I've contributed to WCGrid for a few years, but I stopped contributing, because of lack of transparency from the platform maintainers. Namely, while they say:

«The net societal benefit of the use of World Community Grid far outweighs the minimal additional energy which may be drawn from the otherwise idle devices. The power of the grid enables researchers to complete computations in months instead of years and bring new, exciting innovations and solutions to health and environmental issues which affect our communities, our global neighbors and the environment.»

They don't backup this claim with data. Which means that the benefits of running WCGrid might not actually compensate for all negative externalities: Hardware wear, energy spent, pollution from using that extra energy, noise pollution, etc. ...

If my memory is fine, I think someone from the staff once said that this WCGrid approach is like finding a needle not in a haystack, but in lots of them and while having only time to search in a few of them. This only reinforces my idea that WCGrid should make a regular report with an analysis to the cost-benefit of running its platform (even if the use of very rough estimates are required) if it wants its reputation intact. I've suggested the publishing of such a report using this website's contact form a few times many months ago and got no interest back from them. Should we actually contribute to WCGrid without transparency on this issue?

I've even thought of publishing the following quatrain in a book to highlight this issue:

World Community Grid
Is asking for your computing power.
But does it not also rid
Of your dough and flour?

Oh, now I do know
From a few estimations
That the costs are low
The end of my frustrations

Let's compute as much as we can
Hopefully soon we'll have results
From the peasant to the businessman
From the children to the adults

After these estimations, I am now convinced!

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post edited to remove exclamation point and emoji on the title. Thank you