Apis Tintinnambulator said:

Yes, this. The old percent calculation took into account time (like past 30 days' rate or whatever), so I wasn't the biggest fan since it wasn't a simple calculation. I like the Keep It Simple math you talk about:

[work units completed] / [total known work units] * 100% = percent shown.

This will of course change as new work comes in, but the denominator will simply increase.

I can understand the motives behind this change, but as many have expressed here already: it is demotivating. Personally, I found no issue in seeing the percentages as showing how much was done from the currently known work available. In my opinion that said a lot too.

Of course I understand that the constant nagging on the forums about the percentage bars "not showing correct info" for the project as a whole frustrated you as much as many others here too.

My proposition:
Keep the new bars by all means because yes, they do serve purpose by showing "In progress" for instance, but please also add back the "known work" percentage bars too - i.e. keep two sets of bars. That way 99% and "In progress" clearly means that the project has no ending in sight as a whole. That would ve /very/ informative!

Actually, put the "monthly calls" you make nowadays on there as well as "milestones" or something like that so that you clearly see that even though it shows 99% for known work, the other bar clearly shows "In progress" and there one can see links (or expand an info-square or something) to the last three monthly calls for the project. That way people can clearly read what is coming up in the nearest future for the project without having to resort to finding those posts in the forum.

Also, a "progressbar updated" date would be very beneficial especially since most projects are progressing slowly.

Perhaps if you do not completely agree with me, then at least make the "show second progress bar" option available in the settings so that those who know what they mean can go there and turn them back on (they will be visible on the Research page only when logged in of course then).

People need to see /some/ sort of progress and I am confident a lot of the "hardcore crunchers" and "long-runners" at WCG are power-users or like stats and progress and seeing how everyone's contributions are progressing long-running and complex things forward at any rate. Showing nothing more that "In progress" for ages does not contribute to this.

Personally I love to see stats and figures and numbers, it helps /A LOT/ to keep the motivation there, reminding oneself that one's and everyone's crunching is making a difference. If you ask me I would wish for real-time "batches processed" counters for each project on the start page with real-time graphs showing how results are coming in and out, with a live map clearly showing the proportions of WUs and results flowing in and out to/from the WCG servers from all over the world and so on...! :) That would help motivation and entice people even more to see.

But at this moment we are discussing the percentage complete bars and a first step is not to make us power-users and stats lovers disappointed by removing the last little measurement of progress that we had left.
Please, don't leave us out in the cold :'(

Personally I find the new progress bars extremely demotivating. Some projects I really care about, others I'm mostly in it for the badge. I'm honestly not sure what to do about some of these projects now - probably I'll get to the next badge and drop them - 30 days notice isn't nearly enough. I need a better idea of how long these projects will last, even if it is flawed, to pursue badges for these projects. For now, it seems my choice is to focus more resources on non-WCG projects....

I agree with the majority of the comments above, its a retrograde step in terms of keeping contributors in the loop. To me it kind of feels like statistical censorship. At least with the old system you could have a rough guess as to which way to allocate and manage your resources to catch badges before your favourite project expired. Everyone likes to see countdowns, and racing against the clock. Ok, maybe not everyone, but nearly everyone, has a bit of competitive spirit. Isn't that one of the driving ideas behind badge hunting? I myself went and bought a couple of Android devices when I saw how soon the SCC project was coming to an end , based purely on the project progress percentage bars, and was able to snag a 10 year badge just in the nick of time. It gave me bragging rights! It gave me a sense of achievement, that I had done the right thing! And WCG won too, because now those same devices are hard at work on Zika. My point is, I was spurred on to do this because I foresaw, more than two months beforehand, that a ten year badge was within reach, simply by looking at the progress bars.
While I can understand some of the reasons why WCG has done this, overall it was better the old way.
Demotivating, very demotivating, as many others have said. Please bring back the old system, or at least something that differentiates between a one year project and a 5 year project. We all feel left in the dark right now.

I understand your points, and yes the old progress bars caused a lot of forum threads with a lot of discussion. But let's take Zika as an example. They update their "Experiments" sections pretty regularly and post the new experiments there together with the batch range for each. That information is useful because one can then track the progress /within each experiment/.

A "current experiment" progressbar for Zika would have been nice on the research page. In the same manor the other projects should be able to divide their work into some discrete batch ranges at least.

At the very least, please post the "Monthly calls" there as a progress indicator on the research page so that one can find that information easily or post it in the news section.