That's what I like about the WCG overall project, you can't go wrong. I doesn't matter if you crunch in just one project (for whatever reason you like or care) or in just another project or in all projects. Crunching is goodness from any angle you look at it.

Agreed. There are people here that keep a serious eye on the points, stats, status, WUs numbers, etc. I sometimes think that they know as much as the techs, admins and scientists

CJSL

Gotta keep crunching, there's a world to save !!!

1 line summary: communication, updates, appreciation, and bells and whistles

I started doing BOINC when there were 3 malaria projects and since one was here I joined WCG. As this was finishing first I pooled my resources toward this until the last week or so and disconnected from WCG, then continued at the 2nd site until their project finished and have been plugging away at the 3rd. But the lack of communication/information mixed with the boring website led me back here. What were they testing? How were the tests going? How many WUs were finished in a day? Was there an end in sight?

Initially I couldn't give a rip about the points or the project badges as I was doing this for the betterment of mankind of such~ And so as I saw the end of project scramble by members here I disconnected a little quicker so hopefully someone else could get the badge they were going for. Going off of boincstats.com I have contributed here the least and according to the 'My Contribution' page at WCG I just finished 7 years at WCG today (woohoo~). But as time wore on I found I needed the sparkles and the shiny things and most Boinc websites are terrible at that. So here, between the badges, the 'run time' at the 'My Contribution' page, WCG Supplemental Performance Charts , the status page for FA@H with the cool gif images that show percentages + we can see their experiements getting finished, boincstats.com and the wcgsig.com custom signatures (tons of info in one personal gif!?! how cool is that?) - I have enough micro goals and communication in the forums to hold my interest and keep a majority of my cpu resources here.

I know it sounds selfish but people need to see what their computers/electricity bill/noise pollution of CPU fans is going towards and the information made by the 3rd parties I just mentioned is critical for keeping my involvement here. The 'my contribution' pages on other sites resets as enough time goes by which was really depressing for me. I don't need to boast to other people but I need for myself, a true visual learner, to see what I have contributed towards and not to be forgotten and while sites like boincstats.com don't forget, I still wanted to see the information on my private only-for-me page after I log into the various Boinc websites.

WCG recently expanded the badges beyond the 2 year mark and just started something that shows when you recruit a friend here; nice new bells and whistles. Now that a 5 year badge exists I'm going for that on FA@H before continuing towards 2 year badges for Cancer and CE2.

For me WCG is my favorite project with applications that I'm very interested in. In WCG applications I spend the most overall runtime of all boinc projects and I suppose this will continue in the future.

But: WCG isn't the only project I'm interested in. I also like projects from different to WCG areas of science. That means that some weeks a year I'm off of WCG and supporting other projects. There are also team competitions like the annually penthatlon were I'm supporting my team too.
So I might be inactive in WCG a couple of weeks but I will always return (as long I can afford the price for electricity 0,27€/kWh).

I second that Eric Kaiser. Although my electricity costs are not as much, it is however still a cost. I have no problems with it though since I think of it as a small cost to help future generations.

As a small thing that might keep long-term users I was thinking of is that maybe the main WCG website would include something like the top users/teams on its webpage and a number of users. This would at least make the people that like the points aspect feel rewarded. I noticed that with a lot of BOINC projects that they do have something like that, and although it might not do much it can at least show that WCG is an active project and show a person who comes across this webpage that there are lot of people working towards research.

Another aspect I feel that needs more work is team awards. Same as we have badges for individual's that donate their cpu's there could be team badges, although their badges would need to be set much higher.

I completely agree with you...we are all the same, so if you wanna be better & cruch more - build better machine(s)...

also, the electricity costs are sthg to think about in the future...at least until they get those fusion reactors to work in USA & France (talking only about the Europe & USA)...
until then, some resources will have to be shut down...or we might switch also to something like GRIDCOIN to calculate some coins...either for more efficient/powerful CPUs, more efficient/powerful PSU, more RAM, new faster HDD, etc...