This past weekend World Community Grid took the unusual action of temporarily changing some of the forums to read-only. Before we talk about that, let's review why World Community Grid exists and why there are forums.

There are many challenges in our society some of these challenges include diseases, hunger and climate. There are many research organizations that have ideas that can help solve some of these issues, but they do not have access to sufficient computing power to fully investigate their potential solutions. At the same time, most of the world’s personal computers use only a tiny fraction of their available computing power. World Community Grid exists to allow the owners of those personal computers to donate their computing power to researchers who are attempting to solve problems facing humanity. In the nearly three years since we launched we have had hundreds of thousands of members donate over 100,000 years of computing time. This is a tremendous accomplishment and together we have successfully advanced the research significantly. We are truly grateful for the member’s donations of their computers.

As part of the World Community Grid website, we have set up forums for use by the members in the following way:
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1) To allow members to seek help or report problems with the grid agents or with the website
2) To discuss, ask questions and learn more about the science projects that are underway and the results of those projects
3) To promote a positive community atmosphere about the accomplishments that we can all achieve when we come together

To ensure that the forums are used for their intended purpose, certain rules have been established. These rules may be viewed on the website research page by selecting “Rules” from the menu under the upper navigtation bar. We take these rules seriously.

We understand that members will have disagreements with each other over different issues or different visions of what the world is or should be. This is normal in any group situation. However, these forums do not exist for protracted discussions and debates on these issues. There are many, many forums elsewhere on the internet that exist and encourage these types of discussions.

Due to a disruptive situation that occurred this past week, we decided to give the forum a “rest” and made several forums “read only” so that the support staff could enjoy the weekend. We apologize to our loyal World Community Grid members for this disruption of service. Our technical staff is dedicated to providing a safe and friendly environment for members to contribute their unused computer cycles to help humanity. We will continue to strive to provide an environment that is rewarding to all of the World Community Grid members.

We will be allowing members to post in the “read only” forums shortly but request that members respect the goals of these forums and focus on the goals of World Community Grid’s Community to further research that helps humanity.