Mike,

I agree about "crunching something else more productively" :-) but it would need the restoration of the [pre-migration] grace days to stop the server prematurely re-issuing work for tasks that started pre-deadline but are still in progress[1]; I think we're stuck with this for now.

As for the reduced deadlines: if "reliable" (i.e. fast turnaround, and not prone to errors) systems get those 36-hour deadline tasks and don't have excessive buffers there's no reason (apart from very long delays in download or upload) that they should be unable to return them within 36 hours. Even the step-size 18 task(s) shouldn't take a modern machine more than 24 hours :-)

Adri,

I looked at your analysis in the other thread, and [looking at sent and returned times] it actually appears that the _4 task was triggered by the _2 task going No Reply (before it returned post-deadline). The point about unavoidable retries was valid either way :-)

Cheers - Al.

[1] The above said, I think the grace period mechanism is more important for tasks with longer initial deadlines; telling the clients the deadlines are shorter might produce a lot more "Not Started by Deadline" errors for tasks with a 5 day deadline (or longer) and perhaps encourage some folks to shrink their buffers somewhat, releasing more work for others :-) Indeed, specifically for ARP1 perhaps a 4-day deadline (with one day's grace) to try to reduce the number of units taking over a week to complete!

[Edited to remove a (longer) section rendered redundant by adriverhoef's post...]

Al:

You're right!
I already thought to myself that it was a bit strange, that missing _0's deadline generated 2 re-sends. And this is why, this explains it. So, _0 missing its deadline caused the release of copy _3, and _2 missing its deadline caused the release of copy _4.
Thanks for setting it straight!

Mike,
I also agree with you on "Those machines could have been crunching something else more productively", so you know. Anyhow, I'm afraid it is what it is.

Adri

Heya Hans,
Maybe this is some kind of help. Sorry if you already knew this.
Not only can you refer to a thread, you can also refer to a certain post. You can presumably handle this by clicking with your right mouse button (context), in the original post that you want to refer to (possibly open in another window or browser tab), on the 'chain' symbol in the lower right corner of that post.
The chain symbol is placed to the left of an 'unhappy face' and an 'arrow up' (in that same lower right corner) in the designated post.
When the context menu opens, you can find something like 'copy link' in it. When you choose 'copy link', the link to the post that you want to refer to is placed in your copy buffer (just like you can put the link to a thread in your copy buffer). In this way you can use the contents of your copy buffer to put it into an article that you want to post.

Adri