... How about an email to rosetta users ... to give a minimum of, say, 20% to R@H.

This would have to be sensitively worded. The BOINC spirit is to share amongst projects, and that includes having one or two low resource projects as "back up" for when the main project is unavailable.

Rosetta benefits from crunch time provided by users who us the project solely as backup. There is a double benefit - a slow trickle of results when their main project is running, and a higher burst of results when their main project goes down.

Some such users might resent such an approach as you suggest (lok at the boards, you can find people in a user community this size to resent almost anything!). The question then is whether the loss due to such a mail out is less than the gain.

Another loss could be if other projects (or fans of other projects) resented such a mail-out as poaching, and stopped recommending Rosetta. Rosetta does get a lot of support from people on other projects boards and it would be counter productive to lose that.

I am not saying don't do it. I am saying do it carefully. Perhaps a thank you mail out stressing the benefits of Rosetta research as the main feature, and kind of mentioning the project shares in passing?

As you can see from my stats, Rosetta is not top of my priorities, though I do give a good share and I am letting it catch up with Einstein. One use I make of ROsetta is to fill the gaps in the LHC project (LHC has no work about 50% of the time, and the gaps may get bigger rather than smaller), but I could instead give that time to Einstein. I don't because I follow these borads enough to know what is going on, and to really appreciate the effort the Project Team make here to communicate both the science, and to involve users in problem solving with the number crunching.

If I did not know that, an informative email would probably do more to shift my perspective towards Rosetta than an obviously begging one.

But that is just my own feeling, I don't know how typical I am of others.

A final point: are crunchers users?

It is David et al who use the results, not us. Especially when hoping for bigger donations of cpu time, it might be tactful to refer to us as supporters and as donors. That is what we are, all of us. And like other donors (eg donors to charities, or religious or political groups) sometimes we like that to be acknowledged.

"Thank you for your support, we thought you might like to know what we have been doing with the cpu time you have been kindly donating to Rosetta@home..."

River~~

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... How about an email to rosetta users ... to give a minimum of, say, 20% to R@H.

In my opinion a mail to the crunchers is ok when we can tell them that the most of the BUGS are solved. Which seem to be soon :)

Anders n

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Many BOINC projects have been emailing users during the last few weeks (e.g. SETI to ask for $$$ donations to keep it alive, WCG has been emailing users who stopped crunching since X months, Einstein made a plea for CPU time a couple of months ago -obviously with "akosf"'s optimised apps they're doing 4x the science with same number of CPUs- etc)

IMO, R could send an email pointing to recent successes in the science and recent bugfixes, esp. if the credit granting could be normalised asap.

The big bet would be attracting NEW users, like BBC/CPDN has managed to add >80.000 users to DC donor userbase.

But it'd be of no use to attract 1000s of new users, only to lose them again if one every 5-10 WUs turns out to be a 250MB mem monster (which would cause many people's PCs with 512M to start paging, slow down significantly etc) and risk losing those users again.

Though I have to add that I've been participating in both Rosetta@home and RALPH and I've had NO problems whatsoever during the past 1.5month, even with a marginal 256MB RAM PC.

PS: Today I've upgraded my PCs' RAM to 768M-1G to make sure they'll be able to crunch the more demanding WUs.

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Best UFO Resources
Wikipedia R@h
How-To: Join Distributed Computing projects that benefit humanity

... How about an email to rosetta users ... to give a minimum of, say, 20% to R@H.

In my opinion a mail to the crunchers is ok when we can tell them that the most of the BUGS are solved. Which seem to be soon :)

Anders n

The three responses I've gotten since my post have been very informative. Thanks to all. I do think the bug thing is bigger than you can possibly imagine, IMHO. If you look at my stats, you will see I quit after just a few days in January, then started up again a few weeks ago for that very reason! Rosetta was crap in them thar early days!! It is now mature enough to start thinking about getting those old users back. And if you take a look at the project stats, you will see that there are others just like me who bowed out.

Gerry Rough

... How about an email to rosetta users ... to give a minimum of, say, 20% to R@H.

In my opinion a mail to the crunchers is ok when we can tell them that the most of the BUGS are solved. Which seem to be soon :)

Anders n

The three responses I've gotten since my post have been very informative. Thanks to all. I do think the bug thing is bigger than you can possibly imagine, IMHO. If you look at my stats, you will see I quit after just a few days in January, then started up again a few weeks ago for that very reason! Rosetta was crap in them thar early days!! It is now mature enough to start thinking about getting those old users back. And if you take a look at the project stats, you will see that there are others just like me who bowed out.

Gerry Rough

I like the email idea if people think it wouldn't be objected to. I want to be sure first that the major issues people have are dealt with. What is the biggest current turn off--the high memory requirements, the size of the data files being downloaded, or the remaining bugs? If we could get the majority of people who tried rosetta@home and left in frustration earlier back it would be a big plus.

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What is the biggest current turn off?

I think all three are key points. If you're a dialup user, the occaisionally inconsistent upload times are key. If you're a new user, the occaisional glitch in a WU is key. I've not personally seen the 1% bug, but a HUNG WU would be even worse than a killed one.

If such an EMail is sent, I would say "please consider allocating a higher resource share to Rosetta". That way if their current share is 30%, you might get 40 rather than only the 20 you asked for :) If this request is included WITH all the great outcomes referenced, and what they mean to science, and explain that the higher resource share is needed to accomodate your specific projects with HIV and malaria then I think you'll appeal to nobler motives and not be seen as poaching.

Since both Einstein and climate(?) are for a specific number of WUs, I think the BEST way to go about recruiting from existing projects is to get THOSE project organizers to see how valuable the Rosetta work is for humanity, and to send a recap EMail to their users saying "thanks for your crunch time, we're outta WUs now, please consider replacing Einstein/climate with Rosetta while we study the results and prepare our next project. Check back with us in the Fall to participate in our new X project".

The BBC climate project is shorter duration, the CPDN "seasonal" hopes to get the WUs back in 3 months, the older CPDN project I believe has a limited number of WUs for the project scope, and Einstein continues to estimate they'll be done in about 6 months, but dividing remaining WUs to crunch by avg reported each week and you get an estimate of more like 6 weeks!

This is the References from other projects: idea I had in my original post. And it is one that I believe is high enough leverage (Einstein is 43TFLOPS of active users) to warrant the attention of Rosetta project team rather than the volunteers. And to send a note from project team to project team. If there's something specific the volunteers can help with on this specific idea, be sure to let me know, because I think Einstein will be in a position to be sending such a note very soon.

This way you're not poaching. You're just making it easy for people to head your direction. They're used to crunching, have BOINC installed, and are arranging internet access for BOINC. All they have to do is register another project. And if, in the end, Einstein decides they should give equal mention of all the other BOINC projects, hopefully they include a line or two about the compelling work Rosetta does and you still gain more crunchers than the other projects. Perhaps if you actually send them a 1 paragraph statement you are asking them to include in a recap EMail to their participants. Then you could include links to the Baker journal thread, to info. on the coming HIV and malaria projects, and perhaps to some versioning info. that describes the flexible WU size, and killed bugs.

RE: mention of bugs in such an EMail. I definately recommend minimizing this. Perhaps a single sentence that says "We've continued improving our processes and systems to accomodate our distributed community, and our newest 4.xx release has eliminated many of the problems we were seeing in the early days of the project." I mean the message is going to reach some people that have seen the problems, and some that have not. So, you want to mention it, in case that's why you lost the former, and yet minimize it so as not to deture the latter.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

It might be best to more fully resolve these 3 issues prior to sending out an email in order not to disappoint the user base. For example, it's not wise to open a new restaurant or concoct a new menu before it's just right. Once people try something they do not like, for whatever reason, they are less likely to give you a second chance.

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Founder of BOINC GROUP - Objectivists - Philosophically minded rational data crunchers.

It might be best to more fully resolve these 3 issues prior to sending out an email in order not to disappoint the user base. For example, it's not wise to open a new restaurant or concoct a new menu before it's just right. Once people try something they do not like, for whatever reason, they are less likely to give you a second chance.

I wholeheartedly agree. Tell you what: I will draft a letter idea outline for others who are following this thread. Together we will deal with these issues so we can draft a letter (or letters) to old users or new users regarding these issues and we can send it to the Rosetta team with our idea. My current thinking, by the way, is that there would need to be more than one letter drafted to reach several different audiences: old volunteers who dropped out, new volunteers who are coming over form the other projects mentioned, etc. I will have my ideas later this evening and we can go from there. For those who are adept at such things, put your ideas on paper (even in outline form might help) for a few minutes and get started on this. I think the idea is worth pursuing. I will start a new thread for the letter project.

Gerry Rough

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(Click for detailed stats)

I will start a new thread for the letter project.

If you'd prefer, you could always join the volunteers group mentioned here.

Otherwise, if you chose to use threads, I'd suggest focusing with one thread per suggested letter so as to avoid confusion on which type of letter is being discussed in the responses:

• Letter to inactive Rosetta participants
  
• Letter to accompany end of a project notice from other projects
  
• Letter to send when people tell-a-friend about Rosetta
  

It might be best to more fully resolve these 3 issues prior to sending out an email

I agree, but feel it will take some time to draft the letters, and then further before Einstein ends, and the tell-a-friend site changes are completed. We can always hold the letters once we have them. But I think we can proceed optimistically, assuming that by time we have everything lined up, the SW issues will be behind us.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Just one suggestion:

Create a roadmap with milestones and short-to-midterm targets. People like to bring down clear-defined "mountains" of computation work and like to see the mountain shrink. You have something like an accellerating countdown. I think this is very thrilling and gives you a short-term goal understandable to everyone.

Furthermore a roadmap with different goals gives you the feeling the project is well-planned and has well-defined objectives to reach. I think this is one reason of the success of Einstein (200 day targets with milestones like S3,S4, S5 etc.).

While the goal (cure cancer etc.) is clear and honorable the link how this project contributes in achieving this goal is weak (gaining understanding, comparing proteins, folding and refolding them, improving models and predictions etc...). But a roadmap and short-term-goals (folding 200.000 proteins in stage 1, leading to this progress in the science) would bring a closer connection between the long-term goal and the actual contribution of this project.

P.S.: Sorry for cross-posting but the first post was really in the wrong topic and this appropriate topic was pointed out to me for such a post.

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One suggestion:

Get the MMORPG group involved. Trade WUs crunched for game experience points. Advertise on MMORPG BBs.

dag

Get the MMORPG (online gamers) group involved.

Yes, online gamers tend to have beefy PCs, and fat (internet) pipes.

Unless you have some contacts to discuss the points exchange with, I think the most we can hope for would be some mention as gamers are posting on those message boards.

So, if you're a gamer, and it fits within the message board's usage guidelines, please encourage Rosetta amongst other gamers.

I'm going to post that on the Can you help Rosetta thread as well.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

One suggestion:

Get the MMORPG group involved. Trade WUs crunched for game experience points. Advertise on MMORPG BBs.

dag

About 40 of my 47 active/inactive members came from there. Seems to work...especially if you're a leader. Every little bit helps. I just haven't been able to move them over to Rosetta yet. Will be nice when the boilerplate comes and I can email all of them with ease.

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Founder of BOINC GROUP - Objectivists - Philosophically minded rational data crunchers.

Another idea I've had floating around in my head...
Bumper stickers: I for one have never placed a bumper sticker on my car... but Rosetta is one I'd be proud to have there. Further details on the idea, and how to cast your vote on it are described in this thread. Please keep any discussion about the bumper stickers in the other thread to leave room here for more ideas to bring more users to Rosetta!

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Feet 1st, as you seem to be the leader of the volunteer effort here, what is the progress report of the 'tell a friend' idea ? This has been a bit of focus for us and I am greatly looking forward to it...


ps I also noted over on the SETI forums that someone commented that Rosetta was mentioned as part of the 'Live Science' newsletter. I commented that this was good news as it meant that the Rosetta publicity endeavor is making progress. Keep up the good coordinated work!

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Founder of BOINC GROUP - Objectivists - Philosophically minded rational data crunchers.

...what is the progress report of the 'tell a friend' idea?

The website programming seems to be pretty well completed by Jonathan. I was hoping to have a draft of the letter we would propose to send via that "tell-a-friend" button on the website posted here on Sunday. However, taking in to account some additional ideas that came across over the weekend, I completely revamped my draft just 48hrs ago, and have yet to gather input from the rest of the volunteers, so... we'd like to review it and revise it a couple more times, and then post here later in the week for a more public review. Sorry for the delay.

In the end, the tell-a-friend function will likely be held until existing WU issues are all cleared up (I think we're getting close now). We (the volunteers) are just trying to have everything prepared for when that day arrives. At that point, the decision of when (/if?) to actually implement the function will be at the hands of the project team in the Baker lab.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Thanks, Feet1st.

I have yet to join the offsite conversation group and that is largely because I shift around a bit and access to computers varies and I am not inclined to join such groups anyway... :-)

Perhaps you could repaste the link here for me along with a,b,c, instructions ? I'll see what I can do...

Thank you in advance.

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Founder of BOINC GROUP - Objectivists - Philosophically minded rational data crunchers.

Perhaps you could repaste the link here for me along with a,b,c, instructions ? I'll see what I can do...

Thanks Robert, I wasn't positive which link you wanted.

The description of joining the volunteers group or the link to test tell-a-friend. But you (and everyone else) are welcome to use either and offer comments or ideas to improve either way.

The Yahoo! group is easy because you just use a browser from any PC you are at. Just have to remember your Yahoo! ID and password (one more ID! ugh :( and once you do that, you can stash the ID on the PC and just do the password too.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Theres a couple of bugs in the tell-a-friend's system - I dont have much time atm, I'll try to fix them when I get round to it. RL is getting VERY VERY VERY VERY hectic rite now.

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Theres a couple of bugs in the tell-a-friend's system - I dont have much time atm, I'll try to fix them when I get round to it. RL is getting VERY VERY VERY VERY hectic rite now.

What kind of bugs are there? As soon as it's done I'm going to use it to message all of my team members and get as many as I can to dedicate time to Rosetta. We've only got 47 members in our team but every bit helps. One step at a time, I suppose. Thanks.

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Founder of BOINC GROUP - Objectivists - Philosophically minded rational data crunchers.