I too have wondered about the change from median to mean scoring, and the reason it had been brought in.

Personally it doesn't worry me - but I can also see that those who have seen a reduction in points, as a result of this change to mean scoring are not going to be happy - and as Movieman has said, a 5% reduction of his total teams daily score of over 1 million points is quite significant.

Edit : DA is faster on the button and got his posts in first - I'll leave it here anyway

Hello David.
It's 7:20am here. I just got my required 3 hours sleep and I'm raring to go.
In response to:
(1) Yes and no. Make a 1000 points a day and 5% is a loss of 50 points.
Make a 1,000,000 points a day and that 5% loss is 50,000.
Essentially increases another teams lead not diminishes it.
Any existing lead has now become effectively 5% larger.
(2) From this point on, correct but see (1)
(3)David: I have no doubts that all the changes were done with the best of intentions and I mean that. I personally love the 1/2 points deal on the outliers, 1/10th might have been better!
Yes, all comments to the contrary, this competive person above all else wants a fair playing field.
Suggestion: Next time you make a change like this, give the guys(and ladies) 30 days notice.Why that timeframe? It's an accepted business number,easy to remember, and I expect most here check in at least that often. Also takes into consideration the european custom of taking 30 days holiday so those people also don't miss anything.
(4) Agreed, but I'm seeing some numbers showing that the higher end machines take a bigger hit. Still looking at those and being analyzed by a couple of the "brains" on the team.
(5) Agreed, not my area, used UD for a total of 2 days years ago on another project.
(6)Suns not quite up here yet but I will get out today and Yes, I can tell you that this really does matter. Not a whole lot to me personally, but there are many that it does matter quite a bit to.
Are they wrong? No my friend, just incredibly competitive and dedicated.
When someone has made a $20-100K investment or greater into this hobby and then takes that kind of equipment and dedicates it 100% 24/7 to a project they do take it seriously.
i'll give you an example of how we look at things:
In addition to WCG, I run this program called MJ12. A really meaningless app that maps the internet. I took it on just to help that XS team as I have a fast line here(15mbit/2mbit) and the faster the line the more you can do in that app. I had it running on 3 machines and then picked up that over time it was not just using memory that I have plenty of but also the cpu use grew over time from 3% to as much as 24% and that interferes with the resources for WCG so I set up an older machine just to run MJ12 on and not cut into the fast machines resources.
(7) I understand your comment and the thought process that makes you say that, but ask yourself this: Would you see these "milestone days" that I see you and others writing about without the competitive people from the teams? I don't mean just XS, I mean all of them.
How much of the daily total is from people that are on teams?
If you relied on just John Jones that happenned to see your add on some website how much would you lose daily?
I'll freely admit that a lot of us may appear to be total fruitcakes to you over the drive and competitiveness we show but this is a chosen hobby and people become very obsessive about their hobbies.
This one to me is a win-win. I design and build high end machines and my pleasure from that is that hopefully someday something that I crunch here will make some scientist somewhere scream in joy that he's just found the cure for cancer,aids,etc.
Just that simple my friend. That is what drives me personally.
That's why this old fart at 54 is on the XS team. I found a group of people that are just that dedicated.
I don't ask that you become like we are, just understand that we are this way and sit back and let WCG reap the benefit of our obsession.
I promise, we won't send a bill, won't ask you to pay for the electric or help with upgrades. Just a fair shake, some answers to questions here and there and maybe pass along some suggestions.
This will sound a little corny but I promise you it's from the heart:
We're here to help, all we need is that you understand that and allow us to do so in a fair and friendly envirionement.
Now it's time for some coffee.
Take care.

I don't really think there should have been more notice. No matter when the notice went up people would have missed it.

The problem, I think, is the punitive nature of the solution. Fine, id the outlier, ignore its score and average the other two. Give everyone the same points, because they all contirbuted the same, validated science.

Hi carl.h,
You have a good point.
knreed said that the statuses are all through the code. He would have liked to have added a new status that meant 'Valid, but with claimed points disallowed' but that would have turned into a big programming job. So he used a quick kludge. The result is validated, but if the point claim is disallowed then the status is changed to 'Invalid' for some of the code. It still counts as Valid for most of the code, but the section that shows the status of the result will show Invalid. So the Results Status page, using a Quorum of 3, will show 2 Valids and 1 Invalid, confusing anyone who does not know of this 'special case'. Sigh . . . Kludges are like that.

Lawrence

Cheers Lawrence I stand corrected

You live and learn

Dave