I would discuss project communication, but at the moment, it appears that there isn't any.

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The project team is quite fast in hiding whole threads for some posts, that are declared flames and/or flamebait. It's thus very easy to destroy any discussion by simply start flaming, and soon all previous posts, even those with reasonable content and polite wording, are gone.

At the same time it seems to be a policy to strictly forbid any discussion of what's fair and how to measure it. The simple mentioning of the "optimized" clients in this regard seems to be Verboten.

The project team is quite fast in hiding whole threads for some posts, that are declared flames and/or flamebait. It's thus very easy to destroy any discussion by simply start flaming, and soon all previous posts, even those with reasonable content and polite wording, are gone.

At the same time it seems to be a policy to strictly forbid any discussion of what's fair and how to measure it. The simple mentioning of the "optimized" clients in this regard seems to be Verboten.

This has nothing to do with communication but with moderation, which is not the same :P
Start a "Discussion of forum moderation" thread please :)

Till now I liked the information given by the project team, could be better but hé It always will be ;)

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This has nothing to do with communication but with moderation, which is not the same :P
Start a "Discussion of forum moderation" thread please :)

Till now I liked the information given by the project team, could be better but hé It always will be ;)

Moderation is an inherent part of communication. It's how they deal with discussion, not just aboiut the one-way-street of proclamations.

Hi, this is the place to discuss communication and actions from project staff. Dicussion about the new credit system should take placehere.

Please be polite and constructive in your posts! For this thread there are more restrictive moderation rules enforced. It is not enough to not insult or accuse, you must be polite and constructive! If you want to express your anger please don't post but mail it to rosettamod( at )gmail.com

The net effect of this statement is to stifle anyone who disagrees with you.
You folks ask for a constructive statement:
Here is one for you: Get out of the DC game, you don't understand the mentality of the people who support you.
Since you are not allowing me to express my thoughts here I will take it to the 200+teams and every public forum I can find.
Yes, you will delete this and I really don't care, this message is for you.
You have lost my respect. Since you don't seem to be aware of what that word means, I suggest you look it up in the dictionary.
Pass this on to the esteemed Dr. Baker: He may be brilliant and have a great idea with Rosetta but in terms of being a man,this expression fits perfectly:
"You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting"
Movieman

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Movieman, I agree with you about the non-understanding of a DC-community.
I think that if the project had discouraged the "optimized" clients from the beginning, and had taken steps quite early against the overclaiming, instead of tolerating them, your team would not have complained about it, as the rules would have been clear and fixed.

Unfortunately they totally misjudged the importance of the credit system for the community, and were very lenient with it. This had to erupt at one point, and the damage is quite considerable now. Early action could have prevented this.

Movieman, I agree with you about the non-understanding of a DC-community.
I think that if the project had discouraged the "optimized" clients from the beginning, and had taken steps quite early against the overclaiming, instead of tolerating them, your team would not have complained about it, as the rules would have been clear and fixed.

Unfortunately they totally misjudged the importance of the credit system for the community, and were very lenient with it. This had to erupt at one point, and the damage is quite considerable now. Early action could have prevented this.

This may be the one and only time I will agree with you.
The root problem here is BOINC, all other problems came from that.
The new credit system is so flawed it is a joke.
It does not fairly and between WU assign credit and that is a fact no matter how they try and gloss it over and from what I read it's essentially a quorum of 3 that sets the points awarded?
I may be wrong on that but thats what I caught from a few posts here today.
Movieman

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What happened to the New Credit system went live thread from yeterday? That had a LOT of good posts in it.

I fully do not agree with simply hiding whole threads instead of removing offending posts. It's laziness on the part of the person hiding the thread, and it dis-respects the opinions of the people who made good posts.

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

the new credit system awards the producer in luck system ive seen the credits granted and this is a joke really.

i have a constructive criticism for you, realise we the crunchers are the base of this project without us the project dies, if we think a part of the project is flawed, the project managers should adress it, we hold the share me make the work and we dont see the benefits as we should? i think you guys really dont appreciate what we are doing here.

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Another communication faux-pas.

Describing the now-defunct previous credit system as "cheating" in the "Good" section of this thread is sure to inflame people even more.

Does the project not realize that this is exactly what alienated most of the biggest team in this project? I thought that everyone would have been past calling the use of otimized clients "cheating" by now. Evidently that lesson has not been learned.

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

However if you think they just handled things improperly and can improve on it than you should write constructive and polite.

We keep doing that, and you keep deleting the threads. Stop it. You are forcing us to keep repeating ourselves.

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Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

Another communication faux-pas.

Describing the now-defunct previous credit system as "cheating" in the "Good" section of this thread is sure to inflame people even more.

Does the project not realize that this is exactly what alienated most of the biggest team in this project? I thought that everyone would have been past calling the use of otimized clients "cheating" by now. Evidently that lesson has not been learned.

Thanks Angus for pointing out that there was a way to read that part as accusing users of optimized clients cheaters. I've now clarified it. But don't you agree that it needs a bias to read my original sentence in your understanding?

No- not in the context of the discussions here over the last few months where everyone using the optimized client was catagorized as a "cheat" by the other camp.

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

One possible reason some members who ran optimized clients are upset is that, without notification, they could not dump the jobs already completed.

I anticipated the situation and reinstalled BOINC several weeks ago so that I would not be disappointed later.

Yes, project communication failed when David Kim did not describe the new points system as Dr. Baker said he would. Additionally, project communication failed when the new points system was implemented without notification. Worse yet, no one acknowledged that the points system had been changed until a day after some members had questioned the system changes on the message board. Apparently the moderators had not been told, either.

For someone not running an optimized BOINC installation, it did not matter. The new system seems fair to me, but if it isn't then at least it is consistent. It would be nice if we could give Dr. Baker the week he requested to evaluate the system before we get emotional about it.

I have a shortcut on my desktop to the message boards. I don't search the home page for news as often as management anticipated because I don't go to the message board via the homepage. It would help if there were an official announcements section on the message boards linking to information posted elsewhere. I can appreciate that much of the information cannot be presented well using BBCode, and it certainly isn't easy to do it without a preview feature. Using the RSS feed helps, but the feed link is at the bottom right of the home page and is easily overlooked.

Maybe I'm more of a laid back kind of person... I fail to see why people need to know exactly when the new credit system will be implemented. Is this so people can game the system, and gain the most credits before the change and not lose credits after the change has been made? Because you want to game the system, then them not communicating exactly when becomes a failure to communicate? Everyone knew a change was coming (and soon), so I do not view it as a failure to communicate.

Seems to me that people care more about their stats than MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD.


The credit system will be fine. I propose a simple mathematical answer (here) if they choose to wait for XX results before granting credit.

We keep doing that, and you keep deleting the threads. Stop it. You are forcing us to keep repeating ourselves.

Than blame those who flame. If there is a certain limit of flames in a thread it becomes uncontrollable and has to be deleted - togehter with dozens of interesting and constructive posts.

How can I do that when you keep deleting the threads? I have no idea who or why they were deleted, other than "somebody thought somebody else did something bad".

...or worse yet, "somebody is trying to hide something."

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Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

Seems to me that people care more about their stats than MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD.

You are a perfect example (that isn't a slam, but simply pointing it out) of those who do not understand the psyche of the hardcore DC crunchers who provide the majority of the power to these projects. The project scientists and developers fall into that group.

It's all about credits.

It's all about credits.

It's not about anything else but credits.

Sure - they might pick one project over another because it sounds more interesting, but they aren't contributing the time, effort, money and resources for the warm fuzzy feelings. It's COMPETITON - pure and simple.

They possibly aren't the numerical majority of the crunchers on a project, but they ARE the GHz majority.

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

However if you think they just handled things improperly and can improve on it than you should write constructive and polite.

We keep doing that, and you keep deleting the threads. Stop it. You are forcing us to keep repeating ourselves.

Than blame those who flame. If there is a certain limit of flames in a thread it becomes uncontrollable and has to be deleted - togehter with dozens of interesting and constructive posts.

It's still comes down to "it's EASIER to delete (hide) the thread, than clean it up and retain the good posts". Laziness

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

the new credit system awards the producer in luck system ive seen the credits granted and this is a joke really.

i have a constructive criticism for you, realise we the crunchers are the base of this project without us the project dies, if we think a part of the project is flawed, the project managers should adress it, we hold the share me make the work and we dont see the benefits as we should? i think you guys really dont appreciate what we are doing here.

But that is what the project currently does - adressing the concerns of the user. They created a new credit system, users where not happy, they change it and tweak it and they listen to proposals how to make it really fair. What is your constructive criticism in this post? They should listen to the user base. They do! But the user base does not speak with one voice. So they need to seek a compromise. Or do you wanted to say, they should listen to the position of XS because we are the big guys?

if you really want to know what the user base has to say just make a poll of several solutions to 1 problem the people vote, the project resolve.

take like example big companies they make shareholder meeting to explain what they are doing with the shareholders money they get together the big guys and make a public statement for the small guy and if the managment of the company is doing the wrong things you see how everyone sells....

think in that way and you will see that you need to keep the big teams next to you to have the computing power you need, you piss the big guys and you are left with almost nothing.... really sad the managment of the project fails to see this and they are very smart people

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No- not in the context of the discussions here over the last few months where everyone using the optimized client was catagorized as a "cheat" by the other camp.

This is degenerating back to the optimised/not optimised, old credit/new credit debate, but then I think that's inevitable because that's the root of all the problems and discussion.

The above quote has been stated over and over, and I've repeatedly stated that it's not true, but seem to have been ignored every time. I don't doubt that some consider the use of optimised clients cheating - some have stated it on the boards - but a few people have turned this into an us vs them debate.

I didn't agree with your opinions but I'm not on anyone's side on the subject - I have my own opinions and have expressed them (without flaming), and have never called anyone a cheat, so the quote above is an oversimplification that's the root of a lot of tension. There were other reasons beyond the use of optimised clients for requesting the backdating etc and yet these were ignored - its always posted as optimised camp vs boinc-parity camp. It was never that simple.

I think another major problem is that there's a been misinformation being spread as fact, or errors that haven't been cleared up, both on these boards and elsewhere (although the corrections were usually quite prompt and complete here).

I understand that some people haven't been happy with the communications here, and some people may leave because of it. I understand that almost everyone involved in the debate is interested in the stats for the competition (which is great for the project), and some have been concerned by what they've perceived as a flawed credit system, but IMO questioning the integrity or the project team is unfair and immature.

The big piture is this: the Bakerlab are working on groundbreaking research. Spending all their time trying to please a small number of, albeit large contributers (the majority of work comes from those who will never look at these message boards, or their stats), should not be as high on their radar as many of you seem to think! I don't want to offend anyone, but I'd be disappointed if the Bakerlab have ANY consideration other than reaching the target of Rosetta being involved in a biomedical revolution. I accept we are a tool in reaching that, and things such as stats are important to get the most from the DC community, but they are only a tool and there are more important issues.

I also accept that communications haven't been the best, but again only in relation to the stats. The communications on a scientific front are second to none. The team have made mistakes and admit that - (as someone posted yesterday it's partly because the DC community isn't particularly logical and these guys are!) - but their intentions have always been right.

Lets not forget that if there is a mistake with the stats it can always be corrected.

cheers
Danny

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OK, so if the credit system is cleaned up and the kinks are worked out, then what? If they communicate everything, then what?

It seems to me like hardcore crunchers get burnt out and then find a reason not to like it. For example, the more hours you put into a MMORPG, the more dissatified you become after a certain point. My best friend plays Everquest and sees this all the time. People play a LOT, it becomes less rewarding for them, and then they find all the reasons they don't like it. What he found is if he backs away and takes a break (or ignores it as he crunches), then he can come back to it and gain more enjoyment. I admit I check my stats daily, but I really want to check them weekly. I'm too anxious about them.

Let's say project staff changed and communicated and acted in a way that even pleases the military types. Then people are going to find something that they don't like. What if they focus processing power on HIV vaccines and all the cancer survivors get ticked because their issue is temporarily going to the back burner?

My girlfriend just moved in with me and she is having problems accepting my quirks. If we are to move forward together, she ultimately has to accept them. She could go from person to person and not accept their quirks, and this would not serve her. People go from project to project and don't accept their idiosyncracies and I don't think this serves them as people. I still accept them though :)