I have read all of the comments. I agree with parts of them. I am very displeased with the new "progress bars" on the Research page. That being said, I am not going to leave WCG because of this change. I think the research in all the areas is too important, especially in the cancer projects because I have a vested interest. Somewhere, I recall reading that one of the criteria for getting a project approved for crunching on WCG is a concept(statement ?) of the scope of the project. I realize the potential scope of any of the projects can be quite open ended. However, I am pretty sure any project with a potential scope in excess of some arbitrary number - such as 25 years - may have to scale back the project. Heaven knows in many areas projects can last much longer despite throwing countless computing cycles at the problem. All that being said, it would be nice to know what the potential scope of a project might be at the start of the project and how that potential scope may periodically change over time. I believe the Drug Search for Leishmaniasis project was terminated early at least partly because the scope of the project ballooned over time.
At least knowing the initial scope of the project would allow some indication of how long the project may last. With the new knowledge from the first six months to a year of crunching on a project some new estimate of the scope may be inferred and hopefully communicated to the volunteers. I don't think this is too much to ask, not from the techs, but from the scientists who actually are in charge of the project.
This project can not continue without the goodwill of IBM, nor can it continue to provide useful contributions to the affected scientific community without the participation of the volunteers. Therefore, I think it would be in the best interest of all concerned to to provide something better than what currently exists on the Research page.
Cheers

Don't know about you guys, but this weekend has been a reflexion to me how I want to continue donating to WCG - with all my machines crunching 24+ days per day.

& I've come to the conclusion, as hard as it is, but got to 1 ESTIMATE. This one is pretty accurate one & it's pretty sure, concerning my future days here.

The ECD goes: if things don't change (back) for the better (or to include ECDs back in any way), from 1st of July I will be only a memory here.

The current system is too 'course' and lacks the previous useful information

I don't wish to sound disrespectful to the techs and administrators. We appreciate they are underpaid and overworked! And busy getting the new climate change projects up and running. But... while we acknowledge that maintaining the old progress bars and weathering the previous criticisms that came with the old system was a drain on resources, and was not 100% accurate, has anyone done a cost-benefit analysis? So many people here have commented on how demotivating the new system is. Some have even threatened to quit. And who knows how many are unhappy but have not said anything, but are considering turning off their machines. Without mentioning names, less than a week after this monumental change, there are crunchers commenting in this thread who are donating 115, 124, and 340 days of computing time per day who are very unhappy! That was unknown before the change, but now it is crystal clear. So time spent restoring and maintaining the old system will deliver huge benefits to the project overall in terms of cruncher goodwill and computing time gained vrs tech time spent bringing the old system back, or putting in place something better than the kindergarten level system we have now. Nobody says WCG is perfect, its cutting edge in many ways, and you have to try new ideas all the time. No disgrace at all if some of these new ideas don't work. My point being is this new system was worth a try, but seems it is causing more harm than good, so time to try something else, or please, please bring back the old system. Or least something that gives us a rough ball park idea of how much longer a project will run.

Talked about this before, the vanished milestones bar on the individual research pages, was just curious how/where to find out when that first segment was achieved... just launched. E.g. When did MIP go live... Is it a secret that the last project launch was on or before August 2017, at least, that seems to be the oldest post in the MIP forum?