Beren --
First -- nice to see the Australian flag in your sig line.

The truly "ghost" devices which never generated any points do go away after some point (a month? -- just not sure how long). The others which I was talking about generated points, but are actually no longer there due to re-install of the software to get past an error or because the system was upgraded. In my case, for example, I run and have run for most of the project two systems. One of those had problems back in late December and I had to re-install to get past the problem and am now shown as having 3 devices. The WCG techs are working on allowing the points from these devices to be rolled up to the currently active systems a member has.

jcsalter --
Yes, you are correct that the project is "more or less" altruistic. For those of us who are "impure", points is our "less" altruistic way of recognizing those who hang in there month in and month out running their systems flat out for the WCG. As far as adding the "Look at Me! I have over 100,000 Points!" graphic, if you were on "MyOnlineTeam" you would have been recognized for the contribution you have made. This smaller recognition is the type of incentive that Beren is talking about as it does help to motivate some of us.

As Beren said, the designation is based on the number of posts you have made in the forums. The present designations are as follows:
01-19: Stranger
20-49: Newbie
50-99: Member
100+ : Advanced Member
There is a thread at https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=2147 in which the WCG staff discusses changing these to different titles.

How about we change those titles to something easier to recognize, like

member
veteran
veteran^2
veteran^3

This idea came to me in a dream.

Hey I'm here to encourage any potential team leader with a team with just your friends and family on board.

That's the way that MOT started. Me, my 2 daughters, my best buddy and his dad.

Nobody is more surprised than me to be the team captain of a 5th Ranking Team with no country team in front of us posting over a years worth of crunching per day. Even more than IBM Corp themselves.

If it can happen for me there is no reason why it shouldn't happen for you.

You just have to stick in there. I wouldn't say that it is impossible to reach the level of MOT TW or /. as we are just "out there" we are only 6 months into the project and over the coming years who knows who will be at the top then.

It could be you.
Even the irrepressible MOT had to take one step back as those cheeky young upstarts TW rampaged through the rankings.

Hopefully there will be plenty more teams that do the same otherwise we will only have 4 more celebrations as we overtake teams on the way to the top.

We need more teams representing groups from around the world.
Diversity is the name of the game. Community is the way to achieve it. Nobody wants to join a team where the only feedback they get is just reading their ranking in the team list on the WCG site. There are real people out there behind all those numbers with a multitude of reasons behind why they are doing this. Get out there and communicate with each other. The world not such a big place anymore. I know MOT must be irritating as we are almost always listed on the team forum in that No 1 slot. But the reason is we just like to chat with our new friends we've made from around the world.

Don't give up.

All the best
Dave

Cracking Dave

Who would have thought

Brass is going to be a meber...lol!