5 ms·

There is a nice white paper and other pdfs in the wiki.

cookiecaper 15y ago
I glanced around and didn't see it, even though I loaded the wiki's MainPage. Nonetheless, I don't really have much motivation to download a PDF in the first place, but having done so, I don't have enough motivation to try to read this 58-page white paper just to find out the basics of how this works. They need to write an executive summary and a basic overview of its mechanisms, totaling <= 5 pages tops. It's totally unrealistic to expect people to 1) find your obscure links, 2) download a PDF or other external resource to learn anything about your product, and 3) sit down and read a 58-page white paper as an introduction. If someone is really interested in technical details because they're considering development on the project, or something like that, then this is reasonable, but not for people that you expect to be users.
- SeoxyS 15y ago
  Maybe, just maybe, they don't have an obligation to cater to your expectations of how they must describe their network. Maybe the people they're trying to reach are happy with a white paper. Maybe they're not great writers, designers or marketers and would rather spend their time working on their product.
  - cookiecaper 15y ago
    Maybe, and that's fine. I'm just trying to help set expectations and comment generally on why this kind of thing is a bad idea if you want to attract users. Most people are not going to read 58 pages to learn about how this works; that should be obvious even to bad marketers. If they don't care and only want users that cared enough to read the white paper (or were careless enough to use the network with almost no technical detail), that's their prerogative and they're welcome to it. :)
    - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
      The problem is the five-page people tend to be the bike shedders. They don't understand the system well enough to provide good feedback, so start pointing out inconsequential things, causing diversion from getting stuff done.
      - _tef 15y ago
        Alternatively, the people who wax lyrical for 60 or so pages don't understand much either, and are compelled to pad out their document. I remember seeing this a while ago, but I didn't pay much attention to it then, because punishing those who understand the problems with a lengthy verbose soliloquy isn't a good strategy for disseminating information. :-) The other problem is that something 60 pages long without any references or citations beyond an occasional casual link to wikipedia, smacks of reinventing the wheel. This would be why he can go for 60 pages without mentioning known terms like "Cybil Attack", or "Onion Routing". This white paper smells more of bikeshedding - there was no code and right at the bottom of the document, you can see the caveat & apology "This white paper is in no way a complete protocol specification, far from it actually. Its main goal is rather to provide suggestions for solutions for several typical problems [...] which could hopefully work as some kind of reference point for any discussions that may be inspired by it." I think my favourite part of the paper is where he handwaves PKI & Voting atop of a DHT to 'solve' lots of problems, without realising those are the genuinely hard problems people are still working on. A close runner-up is in the slides he talks about "no central point of failure" and then explains his "Manual Override Command Support", which is a central point of abuse. It is nice to see that someone is finally writing code for it, and I wish them luck working out all of the details left out in the paper, especially the organisation and management of addresses.

I glanced around and didn't see it, even though I loaded the wiki's MainPage. Nonetheless, I don't really have much motivation to download a PDF in the first place, but having done so, I don't have enough motivation to try to read this 58-page white paper just to find out the basics of how this works. They need to write an executive summary and a basic overview of its mechanisms, totaling <= 5 pages tops. It's totally unrealistic to expect people to 1) find your obscure links, 2) download a PDF or other external resource to learn anything about your product, and 3) sit down and read a 58-page white paper as an introduction. If someone is really interested in technical details because they're considering development on the project, or something like that, then this is reasonable, but not for people that you expect to be users.

SeoxyS 15y ago
Maybe, just maybe, they don't have an obligation to cater to your expectations of how they must describe their network. Maybe the people they're trying to reach are happy with a white paper. Maybe they're not great writers, designers or marketers and would rather spend their time working on their product.
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  Maybe, and that's fine. I'm just trying to help set expectations and comment generally on why this kind of thing is a bad idea if you want to attract users. Most people are not going to read 58 pages to learn about how this works; that should be obvious even to bad marketers. If they don't care and only want users that cared enough to read the white paper (or were careless enough to use the network with almost no technical detail), that's their prerogative and they're welcome to it. :)
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    The problem is the five-page people tend to be the bike shedders. They don't understand the system well enough to provide good feedback, so start pointing out inconsequential things, causing diversion from getting stuff done.
    - _tef 15y ago
      Alternatively, the people who wax lyrical for 60 or so pages don't understand much either, and are compelled to pad out their document. I remember seeing this a while ago, but I didn't pay much attention to it then, because punishing those who understand the problems with a lengthy verbose soliloquy isn't a good strategy for disseminating information. :-) The other problem is that something 60 pages long without any references or citations beyond an occasional casual link to wikipedia, smacks of reinventing the wheel. This would be why he can go for 60 pages without mentioning known terms like "Cybil Attack", or "Onion Routing". This white paper smells more of bikeshedding - there was no code and right at the bottom of the document, you can see the caveat & apology "This white paper is in no way a complete protocol specification, far from it actually. Its main goal is rather to provide suggestions for solutions for several typical problems [...] which could hopefully work as some kind of reference point for any discussions that may be inspired by it." I think my favourite part of the paper is where he handwaves PKI & Voting atop of a DHT to 'solve' lots of problems, without realising those are the genuinely hard problems people are still working on. A close runner-up is in the slides he talks about "no central point of failure" and then explains his "Manual Override Command Support", which is a central point of abuse. It is nice to see that someone is finally writing code for it, and I wish them luck working out all of the details left out in the paper, especially the organisation and management of addresses.