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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Website Support
Thread: Change to the Project Progress Bars |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 164
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BladeD
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Nov 17, 2004 Post Count: 28976 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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However, the entire team is heads-down on trying to launch the climate projects, and that is our top priority. That's good to hear! |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
While I don't personally agree with your decision, we are not in a position to know what level of service calls any confusion gives rise to. Again, personally, I think you could do a lot to alleviate the confusion just with a few carefully chosen words on the projects web page, but it's your shout.
The rest of us will have to rely even more on KLIK's excellent ECD thread. |
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sphospital
Cruncher Joined: Apr 30, 2014 Post Count: 2 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I understand your reasoning for this change, but the old system did provide more info as other posts have noted.
We did get used to the fluctuations in percentage up and down. If it was put to a vote, i would prefer the old method. |
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Seoulpowergrid
Veteran Cruncher Joined: Apr 12, 2013 Post Count: 818 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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There is no way to show an accurate timeline, or even guess at an end date for projects. This is due to the very nature of basic research; the scientists are in uncharted territory and often are uncertain what they will find, or what discoveries other scientists may make that will impact the body of knowledge in their field and cause a project to end quickly or go on for many more years. I think that if something like this was/will be written on the Research Overview page, in big bold hard to miss size, it could help to dodge some of the known confusion. Even with the new progress bar system in place, this would be very helpful~We’ll discuss if/how/when to add information such as batch numbers to the project pages. However, the entire team is heads-down on trying to launch the climate projects, and that is our top priority. Focusing on climate - cool cool. "Highest currently known batch number (*highly variable*)" would be my preference :) Aw~ I was hoping the links of https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/api/project?shortName=mip1 were still working :P I know the dates aren't accurate, but I like seeing a super rough estimate so I know to shoot for the next badge or not. If you re-implement this as a hidden feature, I'd sure appreciate it. Or just giving the date, again with really prominent disclaimer, and writing it under the "highest known batch number".  |
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katoda
Senior Cruncher Poland Joined: Apr 28, 2007 Post Count: 171 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I second what was written above regarding re-implementation of estimated end date in a hidden way - most of (or even all) users using API to get such information know very well the calculations behind and would never complaint about fluctuations. It should not be difficult to put this back, especially taking into account that no change in the front-end is required.
----------------------------------------I'm finding this move as very demotivating. We were given a sort of prizes in the form of badges and now we were deprived of opportunity to decide which of the prize is worth pursuing. I know, I know, we are here to help science and (as I read many times here) we should not expect anything in return. As I agree that our most important goal is to help, at the same time I would like to have some fun doing that, as a form of motivation while paying increased energy bills. Without that kind of motivation and while missing badges due to lack of any information where to put more resources, well, helping science will not be the same as before. Sad, but true.  [Edit 2 times, last edit by katoda at May 17, 2019 1:25:24 PM] |
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Procyon Lotor One
Cruncher Joined: Jun 28, 2008 Post Count: 14 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I agree with Mike on this one. Getting to the different diamond levels is hard enough, I would hate to be working on a 50 or 100 year badge and get some type of 30-day or less warning out of the blue. Knowing that a project is 94% done tells me go for that diamond on another project. I already have enough badges that I missed by days or weeks because of my own inability to figure out what is going on thank you.
----------------------------------------*edit - it does look go though :) [Edit 1 times, last edit by Procyon Lotor One at May 15, 2019 9:11:52 AM] |
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[VENETO] boboviz
Senior Cruncher Joined: Aug 17, 2008 Post Count: 183 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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New progress bars=bad idea
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
The rest of us will have to rely even more on KLIK's excellent ECD thread. That's based on the research page..... How is he going to know how things are progressing without the end date in the API and the bogus unreliable percentages? As has been suggested previously, just get rid of the research page as you have take a page with unreliable but somewhat useful percentages and, essentially, turned it into a running or not binary page which is totally useless. I believe most members are smart enough to know if they are getting WUs, the projects running and, if not, it isn't. Not only that you have made the page something that is going to require manual updating to be accurate. We don't reliably get the 30 day notice so I suggest we won't get the page updated reliable either. Hence, it just becomes a matter of time before this new page is unreliable also. Remember they are heads down on the #FakeNews climate projects. The difficulty surrounding this escapes me since the folks at Temple have pie charts with percentages in them and it seems to work just fine. What do they know that WCG techs don't? I guess it's because they have Ph.Ds. The ZIKA group provides batch numbers instead of percentages but it wouldn't be hard to take their information and look at the running batch number and figure a percentage. What do they know that WCG techs don't? Yes, they too have Ph.Ds. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
The rest of us will have to rely even more on KLIK's excellent ECD thread. That's based on the research page..... How is he going to know how things are progressing without the end date in the API and the bogus unreliable percentages? OK, I had thought that KLIK was using data from 'side channels', Now I think it was completely wrong for the techs to ask us what we thought of the research page, to make a decision on that information (that I happen to disagree with) and then to delete the data from the API as well (without hinting that that might happen or asking what we thought of it and the consequences of that action). That's unquestionably a step too far! WCG must let those of us who know what we're getting make use of what we can. You're going back to the old view of the WCG techs as hiding behind an arras and pretending the world doesn't exist. You cannot expect to build up a loyal band of followers and a mutually supportive community if you do this to us! And, based on past history and the ability of the crunchers here, I have a feeling that someone will find a way around the roadblocks that you're trying to put in place anyway. It will be interesting to see if that makes your lives better or worse, as regards support calls ... |
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widdershins
Veteran Cruncher Scotland Joined: Apr 30, 2007 Post Count: 674 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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As others have said, the research page progress bar is now useless. What's the difference between just launched and in progress??? None! Both just mean currently WU's are available. If a project launched in 2010 and is predicted to last 10 years when does it move from just launched to in progress??? 1 year in? 2 years in??
What if a project is only planned at the outset to last 10 months? How will anyone know the difference without spending hours trawling random posts from WCG staff and intermittent posts (if at all) from researchers? There is absolutely no clue now on how long the project will last. I honestly don't know why you wasted precious development time on making that page worse than useless when the resources could have been used more productively. For me part of the "fun" was setting difficult goals for run time and balancing off how long each goal would take against the predicted amount of time left. Tweaking my resources available for each science to achieve targets in time. It appealed to my inner nerd. That's no longer possible, so no fun, so no visits to the website on a routine basis to see how things are progressing. My vote is to put it back the way it was, it may have been a poor indicator, but it was still miles better than the new one. |
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