They use the data dumps from the projects to determine the numbers ... there is of course some fluctuation as some of us are intermittent in doing work ..., but the order of magnitude is reasonable ...

For me, the thing to take away from that number is that 75% of the people that tried Rosetta, left ...

to me the most depressing aspect of this is that *I* think that the project could improve on those numbers ... if only ... and there is a song about that I thing ...

This topic may be on another thread but this fact kills me...that a VERY HIGH percentage of BOINC participants exit the project after a short amount of time. There are countless reasons but I would suggest these are the top few:

1)We're not all computer geniuses or biology majors. The BOINC websites (like RAH) are horrific to give the AVERAGE HUMAN an update on what is going on. I don't want or need all the mumbo jumbo nor do I understand it. Tell me basics like have we created any cures? Have we come much much closer to a cure for something? Etc.

2)Updates on the RAH homepage are few and far between. I'm not talking about technology updates like server outages or new product updates, I'm talking about WHAT THE PROJECT HAS ACCOMPLISHED. Email updates 3-4 times a year would be awesome and would keep people involved. This could be another bullet point. If I don't feel appreciated, I am going to leave and donate my time/money/cpu elsewhere to people who can spend a few hours a year emailing me.

3)BOINC is still not a very simple program for non-computer people to administer and run. I consider myself a computer guru yet BOINC every now and then gets caught in my various Firewall applications or gets cranky if the net connection is down and sometimes (very rarely) just seems to require a reboot to get it back and running....it will be running great for months and then bam! The firewall traps it. I of course know how to fix this but MOST PEOPLE would have no clue if they should choose Yes or No to allow BOINC to talk to the servers any longer. Furthermore, firewall/antivirus software is cryptic enough to promote the user to always choose the "get rid of it" option. BOINC does have it's Advanced view and Simple View...but I think the Simple view could be even better...the install.

3a)Installation and support...a complete joke for the non-computer savvy. No screenshot-based Install Guide on the website, installation is cryptic about what the user needs to do after choosing a dir path, account name, and pw. Connect to a project? Huh? What? Server cannot communicate right now? (I get that a lot with fresh installs)...now what do I do? Support is Forum-based only, which of course requires login credentials and lack of email....so all the effort is on the VOLUNTEER to chase down the problem and try to get it working. Bad methodology if you ask me.


4)For the first day or 2 of installing BOINC (because it depends on how fast your cpu is, how often BOINC is running, and your net connection availability), it is constantly doing things which need human intervention. Sure, to you and me it's a quick few questions/annoyances but for mom and dad out there, they have no idea what the heck is happening.


I would be willing to bet that 50% of the users that never come back have somehow INVOLUNTARILY configured their machine to never connect again...whether that's the firewall, or Vista and its stupid Defender, or BOINC settings.

I would gather that the remainder of the 50% quitters left because of frustration...for me, my frustration is that I am dedicating lots of computer power to a project yet the project can't spend the time to make the website USER FRIENDLY for the NON-TECHNICAL folk. This is a VERY COMMON problem among Educational Institutions across the globe...their websites are difficult to read and difficult to get simple answers to simple questions. Corporate websites are much better because they have to in order to survive.

As I have advocated for years, distributed computing projects need to have REAL project management....which typically implies that it is headed by someone NOT from the educational world. You can't just focus 99% of your time/resources on solving the problem...especially if you are getting all your "work" done for you for free by volunteers.


-Eric

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You hit my complaints on the nose for sure!
Lack of project information is annoying.
Lack of communication on what the tasks are looking at is a big gripe of mine.
Active work units log in the science thread....no new information posted in over 170 days?! come on. I guess we are doing old work then. No information there about CASP 8 or anything that was going on before it.

Where we are and where are we going...no updates in 211 days!!! gees

Installation, well I didn't have much trouble installing BOINC and attaching to RAH when I first installed the program. But yeah, more information on how to configure both would be nice. Now I have mine customized the way I want it, but it took some doing in the beginning.

Have to agree that the app's are not firewall friendly, so if you get a new app like 1.28 you have to be there or stop your other work to get it to start so you can ok it through your firewall.

Biggest complaint I have seen is the bad work units that come out and the lack of information to tell people they are bad. You get quad core crunchers out there who bail the project due to the lack of communication. Even server outages do not get reported all that quickly.

RAH's biggest weak spot is communications! Get a communications intern to write your news. Write something up in rough draft and give it to them to post out here. It seems like the team is in a cave and can't get out to tell the group what is going on.

And yes...simple explanations on what the task is doing or looking for would be much appreciated. We are not scientists like you folks. Just plain old folks with computers to donate.

most of that stuff could be done by a student or two. At least the majority of it could - it'd take it off the project staff's hands and improve the feeback and interaction massively.

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so, like, um, can ANYONE from the RAH team comment on my (and Greg_be's) comments about the lack of information/emails/updates?

I feel like this topic is a broken record....never a reply from RAH. Just keep on ignoring our requests.

-Eric

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everyone that agrees, just do the + on all the latest posts here and maybe they pay attention. otherwise same old same old...ignore suggestions

Hello? RAH? Are you there?

Sheeeez.

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Has someone turned the lights out?

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Double post. Slow server.

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Hello???? RAH???? Anyone there from the project? Dr. Baker?

Nobody, after 1 full year, can reply to this sub-topic about LACK OF INFORMATION ON THE WEBSITE????


Please...if not, I'm yanking all my machines and saving my electricity. RAH claims all this cpu power crunching is for a great cause...YET THERE'S NOT A SINGLE SENTENCE on the website about what (in laymens terms) RAH has accomplished.

RAH just keeps asking for monetary donations and cpu time...yet refuses to respond to simple AND IMPORTANT requests like this.

-Eric

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Why don't you guys hire a communications student to take your raw material and turn it into something we can read? Can't be that hard can it?

ejuel - from the home page:

Users (last day) :252,591 (+84)
Hosts (last day) :758,289 (+387)

however it looks like only 45,947 active users and 78,918 hosts at 750 PM EDT[eastern daylight time]
http://boincstats.com/stats/project_graph.php?pr=rosetta i wish they would place these statistics on the home page i see little use for the total users number

ejuel - from the home page:

Users (last day) :252,591 (+84)
Hosts (last day) :758,289 (+387)

I'm talking about what the PROJECT has accomplished...not how many computers are attached to the project.

There need to be updates telling us what cures they have found, what illnesses they are closing in on solving, etc. Not "well, it's been a great year...we crunched 79 trillion folds".

I think a LOT of people have stopped contributing to this project...the poor #s indicate it. 84 new people a day? Wow...that's a showstopper. The project has been runnig for years now and it only has 250,000 people signed up? Honestly, that's pathetic. How many of the 250,000 are actively crunching units? 30,000? Maybe?

I have a lot of respect for this project...but I have a LOT MORE EXPECTATION that this project will GIVE BACK to the people it depends on. I'm getting no feedback from RAH...nothing. Zilch. Zip. I feel used.

I'm gonna give RAH a few days to reply to this thread...then I'm taking my cpus somewhere else...it's EXTREMELY sad that I am threatening to leave a project with such admirable goals. But I'm not going to be used and ignored.

-Eric

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Please, be patience... July is holiday season... lot of heat... siesta... ;)

I,m sure (I want to think it) that R@H people do their best for the project. And they try (with their limitations, obviously) to improve the project as much as they can.

Regards.

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you can try digging through this thread and this thread where Dr Baker states in the latest post to another user: "Thank you for the suggestions! We will work on updating and reporting this week. Everybody here is so focused on research we do need reminders occasionally when we have fallen behind on reporting back to you all the exciting things that are happening!"

I'm sorry, I didn't read through this thread earlier, I wish I had.

I am fully aware that we have fallen behind on providing feedback on the project. As I've said elsewhere, it is because we are putting all of our efforts into the research, but this is not an excuse. Since you are making the work possible, we owe it to you to give clear explanations of what we are working on.

I apologize again, and we will collectively put together a full report by mid next week.

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I'm sorry, I didn't read through this thread earlier, I wish I had.

I am fully aware that we have fallen behind on providing feedback on the project. As I've said elsewhere, it is because we are putting all of our efforts into the research, but this is not an excuse. Since you are making the work possible, we owe it to you to give clear explanations of what we are working on.

I apologize again, and we will collectively put together a full report by mid next week.

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to make an update.
Looking forward to it.
Perhaps you could find an intern to summarize things for you and the others to us crunchers once the school year starts again.

I'm sorry, I didn't read through this thread earlier, I wish I had.

I am fully aware that we have fallen behind on providing feedback on the project. As I've said elsewhere, it is because we are putting all of our efforts into the research, but this is not an excuse. Since you are making the work possible, we owe it to you to give clear explanations of what we are working on.

I apologize again, and we will collectively put together a full report by mid next week.

Thank you, David. I appreciate you taking the time to read the comments.

One bit of advice I would like to add is that many of us (me) are not biology majors or understand all the wonderful aspects of chemicals and proteins,etc. I think it is worthwhile to create a News area that is in laymens terms...stuff that the average person on the street can read and understand. If you must put in some tidbits about proteins and chemicals and such, please explain in laymens terms, what the end result is to humans.

An example update I would like to see would read like this (greatly shortened for the point of this thread):

"For the last 6 months we have been able to process 17 trillion chemical reactions in _______ which has helped scientists come closer to solving Cancer. Also, it has allowed doctors to rule out 4 possible causes of Cancer. The RAH research has also led to significant steps in preventing Malaria because ________. Boston Childrens Hospital has improved their diagnosis of _______ due to RAH's ________. Dr. Smith of Cook County Medical offers this praise of RAH..."


Thanks again.

-Eric

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I'm sorry, I didn't read through this thread earlier, I wish I had.

I am fully aware that we have fallen behind on providing feedback on the project. As I've said elsewhere, it is because we are putting all of our efforts into the research, but this is not an excuse. Since you are making the work possible, we owe it to you to give clear explanations of what we are working on.

I apologize again, and we will collectively put together a full report by mid next week.

Thank you, David. I appreciate you taking the time to read the comments.

One bit of advice I would like to add is that many of us (me) are not biology majors or understand all the wonderful aspects of chemicals and proteins,etc. I think it is worthwhile to create a News area that is in laymens terms...stuff that the average person on the street can read and understand. If you must put in some tidbits about proteins and chemicals and such, please explain in laymens terms, what the end result is to humans.

An example update I would like to see would read like this (greatly shortened for the point of this thread):

"For the last 6 months we have been able to process 17 trillion chemical reactions in _______ which has helped scientists come closer to solving Cancer. Also, it has allowed doctors to rule out 4 possible causes of Cancer. The RAH research has also led to significant steps in preventing Malaria because ________. Boston Childrens Hospital has improved their diagnosis of _______ due to RAH's ________. Dr. Smith of Cook County Medical offers this praise of RAH..."


Thanks again.

-Eric

I have to agree with Eric, it would be nice to have more information in laymens terms and then if one wanted to dig into the science of it all there could be a thread for them or links to the more scientific explanations of things.

I have to agree with Eric, it would be nice to have more information in laymens terms and then if one wanted to dig into the science of it all there could be a thread for them or links to the more scientific explanations of things.

I am currently in the process of building a Rosetta Wiki. It is still in the early stages of development, but I hope that it will provide a central collection point for news about Rosetta with translations of scientific jargon into ordinary English.

As ever though, more news from the project team is always welcome. :)

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