One mirror at a time

The subject, stated narrowly

WeTheNorth Market publishes more than one onion address. Almost every page on the internet about WTN mirrors treats that as a preliminary, hands over the strings, and moves on to the Tor Browser, to payment, to vendors. This site treats it as the subject and never moves on.

The question underneath every study here is the same one. What is actually true because there is a set rather than a single string? A surprising amount, once you separate it from everything that would be equally true of a market with exactly one address.

That separation is the whole editorial rule. If a fact would survive unchanged for a single address market, it is not on this site. That excludes a great deal of ordinary and useful advice, which is available in plenty of other places and is not repeated here.

How a study is shaped

Every study has the same parts, in the same order, so you can read the ones you need and skip the rest without losing your footing.

1. A plain statement of the thing being studied, as the heading.
2. One line saying what the study is about.
3. The question, in a single sentence, so you can tell immediately whether it is yours.
4. Five to seven short sections of prose.
5. A block headed if there were only one address, saying what would be different. This is the honesty check: a study that cannot fill it in does not belong here.
6. One line on what the study is not, because the boundary is usually the useful part.
7. Three related studies.

The eight sections

Each section takes one consequence of plurality and works it out. They are meant to be readable in any order, and the sections that people need most urgently are usually absence and divergence.

• Plurality8 studiesWhy more than one address exists at all, and what the second and third one really buy.
• Choosing8 studiesHow a reader picks one of three, and why the picking has no right answer.
• Equivalence8 studiesWhat is truly the same on all three routes, and the four things that are not.
• Divergence8 studiesTwo routes that seem to disagree, and what each possible cause would be.
• Switching8 studiesMoving between routes mid visit, and the sharp line between what carries and what does not.
• Absence8 studiesOne quiet, two quiet, all three quiet, and what each state can support.
• Lists8 studiesA published set is an artefact with an author and an age, and both matter.
• Mistakes8 studiesThe specific errors that become possible only once there is a set.

What this site does not do

• It never opens the addresses it publishes. There is no uptime figure, no status light and no time of checking anywhere on it.
• It does not rank the three, number them, or mark one as principal, because the argument of the whole site is that none of them is.
• It carries no advertising, no paid placement and no affiliate arrangement, and it has no accounts, cookies or tracking.
• It invents nothing. Where a figure appears it has been computed from the strings on the page, and where a fact is not known the page says so.
• It is not the market and cannot reach an account, an order or a message on your behalf.

Where to start

If you have a specific problem in front of you, the words page maps the way people usually phrase these questions onto the study that answers each one. If you want the argument from the beginning, start with three addresses can describe one market and read the first section in order.

If you only came for the strings, they are at the top of this page and at the top of every other page here, and you are not required to read anything else.

• All studies
• The three addresses
• How this site thinks
• The words people type

Four questions that come up before anything else

Why does WeTheNorth Market have more than one onion address?

Because one address is a single route, and a route can fail while the thing at the end of it is healthy. Publishing several gives a reader a next move that is not a search. The full treatment is in what a second address buys you.

Which of the three WTN mirrors should I use?

There is no correct answer, and this site will not invent one. All three point at the same market. The study on there being no correct choice explains why the question has no answer and what to do instead of answering it.

If I sign in on a different WTN market url, is it a different account?

No. The account, the inbox, the order record and the balance are one set of things reached by three routes. What does not carry across is the session you are signed in with. See equivalence.

Does this site say whether the WeTheNorth mirrors are working?

No, and it never will. Nothing here opens any address, so any figure would be an invention. The reasoning is set out in why there is no uptime number.