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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: "If there is no work available" setting should be probably be revoked |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 11
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Dayle Diamond
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jan 31, 2013 Post Count: 450 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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If there is no work available for the project(s) I have selected above, please send me work from another project. Please opt me in to new projects as they become available We are approaching the end of planned work units for Fight AIDS at Home. By the end of November 2015, we will be approaching the end of planned work units for Mapping Cancer Markers. While the WCG forums are fairly active, a quick look at the stats page suggests that a tiny minority of donors participate in discussion. I don't think it's a stretch to conclude that a lot of our crunching power comes from set-and-forget users who haven't changed their preferences since signing up. And that's perfectly fine! The more the merrier. FAAH and MCM have enjoyed the lions share of WCG's crunching power and goodwill for some time. It would be a crying shame to lose tens of years of work per day just to cater to user choice. Consider a user who selected YES to every inaugural project soon after the WCG launch, then stopped paying attention. She declined to automatically participate in projects, because it gave her a momentary feeling of choice and control. We'll lose her support this week. But do we really think that while she supported the Human Proteome Folding project, she'd hate Uncovering Genome Mysteries? Or how about a user who joined the BOINC after learning about Mapping Cancer Markers in the media. He, like so many people, has been impacted by cancer and wants to contribute. After installing BOINC, he picks just one project - MCM. He hasn't directly been impacted by Ebola or Schistosoma, or HIV/AIDS. The press didn't mention that projects END and he didn't think about it. If you could ask him, he'd rather contribute to something than nothing. Sure there may be one or two people who have no interest whatsoever in the remaining projects, but I'd imagine they're pretty rare. If they're out there, and they truly don't want to contribute to anything, they can always manually unsubscribe. I recommend we send out a brief announcement for the BOINC news tab announcing an upcoming settings revamp -- scheduled for two weeks later. That will give the our handful of donors with strange preferences the option to leave, and nobody can accuse WCG of running software without permission. Your thoughts? WCG Techs: How many gigaflops are we projected to lose if this setting remains unchanged? |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
An [Early] warning mailing about ending of FA@H was suggested previously to be sent to members with exclusive and limiting options (de)selected to please check their options as we like you to continue helping resolve problems of this world.
Thanks for bringing this up again [but very much doubt 'revoking' the 2 particular options will help, more likely antagonize members]. |
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Dayle Diamond
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jan 31, 2013 Post Count: 450 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I would love to see more feedback on this - do we really have anyone active on the forum who intends to end their participation with the end of these two projects?
And to reiterate, how many gigaflops are we willing to lose rather than risk antagonizing members who deeply intended to never contribute again? |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Curious this question is even raised: First principle, absolute never ever should WCG alter device profile settings of members, forgotten or not, NEVER!
(Arbitrary device profile setting changes could affect the operation in particular for those who're not exclusively computing at WCG and signed up for science X, Y or Z.) |
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cjslman
Master Cruncher Mexico Joined: Nov 23, 2004 Post Count: 2082 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Well, what I would suggest that could be done is notify all the users that don't have the "If there is no work available..." selected (don't know if this is doable), notify them that FAAH, MCM, etc is ending and invite them to enable the option or to select other projects (along with instructions on how to do it). I fully agree with Rob... no monkeying around with the participant's settings, that's a big no-no.
----------------------------------------CJSL Crunching for a better world... |
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captainjack
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Apr 14, 2008 Post Count: 144 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I agree with Rob on this one.
First principle, absolute never ever should WCG alter device profile settings of members, forgotten or not, NEVER! One of the features of volunteer computing is that we get to choose what we work on. If the project administrators take that choice away from us, many volunteers will get upset. IIRC, when a person hasn't contributed anything in a while, they get an e-mail message that says so. Is that still the case? If so, a user who only has AIDS selected would get a follow up message when they hadn't contributed anything after a while. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Yes, AFAIK the 3 week inquiry mail is still in place, IIRC even recently a member came to the forums to ask Whats Up wih this.
----------------------------------------[Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Jun 6, 2015 8:35:54 PM] |
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[CSF] Thomas Dupont
Veteran Cruncher Joined: Aug 25, 2013 Post Count: 685 Status: Offline |
Totally agree with Rob, cjslman and captainjack.
----------------------------------------The volunteers who participate in the WCG project for a long time will realize that they have no more WU's from WCG by consulting their BOINC Manager. It's true all the more, if they're present only on the WCG project. And those who are on several BOINC projects are already "experts" and will realize it. An e-mail of warning would thus be welcome + a news via BOINC Manager (tab notices). |
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Well, WCG was always a good project...always giving you an upper hand, choosing what you wanted...so is that option!
----------------------------------------Preferably I'm using it...even though I've been chasing some other badges & not crunching FA@h...I've returned to that project & willl have just above 8y of CPU power... why? a project needs to finish & right now I'm not chasing any badges...they come as they come! but, several months ago I was crunching only UGM & OET, with the option of other projects selected...and it gave me an option to run some other WUs (CEP2 - which I don't like, & FA@h), when the UGM & OET had some problems... main thing here is to donate...so we donate! if they don't want that...why give them science which they don't want to crunch? that would only get people away from WCG... I would rather send those people MAILS saying: "We haven't seen or heard from you in a while. Look at some new projects that we have & participate in them..." it's their equipment & their electricity bill...let them choose what they want!  ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by KLiK at Jun 7, 2015 7:34:42 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
They could change the setting to:
----------------------------------------"Please opt me in to new projects as they become available" and send an email confirmation every time a new project is automatically added, so that I can manually opt out by simply following an included link. This way more people will choose to automatically opt in on new projects. I, too, think they shouldn't make any retroactive changes. [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Jun 7, 2015 8:27:30 AM] |
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