Hello WCG.

Attention: all

Gentlemen:

One idea (if not THE idea) of the use of milestones in projects is to quantify progress or achievement of a certain aspect of a project. In molecular-based WCG projects, like HPF2, one milestone is the achievement of lowest-energy binding (LEB) of molecules. I propose that every WCG project have a milestone entered into WCG's system of reward/recognition.

The "badge" system can be viewed as one "module" in such a reward/recognition system. Under the "badge" module, WCG crunchers are rewarded/recognized for their contribution on the computing-aspect of crunching WUs -- specifically runtime, and related milestones. In my proposal, the crunchers would be rewarded/recognized for their contribution on (advancing) the science-aspect behind the crunched WUs; in the case of molecular-based projects -- specifically, LEB. I leave it to the WCG-management to flesh out the implementation mechanics/specifics.

One approach would be the "hitter of the day" or something like that, for the cruncher who found the LEB to date and would hold on to that title unless toppled by yet lower LEB from another cruncher.

Another approach, and I hope this would play out as a close counterpart to the "badges" module, would be ranking crunchers according to the number of times he/she made a "hit" on the LEB. Because a cruncher would never know in advance if crunching a given WU would hit an LEB, the LEB milestone also serves as somewhat of an equalizer merit for those crunchers who may not afford muscle computers to give them big runtimes under the badge module. The small guy may hit the most LEBs while using the lower end class of computers -- a chance for a recognition that would be zero under the badge-only system.

Given that the science behind the WU is the raison-de-etre of why we do crunching to begin with, it is time to put our money where the money truly belongs: in the science side of crunching. It is time to reward/recognize crunchers for achieving a science milestone side-by-side with the existing badge system.

Comments, anyone?

Good day
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