1) Something is wrong with that URL. "You are attempting to view something that you do not have sufficient rights to view."

2) Credits awarded vs. credits claimed is really the *only* tool we have to tell if there are problems, aside from tasks that error out.

3) I crunch 50+ BOINC projects at the same time, and when one project is such a small slice, variances in run times are easy to miss. Especially when there are multiple sub-projects. Frankly, the only reason I noticed the problem is because of the Christmas Race. A week ago, I re-tasked my machines 100% to WCG for the duration, at which point the problem became obvious, due to funky credits.

Hi everybody,
I am coming back from business trip and I enjoy to see that finally the collection of various observations (despite of the initial reason for them) help to identify a serious problem and to define at least a "workaround".
Already, yesterday evening I reallocated projects more accurately to the different type of hosts I operate (by the way, it will be useful if more device profiles could be define for boinc).
However I am a little bit surprised by some reactions concerning credits.
Being honest, we ALL are like children enjoying toys, games and finally expecting some recognition. There are no rational and logical reasons for spending time, electricity and for devoting hardware to tasks which do not give back any advantage or profits.
Because, like many children, we are in some ways idealist, we think that it is logical and natural to devote energy, time, money and hardware to projects which can help the humanity becoming better, living healthier, etc.
Because we are like such children, we enjoy receiving encouragement and being thanked. At WCG projects, credits are encouraging people to do more (or at least to stay working for WCG).
For my-self, I did not take care of the granted credits during many months. I've just devoted one, later two further hosts to WCG. After half a year, I discovered (for my big surprise) that I was finally in the top ten of my team. Some weeks later, I needed a new powerful workstation for my business. Because of WCG, I selected a very powerful one because it could be usable for crunching projects (otherwise, I would have bought something less powerful).
Leaving the psychology level, we have also to consider the operation of platform like WCG and of all sub-platforms provided by the WCG-members in a professional manner (my professional expertise is coming up).
As soon as we operate complex IT systems, performance monitoring is a necessity ! For Good Business Practice reasons, it is necessary to ensure that the delivered computation power is used efficiently. If some projects wast this power, it is inefficient for an environmental point of view (think of the global earth warming) and it is a disaster for projects which would be able to use the available power in a more efficient manner.
Today, a reasonable monitoring of the granted credits is the once way we have for observing the systems we devoted (fully or partially) to WCG projects.
I am providing consultancy for the regulated industry (i.e. pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical device manufacturers, ...). For this industry sector, performance monitoring is a REGULATORY requirement.
From a didactical point of view, participating to WCG is for me the opportunity to collect experience which I will surely re-use in my job. For this reason, I am managing my WCG sub-platform in the same way, I would operate GxP relevant systems (systems having to fulfill pharmaceutical regulation).
This approach was mainly the reason for me, for monitoring closely my main crunching machine, for wondering my-self regarding its behavior and results during the last two weeks and finally for initiating this thread.
Because the WCG projects are becoming more and more successful and larger, it is VITAL to take care of the resource usage.
From time to time, by reading posts in the forum, I have the feeling that some people do consider the available computation power like an unlimited resource ! It is a big mistake, because the available resource is small regarding the needs of the scientific community and because this resource is strongly related to the good will of volunteers. For being engaged in the operation of several not-for-profit organizations, I know that volunteers need encouragement, consideration and respect, otherwise they leave.
I hope that nobody will consider this post like a "teacher's lesson". It was not the purpose.
I am still available for supporting investigation (and spending time) for further investigation regarding the original issue. I am also ready for helping implementing some Good Practices for making WCG more efficient.
I wish everybody a great week-end.
Thank you for reading (and especially for having the patience to have read this long post) !
Cheers,

This thread should have been renamed immediately after the first post, knowing what was already known.

As was said, the credit system worked. So the problem was obviously something else, something real.

So lets stop talking (and prioritizing) about this as if it has anything to do with credits.

The observation is OK !
But I don't know how I can rename the thread ! (can somebody help?)

To be clear, I meant the admins should have renamed this thread, since they already knew the real cause of the problem, rather than let it perpetuate the image that it was about credits. Or at least said so out loud.