I stumbled across this thread while browsing the forums to see whats been going on lately. I initially visited kliks now abandoned thread to view ECDs and see if any new projects had come online. Saw the link to this thread and found your post. Looks like you have jumped ship since posting this back in May, NixChix, but I completely understand what you said. I was getting the grid.org vibe around here for a while. Limited communication from staff, promises of new projects only to have constant pushed back, etc. I bailed on the grid.org and came over here because everything just seemed better. Then lately things started feeling like deja vu.
I posted this post back in April in Snurks team thread, letting them know I was shutting down. One of my systems started grabbing SCC work back in August for a few days without my knowledge, but other than that I've been inactive since April. I have visited the forums occasionally, but missed this announcement.

It's a shame that so many of what I would call "veteran" crunchers have left. People who have actively helped and contributed to the forum. Its not about the number of threads you crunch, its about the effort spent. These members actively helped new members with questions of setting up devices, offering advice, etc... With the disolving of community advisors (another effort I questioned), members were mostly all we had left to help other members. And if I am volunteering my computers and androids, I want to feel a sense of accomplishment. Lately that feeling had faded. And seems to have faded for many like me. I do still feel like volunteer distributed computing is important and needs to be done especially in research in stuff like cancer, which hits so many every day. But I just think WCG has lost its way. I understand that staffing is limited, and people are overworked. But when they refuse to accept the help of volunteers (I have seen requests to help be turned down on several occasions) then they are digging the grave of WCG.

I chose this post to quote because after reading start to finish, this post seems to hit the nail on the head in my eyes. And after seeing that admins are still not interested in working with their volunteers to make this a better place, I believe this will be my last post on WCG. Without the staff that keep WCG floating, we volunteers would have nothing. But the staff need to remember that without the volunteers, they also have nothing. I really do hope that my 289 years contributed were beneficial in some small way. Take care and best wishes to everyone out there.

+1
I never thought that these new Progress Bars (and all that revolves around this position statement) could appeal to so much "affect" and I really regret the loss of some of our crunchers. We are a family, and in all (big) families, there is friction but that should not separate us, because if the blood relationship have the primacy in a biological family, the philanthropic relationship should have it in ours.

Doneske, I mostly agree with you. However, I don't think in terms of dysfunctional. I am unsure of why there is a paucity of interaction between the scientists, the staff and the volunteers. We are getting some updates from caitilarkin and Erika T seems to keep a little eye on the fora. I do agree about the drudge part with several analogies which come to mind, such as watching cheese age, watching for proton decay, and watching fingernails grow. I do miss the days of Dr. Alex Perryman chiming in on the forum from time to time. I wish more scientists would actually do that. Maybe there is something in the agreements they have with WCG which limits their ability or willingness to engage from time to time with the volunteers. Regardless, I like the science and will continue to crunch because I believe the crunching is helping to find solutions to some of mankind's most vexing problems.
Cheers

I can only speak for myself but, I'd rather do medical work over math, space, or look for something that doesn't exist like E.T..

Reminder:

caitilarkin said on 5/14/2019:


In other words, I assume this action item (fixing the Project Progress page with simple details on batches/work units that are automatically pulled from the database) will be revisited as soon as ARP launches. I just wish things around here happened at a faster pace.