[tor-dev] Tor Terminology + torspec

Nick Mathewson

2018-05-02 11:53:51 UTC

Post by Iain Learmonth
Hi All,
Looking at the recent work on the Tor bandwidth measurements document
format, I've noticed there are a few places where language can be
ambiguous [0]. This morning, I noticed more ambiguity in some metrics
tools [1]. We could do with a glossary.
The problem though is not the lack of a glossary, but that we have at
least 3 [2][3][4].
I've just been discussing this with juga in IRC. For the Metrics
glossary, I think (but please correct me if I'm wrong) that the Metrics
team would be happy to have our glossary's definitions match up with
torspec. I also think it would be cool if we only add new terms to the
Metrics glossary if they have a corresponding term in torspec's glossary.
Would the torspec maintainers be happy to review and merge patches for
new terms to facilitate that?
The community glossary is perhaps more broad than the Metrics or torspec
glossaries, and so having all those terms in torspec would probably not
be a useful thing to do.
Would it be agreeable with the community team that terms that are
already defined in torspec should not be overloaded and that new terms
shouldn't be defined in torspec if they would have conflicting meanings
with terms defined in the community glossary?
If you have other ideas, then please do also suggest them.

In the abstract, I'm generally in favor of using the same terms and
vocabulary everywhere. I guess that there might be specific cases where
some term is too entrenched to replace or something, but I bet we can
handle that when we come across it.

Let's start slow and easy, and work up to the more difficult stuff.

peace,

--
Nick