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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: Competition Categories |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 5
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bahorn
Cruncher United States Joined: Feb 9, 2018 Post Count: 4 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I've only been a member of the WCG for a little over a day, but I'm surprised to see that there does not appear to be any categorization of rankings. An individual with one device on the grid is ranked against a company/institution with almost 450,000 devices.
I discovered that there are "small" team challenges, but then saw that this pitted teams with one member against teams with thousands of members. Is there a reason the WCG doesn't have categories, such as individuals and companies/institutions. Within each of these it would seem reasonable to have some subcategorization by number of devices. For individuals that might be a) 1-2 devices, b) 3-5 devices, c) 6-10 devices and d) >10 devices (at this point the specifics are less important than the concept). Likewise, for companies/institutions categories might be a) 1-10, b) 11-100, c) 101-1000 and d) >1000. From a competition point of view, I'm not very motivated to add devices to the grid to try to move my ranking from #550,000 to #540,000. Thanks for listening. - Bruce Horn |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Welcome to crunching and to the Forum, bahorn
 Shortly someone will be here and give his thoughts on your thoughts. In the meantime you may want to tell us where you come from - maybe even put it into your Forum Profile  |
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KerSamson
Master Cruncher Switzerland Joined: Jan 29, 2007 Post Count: 1670 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Hi bahorn,
----------------------------------------welcome at WCG. The large majority of the members contributing to WCG projects are less competition-oriented than looking for supporting basic research projects for the humanity: healthcare / life science, sustainable development / clean energy, water supply, ... Indeed you have some members being able to involve complete infrastructure of large organisations like universities, middle size or larger companies, etc. At the other side, the vast majority of contributors are single persons, sometime "geek" with some very powerful machines, but usually with a modest but faithful contribution. Since WCG exists since 2004, you have some members having a very long contribution history with a "high" ranking even with limited resources. On my side, I've just reached 265 CPU years after 11 years contribution. It makes an average of 24 CPU years per calendar year; with currently available multi-core CPUs, it is not a big deal. If you have two machines based on a RyZen 7 CPU (16 threads), you can overpass my average daily contribution easily. The only difference between us would be contribution 11 years. I can understand that competition is something exciting. However, on my side, the long term research and discovery objectives motivate me much more, since I know that I will never have huge computational resources to devote to WCG. Enjoy crunching for the humanity, Yves --- PS: If you wish to notice your daily progress relatively accurately, you can take a look on your member statistics at: https://boincstats.com/en/stats/15/user/detail/1062801 As soon as you contribute regularly, you will see your progress and you will be able to notice that, after a couple of months, you will rapidly move out of the "low ranking area". At least, it could be a good motivation for you. ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by KerSamson at Feb 10, 2018 10:19:35 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I've only been a member of the WCG for a little over a day, but I'm surprised to see that there does not appear to be any categorization of rankings. An individual with one device on the grid is ranked against a company/institution with almost 450,000 devices. I discovered that there are "small" team challenges, but then saw that this pitted teams with one member against teams with thousands of members. Is there a reason the WCG doesn't have categories, such as individuals and companies/institutions. Within each of these it would seem reasonable to have some subcategorization by number of devices. For individuals that might be a) 1-2 devices, b) 3-5 devices, c) 6-10 devices and d) >10 devices (at this point the specifics are less important than the concept). Likewise, for companies/institutions categories might be a) 1-10, b) 11-100, c) 101-1000 and d) >1000. From a competition point of view, I'm not very motivated to add devices to the grid to try to move my ranking from #550,000 to #540,000. Thanks for listening. - Bruce Horn The only problem I could see with this idea is that if you swap computers around a lot, each installation of boinc and wcg is considered a new device. Say I have one computer. I install Windows 7 on it for a few months. Then I decide I don't like Windows, and install Ubuntu. Now you have two devices registered. Say I don't like Ubuntu, and install Mint. Three devices. And in the end, I decide I don't like Linux at all, and go back to 7. Now I have four devices registered. I know this isn't the "norm", but if you do things like this, it will artificially inflate your device installations very quick. I have been crunching since Feb 2006, and my profile lists 82 device installations. Those never go away, and include lots of OLD computers that are long since in their graveyards. I only currently have 17 active participants in WCG, including 10 of those being android devices. I do like the idea of separating business accounts from personal, but based on device installations I don't know if it would work. I think it would have to go by when an account is set up, the user would have to identify if they are an individual, or an organization of some sort. |
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KerSamson
Master Cruncher Switzerland Joined: Jan 29, 2007 Post Count: 1670 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Even differentiating business from private accounts would not be optimal. A very small business organisation has often less devices than some strong private crunchers with many powerful devices, see, for example, Decrypt74.
----------------------------------------On my side, I am fine with the current situation. Additionally, joneill003's remark regarding multiple device re-installations is fully valid and it is impossible to control such cases. What I did not appreciate is the WCG partnership program. After a couple of years contributing, I did apply in 2011 for becoming a WCG partner and I was rejected since I was too small and not being able (not willing) to create my own team. Indeed, I deliberately wished to remain member of the Decrypthon team and to promote this team. During the discussions with the IBM person in charge of the partnership program, I have been taught that each partner has to create its own team without any exception; at this time several organisations have been mentioned to me as example. Since several years, none of these organisations are still contributing, but I still do ! ... and my overall contribution is much bigger than these "partners" ever did. Cheers, Yves |
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