Folding@Home Weekly Team News - 20th January 2006

Good points I think Billy. If we're wondering why we can't emulate our success in SETI Classic, one thing I think we have to remember is that with Classic we were always punching above our weight. SG had (has!) about 6 times more members than us and we stuck with them through having many high-powered crunchers and sheer determination.

With all the different projects now, the team isn't big enough to go round, and the fact that we've lost several high-profile crunchers like MoS, Sneezy and Richard is not helpful.

Now personally I would rather have a presence in every project than commit all our resources to one, regardless of the effect that has on our place in the standings. Take Seti Germany - they're all-powerful in BOINC, but they (as far as I'm aware) don't have a Folding team. SETI Germany, by virtue of being called SETI Germany, were always going to dedicate a lot of resources to SETI. But we're not SETI UK - meaning that not only do we not have the SETI focus, but we are not a national team. National teams can arouse a great deal of patriotism I suppose. We are an overclocking forum and we appeal to a comparatively tiny market segment. That considered, I think we're doing pretty well. It's just hard to get used to not winning. Yet of course we want to get bigger and better!

(As an aside, there is a United Kingdom BOINC team. It's tiny compared to us. Not sure how that happened - must have been momentum from Classic or something...)

So what to do? I think we need to ease the learning curve, make DC more comprehensible to your average guy (read: GD reader.) This isn't a new idea - Billy suggested it the other week - but I think it's important. The community we have here is pretty esoteric. What is a stomp? What is F@H? Who the hell is Spanky anyway?

Some of that is inevitable, but there must be things we can do to make it easier for new members to find us. (Personally I'd campaign for DC to be moved from the bottom of the forum list to the top, but I think I'm on a non-starter with that one :D) Rich and others have done a good job with the guides, but I do think the general introduction, which I know Rich and Billy are working on, will be helpful.

Billy, I like the idea of a competition in GD. But I do think that there needs to be something that the entrants can do to improve their chance of winning, rather than using essentially random numbers. Just a thought :)
 
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Mattus said:
Billy, I like the idea of a competition in GD. But I do think that there needs to be something that the entrants can do to improve their chance of winning, rather than using essentially random numbers. Just a thought :)
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I considered that but decided that if we want people to get interested we'd have to make it pretty equal. some people are just luckier than others in respect to DC. Imagine if we did a point system with SETI Classic. If MoS has 1000 computers versus my three and each WU counts as an entry, it's far less likely that I'll win. The big producers do not need to win, they're already winning in that they have big production.

We could set it up so that after a certain score your results would be capped. i.e. Whitestar enters but his entry is capped at 10,000 points so that he doesn't get a million entries versus Mr. Huddy's 1,000 entries. The idea is that we try not to favor the veterans as much. I know it's not fair to the vets but I think it would generate more excetement.
 
Yeah, we considered that with the original give-a-way thread but nothing came of it. It's just too hard to quantify and there's too much recordkeeping to do.

If the random winner idea is unpopular we could do a race to a certain number of points, say 25,000. The issue there is keeping track of when people joined FAH as that stat is not tracked by Stanford. Rich might know more about that than me. Again, this system favors those who have access to a lot of computers. Though I'd like to have it more fair that that there is truth in the idea becasue the people with a lot of machines are contributing more to the team's score, if not the team spirit in this forum.
 
BillytheImpaler said:
The issue there is keeping track of when people joined FAH as that stat is not tracked by Stanford.
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I think it's tracked by EOC?

joined5en.gif
 
As i said before, the problem with these gd recruiting schemes is they almost all require some sort of prize/incentive in order to be effective. One way or another we need something.
We could have someone willing to donate a folding cpu to the winner, we could have a winners sig, we could somehow offer a small cashprize or item, but we do need something, preferably something free.

Failing that, then the only incentives we have left are team spirit (help your team reach x goal) and return a favour incentive (give something back to your forums). If we can't come up with a prize and decide to use one of these, i think this would work best:

3: Create a public folding name, OCUK Gangsters or something, for people to join who haven't a hope of competing with the rest of us, or who don't want an account under their own name to participate. It can be a team within a team, and can easily be focused on. A thread can be setup in the gd to promote it, and recruit as many people as possible.

As far as recruitment goes it could be said that we're very close to having reached critical mass.
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You're right, but the forums are growing every day, so we will never run out of potential recruits, and i don't believe our dc projects are growing at the same rate as the forums.
 
Yes, it probably should be a bit more altruistic than as proposed but that has problems. There are very few things that we could give away that are all of the following: 1) not physical, 2) able to be given without the forum admin's permission/participation, and 3) matters to the potential winner.

We could give away b0rgs to the winner but that doesn't matter to someone who doesn't care/know about DC. Attempts have been made in the past, especailly by the SETI blokes to appeal to the "give something back to the forum" ideal. I think that that appeal has gone about as far as it'll go.

I looked for the previous give-a-way thread and cannot find it. It's probably been pruned. If anyone has any recollection of waht the actual prizes under discussion were, that would be fantastic.
 
BillytheImpaler said:
Yes, it probably should be a bit more altruistic than as proposed but that has problems. There are very few things that we could give away that are all of the following: 1) not physical, 2) able to be given without the forum admin's permission/participation, and 3) matters to the potential winner.
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You've hit the nail on the head there. Thats exactly the problem. :rolleyes:
So what to offer as a prize, or can any of these things work without one? :confused:
 
Joe42 said:
So what to offer as a prize, or can any of these things work without one? :confused:
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I think it would be much more successful with a prize. Most of the people who would do DC for the fun of it, are already doing it. The rest of them need an incentive.
 
It was a nice P4 if I remember correctly.

I believe Sculptor works away for home (offshore?) for periods of time so he doesn't often have internet access?
 
BillytheImpaler said:
Hey Rich, care to include a mention of my beta how-to in next week's news?
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yep of course i can - still not got a chance to read it properly but at last it's the weekend :)


just starting the news now - better late than never
plus i saved the stats from earlier anyway :cool:
 
BillytheImpaler said:
Stomping is passing someone in the rankings. Before one stopms someone it is polite to parp then; let them know you're about to pass. Dumping is returning WU(s). The term dumping is used more in SETI where stashing crunched WUs is common.
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Please accept this post as my "parp" to anyone I may stomp in the future, anyone parping me is duly excused! :p
 
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