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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: Abandon Points System |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 31
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Byteball_730a2960
Senior Cruncher Joined: Oct 29, 2010 Post Count: 318 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Cgos - Sorry that you feel this way. Personally, I joined WCG for Alturistic reasons. Speaking for myself, I wanted to see my computer used more efficiently which I am sure is why we all did it.
I would have done this irrespective of losing family to cancer, malnutrition and malaria. They wouldn't make me join distributed computing but they played a major part in devoting 100% of my computing time to WCG. If you consider humans are donkeys, then points and badges are carrots. Coupled with this, I have tried to increase the number of friends and family who are crunching and I have had some success. I feel that those who are dissalusioned by the crunching and the numbers are losing focus on that fact that everyone helps. Having persused these boards, everyone is super helpful and super dedicated. Those that know the system inside out contribute sooooooo much to it for nothing. Getting rid of points and badges would not stop me crunching but it does allow me to measure how effective my promotion of it is. You need to be able to measure the output from the system that you have put input into. It's human nature for most of us. |
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mikey
Veteran Cruncher Joined: May 10, 2009 Post Count: 826 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Welcome to the forums, Sorry, but nobody ''assumes'' anything. You created this account in 2009 and if you contributed in 2006/2007, it was under a different member name, maybe just misspelled or an extra space or whatever. If you remember the email address with which that 2006/2007 account was registered, you can actually recover that information by going here http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/login/forgotMemberName.do and asking to send all member names that were registered with that address.Of course the reply will go to that email address and no other, so if you retired the mail account, it becomes difficult. If you have a reply, then in a second step you can recover the password for those accounts with this page http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/login/forgotPassword.do Whilst you may recover the account, it remains not possible to merge these accounts. Not expecting that to ever be possible anywhere in BOINC world. --//-- Actually it IS possible but ONLY by an Admin and ONLY at certain projects right now. I think it has to do with how the Stats are kept for 'proof of research' purposes.   |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
To be clear, the creation dates of accounts are uncorruptable and those ever created remaining, merely archived away from view and only on the *explicit* request of the account owner (lest there is an "disruptive force" involved), and only by email, for track record. At nearly 600000 members, engaging in account merging could become a daytask... not likely to be engaged in.
The story of tracking back single results to a specific device has taken on a live of it's own and persists. Any result processed with a promising hit is recrunched to confirm. On the now nearly 900 million results, a near impossible task to trace back. In their foresight, the techs though did keep precise tally of how much work accumulated for each member on science in points/results/time from day one, so years later they were able to implement the badges and get the devisions to tie to the My Grid page, Team andf Global stats, which back then had just the overall totals... had I ever known that I needed 2.5 days more for a FGC gold, I'd have done that :( --//-- |
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deltavee
Ace Cruncher Texas Hill Country Joined: Nov 17, 2004 Post Count: 4894 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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The points system is not unique to Boinc. Most non-profit organizations publish lists of donors sorted or grouped by level of giving. This type of recognition is considered essential to maintaining high donor interest no matter what the cause. It may be considered mercenary or distasteful, but the people raising money or cpu cycles know it improves giving, and that is the bottom line.
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Hypernova
Master Cruncher Audaces Fortuna Juvat ! Vaud - Switzerland Joined: Dec 16, 2008 Post Count: 1908 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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We human beings are very far from perfection. We have to be modest and recognize that albeit our major technological evolution, we are still inhabited by very primitive feelings, like: posession, power, greed, ego, ambition etc. etc.
----------------------------------------To achieve certain objectives it is just fair to strike those senses to have us act, move or do things. Points, badges are one way to do so. There are also other ways. I have no problem with that as long as it is in a friendly atmosphere (which it is) and for a great cause (which it is too).   |
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alver
Senior Cruncher Joined: Nov 30, 2007 Post Count: 245 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I started out purely for the reasons of scientific research, and couldn't have cared less about points. But it does sort of draw you in, and I'm afraid I now check my stats every day. I've added at least 2 of my machines (6 cores total) more or less solely for the purpose of crunching. Obviously I realise the science is more important than the points - I wouldn't be spending this amount on electricity just for a number - but the points are actually a big motivation for a lot of people. To scrap them would be a big mistake.
---------------------------------------- (previously known as 'proxima' on SETI, UD, distributed folding, FaD, and Rosetta) |
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mikey
Veteran Cruncher Joined: May 10, 2009 Post Count: 826 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I started out purely for the reasons of scientific research, and couldn't have cared less about points. But it does sort of draw you in, and I'm afraid I now check my stats every day. I've added at least 2 of my machines (6 cores total) more or less solely for the purpose of crunching. Obviously I realise the science is more important than the points - I wouldn't be spending this amount on electricity just for a number - but the points are actually a big motivation for a lot of people. To scrap them would be a big mistake. I TOTALLY agree, I too started out with 1 machine and am now up to 14 running 24/7 most quad cores AND with gpu's ALSO crunching! I do have a goal in mind and am working steadily towards it, but it HAS changed over the years! I LIKE the points but think they should be treated more like a baseball players, an overall total kept but as of Jan 1 every year the running totals are reset to zero, and we all start again! As I said above I also think credits should be a PER PROJECT type thing, not an overall Boinc thing. What does it mean that I am #99 out of 2.3 million people NOTHING at all except to me. What does it mean that I have accumulated almost 750 million overall Boinc credits, NOTHING at all except to me. Those stats should be archived each year but the ongoing daily stats should be reset every year, for everyone. My stats simply mean I have crunched for a VERY long time, nothing more!! Oh maybe it means I have more disposable income than some others, but how does that help stop a disease, or do something another project asks me to do?! It doesn't unless I crunch!!!!  [Edit 2 times, last edit by mikey159b at Mar 6, 2012 2:02:13 PM] |
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GeraldRube
Master Cruncher United States Joined: Nov 20, 2004 Post Count: 2153 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I think the point system is an incentive to get more--its competition--to the people that don't like the system they should not advertise their points in their signature
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johncmacalister2010@gmail.com
Veteran Cruncher Canada Joined: Nov 16, 2010 Post Count: 799 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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They aren't good for anything other than "bragging rights" and even that is dubious. I've read what points supposedly represent and think it's BS. I have several computers running WCG. When I go and look at points calculations for each WU, I see other computers that take more time than mine to finish and get a lower point calculation than my computer. Then see the points averaged between the computers that finished them. So my computers end up getting fewer points by the "work done calculation." Points are irrelevant anyway. It is the science that is being done that is important. Therefore, it is the computer power that is being DONATED that is important. CPU hours and WU's completed are the true yardstick. The more WU's completed (successfully), the closer science gets to finding badly needed answers. I started doing this just a few years ago and participated in many projects. Now I have a friend dying of cancer. I'm not monitarily wealthy, but I have a few multi-core computers at my disposal and some do nothing else but crunch WU's all day long. And I've dedicated all that processing power to Help Conquer Cancer. The concept of awarding points is moot, so stop doing it. It only serves to create a bone of contention between users. Stop creating feelings of animosity among users. CGOS edit: spelling IMHO, points tell me how much I am contributing to the research. I would be very happy to see all research concluded with diseases cured, water desalinated, misery eliminated, solar energy harnessed, etc. Then, there would be no need for points, badges or research. As that is not happening soon, let's keep the points so I can measure my contribution and tweak my systems to contribute more. In the absence of points, it might not be possible to tell if your computers are contribution anything at all. I also like reading progress reports from the different research projects.  crunching, crunching, crunching. AMD Ryzen 5 2600 6-core Processor with Windows 11 64 Pro. AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor with Windows 11 64 Pro (part time) |
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widdershins
Veteran Cruncher Scotland Joined: Apr 30, 2007 Post Count: 677 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Points may not mean much to some people, but some people are competitive, be it with others in their team, WCG in general, or even just with themselves.
----------------------------------------The points can spur some on to greater goals, to tweak that little bit extra performance out of their machine, to upgrade their machine to try and outdo that team mate who always seems to get just a few hundred more points, to build a server farm in the spare bedroom to try to reach the top 100 in the rankings, or whatever. Some people just love collecting data to produce stats and charts (none more so than Sek), some love the goal of trying to get that next badge. Different things motivate different people and WCG has to try and incentivise as many as possible to contribute as much as possible. [Edit 1 times, last edit by widdershins at Mar 6, 2012 11:19:23 PM] |
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