>> I don't see that as a valid disincentive for potential contributors

>> If people really wanted to join a cause such as this I would imagine they wouldn't be put off by such a minor thing ...


Surely the number of people who are fairly neutral towards WCG, far far far outweigh those who are passionate.

But doesn't WCG rely on numbers of contributors. I thought the idea of the grid was install and forget. Or at least, that should be the case for the majority.

It's those vast majority that aren't all that passionate that will make the difference. With these people you just get one shot.

Once one of these people arrives at the WCG home page, the path to installed and running needs to be as simple and obvious as can possibly be.

Any unnecessary friction in the procedure is going to result in another percentage of potential contributors giving up. Every unnecessary mouse click, key press, unclear step, any need to think, any delay, etc, will result in more lost contributors. And once they've gone, they've gone.

Remember the first time somebody visits the site, they're likely to have no sense of loyalty to WCG at all. They may (like me when I first visited) have only first heard of the site literally two minutes prior.

Or maybe there's other reasons. Maybe it's the WCG home page. That's the first thing people see. It certainly does look very smart. But does it get the message across immediately, or does a surfer have to dig to find out what it's all about?

The friends I told about the site, I dont think even downloaded the software. They couldn't see what it was straight away, so decided to leave it 'till tomorrow'. (I clearly didn't explain it very well either)

When I first looked at the site, it took me a while to find the download bit. I'd read the BBC article and wanted to donate (based on the BBC article - not what I read on the site) - but then had to faff to find the download - I was on a lunch break and had very little time to mess about.

Admittedly it's been redesigned since, but maybe the download button could be still be made bright red and placed dead center? It still doesn't SHOUT OUT to somebody who's new to the site and short of time.

Just some observations... I really believe, for such a good idea, the WCG should have attracted a lot more CPU time donors by now.

Anon.

>> There are many worthy projects vying for peoples' cpu time.

The reason I switched to WCG (from grid.org) was because I thought WCG was trying to address that - namely it was to be a single grid where multiple projects could be carried out at once, and where new ones would continuously be being added, rather than having researchers needing to create separate grids each time they have a new project, or having contributors needing to run separate clients to support different projects.

That way it could accumulate the CPUs of people who weren't necessarily passionate about it. For example those who just read about the project one minute on their lunch break (like me originally), thought it was a good idea at the time, clicked to contribute, then forgot about it within three minutes. Leaving the client quietly running in the background, quietly crunching away, quietly changing to new projects automatically when they appeared, without bothering that user again.

Those people (and I would guess they'd be in the majority) would be lost if each project required them to download a new client manually from another research group.

>> The install procedure etc is as simple as it reasonably can be.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. The need to setup registration details nearly put me off; I can't help thinking it will have put others off. Oh well. Just my view.

And returning to the original quote...

>> There are many worthy projects vying for peoples' cpu time.

Why haven't the WCG people convinced those projects researchers to allow them to incorporate those projects into WCG? It would help to really show potential contributors what it is that (is supposed to) set WCG apart.

Anon.

I am currently on more than one team all you need is more than one computer--ultimately we are all on the same team and all results count and if you dont like signing in use Firefox-Mozilla-Opera or one browser that remembers passwords

You are correct