Scott,

No, this observation is over several months.

And I have to admit, the most fun for me on the project is the sense that we are as important as the articles/papers say we are.

The project pays the particpants two ways and two ways only, credit and communication. Of the two, Communication is the most important.

If I went with my NORMAL profile, RAH would not deserve much more than 10% of my time. For one, it is a Bio project and that is not something I am normally interested in. And, they are doing engineering at the moment. Like LHC this is important, but, not why I like to do BOINC.

And I will admit that if I was not so interested in getting a second project "over" SETI@Home I would not be doing as much Einstein@Home (which *IS* down my usual interests - physics) but would be giving more time here ...

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Early death on work is fine by me. In SETI@Home it is -9 noisy; in LHC it is BAM!, hit the wall; RAH, well, what David said ...

I also don't have a problem with "early death", such as on SETI, because the noisy ones are something like 1% of the work. Unless you're the unlucky guy who gets 10 in a row, it doesn't have an impact on DCF, the estimates, etc. (Look right now at the "what's happening" threads over there because a whole block of "early death" results went out! Because of a splitter error, not noisy tapes, but same principle.) The issue here is that the nature of the algorithm seems to say that out of the 10 "sets" in _any_ Rosetta result, there are going to be one or more 'short' ones.

Instead of 99 'normal' and 1 'real short', we're seeing 100 'all over the place'. I don't really even have a big problem with _that_, even though it's not 'preferable' - but if they can't be 'evened out' somehow (without affecting the science!) then the nature of the result-lengths needs to be explained early and often on the web pages. Unless it's some major problem (and I can't even think of an example...) almost ANYTHING is fine, as long as it's CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD! I've seen people screaming "this result says it's going to take 800 hours!" when they get their first CPDN result, because they didn't _read_ the pages - but that's _their_ problem. If CPDN didn't explain it well and often, _then_ it would be the project's problem.

And a point of puzzlement for me; on the Mac Mini, I _have_ seen this "all over the place" behavior from Rosetta; not understanding that it was "the nature of the work", I took Rosetta off the Mac but left it on the PC, pending a new Mac app. I have NOT seen this wide a range on the PC. MAYBE 2:1, but not the 9:1 I saw on Mac, and certainly not the theoretical 20:1... I'll start watching more closely, maybe it's just because the times on the PC are too short, a result is "here and gone" before it becomes noticeable. Even the 2:1 is enough to scramble the estimated times, and probably it's just that looking and seeing "01:55" instead of "01:02" doesn't get my attention like looking and seeing "20:00" instead of "03:00" did...

I'll put Rosetta back on that Mac shortly too and see what happens.

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Well, that is what I get for saying I have not seen one in awhile....

25-hours at 1% ...

Picture #1 and #2 of the same work unit.

Some notes, #1 was taken with 100% CPU (well 25% on the dual Xeon, but that is 100% of the virtual CPU) and the only thing that changed was the time counter.

Maybe this will help find the problem ... 175 CS shot! :)

Ah well, if I can't take a joke I should not have depression ... or BOINC ... or something ...
==== edit
I forgot to point, the #2 shows 10% completion ...

[tongue-in-cheek-mode]Bad random number generator?[/tongue-in-cheek-mode]

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Just because I don't like to re-edit a re-edit ...

What happened to my idea of the program tracking the run time and if, for example, it hits 20% of the expected total run time and is still "stuck" it abandons that stage?

In this case, because I had to stop BOINC and restart it, AND the check point obviously did not happen, I lost my "investment".

Hmmm, back to point #16 ... checkpointing ... :)

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honestly whatever works to help the science work better is what we want.. i like the list and agree comunication isnt listed enough...

Agree.

How about next point:
20. finish what has been started/promised.
Just put together "honestly whatever works to help the science work better is what we want.." and "code release and redundancy" thread.

We thought it would be good to give out the code because we thought 1) people would be interested in seeing it, 2) compilation and code performance on a much wider array of platforms than we have in house could be optimized and 3) experts could experiment with variations on search strategies. But because of the many concerns I am reconsidering this--keeping all of you happy is clearly critical!

A one month lack of communication on this topic from core team (until a participant raise his voice) can be seen in constrast with points #1-3. I understand the connection with point #4 (plaforms support) and #9 but - unfortunatelly, this topic have not moved much further.
I understand that doing science (and programming as well) is a continuous process so there may be no any point of "finish". That, a feedback of progress (see point #1-3) takes place.

This is not to state Rosetta is a bad project. Actually, I rate Rosetta very high among other BOINC or DC projects (and I have participated in many of them since last century). Any project should follow this "How to...".
This is just to make it a bit more balanced.
[Hope my English have not taken me down].

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I agree the feedback is a great part of any project.

I think we need to keep in mind how difficult it can be to keep up with message boards. If you start a new thread, or make a post, that thread is important to you. That means each thread is important to someone, and as the number of threads grows (which I'm pretty sure has been at an exponential rate since September), so does the time requirement to keep up with them.

If I don't check these boards for a day, there are 15 or 20 threads that are new or have several new posts. Pretend you're a scientist. . if only a few of these threads require responses, it's going to take a decent chunk of time to come up with a good answer. . . Bill and Paul, how much time do you spend writing responses each day? For someone running a lab, I'm sure that's time they'd have to take away from research.

Now, I'm not trying to say it's ok never to respond. . but keep in mind the number of questions posed on the boards (and even the responses to scientist's posts asking more questions) are growing rapidly. I've heard several comments about the level of communication dropping. . I think the number of posts asking for responses has grown while the amount of posts (researcher time) has stayed the same. . so there's the illusion of less communication.

That's just my .02 :)

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HM, here are some things, I have watched, since BOINC was in early Beta-Project-Status:

Communication of projects change with the time. There have been times, that P@H had been the best communicativ-project. This has changed, when Michaela has changed to a different company / organization.

E@H was very communicativ in early days, as i could read in this thread, this seems to have changed.

CPDN has also been very communicativ in early days, being in alpha-state.

I guess, that within an early stage of a new project, all sides (project-team and crunchers) have a lot to learn, making the project really work fine.

But after this phase, there is a big change: The questions, stated from crunchers, keep to be the same questions as in the month before; new crunchers don't take the time to read, what had already been discussed (or to read Pauls BOINC-Wiki); they post the same questions again and again.

In the past, I tried to give people help, but if you read the same question again and again, you get tired answering this same questions.

So, I can understand, that, if all is running smoothly, a project-member has much more to do within the project than to read and answer the questions, that have been answered ten times before.

And, a lot of things, that are asked, are not project related, but boinc-client. A lot of people even can't difference, wheather it is a problem of the client or of the project.

For a better communication-level, it would be good to have some experienced volunteers, that keep an eye on the forums; yeah, let them be responsible for a part of the forum. If they can't answer a question, they direct a project-member to postings, that should be answered by them. This could save a lot of wasted time from the project-team.

@Bill Michael: You have "Forum Moderator" in your sig ... What are you responsible for ?

Maybe, you give the experienced volunteers a sig like RosettaVolunteerSupport or something similar; so unexperienced users can understand, that they got a feedback from someone near to the original-project-team.

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Supporting BOINC, a great concept !

... but keep in mind the number of questions posed on the boards (and even the responses to scientist's posts asking more questions) are growing rapidly. I've heard several comments about the level of communication dropping. . I think the number of posts asking for responses has grown while the amount of posts (researcher time) has stayed the same. . so there's the illusion of less communication.

This gave me the idea, to look for the latest posts of Bruce Allen:

48 Minutes ago
1 hour ago
1 hour ago
1 hour ago
1 hour ago
3 hours ago
3 hours ago
3 hours ago
...
...
3 days ago
5 days ago
5 days ago
5 days ago
10 days ago

Wan't to look yourself ? Go here

Is this not communicativ ?

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Supporting BOINC, a great concept !

Now, I'm not trying to say it's ok never to respond. . but keep in mind the number of questions posed on the boards (and even the responses to scientist's posts asking more questions) are growing rapidly. I've heard several comments about the level of communication dropping. . I think the number of posts asking for responses has grown while the amount of posts (researcher time) has stayed the same. . so there's the illusion of less communication.

While nobody should cry for us, it is true that we are now up to 17 other things to do in addition to "communicate." So when you aren't hearing from us, it almost assuredly because we are working on the less visible, but highly important, aspects of running this project.

We truly appreciate the donation of your computer time, and understand that we need to make it worth your while. But I would agree with HFS and say that it is very difficult to keep up with the proliferation of threads. Is it okay for me to suggest that there could be a parallel manifesto about how to be the best BOINC particpant?

While nobody should cry for us, it is true that we are now up to 17 other things to do in addition to "communicate." So when you aren't hearing from us, it almost assuredly because we are working on the less visible, but highly important, aspects of running this project.

Here's a thought. Once a week, Monday lunch break (or evening), David Baker starts a thread about some aspect of the science. Two that come to mind right off the top of my head are his "Breakthrough" thread, and the "Fighting Malaria and HIV" thread. We're going to respond there. Then every day for the rest of the week, try to address a few of the questions and comments raised. I know that time is precious for you all, but that could be kept to 15 minutes to half an hour a day, and would do a lot. Threads like the two I've mentioned are what set this project well ahead of the rest.

I may be being a little self centered here, but I do care about the science, and do want to understand and learn what makes things tick. As an example, David has said that if we can determine the shape of a protein, it will help the inverse problem, making a protein to generate a specific shape, as is planned for the HIV vaccine, I believe.

However some explanation of how this is going to work would be of great interest to me. It seems that trying random strings of amino acids and seeing what shape they make will not work. So it has to be a more carefully directed approach. But how exactly will it work?

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@Bill Michael: You have "Forum Moderator" in your sig ... What are you responsible for ?

Not ducking fast enough...

Maybe, you give the experienced volunteers a sig like RosettaVolunteerSupport or something similar; so unexperienced users can understand, that they got a feedback from someone near to the original-project-team.

I really don't want to do anything like that. The "Forum Moderator" tag is plenty to indicate any "special" status, such as it is, ie; if I tell somebody to knock it off or get their thread deleted, they know I can do it. As far as the project, I probably know less than those of you who have been here longer; I've been around just under 2 months. As far as "general BOINC", I've only been around for about 6 months - it just happens to have been 6 months that I've had little else to do. I'm a participant because I'm interested, and was doing SETI Classic before BOINC, and RC5 before SETI. I'll be here until I can't, or something else comes along to eat up my time.

My background is programming; Mac development, some in-house corporate stuff, but mostly "on the side"; and big-systems analysis, design, and coding. Some "End-user Support" but only of the systems I was responsible for, not PC-level. Dinosaur stuff. :-) I was a physics major and pre-med before coming to my senses and going Computer Science (yes, it WAS punch-card days :-P ), so I do have some bioscience background, but it's minimal...

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I think we need to keep in mind how difficult it can be to keep up with message boards.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect any one "project staff" person to read every message on every board. There's no point in reading the "cafe", and only a couple really need to be in "science", and probably a couple of different ones here. It's when a thread is titled "ADMIN - NEED HELP", and gets no response, that it gets frustrating. Threads like _this_ one, I would expect "staff" to read, or at least look through. "xtreme overclocking", no. Many of the "no work" type threads can be glanced at, "is this a project problem? no? go on".

It's a balancing act. The more communication you have, of _whatever_ type, the more participants you attract, and the more time it takes to keep up the communication. Rosetta is doing _very_ well in this regard, but it _is_ just beginning to grow. I would be surprised if the communication _grows_ with the project; the concern is that it doesn't _diminish_ too much as the project grows.

The ideal would be to have a full time "user support" person, but unless you're the exception to the BOINC rule of shoestring funding, it'd be hard to justify. More likely would be just to have enough "regular staff", that everyone isn't overworked, and everyone has _some_ time to spend on the boards, if only to keep up with what's going on with the participant's side of the deal. I think the problem at SETI is simply _way_ too few people for the work to be done, even if the boards didn't exist!

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I really don't want to do anything like that. The "Forum Moderator" tag is plenty to indicate any "special" status, such as it is, ie; ...

Okay, I see a big difference between your "job" as ForumAdministrator and the RosettaVolunteerSupport.

If you take a look in a nearby-thread, you see people crying about "won't fetch work". You have also answered in the thread. If someone answers these guys with status RosettaVolunteerSupport, it becomes more official character. And it is a typical post from someone with low experiences on BOINC, but it makes a lot of people rubbish, if they read this statement; they only read "no work" and cry. I don't know, wheather they accept a post from a Yeti; and a Yeti is no official.

I don't want to be a member of RosettaVolunteerSupport, because I don't have the time for somethinmg like this, but I think, it could really help.

Dinosaur stuff. :-) ... (yes, it WAS punch-card days :-P ) ...

Yeah, so we are both dinosauriers: My first contact with computers has been in 1977, but we have been modern, we didn't need to punch, we only needed to make a sign on the numbered card ;-)

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Supporting BOINC, a great concept !

Now, I'm not trying to say it's ok never to respond. . but keep in mind the number of questions posed on the boards (and even the responses to scientist's posts asking more questions) are growing rapidly. I've heard several comments about the level of communication dropping. . I think the number of posts asking for responses has grown while the amount of posts (researcher time) has stayed the same. . so there's the illusion of less communication.

While nobody should cry for us, it is true that we are now up to 17 other things to do in addition to "communicate." So when you aren't hearing from us, it almost assuredly because we are working on the less visible, but highly important, aspects of running this project.

could you try to do us a favor when you are doing something that in less visible but highly important could you post mabey a what are we doing behind the sceans message in mabey the science or number crunching section so people see that your purging this or optimizing this or whatever.. lets us feel more involved and mabey can help some of us explain why Rosetta is the project to run while explaing it to people who are worried that Distributed computing will give you computer virouses or the like.

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Well, I spend 1-3 hours a day looking at 12+ project's message boards, another hour answering e-mail usually. So, yes it is a lot of time.

But, the point is... you want to know what keeps me here ... I told you ... I also told you what I don't like ...

Now, you have a guy like Bill that can send you a note to say ... look here ... so, I am not sure this is not a strawman. The point is, if it is IMPORTANT to you, you will find a way. If communicating to your participants is not important to you ... you won't.

It is easy to say you have lots of other things to do, but, who and what makes that possible?

Call me a cynic, but, I also predicted this early on... just a question of how long it will take for the Rosetta@Home project staff to be as communicative as the staff at UCB. Again, the question is, is it important to you to have participants recommending your project? If it is, then maybe you need to find the time.

Quick thinks come to mind ...

One common project account, assign one staff to that account each day, that day they are to answer the posts that seem important. That marks all the posts as read and on you go ...

And, oh-by-the-way, the fact that I spend those hours does relieve you of a lot of the burden of answering the common questions, just as Billl does.

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Is it okay for me to suggest that there could be a parallel manifesto about how to be the best BOINC particpant?

Especially on the forum. People seem to just jump in and create a new thread without looking at what's been written before. With "no new work" for instance, there's at least 3 threads with similar titles.

• Cannot get any work from rosetta ??
  
• No work from project
  
• No work from project.
  

The FAQ Hugo has been working on might help a little, though some people don't read anything unless it's an answer to their own question in their own thread.

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*** Join BOINC@Australia today ***

I just wanted to point out the latest post by DB on the science forum:

(note, I still can't make a hyperlink, a href aludes me)

https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=684

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I just wanted to point out the latest post by DB on the science forum:

I made it sticky a bit ago.

(note, I still can't make a hyperlink, a href aludes me)

Forget html rules - much simpler bbcode method used here now.

[ url = https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=684] title goes here [ / url]

(with lots of extra spaces so it wouldn't be recognized).

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Another point is to leave a generous margin on the deadlines. RAH wins on this point too

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...
If I went with my NORMAL profile, RAH would not deserve much more than 10% of my time. For one, it is a Bio project and that is not something I am normally interested in. And, they are doing engineering at the moment. Like LHC this is important, but, not why I like to do BOINC.
...

hi again Paul,

Like you, physics is my favourite science. But software is my favourite branch of engineering.

So the fact that Rosetta's engineering is more interesting to me outweighs the fact that the end science is less so.

So in terms of 'how to have the best BOINC project' one advantage for me is that the programmers involve us donors in debugging when needed, as in the current 'report stuck wu here' thread.

Whether I'll stick around when Rosetta get to the real science is another thing -- if they include diabetes then I will for selfish rather than scientific reasons ;-)

River~~