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@asknostr

I'm trying to figure out the whole relay thing.

I send a note 3 times using nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg desktop, every time connecting to different relays.

Good to know: I am a new user with 6 followers (including myself) and 192 following. This will give me probably a low WoT score, but it will be the case for many new people who come into nostr.

To check which relays accepted my notes, I used nostr:npub13myx4j0pp9uenpjjq68wdvqzywuwxfj64welu28mdvaku222mjtqzqv3qk (shout out to nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn for his amazing work)

TRIAL 1 - standard primal relays

3 relays accepted my note:

- nostr.oxtr.dev

- relay.damus.io

- relay.nostr.band

The strange thing is that only relay.damus.io was in my relay list, the others were not. Not sure where they came from, unless there is a delay in (dis)connecting to relays?

I also was very surprised that relay.primal.net did not accept my note

TRIAL 2 - relays that are advised online (google search)

I connected to 13 relays in total, including nos.lol and relay.snort.social

3 relays accepted my note:

- nostr.oxtr.dev

- relay.mostr.pub

- relay.damus.io

So, all these 3 relays were in the list of 13, so basically my note got rejected by 10

TRIAL 3 - the WoT relays that are advised because of spam.

I was curious to see what would happen for a new user like me

I connected to 15 WoT relays.

The only 2 relays that accepted my note:

- nostr.oxtr.dev/

- relay.damus.io/

Both those 2 relays were not in my relay list

QUESTIONS

1) Is there indeed a delay between connecting to relays and the actual usage of relays to accept your notes? This could explain some of the relays accepting my notes while they are not in my relay list

2) Is there a way for new users to get some engagement on their notes? With a low WoT score, I think their notes are rejected by many relays. Even if they are connected to 10+ relays, it is likely that their notes are only accepted by one or two relays. What are the best 5 relays to be connected to as a new user?

3) Is there a reason that I cannot see my own posts in my primal (desktop) feed? A few days ago, I could see my own posts in my feed, but that seems to have disappeared. I assumed this had to do with relays, and this started my initial investigation.

4) What can be the reason that in primal I see 5 reactions on my earlier post, but in Coracle I see an extra reply by someone? Can this be relay - related?

A long rambling, I know, but I try to figure out how all these parts work together. Because I want to build on Nostr, without users having to understand anything about the underlying plumbing. For that to succeed, I will need to understand it myself 😉 )

Mental note: get my wallet filled up, so I can start zapping the helpful community.

Great questions, relays can get complicated, especially since relay policy isn't surfaced super well. To get some hints on what a particular relay may or may not accept, you can look at the NIP 11 relay document and watch for error messages contained in NOTICE or OK messages. This may help explain why your notes are being rejected.

It's odd that primal would reject notes from their own users. For most of the rejections, I doubt that WoT would be the reason, since wot filtering is a relatively new thing on the relay side and not supported by a lot of relay implementations. My best guess would be rate limiting, or over-zealous spam filtering after the last few weeks of ReplyGuy.

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Discussion

nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn is right. And on reading this seems way too complex for a newcomer to nostr.

Ideally, there is an auto-pilot https://github.com/damus-io/damus/issues/423 that just works™️ where there is an option to take more ownership of relay management.

Wd yall think nostr:npub1gcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqlfnj5z nostr:npub1j60x528w2g2vkq5kae5uhh8y7sezjyj20zcsg0v9muc72cmdpu0s0md7ua nostr:npub1ye5ptcxfyyxl5vjvdjar2ua3f0hynkjzpx552mu5snj3qmx5pzjscpknpr

Community relays with price lists does a lot too.

Admins don't leave sats on the table like that.

New users can target their posts to a set of communities that is likely to engage.

relay policy surfacing nip66 👀

Yes 💯

Will need to take that proposal a bit further tho if I want to display the "who can read/write what, under what condition".