What have you quoted, Alex?

https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=1973#20453

What i wanted to express is that the percentage of "inactive" hosts does not necessarily mean that those users retracted from the project, but might have been replaced by a new host-id (although it's the same host).

OK, i must admit that the "in response to Message ID 20453" is quite hard to spot.
Don't want to start another "this forum-software sucks"-flamewar though ;)

Alex.

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"I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here... We have spent
millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it
should be stopped."
-- Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator, on the Smithsonian Institute, 1901.

I believe the post was deleted by the Administrator, Ethan, because it is flamebait.

I am trying hard to be constructive, and have supported my views about virtual community with a credible reference. I don't want enemies. Angus, you have been an antagonist elsewhere, and it doesn't take much time on Google to find this listing at SETI: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_user_posts.php?userid=25311.

One of my trusted friends has already told me that I am making a fool of myself, and I apoligize to anyone else who shares his opinion.

Let's please go forward with the topic and forget the past.

Long live good liquor and The Best Crap Thread Ever Created 5!!! Now to be the ultimate troll you just need to run a fuzzer and figure out how to bring the forums to their knees. Just kidding but have to say that link about made me crap my pants I laughed so hard.

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This over moderation, inappropriate moving of threads, bad threadment of users by the mods and other users, heavy arogancy against other boinc projects from a lot of users and mods, and zensoring of postings with constructive criticsm has forced me to stop crunching rosetta and ralph.
Sometimes I check the messageboards, but if there would not be a significant change, I seen no more reason to crunch these projects.

That's what drove me away. Especially carl.h and Moderator9. I see they are still at it and there is no reason to come back.

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David Stites
Mount Vernon, WA USA

This over moderation, inappropriate moving of threads, bad threadment of users by the mods and other users, heavy arogancy against other boinc projects from a lot of users and mods, and zensoring of postings with constructive criticsm has forced me to stop crunching rosetta and ralph.
Sometimes I check the messageboards, but if there would not be a significant change, I seen no more reason to crunch these projects.

That's what drove me away. Especially carl.h and Moderator9. I see they are still at it and there is no reason to come back.

Regardless of the boards, IMO there are certainly reasons to come back! The project, which has a great potential to revolutionise biochemistry (including medicine), needs more CPU power. Surely that's enough reason to crunch rosetta, regardless of your feelings for a few others that also crunch?

Danny

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That's what drove me away. Especially carl.h and Moderator9. I see they are still at it and there is no reason to come back.

David, the new moderators can see your one deleted post.

You posted that you had a message that was...

deleted not for offensive language as was stated but for objecting to carl.h and his high handed manner. I am not surprised, scientists make their living begging rich people for money.

It's over 200 days ago, so you probably don't recall, so let me recap for you.
The deleted post began with name calling, first of a class of contributors, and then of a specific person, and ended with "grow up" and have a nice day.

I wanted to be clear to you, and to anyone else reading this, that this is exactly the type of post that will be deleted by moderators. And it has nothing to do with opinions expressed in the post. It has entirely to do with the portion I sited above. If posts were deleted due to the opinion expressed, then your post after that about overmoderation would have been deleted as well. In fact, I might have deleted that one as well if it were me, because you continued with the name calling. It's as simple as that.

As for "inapporpriate moving of threads"... I'm not clear if you are referring to some specific case or not. But wanted to point out that it is ALSO the moderators' job to try and keep the information on the boards organized. This means attempting to collapse multiple threads about the same topic into one. And breaking an off-topic conversation out in to a separate thread. It is always the case that one person's "organized" boards is anothers "can't find anything". But movement of threads doesn't indicate that a moderator had any problem with the conversation that was occuring. Simply that they felt if should be occuring on another board, or in another thread, that's all.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

That's what drove me away. Especially carl.h and Moderator9. I see they are still at it and there is no reason to come back.

David, the new moderators can see your one deleted post.

You posted that you had a message that was...

deleted not for offensive language as was stated but for objecting to carl.h and his high handed manner. I am not surprised, scientists make their living begging rich people for money.

It's over 200 days ago, so you probably don't recall, so let me recap for you.
The deleted post began with name calling, first of a class of contributors, and then of a specific person, and ended with "grow up" and have a nice day.

I wanted to be clear to you, and to anyone else reading this, that this is exactly the type of post that will be deleted by moderators. And it has nothing to do with opinions expressed in the post. It has entirely to do with the portion I sited above. If posts were deleted due to the opinion expressed, then your post after that about overmoderation would have been deleted as well. In fact, I might have deleted that one as well if it were me, because you continued with the name calling. It's as simple as that.

I was thinking about coming back but after this response I have decided not to.

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David Stites
Mount Vernon, WA USA

David, to be frank, it sounds like you are sticking your finger up at the mod, because he said somthing you didn't like.

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I was thinking about coming back but after this response I have decided not to.

Seems to me if you are posting here you ARE back! No?

Any more ideas on ways to retain current users? Or ideas on how to bring back former users?

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Tymbrimi
ROSETTA@home FAQ
Moderator Contact

One of the critical questions here is "What makes people want to take part in a particular project?"

There are a few possibilities (which may of course be combined!):
Credit - the project that gives most credit will be most favourable to this participant.

Science - the fact that the project is helping science in one way or another is what's important to this participant.

Fame - If someone is named as the "finder of XXX", that would make the person famous (at least within their world), and this may be important to some participants.


Depending on which one of these the former/new participant is, different ideas may be used for retaining/returning them to the project.

The only solution to a credit-craving participant is to use inflationary credit-policy - the project that gives best credit will always be favoured, so each project would increase the amount of credit per workunit, until like Germany prior to WW-II where you needed a wheel-barrow full of bills to buy a loaf of bread - just printing more money doesn't actually solve the finances of the world!!! [In the BOINC world, this would be the problem that the credit count couldn't be maintained in a single precision float any longer, because it's too large!] I don't think there's any particularly good solution to this other than a fair, reasonably "equal" credit policy [and the one we have now fulfills this goal to my mind]. Anything else would just be an auction with inflation as a result, with no particular benefits.

The "crunches for science" should be fairly happy with Rosetta, and aside from some that may have been upset by others during the debate of Rosetta credit system, I don't believe many of those are "lost".

In the camp of "fame", I'm pretty sure that Rosetta does well too.

I had a look at the Rosetta leaderboard for the UK. The top 4 (by credit) have got zero credit for the last few weeks. It's a pitty, because they have more than a hundred machines, presumably working for other projects now... It's a loss - but inevitably, we can't just allow arbitrary inflation of the credit, that's not fair either... I don't have an answer to what to do here...

I think one message that could be used to try to get those back that have lost faith in the credit system is to explain that they are given fair credit in the new system, and some of them, even if they don't get the same level of credit as they used to in the inflated days, may well gain a fair amount of credit if they are using for example Linux based systems...

Finally, not all "inflated claimers" have quit the project. In the UK country stats, there are at least two of the top ten that are claiming 2-3x the credit they are getting now, and they are still crunching (and will soon get to the top positions, as the people above are no longer crunching, which may be a motivation for them to start again?)

--
Mats

--
Mats

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I dunno what motivates others to join or leave Rosetta, but I just left one program because, after over a week of crunching, I still hadn't finished a single WU. Obviously, either the WU's are just too demanding or my CPU (Celeron 390) is just too lame. Either way, it was a bad match that I was unwilling to continue.

I also just left another program because, after fuller consideration, I realized that its goals and my religious perspective were not a good fit. Nice graphics, though.

So here I am.

Even if NO advances in science derive from the project, it's good clean fun and a chance to advance the knowledge of God's creation. (Chill out with the flame throwers ... 'holding' an opinion is not the same as 'promoting' it. You view the world your way and I'll view it mine. Fair enough?)

Here's what I like about Rosetta:
1) The WU's are a manageable size. I, like many, am running a single cpu on a moderately powered system. It's nice to finish 2-3 WU's a day. However trivial they may be, there is a small sense of accomplishment.

2) Cool graphics! I especially like it when the shapes are changing so rapidly that I can't be certain of what I actually saw. However, what is indicated by "energy" and what is meant by "accepted"? A bit more 'general public' education would be welcomed ... jus enough to let me evaluate what I am looking at to get a sense of the actual work being performed and when a simulation is near success / achieves it. Right now it 'just finishes' and I have no way of knowing if the sought-after form was found.

Like I said, this, to me, comes under the heading of basic research into a physical phenomenom ... like figuring out why fruit flies don't like gasoline ... and steers clear of ethical concerns. Because it steers clear of ethical concerns I can participate with a clear conscience. Because I can finish a WU in a reasonable time frame, there is a decent level of feedback and reinforcement / sense of accomplishment.

Credit -- should be consistent and reasonably linked to the actual work performed. Set a process, refine it so as be tough to manipulate, then let it run. Review it often enough to KNOW that it is giving equitable results. You lose your race-horses if you let them get too far ahead and then take away the spurious points they thought were legitimately earned. Monitor the results of your rewards system to prevent a 'race condition' from developing. (1 Corinthians 9:6,7; Galatians 6:4)

Science -- 'semi-motivating' but mitigated by the awareness that large corporations and universities are going to make big bucks off my donated cpu time. (Deuteronomy 25:4; 1 Corinthians 9:7-10; 1 Timothy 5:18) Since I cannot personally profit from my portion of this work, if there was a way to place the results in the public trough without passing through those larger organisms, I'd feel much better.

Fame -- mitigated by the awareness that there are server farms working on this material and I and my little laptop-tethered-to-a-desk won't be seeing much 'fame' from the project itself. The absolute closest I will get to 'fame' is letting a medical professional friend know that I am participating in this project. Beyond that, if I want so much as a certificate of units worked suitable for framing I'll have to print it up myself and give some drunk $2.00 to sign it.

Do you actually want to play the 'fame' card? Get some cheap certficates from the local office supply store and award them at, perhaps, 10,000, 25,000, 50 and 100 thousand credits. Have some grand-high muck-a-muck sign them and drop them in the snail mail. The janitor would suffice ... just give him a nice-sounding title "VP of Credit Verification" and a good pen from the Belle Isle Conservatory. (It's a Detroit joke.) Don't list just those who have the highest scores ... list all who exceed certain benchmark levels.

It's late, I'm rambling. G'night.

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1 Thessalonians 4:11.