[mat-wg] Encouraging RIPE Atlas users to choose for public probes and measurements

Dear colleagues,

One of the main goals of RIPE Atlas is to share information about
Internet performance, which we collect via the active measurements
performed by the thousands of probes in the RIPE Atlas network. In order 
to better achieve that goal, last year we suggested making even more of 
the collected data public. You can read the full details of this 
proposal on RIPE Labs:

https://labs.ripe.net/Members/becha/proposing-making-ripe-atlas-data-more-public

We asked for feedback about this proposal from the RIPE Atlas community
and, based on that feedback, we have decided not to go ahead with the
proposal or make any major changes to the system.

We would therefore like to revise our original proposal and suggest the
following, revised plan:

1. We will strongly encourage RIPE Atlas users to keep their RIPE Atlas
probes public and to perform public measurements as much as possible by:

- Making new probes public by default (opt-out available) whenever
someone applies for a new probe
- Checking the public option by default when using the web interface to
create user-defined measurements
- Rewarding those who make their probes and measurements public by
giving them more credits than those who don’t
- Requiring all research enabled by special credits to produce public
measurement results
- Stressing the public nature of RIPE Atlas as a measurements platform
in the RIPE NCC's publications and outreach

2. We will continue to allow users to *not* mark their probes public and 
to schedule user-defined measurements that are not public.

3. We will improve the documentation in order to clarify exactly what
information is available for probes and user-defined measurements that
are marked public versus those not marked public.

Because this revised plan does not involve making any significant
changes to our procedures or interfaces, the implementation would take
place during our regular deployment cycle.

We are basing this revised plan on the reactions of the 13 RIPE Atlas
users who provided feedback after we proposed our original plan (you can 
find more details about the feedback we received below).

We would like to hear from more of you, even if you just confirm that
you agree with this revised proposal. Please subscribe to the RIPE Atlas 
mailing list and let us know what you think:
https://www.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/ripe-atlas

Regards,

Vesna Manojlovic
Senior Community Builder for Measurements Tools
RIPE NCC

Summary of the feedback
(the original comments can also be found on the RIPE Atlas mailing list 
archives):

Eleven people replied on the mailing list and two replied on RIPE Labs,
with some people supporting more than one option.

- Three people supported making the data more public
- Six people supported keeping things the same (i.e. against removing
the "not public" option)
- One person suggested making the data less public
- Three people suggested delaying the publication of the public results
(a new suggestion)
- One person was completely neutral

Specific comments included:

- Making the data public by default is okay, but leave the option to not 
make it public
- If a delay in making the data public is introduced, one-off
measurements should be excluded
- A delay in making the data public will introduce more complexity to
the system
- A proposal to receive extra/fewer credits for making probes and
measurements public/not public, respectively