I know where to look. I have been with the project for quite some time now.
And yes as you have seen in this thread and the other one, people are looking for some sort of communication from the people on the project. The grad students have been very very quiet lately. Just pump out the work and not say what it is about. Or if there is a bug, they don't say anything either. Bunch of deaf mutes run this project now I think. Funny how Einstein and Milkyway and Poem can all communicate with no problem and this project can not.

Greg - you can already tell when the project is out of work by looking at the server status page. I think that people are looking a "one liner" now and then about what is being done to resolve the issue and what the expectations for a return to normalcy are.

Last year at this time the project was cranking out 150+ TeraFLOPS - granted that was when SETI was having its issues but I think one of the big reasons R@H is now only producing 100 TeraFLOPS on a good day is the abhorrent lack of communication.

Rember what time of year it is - I suspect you'd find fewer grad students there during the summer.

Robert - you have a point but the issue with a lack of communication has been around a lot longer than the summer break.

I am more of a mind that the task of communication is much like that of the documentation in the shop I used to work in - we had a lot of talented coders who would work endless hours, but would go miles out of their way to avoid documenting anything beyond the bare minimum necessary to get through code reviews.

Writing (aka communication) was always considered to be drudge work to be avoided at all costs.

Regarding the issue of the limited number of WUs in R@h explained by Rocco it would be great how the close future looks like, eg. the rest of August and September.

My team, BOINC@Poland, is seriously considering Rosetta@home to be, once again, our Project of the Month. Before we (and I personally) start encouraging people to devote more and more resources to R@h, take a look on the project etc., it would be reasonable to know if the project plans to have tasks to crunch, if we should expect some additionale glitches, new system requirements, new exciting science and so on and so forth. I am sure that we are not the only ones in a such position.

In BOINC World the communication is not only done by Projects and individual users on the Projects' sites, mailing lists etc., but on the teams communication channels as well. This is particularly important for English non-natives and highly integrated teams. The projects should remember that their information is broadcasted and discussed in many places all over the Internet - and it is highly appreciated even if not stated directly on a forum like this one.

Best regards from Warsaw, and I am seeing for more information regarding the close future.

Well, if we see another dry spell in the near future I will reduce my time devoted to Rosetta. If we burn through the WU more slowly then the flow will be smoother. Others may consider the same approach.

This is not a punishment, it is a recognition that they may have accumulated more compute resource than they can use. That's OK.

Or we just don't worry about running dry because we have other projects to fill in the time. Crunch rosetta when there is work and crunch something else when there isn't. Boinc makes this easy.

It's all good.

crunch crunch crunch .... :)

Just have POEM@Home with "no new tasks", and whenever rosetta goes out for some reason, simply click "allow new work" and ta-da! you'll be doing the same thing but for different researches (German researches that is).

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Having a secondary project does not solve all the issues.

Especially manual swithing on and off is not acceptable for the users who want to have a fairly stable project (because they will be offline, they have a machine or more in distant location without a working remote access, because they don't want to care that much). Far better solution is having a secondary project turned on with something like 0.1% of CPU time enabled. Then it will do work when the primary project fails.

However, all of this does not resolve a huge PR problem. How can we convince other users that Rosetta needs them and their computers can help the science when the project itself does not have anything to do? Of course, it is very good that the project does not want to run empty WUs and we know that the computing power will be needed in future. But the problem lays in timing. If we run a promo campaign of Rosetta@home while it does not need more volunteers, it will be countereffective. Everyone would be better off if we wait with that a month or two.

This is a valid example why the better communication is required.

And we still have total silence and sealed keyboard lips from this project.
I guess no one reads the boards anymore.

And we still have total silence and sealed keyboard lips from this project.
I guess no one reads the boards anymore.

somethings up.............. have not seen it like this since i started here

Greg - if you can't get a response here, you could always try forwarding your concerns and issues to either the Howard Hughes Medical Institute or the National Institutes of Health.

Both are listed as partners in the project on the home page - in this case I suspect that the term partner relates to funding ...

How serious are you about wanting a response <grin>

Greg - if you can't get a response here, you could always try forwarding your concerns and issues to either the Howard Hughes Medical Institute or the National Institutes of Health.

Both are listed as partners in the project on the home page - in this case I suspect that the term partner relates to funding ...

How serious are you about wanting a response <grin>

Suspect that would be read and forwarded to someone who would then file it under misc. and lose track of it.

The Univ. seems to only provide the project with facilities and internet connection, but other than has nothing much to do with the project. (found this out after some serious discussion long time ago)

I suppose I can try the backdoor approach to some individuals email addresses from the project that I found somewhere else. But I suspect that would be met with the same response.

Will wait until school starts again and see what happens with the project then.
Maybe some new blood will show up at the project and start to learn how to communicate again. I have suggested quite a few times, that they just borrow a student from the communications department to come do their PR work for them as well as updating info here on the boards about the project. But that was met with complete silence.

Mum's the word around here. Might be the new project slogan.

And we still have total silence and sealed keyboard lips from this project.
I guess no one reads the boards anymore.

somethings up.............. have not seen it like this since i started here

We COULD always start a rumor that Rosie is shutting down, that should bring them out of the woodwork!

And we still have total silence and sealed keyboard lips from this project.
I guess no one reads the boards anymore.

somethings up.............. have not seen it like this since i started here

We COULD always start a rumor that Rosie is shutting down, that should bring them out of the woodwork!

LOL, thats a good idea

And we still have total silence and sealed keyboard lips from this project.
I guess no one reads the boards anymore.

somethings up.............. have not seen it like this since i started here

We COULD always start a rumor that Rosie is shutting down, that should bring them out of the woodwork!

:shock: You mean they didn't and are supposedly still operating?!?!?

Well, if someone wants to see how proper communication on serious research projects looks like might want to take a look at the various WGC sub project forums... ;-)

Ralf

For what it's worth, I just wanted to add that I stopped participating in Rosetta@home during this outage. I was not bothered by the lack of work, but was really put off by the lack of acknowledgement that an outage was happening and how pleas for information were, other than a single post, for the large part ignored.

I now crunch for World Community Grid and am very impressed by their communication. When I had not returned a work unit for a couple days after I signed up, I received an email providing links to help should I need it. I also got a congratulatory email upon completing my first WU and later a link to a live webcast by a researcher from one of their sub-projects. This level of professionalism and excitement have really motivated me to participate in WCG, so much so that I am now in the process of building a dedicated cruncher and have upped the planned stats on my next "main" desktop in order to better contribute. I still feel that Rosetta is a very worthy project and can only imagine what might have been if the research team here showed a similar level of concern for the volunteers.

Regardless of my own feelings toward Rosetta, good luck all and keep on crunching!

I can understand your frustration.

Lack of communication is still an issue over at RALPH@home.

I have posted 2 questions in the last 3 weeks on their message boards, with no replies from project staff.

Is RALPH still supported by Rosetta@home ?

Keith.

Is RALPH still supported by Rosetta@home ?

Yes, but admins don't use forums.... :-(

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