You sure have that right. I still can't find my threads...a real nightmare. And this is the only place that participants can get tech support. It's almost enough to make me want to quit.

No one at WCG thinks the forum software is a priority and the CA's always say as much in their replies to threads like this. There's always something else that's more important. In the past the argument was that it was more important to roll-out new projects. Now that we have more than enough to keep us busy for months - at least - the forum sw is still on the bottom of the list. No one knows what's on the top of the list since they won't announce anything until they're ready to deploy.

The other argument is that only a small fraction of people that sign up for WCG ever visit the forums. I'm not completely sure that's true any more. I used to believe that but I'd like to see some figures on how many registered members have logged on to the forums at least one in the past 3 months. Since the forum and the boinc/ud databases use the same userid, that shouldn't be hard to do.

But even if it is true, the fact is that there will be a lot more interest in the forums once people start converting to boinc from ud. That's going to be tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. When those people have a question they're going to come here and anyone who is even moderately net savvy is going be . . . well, at least disappointed with the software. There's a huge mass of information here and it's almost impossible to access even if you know what you're looking for. It's pretty pathetic.

But if enough people post their disapproval here and/or one of the suggestions threads, maybe it will get someone's attention.

One can only hope.

Hi twilyth,
More projects are being worked on. We have a new Cancer project coming. There are changes in BOINC. The second phase of DDDT is being prepared to run on CHARMM. There are a lot of bugs in ACAH that people are working on. The current (optimistic) schedule has some free time to start working on new forum software early in 2008. But I am well aware that debugging projects might well run over to the time that we need to start on Phase 2 of HCMD.

You are right, we have put new forum software at lower priority than new projects, but it has made the 'bottom' of the list of things that we might actually get to in 2008.

Lawrence

Added: pictures from the recent Pan-Galactic BOINC workshop: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/WorkShop07/Summary

Oh no!!!! One of those "love it or leave it" types. I thought that attitude was exclusive to the "Ugly Americans" - except even here it went out of fashion in the '70's.

I'm glad to hear it. But then why is it that every time someone complains about the sw we get the standard response that it is a low priority? If you think the forum is important, then you should support raising it's priority. If you don't think it's important, then don't. You can't have it both ways.



That's a pretty small number - granted. However you have no idea how many people come here as guests looking for answers to a question and leave without ever getting it. Given the "read faq's or don't bother to post" cr@p that one normally gets as a newbie in such venues, I doubt that more than 1% of the people who visit are willing to post.

As WCG goes ahead with the boinc to ud conversion, I'm sure that there will be a significant increase in traffic - either that or the number of users will start to decline. Personally I think there are going to be some heavy losses before the conversion is complete. And for that, if no other reason, the forum should be inviting and accessible. Right now, anyone coming here and expecting to find software similar to what they are used to will be lost. And if that is the first and last time that they visit here, then they really will be lost.