I'll make a comment to some of the critics of the communication level at Seti made earlier in this thread.

I think it's unfair to compare Seti to other projects because of the size of Seti with the amounts of users and with this, the work connected to it. They are severely understaffed at Seti in regards to the amount of work, also with the hardware, they have there.

Rom Walton wrote in a private mail to me in the spring this year, that he was so stressed out from his work, that he hardly had time to sleep, and when he finally found a little time to sleep, he had to take sleepingpills, because he couldn't sleep because of stress! Matt Lebofsky also wrote in his blog, that he in periods had to take sleepingpills to be able to sleep because of stress! Janus has been on a sickleave in the late summer! So demanding from them, that they should participate in the communications on the boards is unfair IMHO, also because they actually do participate! And when they then do, they are mostly met with critique! A very typical example is this thread by Matt Lebofsky, which I took myself the liberty to spawn in the Cafe here. Look how both threads, which gave a very good explanation for different issues regarding the closing of Classic and other subjects, have decayed into critique, rants, and moanings! I don't blame the guys over there, if they lose the interest in communicating on the boards!

And with the technical problems they have over there, I must say, that I prefer they work on solving the problems on the servers rather than posting on the boards! I haven't seen David Anderson post anything though!

And I have a comment also to some comments made earlier both in this thread and elsewhere about the "life cycle" of a BOINC project, that in the beginning the dev's are very active and interested in the oppinions of the users, but after a little time, they seem to lose that interest. This can be because of two things; first, in the beginning of the project, there are so many aspects that can be lightened and problems to be solved, that they read on the boards and post answers. Later, when the project is running relatively smoothly, they might be more busy with some other, more internal, aspects, so they become more invisible, also when they see, that the appointed mods are doing a fine job helping and answering the problems, that might be. The second thing is the boredom, as mentioned earlier. When the boards clog up with multiple thread about the same, threads that goes off topic, subjects being posted indiscriminately on all boards, it becomes inscrutable where to read about problems, as they simply don't have the time to read everything! And with this, they become less active in their postings, as they simply miss relevant questions!

Heck, even I become bored after a while! The project is running fine for me, so I don't bother to look every day to check, also because of the clogging of threads with newbie questions and off topic threads. So I only look every other day, sometimes less, and only open the threads that look interesting, where I try to answer the question, I'm able to.

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[b]"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me[/b]

I do think there must be better ways to arrange the message boards.
Their immediacy and non-hierarchical, democratic nature is part of what makes them fun. But it can make it very hard for the admins to keep up. And the same questions have to be answered repeatedly partly because threads are so difficult to navigate.

I'm picturing some kind of dynamic FAQ. I guess a WIKI might be the way to do this.
The thread titles are just too short. And the message boards are too unstructured. We need a way to have clear descriptions of problems that people might have, arranged in a way that is easy for people to find. But perhaps also easy for others to comment on and add to.

I do think there must be better ways to arrange the message boards.

There probably is :-) But some people won't take any notice, they will post anything anywhere (questions about running BOINC in the Rosetta@home science board for instance), without looking if it's already been answered elsewhere - be that another thread or an FAQ.

One thing that may reduce the clutter a little would be to make the link to create a new thread harder to find... Not meaning hide it, but rather than just having it sit there on its own, clearly visible, put something like this at the top of the message boards:

Before creating a new thread
Your question may already have been answered in an earlier thread below. If not, try the Site Search and FAQ* before starting a new thread. Staff and volunteers give freely of their time to answer questions, but it gets a bit tedious to answer the same question over and over again. Please [create a new thread] only if you cannot find an answer through the site search or looking at recent threads.

* That is, once we have an FAQ/knowledge base. Hugothehermit was working on one but got called away for family reasons. Perhaps his work could be tied in to what Jack mentioned. The FAQ/knowledge base should be static, i.e. no postings from people other than those assigned to maintain it...

As far as a wiki goes... Paul is doing a great job with his unofficial BOINC Wiki but (and please don't take this personally as it's not meant that way) I have difficulty finding anything in there. Information overload type of thing.

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*** Join BOINC@Australia today ***

Hi People,

I'm just catching up on this interesting thread. First off, just so you know, I really like explaining the science to such a bright and interested crowd. Although of course we are grateful to those people who just join and forget, it's great to also have people who actually care to know and understand what we are doing, and ask thought-provoking questions.

I took a quick glance at hugothehermit's faq, and it looks pretty good. I think we should have 2 FAQs: a technical faq and a science faq, what do you think? Again, I think it comes down to organization, to help people easily find the answers, so they don't start new threads on the same issues. Another thing that might help is slightly re-organizing the home page, to make certain links more obvious. But I haven't wanted to bug DK to do this, because I know how sleep deprived he is already ;-)

Question for you guys: If someone asks a question that's been asked previously, or is in the "news" or "disease" page, is it rude just to point them to the appropriate place? ie just a link as the full reply?

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Hi People,

Question for you guys: If someone asks a question that's been asked previously, or is in the "news" or "disease" page, is it rude just to point them to the appropriate place? ie just a link as the full reply?

Hi Vanita....

Have enjoyed your explanations on the various threads immensenly. Even though some of the answers were understandably disturbing, especially the time frames on developing protien based drugs. It gave me alot of education.

I have been posting on forums on the internet for 5 years. In all that time it is only the BOINC forums were people will join and spend no time reading the FAQ's and forum topic explanations. They just post uninformed questions that have already been asked 50 times i.e. the differance between Roseta@ home and predictor.

It is bad manners on the part of the poster not to spend at least a week following the various threads and reading through any and all explanations. So you just pointing them to a thread is not at all rude.

Cheers and thanks again for your great communication you guys are the onlyy ones n the BOINC universe doing this!

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I think we should have 2 FAQs: a technical faq and a science faq, what do you think?

A science FAQ ? -- Wow, that would be great ! :-)) While I seem to have learned a lot both about the biology and the algorithmic side of Rosetta, thanks to yours and the other team members posts (thanks DB, Jack and David K. :-) there are still some rather big gaps in my mind. Well, I guess investing the required time I could probably obtain most of the missing bits myself by doing a proper Internet research and by trying to read through all your papers (which is a bit hard for the non-initiated) - so it seems unfair to expect you to spend your precious time on explaining these things to us. But if you really are considering to gather together all the explanations that are already in the forum with perhaps some additional bits and pieces into a science FAQ, that would be wonderful !

I don't know what the devs would think - MY list would start with "Read the front page, the technical news, and then all the recent threads, and at least do a search for your problem, before posting. Your problem may not be unique, everybody may be having it."

... or to put it very succinctly: "Your donated computer cycles are much appreciated, however you would make life easier for us if you would consider to also spend an appropriate amount of mind cycles to go with them." -- ok, not really, but perhaps something like this: "Try to make an honest attempt at solving your problem before asking others to help you."

Thanks Bill and River~~ and Paul D. and dgnuff and other people I've forgotten, for answering people's questions during this trying time. I guess Distributed Assisstance is a part of what makes DC possible.

That, and random number generators ... :)

Sorry, it is the only sense of humor I have ... and I could not resist.

And, Jack, and everyone else, the journey is part of the reward. But, the real work is done by the front line heros like Bill, Tony (SETI), and River~~ ... for my part, if it is a common repeat I ignore it too ... :)

With regard to the Wiki, yes, this has been a long standing problem and I don't know how to solve it. For those that have been around since the BOINC Beta the genesis was a simple re-write of the SETI FAQ ... 5 major site reconstructions later ... well ... you can see the result in the Wiki.

The site immediately prior can be seen at the base address if you are into nostalgia (http://boinc-doc.net/index.php) and for a compare and contrast for finding information.

If anyone has better ideas on how to make things easier to find I would love to hear them ... but, my suggestions are to try ...

Firstly, what type of question is it? About the GUI, look in the Owner's Manual. Message? Look in the messages list. About how to do something, "How-To"s might be promising.

Try the Google search on the word, if a phrase, use "quotes around the phrase" before searching, also try the default search box (quotes do not work there).

Try the category links at the bottom, especially for a BOINC Glossary entry. That gives you an alphabetical list of ALL the topics in that category (the last time I checked there were nearly 1,000 terms defined).

Try to thing of a related term, search on that word/phrase then look at the "Also See" at the bottom. Try some of the other "Also See" from the "Also See" ... you can quit after 20 pages with no luck ... :)

Ask in a forum ... "Hey, where do I find the explanation on 'Credit'"? Well, that is probably a bad example ... :)

Send Paul an e-mail. It is at the top of the first page ... click the envelope icon, get a new e-mail form from the default e-mail program ...

In self defense, spend some time pulling random pages just for the heck of it ... do one a day and you will cover the content in about 4 years ... I mean, heck, less than 1,200 pages there ...

And, no, I did not take the criticism badly ... not even mildly bothered, other than I don't know how to fix it even after 2 and an half years of trying ... heck the early sites did not even have search ... :)

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I'm picturing some kind of dynamic FAQ. I guess a WIKI might be the way to do this.

Projects are welcome to add to mine in their project "area", I try to add material there ... but ... time is partly the issue.

This is an issue that Dr. Anderson and I have been over, and over, about how best to document. I think a global Wiki with BOINC *AND* the projects together is best. He leans towards a very lean BOINC document ... oh, and it should be all in boring "corporate bland" ...

The argument for lean is it is easier to find what is in there because there is less to "wade through". The argument for fat is that not only is there less to "wade through" more is not covered at all ...

The argument for BOINC documentation separate from Project documentaion is that the coverage can be focused. The argument for global and integrated is that this is how the participants see BOINC. They do *NOT* see BOINC as separate from Rosetta@Home ...

In my Wiki, each and EVERY instance of a defined term is linked to the definition, project specific material is linked to FAQ to definition to "Also See" as we can see the linkages.

CPDN, through Chris Randle converted ALL of the scattered CPDN material and reorganized it for integration with the remainder of the Wiki. All project members have a standing offer to send me an e-mail for edit access to the Wiki and will get an account ...

Anyway, the discussion continues and I don't know how to solve all the problems. I have offered the current content (and domain) if we as a community want to make the Wiki "official", but, so far all the parties cannot seem to get their concerns met ... if the Rosetta@Home wish to take this up as something to move forward on ...

p.d.buck@comcast.net

A federated Wiki would be something that would be good for BOINC ... but, it has to meet everyone's needs or it is useless ...

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...It is bad manners on the part of the poster not to spend at least a week following the various threads and reading through any and all explanations. So you just pointing them to a thread is not at all rude....

Agree and disagree, IMO. It's logical to expect someone to make a concerted effort to research the website for an answer to his/her problem. Most likely the problem has already been encountered before and answered (though one should allow for variations on a particular problem in the way it manifests itself). But it's also human nature to take the path of least resistance. That is, post a question and take advantage of the good graces of others. We won't stop people from posting questions on the fly. But it's proper and respectful service to do what most respondents are doing now: "See this thread". This is not rude, it's succinct and all that is required.

Your notion that people should research for a week before posting a question is excessive. A few hours should be enough, though I will say it depends on the urgency of your particular problem. For example, are you experiencing WU crashes or are you just interested in knowing how to set disk space preferences?

Just wanted to give my perspective on this topic. Still would like to see the "How to be a good DC participant Manifesto", knowing full well that people who post questions on the fly are NOT likely to follow the manifesto either.

I took a quick glance at hugothehermit's faq, and it looks pretty good. I think we should have 2 FAQs: a technical faq and a science faq, what do you think?

Hi Vanita

I agree. Some people want to know how to run BOINC/Rosetta. Others want to know what it actually does (and I guess many will want both) I tend to look mostly at the number crunching side of things, but do stop in at the science forum from time to time as I do like to know what I'm crunching.

Having an FAQ for the science (and possibly a series of ongoing, regular articles about what we're researching and achieving) would be good.

On the other matter - I agree with the others. Pointing people to a previously provided answer (or FAQ when we have it) is helpful, rather than rude.

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*** Join BOINC@Australia today ***

...I think it comes down to organization, to help people easily find the answers, so they don't start new threads on the same issues...

People will always start new threads on the same issues. Fact of life.

If I am on a new project and I don't yet know my way around, it can be quite hard to find the right info, or even if I look right at the topic titleit can be hard to spot that this title relates to my problem.

We can do as much as we can to make it easy to find the info -- and we vertainly should. But there will always be the newcomer whose level of ignorance (NB ignorance is not the same as stupidity, nor is it the same as awkwardness) -- whose level of ignorance is such that they either give up or post the question in the place that looks suitable to them.

I am for being gentle with these mistakes.

Question for you guys: If someone asks a question that's been asked previously, or is in the "news" or "disease" page, is it rude just to point them to the appropriate place? ie just a link as the full reply?

If the answer is a one-liner I'd tend to give it, but also to point out "for next time" how to find the answer. ie - not 'how dare you ask that here you moron' but more 'it takes time to find your way around these boards, but I think you'd find you get an answer quicker if you ...'

If the answer is more complex, but the question is in the wrong place, I feel it is rude to give a full answer in that wrong place. It is rude to those who have come here for the right reason. I'd post the link, followed by info "for next time" on how to find the right place.

If the posting is in the wrong place, but is a new question and deserves a response, I frequently say 'its a good question but off topic here, so I will post the answer over there (with link)'. I've only been here 8 days and already done this twice on these boards. I have done this for several years on many other bulletin boards and not had any objections. I'd like more people to do this than collude in dragging a thread off topic.

Just my opinion, all of this.
River~~

I think we should have 2 FAQs: a technical faq and a science faq, what do you think?

Three. Technical re software (about running the project, difference between the client & the app, etc)

Science.

And a separate FAQ about the forums.

A combination of technical re the boards (how to post, how to create links in BBcode, etc) and netiquette. Advice like if someone's post makes you angry, wait till you are calmed down before responding. Like, if the way the software is misbehaving makes you angry, it's OK to say 'I am feeling quite cross/upset/disappointed by this' but it is not going to attract a useful response to say 'this junk-ridden heap of bits and bytes that thinks its a project', which some people might even take as an attack.

Star technique: if you feel defensive about someone else's response, let the feelings die down before replying, and don't reply till you can separate how you feel about the response from the facts involved.

Don't separate the bbcode howto from the netiquette - it is all part of communication on a bulletin board, and if you do separate it out then the people who most need to read the netiquette stuff won't.

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Pointing people to a previously provided answer (or FAQ when we have it) is helpful, rather than rude.

I personally think it's a good idea to point people to somewhere else, because then you don't have to go thru the same line/series of questions and they can see what others have asked too, saves time and space :)

What are the actual problems caused by variable length Work Units?

It's related to work cache. Put simply, if the estimate is for a WU to take an hour to do and it downloads a day's work, it might download 24 work units. If however they end up taking 5 hours each, it may run into trouble with deadlines (especially on systems that run more than one project).

Oh, and Rosetta is already a first rate BOINC project, but there's always room for improvement :-)

it also messes up your DCF
i had this problem with predictor, a WU that lasted over a day with a 3 hour estimate, my DCF shot up to over 17, and took forever to even get back down to even just 13, normally it was only something like 1.3 but it's still not below 10, that messes up estimation of work etc. and probably will do so untill the DCF returns back to a more normal 1.3

it's because of that, combined with other severe annoyences that i no longer crunch for predictor

Great thread - when all the points are put together they make lots of sense.

I got some opinions/points though.

The basics of what I want are the same for most I believe - this thread breaks them down perfectly, but the basics stand as:

something easy to run
something that'll run on my platform (whether it be win/lin/mac dial-up/broadband cat's underpants/toaster)
something that I can install and forget about
somewhere that I know the science is valid and useful (this isn't #1 as there's plenty out there that'll run just for points/credits!)
something stable - normal people don't want to have to baby-sit an app (ok - some of you guys love it but normal people don't!)
something that the geeks can run on their toasters etc (i.e. can be run on networks or sneakernet etc)


>> It is bad manners on the part of the poster not to spend at least a week following the various threads and reading through any and all explanations. So you just pointing them to a thread is not at all rude.

I disagree. DC isn't just about those of use who have the time, patience, knowledge and necessary interest to run through threads and discussions to find the answers to what they were asking, or what they were meaning to ask. It allows us (random people who have access to the t'internet) to help make viable a project that benefits from the resources we control. The technology that allows distributed computing to work also allows us to provide distributed help and assistance. Those who created and run the project are without doubt those best to answer the questions posted, but as River says:

>> Treat it as an exercise in games theory

The project staff can spend all their time answering questions about the project, or they can spend their time imrproving the project, and in turn, reducing the number of questions. (Good luck on finding a balance! I'd recommend anything by J Maynard Smith for advice!)

Ideally the software would be intuitive enough to allow anyone to make it do what they want. While it runs on a PC I can't see that happening!

>>it's also human nature to take the path of least resistance. That is, post a question and take advantage of the good graces of others.

Absolutely - we shouldn't expect people to have to research the details of a project before running it - it should be simple for anyone that wants to help out to run it. IT (I.T. - not It!) is a new phenomemon and most people (i.e. not you people reading this!) don't want to spend their time deciding what should and shouldn't run on their PCs. Do we want their processing power or not? We do!

>> Pointing people to a previously provided answer (or FAQ when we have it) is helpful, rather than rude.

If it's relevant then perfect - there's no point re-inventing the wheel!

>> People will always start new threads on the same issues. Fact of life.

They will, until search engines understand context and subjects as we do! Anything's easy when you know the answer - and someone here probably does! Ask away!

Finally, I'd like to empasise the importance of credit (# 9). I believe it was Agafonov_KY who was ~#5 overall in FaD who said TSC_Russia (who dominated/enialated FaD) weren't gonna get involved in a BOINC project until the credit system is fixed - i.e. it can't be cheated easily. That's a lot of CPU power, just from one team. No-one can ignore this (and i'm sure they're not!) - If you're only in it for the science and don't care about credit then fine - but you've still got to be concerned that those who are interested in the competitive side of DC have a massive amount to offer to the end product.

now i'm going to bed - it's been a long evening, helped on by large portions of belgian (erdinger) and mexican (corona) beer. mmmm... adio!

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