People seem to have a variety of motivations for becoming involved in WCG but the fact of the matter is that it can be an expensive habit, especially if you start investing in hardware.

I think a lot of people leave simply because they get tired of trying to keep up. I know that I have 2 dual hex cores that are idle because I don't want the additional electricity expense and I just don't really care that much about my stats any more. I mean I do to some extent since I'm still running 2 dual socket servers, but it's not really any fun for me any more.

What WOULD make it fun is if WCG could get their butt into gear and find us another GPU project. It strains credulity to believe that they are finding this so difficult if not impossible, but whatever. It's not like they ever take anything we say on the forum seriously so I'm not sure why I even waste the effort to post.

Scribe,
That is an interesting proposal, but speaking strictly for myself, points are not why I am here. I have a vested interest in the cancer projects and the other diseases are important too. I'll be doing this as long as I can afford the electricity. I do admit I am kind of an amateur statistics nut, but the points are not the motivation. The results are, so crunch on.
Cheers

Oh come on, it's not so unimaginable that people are motivated mainly by points when you're talking about people like me who have multiple rigs - especially high thread-count server rigs. Do you really think we're running these purely for the science? Of course not. It's mostly for the sport and the competition. If you don't get that, then you don't really get the whole concept behind teams and team challenges.

But as has been pointed out countless times before, what motivates someone is completely irrelevant. What matters is that they're here and contributing. Anything that gets them to contribute more is good. Anything that makes them contribute less or give up completely is bad.

For example, I think we could do a lot to strengthen our community and keep people interested if we had a real forum with blogs, private messaging and other features that made this feel like a group with a common passion and interests as opposed to a barely functional tech support forum. But oh no, that's too much work, and doesn't even rate a place on the to do list. But there's no arguing it would be something positive for WCG.

I know that was off topic but it's been a few months since I've gotten up on my soap box and that was an itch I needed to scratch.

Anyway, it does no good to look down your nose at people like me who are largely motivated by the competitive aspect of crunching. Do I care about the science and research being done? Of course. But would I be running 70 or more threads just for that reason? Uhhh, no, I don't think so.

Uh... this is going to be interesting...
Well, yes I get the idea of team challenges and competition. I would like to think that people are motivated more by the altruist nature of the projects then just the competition for points... but if not, then it's OK because that competition is helping a good cause (it just difficult for me to understand, that's all).

I agree with that (and did so in my previous note)

I'll skip the forum thing... that's obvious a touchy subject

That's OK, that's what forums are for.

We all have our reasons for crunching and if points are yours, then I respect that. I was referring to the cases were there are people who threaten that they will pick up their marbles and go home if something (points included) doesn't go their way, totally ignoring the main purpose of what the objective of the WCG is: helping science find cures (faster) for illnesses that affect the world.

So, I would sum it up with... let's crunch on.

CJSL

Crunching for a better future...