Volume seems to create problems. New members create new volume

"Accelerate research with no investment of time or money."
One computer that's crunching WCG projects, uses the same amount of electricity as 3 identical computers which are turned on but don't crunch any projects. This means it does cost money to crunch.

This bit was interesting (and I don't recall ever reading it previously): IT IS ANTICIPATED THAT EVENTUALLY IBM WILL TRANSFER WORLD COMMUNITY GRID TO A NON-IBM OWNED NOT-FOR-PROFIT ENTITY.

"Accelerate research with no investment of time or money."

One computer that's crunching WCG projects, uses the same amount of electricity as 3 identical computers which are turned on but don't crunch any projects. This means it does cost money to crunch.

Yes, you will say WCG wrote, investment, not running cost. But people who read that statement, will read it as overall cost. Is it right to sucker them into projects with the implied promise it wont cost them any money -- especially since these projects are covertly run by corporate employees, who are free to sell the computer generated data to the highest bidders, sometimes years before it's released for free to the public?

WCG, maybe you should try an honest and forthcoming sales pitch?

I have to agree with this. People who get excited about WCG and start to participate are going to notice the difference, especially on laptops. They're going to notice how much hotter their machines get, as one example.

And since I don't think most laptop users ever clean their fan/hs, the extra heat is very likely going to cause problems over the longer, if not short term. The last thing you want is to have someone have to take their computer in for servicing because of thermal faults only for the technician to tell them that BOINC is what is causing the problem.

Not everyone out there is a sophisticated user and not being honest about the heat issue up front is only cause people to feel betrayed when they find out.

In terms of how to present this, there's no way to sugar coat it. It's better to be completely honest about the potential issues rather than try to paper them over.

edit: oh, and btw, if this is really a serious attempt to bring in new users, this forum software is going to scare people away, especially when you have such a slick presentation. It's like drawing people in with a full page glossy ad only to have them find out that any actual interaction only occurs by fax.

edit2: Related to that is the 700k figure that is posted right at the top of the presentation. We all know that this is a lie since we only have maybe 60-70k active users. I'm not going to get all self-righteous about this except to say that anytime you have that alleged number of users, people are going to be expecting a lot more people contributing to the forum.

Of course it's an open question as to how many will join and never look at the forum, but I have to believe that most will at least be curious about what kind of community we have here and what they'll find isn't going to jive with that 700k figure.

TBMS - the "no investment of time or money" statement is referring to the fact that there is no cost to sign up and that supporting the causes you care about does not require a financial donation. And while any program that uses CPU does consume electricity, how much additional electricity is used for running World Community Grid varies significantly depending on the device and its power-saving features and settings. The default settings for our software are intentionally on the conservative side and we don't ask volunteers to change the way they use their devices, for example, by leaving them on all the time. Just as with charitable organizations where no donation is too small, same here, we want to be as inclusive as we can be and welcome all volunteers, no matter how much or little they contribute. If everyone does what they can, we're all better for it.


tonyh205, twilyth is correct in that this is standard legal disclaimer language. Side note, we are finalizing a review of our terms of use (since they haven't been updated recently) and will be updating them accordingly.

Hello Erika,

I really like the new slides. They flow well. As far as issues others have stated it better than what I can. My only concern is advertising WCG with android devices. Currently the OET project is in a bad shape on android devices. I would love to donate more, and I would think people would be more likely to just install an app on their phone instead of installing something on their desktops/laptops.

Since OET is the only android capable project, and it has issues where tasks run indefinitely I would say more time has to be spent on making those projects available or finding a way to port it on android.

Just a suggestion. Otherwise it looks great.