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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: Retention of 'Long-Term' Crunchers. |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 155
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Sabrina Tarson
Advanced Cruncher United States Joined: Jun 27, 2012 Post Count: 149 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I just kind of wanted to mention something regarding the facebook alerts. If you link WCG to a Twitter Account, "or make one for WCG only", then link that Twitter Account to Facebook, it will do the same thing you all requested.
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Thanks Chase! If we actually get some sort of feed for individual milestones, this could be a great way to utilize it!
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Col323
Senior Cruncher Joined: Nov 4, 2008 Post Count: 372 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Question to those who are paying closer attention to the participation rates (and decline) than I am. Do we know where the users no longer participating in WCG are going? Are they crunching something else on Boinc? Are they mining? Are they simply turning off or retiring systems?
Part of me wonders if the DC phenomena is dying. 10+ years ago, I knew many "average Joe" households which had more than one desktop computer. One or two for Mom and Dad, another one or two for the kids. Likewise, most office cubes were populated with a tower. This made fertile ground for tech savvy friends, family, and sys admins to participate in DC. And, with some coaxing and/or a pretty screensaver, you could get the average person interested. Today, I see very few desktops at work or in homes. They've been replaced by laptops, tablets, and phones. There are still enthusiasts who build serious crunch boxes, but these are purpose built. If I, as a consumer, can carry something in my pocket which does all I need, then why would I need a desktop? I'm not even going to be a potential resource at that point. So, as our potential resource pool shrinks, the enthusiast pool fragments. There are certainly a lot of DC projects, but now there are also a lot of mining projects. Sure, not all are geared toward the same hardware. But I have to believe that there are some people who enjoy building a monster computer have moved from crunching for numbers on a webpage, to crunching for some form of money in the pocket. And why not? Both scratch that competitive itch. Both feed that inner geek who likes to ride the bleeding edge. Just my musings which could be way off base. Sorry no suggestions or solutions. For what it's worth, I enjoy the WCG community and agree with Old Chap (and others) who say the community aspect means a lot. I've been doing DC in some form or other since 1999, but when I joined WCG, it was the first time I felt that the whole community was one team working toward a common goal instead of a bunch of individual teams vying for bragging rights. That ebbs and flows over time, but what appeals to me is all of us pulling together to knock out cancer, hunger, etc. Crunch on! |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Nice one Col
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Col323: You're absolutely right about the death of the desk top, although for our purposes, laptops are fine too. The issue there however is that once a lappie gets a little long in the tooth and its cooling system starts to clog up with pet hair and dust, running it at 100% capacity can cause some serious issues that will cause people to shut down BOINC.
----------------------------------------So you're probably on to something there. The thing is, that this isn't a new phenomenon. This has been going on for years. Maybe we've hit some sort of tipping point though. That's possible, but that's one of the reasons we need to investigate. Remember, we're not looking at wu's crunched or points, just active users and you can be an active use with an android phone - well, in theory anyway. You won't return many valid Faah work units, but you'd still be considered active. And what we're losing are active users. That means that even if people are moving to phones and tablets, they still abandoning WCG completely when they have other options. |
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Eric_Kaiser
Veteran Cruncher Germany (Hessen) Joined: May 7, 2013 Post Count: 1047 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I've built my desktop not for DC and no a laptop is not a equivalent replacement of my desktop.
----------------------------------------I need a lot of memory (64GB) and a cpu with at least 12 cores for my hobby. DC came up (again) for testing the stability of my new built desktop - this test is still running since a year... ;). Since then I bought some extra stuff like a hd that is specified to run 24/7. And I bought three android devices and a raspberry pi for boinc only. I'm not sure how long my desktop will contribute to boinc because some private circumstances are influencing being involved with the desktop. So it might come to an end in the near future that my desktop will go offline for DC because I need to save the 60€/month for electricity. My android will remain online and I will switch them back to wcg in the next months.  |
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I don't think we'll be hearing from anyone from WCG, at least not any constructive way. If they show up at all it will just be to tell us that they don't have any plans to do squat. So I don't see the point of doing any extra work, but anyone who wishes to is certainly free to do so. I just want to reinforce the point Klik has made a couple times about social media. If at some point we can somehow persuade WCG to make the minimal expenditure of effort needed to recognize people's milestones, we at least need to send those to a twitter account so that people who are interested can follow that account and retweet them. Facebook would also be a good avenue but that seems closed to us and I'm not familiar enough with it or other social media to make any suggestions but I'm sure that once we have the basic logic in place for something like this, we can find other social media outlets for it. Getting people to ask about WCG is the best way to inspire interest. It's always better to have them come to you rather than the other way around. Hello twilyth, Yes it might be a case that I am naive since I am newly joined member that there would probably be no action, however I also think that it is easier for the WCG staff to ignore your and other points if all we have is 10 pages that they have to shift through and then pick out one lines of things we want to make WCG better. I also know that you have made several points on this in previous points as well. The only thing I am trying to do is if we have an idea of how to keep long-term crunchers then we might as well put it into a concise presentation (aka bullet points) showing that we are in agreement and this is what we demand as contributors to WCG, since we are the ones who provide the raw power that is then refined and sharpened by the expertise of the scientists. That is why if we have a consolidated and single example of what we want it is harder to ignore. As for my idea I was thinking of writing something along the lines of a list of Demands for WCG. I have put together a small list of what I could find from the previous posts. Please excuse me if I did not give where credit is due, but I tried to copy the posts and the users that have made it and give credit where credit is due. Please let me know if I am not on the right track with my thoughts on this. Any further additions can be made by other members with a new tag "List of Demands vX.X" List of Demand v1.0: Seoulpowergrid -ability to send private messages to each other within the forums -dashboard (again shows people the progress and the work to be completed) KLiK -Ability to recognize member based on a change of cpu power donated. (Ex: someone who upgrades their equipment and now provides a 50% more output). -"In a few days I will be reaching 20 mil points (if not today)...if my FB account could be linked to WCG site, then WCG could get a FREE commercial on a FB over my profile...with also a link to "join Luka's team on this link"... but I will get credit only here, not publicly...and my friends couldn't like/comment on that post!" -Have a milestone setup that is avaliable on Facebook/tweeter/instagram/tumblr/Google+: * every CPU year * every year of membership, from joind date...with text "Luka has has 7th annyversary with WCG team in which he donated 42y of CPU time & returned 45 000 results of computing for science in humanitarian projects like XYZ project. You can find out more, here (link) and join Luka's team here (link). * every points milestones (1k, 2k, 5k, 10k, 20k, 50k, 100k, 250k, 500k, 1M, 2M, 5M, 10M, 20M, 50M, 100M, 200M, 500M, 1B, 2B, 5B, 10B, 20B, 50B, 100B, etc.)...written "Luka has jus made a new mileston of 1k points on WCG computing for scinence on projects like XYZ. Find you more about this link to research (link) and join Luka's team on link here. * weekly/monthly/quarterly/half year/year reports (example: in last month Luka donated X of CPU h to computing for better future of mankind & world free of disease like AIDS, cancer, etc...find out more on Luka's profile on WCG, link...) * project milestones (BADGES), like we got here...example: Luka just got a emerald badge for donating 2years of CPU time for the project XY, link. if you want to join Luka's team here is the link. * returned X results, hwre X is: 1st, 2nd, 5th, 10th, 20th, 50th, 100th, 200th, 500th, 1k, 2k, 5k, 10k, 20k, 50k, 100k, 500k, 1M, 2M, 5M, etc... (example: Luka just returned his 1st result for participating in the research for project CEP2, find more about the project on link. If you want to join Luka, join here - link.) * World rank, for places: 1st, 2nd, 5th, 10th, 20th, 50th, 100th, 200th, 500th, 1k, 2k, 5k, 10k, 20k, 50k, 100k, 500k, 1M, 2M, 5M, etc... example: Luka just ranked 100.000th in the World for participating in WCG, find out more on link. Join him & beat him, here! * Country rank: Luka just ranked 10th in Croatia for participating in WCG, find out more on link. Join him & beat him here! * research development posts (example: Luka has donated X of CPU hours for computing data for project FightAIDS@home. His donation got scientist to develop this data & conclusions, link. Find out more on this projects and join Luka's team on, link) Make GIFs that can be uploaded to Tumblr or Instagram or Vine...make posts with those GIFs that can be posted on tweeter or Google+ or LinkedIn with some tex/links... Easily setup option of which accounts that you want to link in with that app...and which option do u want to post on your remark - so don't be spamers, just giving choice what the users would like to add & post... E-mails of recognition for every milestone that WCG feels it's great (points, CPU years, results returned, etc.). etc. Vlado101 -main website to include window that shows top users/teams -main website to show number of active users (users who make contribution, not just that have an account). -Introduction of team awards. KLiK suggestion: - top grid developer for the accounts that in last week makes top % of risen in points/results returned. Example someone makes avarage od 100 000points per week, this week has 120 000points per week - so he has a 20% more than before, and makes to the list ranking from top % to 1% of change. All those with change of less than 1% or smaller than zero (negative grid avarage) don't get on that list. So we can see which users do develope their grid more. ;) Top listed teams & users usually are the same...but this is chance for a "smaller player" to get recognition on WCG site...and he will be proud about that...he will develop his/hers grid more...and participate more in projects... Twilyth -One way to do it is to have an area in the banner that randomly lists people and their milestones for the past few weeks. Doneske -I would like to suggest they update the badges so that one could be achieved every 5 years of run time. Going from 10 to 20 years and especially from 20 to 50 or 50 to 100 is almost not achievable for those who might only have 4 or fewer cores contributing. They could still highlight those milestones by a different color of badge for 20, 50, 100 years. You have to remember, badges are on a per project basis not overall runtime. The main thing is to feel like you've accomplished something and it shouldn't take years. In blue there have been developed ideas... ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by KLiK at Jul 31, 2014 6:20:57 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
The problem is obvious, the DC base is shrinking due to transition from destop to mobiles. but there are good trends too. your android device with 4 to 8 cores in it running @ 1,2 to 1,8 GHZ is more powerful than a Mac tower or a Gaming desktop ten years ago..
as for the solution, I have two suggestions; * bypass the electricity bill ; Buy a 16 GB or a 32 GB flash drive, install any linux distro ( I use ubuntu) as usb boot. stick it to your computer in the work place when you are leaving for home. ( of course you have to configure your boot menu for the usb boot prioirty) and you have at least 16 hours of free computing. ** compute with 5 Watt/hour instead of 250 Watt/hour use a Android device such as this; http://www.dx.com/p/jesurun-ug007-quad-core-a...b-rom-xbmc-netflix-223396 stick it to your TV set. download boinc for android. set & forget... you upgrage your TV to a smart TV as a bonus .. javascript:smilie(' ') |
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Falconet
Master Cruncher Portugal Joined: Mar 9, 2009 Post Count: 3295 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Yeah but android devices barely do any work at all compared to a desktop or laptop. Computers are getting more energy efficient, my AMD quad cores use 88 or so watts per hour under full CPU load. That is €9,23 euros each per month if I ran them 24/7.
----------------------------------------AMD Ryzen 5 1600AF 6C/12T 3.2 GHz - 85W AMD Ryzen 5 2500U 4C/8T 2.0 GHz - 28W AMD Ryzen 7 7730U 8C/16T 3.0 GHz [Edit 1 times, last edit by Falconet at Jul 31, 2014 11:24:11 AM] |
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7664 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Buy a 16 GB or a 32 GB flash drive, install any linux distro ( I use ubuntu) as usb boot. stick it to your computer in the work place when you are leaving for home. ( of course you have to configure your boot menu for the usb boot prioirty) and you have at least 16 hours of free computing. Make sure you get permission from the employer before you do this. Some employers are adamant about not using their machines for processes which are not connected to their business. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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