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Forum: Chat Room
Thread: The Future of WCG ??? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 28
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Dataman
Ace Cruncher Joined: Nov 16, 2004 Post Count: 4865 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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They say a picture is worth a thousand words:
----------------------------------------https://www.boincstats.com/stats/15/project/detail/user As a “first day” member of WCG, I find this trend of decreasing crunchers disturbing. While I did not check every active project, WCG is also the only BOINC project I found to have a negative “new users”. I am not sure of all the conditions which would cause this to happen other than opting not only to stop crunching but also to remove their data from WCG. On the bright side, WCG still has one of the largest number of members of the active BOINC projects and the largest % of active members vs. total members. It still has a solid but decreasing core of active crunchers. @ Krembil/Jurisica Admin’s: Are there any plans to attempt to reverse this trend or is a shrinking active member base an acceptable outcome of the transition from IBM to Krembil? @ WCG Crunchers: Comments? Suggestions? Cheers and good luck.   |
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7579 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Dataman: Quite interesting. I don't have any real answers but an observation might be the increasing cost of electricity. Another might be the increasing proportion of laptops versus desktops/servers. From what I have seen, some get a new laptop, want to try this activity and then have problems with overheating mostly due to the thin nature of new laptops and the inadequate amount of strategies for heat dissipation when running 100%. The emphasis seems to have been on graphics and form over function in the design of the laptops. If that is the only computer you have, you do do not want to toast its innards doing volunteer work.
----------------------------------------Just a thought. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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D_S_Spence
Advanced Cruncher Canada Joined: Jan 5, 2017 Post Count: 107 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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This might be caused by old inactive users being removed after 3 years of inactivity (something about European law that IBM maybe over-interpreted).
Look at the "Total Number of Users" chart. It starts falling sharply in July 2019. This is before Krembil took over. |
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Mike.Gibson
Ace Cruncher England Joined: Aug 23, 2007 Post Count: 12146 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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When the move started a number of crunchers pulled out mistakenly thinking that Krembil were a profit-making organisation rather than a not for profit research institute.
It would also be interesting to see the relative proportions of different nationalities as IBM are in USA and Krembil in Canada. Also, IBM are well known whereas Krembil were little known internationally. Mike |
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Unixchick
Veteran Cruncher Joined: Apr 16, 2020 Post Count: 859 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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The big focus should be the move, and not the pr right now. I'm sure the move will cause some issues for a hopefully short time. better to ask for new members after that. A new project would be a great move to get new members. There are only 4 projects at the moment. TB has a low number of WUs and doesn't need any new people... so only 3 projects for new members. ARP takes a bit of resources and might be too much for some machines. The covid project is the one that brought me here, but that started a while ago.
The decline did mostly happen in 2019, and I'm curious as to why. I could understand covid work from home could cause the decline, but it is a bit before that, so what happened around July 2019?? did a big project end?? |
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Bryn Mawr
Senior Cruncher Joined: Dec 26, 2018 Post Count: 337 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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If it is the 3 year rule and the big drop happened in 2019 then what happened in 2016 to cause 3/4 of the volunteers to stop processing?
----------------------------------------The alternative is, did IBM cull inactive users for some reason? [Edit 1 times, last edit by Bryn Mawr at Feb 7, 2022 8:48:57 PM] |
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D_S_Spence
Advanced Cruncher Canada Joined: Jan 5, 2017 Post Count: 107 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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The GDPR only came into effect in 2018. I'm guessing, but to me it looks like IBM started culling inactive users in 2019. By February 2020 they had caught up with the backlog, and it is now an automatic part of operations, that users are removed after being inactive for a set amount of time. The slow decline since then might be for the reasons Sgt.Joe mentioned.
I don't know of any other projects that remove inactive users, but I would guess that for projects of a similar age that don't remove inactive users, a much higher proportion of users aren't active. |
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Falconet
Master Cruncher Portugal Joined: Mar 9, 2009 Post Count: 3295 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Einstein@home has also implemented the GDPR.
----------------------------------------https://www.boincstats.com/stats/5/project/detail/ Users 7,697 Active users 3,340 (43.39%) Hosts 14,768 Active hosts 12,883 (87.24%) My Einstein@home account dates from March 2009 and my ID is 446493. Seems like inactive accounts are also removed/hidden at Einstein@home. AMD Ryzen 5 1600AF 6C/12T 3.2 GHz - 85W AMD Ryzen 5 2500U 4C/8T 2.0 GHz - 28W AMD Ryzen 7 7730U 8C/16T 3.0 GHz [Edit 1 times, last edit by Falconet at Feb 7, 2022 9:42:05 PM] |
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Mike.Gibson
Ace Cruncher England Joined: Aug 23, 2007 Post Count: 12146 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I don't know when it happened but IBM changed the rule for their own machines from requiring an opt out to requiring an opt in. That would have cut numbers for WCG.
Mike |
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Jurisica
World Community Grid Admin, Mapping Cancer Markers and Help Conquer Cancer Scientist Joined: Feb 28, 2007 Post Count: 87 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Dear all - thank you for the questions, concerns and answers (thank you Mike, Falconet, Unixchick).
It is true, many aspects of WCG remain in planning stage, currently on the back burner, until we finalize migration. - we do have a plan to revive the membership (and your answers were accurate, GDPR, inactivity - but there are also users that replaced machines and did not setup on the new ones, or quit the job and did not restart WCG with a new account, etc, - but (after finishing the migration) we do want to bring new projects and with that new volunteers We are not there yet - but we are excited to get there soon. sincerely igor |
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