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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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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Unfortunately, this is a "business" where a lot does need to be taken on faith. Unless you happen to be involved in the particular field of research where a project is focused, you probably aren't going to be able to see the potential benefit. Someone can tell you how things might play out, but that's just speculation. You would need to be involved to see how things develop and see how it eventually contributed.
----------------------------------------I don't have any doubt that the work WCG has done has in fact been a boon for the scientific community, but don't ask me to explain how. That's why that's not one of my primary motivations for crunching and why we can't expect it to be a primary motivation for most people. And that why we have to provide other forms of motivation - things like umm . . . what do you call it again . . . uhhh . . . oh, right - FUN!!! And part of what makes this fun is connecting with people in something called a umm . . . uhhh . . . oh, yeah, a FORUM!!! Of which this POS is barely a vague facsimile. But anyway, getting back on topic, the one project we have going right now which might be able to yield some immediate results, at least if I have some vague idea of what the project is about, is MCM. Once that data is collated I would imagine they could act on it fairly quickly since I think they would be using to actually treat patients. If those treatments result in improved survival times, we should know that within a couple of years I would think, depending on the type and stages of cancers involved I guess. Although in other cases I guess you could be talking up to a decade or more. But still, even in a worst case scenario I would imagine there would probably some preliminary results. The only issue is if they would be sufficient for publication. edit: BTW, something else that might be beneficial is long term follow up. So for example if we have a drug discovery project and it wraps up, maybe a year or two later, have someone from the research end come back and let us know if any of the compounds either went anywhere or led to any other developments. We could also maybe require researchers to credit WCG in any papers they publish. Maybe they already do this but if not, I think it should be a requirement so that someone can do a Google Scholar search and see where WCG shows up. I don't really think that's asking too much.   [Edit 2 times, last edit by twilyth at Jul 24, 2014 1:08:30 AM] |
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Seoulpowergrid
Veteran Cruncher Joined: Apr 12, 2013 Post Count: 817 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Some papers get written, but what's the benefit to mankind. I guess the biggest hope is that the people who could use the research to benefit mankind are the people who would be reading these kind of articles. I personally think a significant help is the CEP project. It's information was put into a website and is accessible by all. Again, the people who would use it will be those researching solar power but hopefully they can take some of the data and skip a good chunk of the R&D (read: expensive+time) and go into physically testing some of the results. I don't expect to see one day all solar panels are suddenly double ability but I do think a progressive increasing in ability and deceasing in cost will come out of the research done here and hopefully will happen faster than otherwise, as again, some of the R&D for solar producing companies is already completed which can push all those companies a bit closer to production. We are doing this on faith that the knowledge gained from our results will lead to something. More communication from the scientists makes everyone feel like we are part of the research team. Scientist and crunchers all working toward the same goal. That's why I left a different project: there was no communication. There are plenty of people who have used Boinc for years more than myself and on a variety of projects. How is the communication of project scientists/IT teams here versus other Boinc projects? We could also maybe require researchers to credit WCG in any papers they publish. Maybe they already do this but if not, I think it should be a requirement so that someone can do a Google Scholar search and see where WCG shows up. I don't really think that's asking too much. Its not a requirement as of yet and looking at the really old icons used for PDF and DOC (hence that page/info hasn't probably been updated in years) I doubt it ever was (link). But doing a search for "world community grid" (with quotes) nets 614 results and "FightAIDS@Home " nets almost 300 on Google Scholar. I'm not saying it is perfect but there is some presence that exists. I surfed through this outdated list and clicked a few articles under the WCG umbrella and did catch a few times WCG is mentioned but yeah, it doesn't look mentioned in all articles.  |
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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While it's natural to try to speculate as to what might be causing these losses, I think it's a mistake to just come up with explanations that don't have any factual basis and casually dismiss them. Granted that jonnie's figures include people who likely left because of the closing of the XRP giveaway and there's no doubt that a large number of them were in the top 5000. But the fact remains that as if I sort BOINCstats by total points and look at the names then look at current points, I see a lot of familiar names with zeros in that column. So while jonnie's figures may be skewed by the giveaway, you only need to look at the user overview charts here to see that the growth in the total number of users has been increasing at a decreasing rate - http://boincstats.com/en/stats/15/project/detail/user The only exception is the period of the the XRP giveaway. If you're looking at the active user chart, I suppose that can be explained by the fact that most users are in the northern hemishpere. However even that doesn't really make much sense to me since the average user is running BOINC on their primary computer and shouldn't even be noticing the difference. So what you're really saying is that thousands of WCG'ers have been shutting down ALL of their crunchers for the summer time - even their Android phones. That doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. But as has been pointed out above, the only way to really get any answers is to contact these people and send them a short questionnaire to try to find out what caused them to abandon WCG. Is it permanent or temporary. Was it something personal that WCG had no control over something about the software, website, forum or quality of support? We need to ask questions in order to get answers and honestly I don't see our crack staff here getting on that anytime soon. It really might be that BOINC was using too much infrastructure of some firm...so the IT dept has it shut down... probably was run illegal on computers in some firms...with some IT employers taking advantage of some "extra spare h" of CPU time! |
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7655 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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It really might be that BOINC was using too much infrastructure of some firm...so the IT dept has it shut down... probably was run illegal on computers in some firms...with some IT employers taking advantage of some "extra spare h" of CPU time! I am aware of at least one instance where this has occurred (not by me) and the powers that be nixed the whole Boinc thing. Unfortunate, but true. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
To get back on topic a little bit, I'm a goals oriented person and to retain my interest I need to set and then achieve goals. At WCG, those goals could take a variety of forms: badges, project completions, team ranking etc. 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.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
APHORISMS, THOUGHTS, SAYINGS The only way to read a book of aphorisms without being bored is to open it at random and, having found something that interests you, close the book and meditate. Prince Charles-Josef de Ligne (1735 - 1814), Austrian field marshal and writer Do meditate on this 'random' page from start here, in silence if you please.   |
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enels
Senior Cruncher Joined: Apr 25, 2008 Post Count: 286 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Could noise be a problem? As a computer becomes clogged the user may notice that by turning off BOINC their fans are significantly quieter. It could be a question in an 'exit survey' people have mentioned to see if it is even a problem.
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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That's why I left a different project: there was no communication. There are plenty of people who have used Boinc for years more than myself and on a variety of projects. How is the communication of project scientists/IT teams here versus other Boinc projects? We could also maybe require researchers to credit WCG in any papers they publish. Maybe they already do this but if not, I think it should be a requirement so that someone can do a Google Scholar search and see where WCG shows up. I don't really think that's asking too much. Its not a requirement as of yet and looking at the really old icons used for PDF and DOC (hence that page/info hasn't probably been updated in years) I doubt it ever was (link). But doing a search for "world community grid" (with quotes) nets 614 results and "FightAIDS@Home " nets almost 300 on Google Scholar. I'm not saying it is perfect but there is some presence that exists. I surfed through this outdated list and clicked a few articles under the WCG umbrella and did catch a few times WCG is mentioned but yeah, it doesn't look mentioned in all articles. I don't know how communication is here compared to other projects but I know that this is a recurring complaint that WCG has tried to address. I think they have added news features to include project updates for example although I tend to regard boinc notices as an annoyance since it is constantly telling me to upgrade my client. Thanks for doing that research on references to WCG on Google Scholar. That's encouraging. However even if most of the research projects that utilize our services are happy to give WCG credit, I think it's something that should be codified since periodically we do get people here questioning the value of the work and in addition to referring them to the standard list of papers it would be nice to as you have done and refer them to a list of hundreds of papers where WCG is credited. |
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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What WCG is not doing is enough in "marketing promotions"...many of which are FREE...
----------------------------------------Example: 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! you can have milestones setup in the user postings on FB, like: - every CPU year - every year of membership - 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.), - 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) etc. Make everything FALSHY and BLINK, like American style...and people will JOIN more, participate MORE & stay out LONGER! I know that it seems much of programing...but I like to share that things... Like when I play PS3...my account posts every BADGE that I got from the game...and only game that I play on PS3 is a GT (currently 6)...many of my friends LIKE the BADGES information on ma profile...some call me and say: can we also come to u and play GT6? it just seems to me that these "public media publications" are much more worth it, than giving extra points to someone sticking around... ;) ---------------------------------------- [Edit 3 times, last edit by KLiK at Jul 25, 2014 7:27:49 AM] |
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jonnieb-uk
Ace Cruncher England Joined: Nov 30, 2011 Post Count: 6105 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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KLiK
----------------------------------------WCG has 'history' with Facebook: knreed Apr 14, 2011 7:16:05 PM We were notified yesterday that an automated tool at Facebook had determined that our Facebook application was "spammy". They informed us that they permanently disabled our application. We appealed that action through their processes but our appeal was denied. We are currently evaluating our next steps. |
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