There are a lot of things that aren't "the worst" but that seems to be the standard by which most things are judged here at WCG.

Of course considering the fact that the value of IBM stock has fallen about 20% over the past year, maybe "not being the worst" is the best they can manage.

Nothing I post in this forum should ever be interpreted as criticism of individual members of the WCG tean. Keith Uplinger, and previously Kevin Reed, have been outstanding in their technical support of the project whilst Ericka and Tedi cannot be faulted on their Admin work.

Criticism is directed squarely at IBM from which resources and staff for the WCG project derive.

In his post abpve David Autumns one of the First 5,000 to sign up for WCG, and a regular contributor to the Forum, makes many excellent points, chief amongst them: IBM is IBM and could never understand the emotional attachment we have to contributing to the research and science hosted here
Being told that as volunteers we are 'esteemed' and that our contributions are 'valued' is not enough. What is wanted is engagement!

Time and again Project Updates and information posts by Scientists attract scores of well informed comments and questions. Why can't WCG take note and do the same.

The much trumpeted rethink on communications policy has produced just 2 "Behind the Scenes" articles with no opportunity for follow up questions or discussion.

The ideal place to start rectifying WCG's lack of engagement with the volunteers would be to make Q&A session with the WCG team, offered to the winners of the "Decade of Discovery Recruitment Challenge" open to all. See some suggested questions here

Jen Crozier VP, IBM Global Citizenship and with oversight responsibilty for WCG
has tweeted her support for the statement
Why should the same not be true for WCG volumteers?

...and this type of "engage, communicate and involve us" need is not limited to this situation. The parallels here with this situation are eerily similar to what many Folders have said about the Pande Group that runs Folding@Home.

As Folders, we tried (for many years) to get the Pande Group to engage us more often, listen to the donors, you name it. In the end, it was a long exercise in futility and went nowhere. Just because it is IBM, the Pande Group, you pick it, it doesn't mean that you will get the treatment you would like to see (that arguably is reasonable). IMO, you are very likely to experience the concerns that I'm reading here. My advice...get over it, donate and find other more fruitful things that you can actually affect with some positive feedback.

The best things about these forums is actually the people (the donors).

Global Statistics shows total members 688,500 but ~579,000 of them have crunched 1 years Runtime or less; ~390,000 of them 90 days or less.

Currently ~55% of WCG's daily output is contributed by just 4.999 users with the user IBM accountting for a further ~14%.

I have no illusions about comments on the forum having any direct effect. I seriously doubt that anyone from IBM even visits here. And from WCG's perspective, so few users come here that they don't even consider what we say vaguely representative of the larger user pool. In fact I believe some of the staff here have, at various times, actually made observations consistent with that sentiment.

So from the point of view of any comments made here having an actual effect, you're absolutely right. That's unlikely at best. But so what?

WCG is still a reflection on IBM. That's something that they might eventually realize. Were that not the case, they wouldn't have even made the effort to conduct the 2013 survey. They saw the long, steady decline in active users and decided that wasn't acceptable.

And while IBM as a company is doing so poorly now that there is virtually no chance that they will sink any additional capital into WCG, that could eventually change. If it does, they might actually make some effort to bring the site into the 21st century, but do I think that will happen any soon? Absolutely not.

It seems like your experience with F@H was the result of the fact that there was a sharp division of opinion regarding the state of things there. That may have been true here as well, even as recently as a year or two ago. But that is changing by the day.

There isn't much pressure now since the number of active users has increased since the UGM and OET projects have started up. But I think even WCG and IBM are starting to realize that will only be temporary unless things on a much more fundamental level change. At least I hope that some in a position to make those changes are beginning to understand that.

In the meantime, I think those of us that realize what a great resource WCG is have an obligation to point out its failings. The approach you suggest basically amounts to 'STFU.' But if you actually care about something, I don't think that's an option.