Lost Credit?. Please add your support

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Profile Geekasylum

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Message 84583 - Posted: 10 Mar 2005, 2:57:29 UTC
Last modified: 10 Mar 2005, 3:20:16 UTC

Please add your support to this thread.

The SETI project, being scientific research is expected to have a high level of integrity. Not crediting participants for 100% of the work they have done, casts a shadow over that intergity. I have seen nothing official from the project team stating that the missing credit will be accounted for - only the opinions of fellow users who expect that the missing credit will be added when the Classic project ends. While their intentions are good, these people have no control over the project. How about some answers from the project team??

I have lost over 2000 work units worth of credit in the 9 months between the snapshot and when I found out about BOINC, and I am not alone. I am seriously considering just running SETI Classic until the end, and using BOINC for other non-seti projects ONLY. The problem gets worse the older the snapshot gets.

Yes, I know everything is secondary to the science, but without the many thousands of hours of CPU time donated by millions of us who are not scientists, this project could not exist. Scientists get excited about the science, but we non scientists get satisfaction from knowing we have contributed a certain amount of value to the project, and that contribution is measured in work unit credits. To lose credits simply because they are not considered important enough to be handled properly is a slap in the face to those of us who have powered this project for so long.

There are so many threads about this that it is hard to keep track of them all. Please reply to this thread with a "Me Too" post and maybe we can get enough posts in one thread that the SETI team will DO something about the problem!

Please also click the "I also have this question" button.

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Message 84640 - Posted: 10 Mar 2005, 8:05:15 UTC

Me Too... I lost 772 credits. I'm still running Seti classic to keep up the work. But I think it's a shame if I won't get rewarded for the real work I have done.

I hope we'll get an answer from the team very soon.
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Profile Thierry Van Driessche
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Message 84647 - Posted: 10 Mar 2005, 9:12:08 UTC

Once S@H Classic will shut down, a new snapshot will be made and then all the existing accounts here will be updated.

Read the News at the homepage
Have a look at the Technical News
Look if your question is not answered at the Boinc Wiki

Best greetings, Thierry
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Message 84714 - Posted: 10 Mar 2005, 15:37:44 UTC - in response to Message 84647.  
Last modified: 10 Mar 2005, 16:02:45 UTC

> Once S@H Classic will shut down, a new snapshot will be made and then all the
> existing accounts here will be updated.

Here's the problem.... Ive read this before, and always from users. I am yet to see it on an official FAQ or hear it from someone who identifies themselves as being part of the project team - the people in the know, if you will.

The fact is that while this sounds nice, and to some extent reasonable, its not entirely true - technically what you have stated is very difficult to do - if not impossible.

What about those who joined the project after May 2004, built up some credit on the classic site, and then had to start a new account here because they were not included in the original snapshot? How will their credit in the old project be matched to their new account here?

What about those who have created a completely new account here because they no longer have access to the email address they were using in May 2004? For example if they changed ISP in June 2004.

What about those who use a different email address on the new site than they did on the old site? The new site allows you to change your email address, so how will these be matched?

What about the two guys who posted in this thread? Your answer suggests that all will be well, but how will their old and new accounts be matched? Both have clearly created new accounts - one was not part of the May snapshot, and the other did not give enough information to determine his situation.

Its not as simple as it seems, and many people gloss it over with a generalisation as quoted above. I am not so sure.

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Message 84788 - Posted: 10 Mar 2005, 19:15:48 UTC - in response to Message 84640.  

yep, and me too. I only joinede BOINCE relatively recently within this year, and have accumualted lots of classic credits since May of 2004 and have't recieved credit for it. It says you can request credits for it, but the feature is turned of temporarily, key word "temporarily". not sure what timeline they are on, but its been off since I have joined which is over a month, so temporarily is an understatement. I think its more like, for a long long time until we'll do something which mgiht take as long as a year or two. i think as expected date should be posted of when they will do this, intead of temporarily which is ambigous statement.
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Message 84793 - Posted: 10 Mar 2005, 19:25:55 UTC
Last modified: 10 Mar 2005, 19:27:03 UTC

Look in the semi-official FAQ by Paul D. Buck.

There it's stated as well.
And I've read it in some older thread mentioned by at least one of the developers (I think Rom or Matt). Feel free to search for it ;)
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Message 84823 - Posted: 10 Mar 2005, 21:06:10 UTC - in response to Message 84793.  

I've heard of that already but the real question comes down to when will they shut down the classic SETI@home? in a week, month, a year, five years? A resonable time estimation is sufficient I'm not neccesarily looking for a set date and time, just a rough idea, the timeline that they have in mind.
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Message 84839 - Posted: 10 Mar 2005, 21:41:52 UTC - in response to Message 84793.  
Last modified: 10 Mar 2005, 22:22:38 UTC

> Look in the semi-official FAQ by Paul D. Buck.

Yes. Ive seen the this FAQ and even commented on it. Again, im looking for something from someone who can actually make such promises. With all due respect to Mr Buck, he has done a wonderful job, but unless he has access to the project database and systems, he cannot make good on such a promise.

Additionally, he does not care much for people who simply ask for recognition of the work they have performed, preferring that they simply donate their resources freely "for the science". An example from his FAQ is below:

Begin Quote
BOINC » Credit Why don't I get the full amount of credit I claimed?

Well, because of those people that were more militant about the result counts in the original SETI@Home than in the fact that the point was to do the science!


Boy am I glad that I got that off my chest, whew! In essence, a tail became more important to some participants than the dog himself. Lets face it, claiming credit (or better, getting credit where credit is due) is a lot of fun. But the real point remains the science itself.
End Quote

Im not sure I can believe someone with that opinion, when they say that the missing credit will be fully accounted for.

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Message 85013 - Posted: 11 Mar 2005, 9:07:19 UTC - in response to Message 84640.  

> Me Too... I lost 772 credits. I'm still running Seti classic to keep up the
> work. But I think it's a shame if I won't get rewarded for the real work I
> have done.
>
> I hope we'll get an answer from the team very soon.

I did even worse. I have been a member for over a year with 737 credits but my account didnt even get transferred let alone part completed. I also had problems because there was no password given for my account when it was set up so I could not edit it in any way. I had to do this as my old account was missing its password also and I could not get in to redirect my email to my new account.
If they ever get around to fixing my problem I have a copy of my stats to prove who I am.
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Message 85023 - Posted: 11 Mar 2005, 10:16:34 UTC

BOINC folks!

Please transfer ALL our accounts stats from the old S@H!

I think the easiest way to do it only once and for all participatns is to get another snapshot after the old S@H is shutdown completely.

I lost more then 1000 credits because BOINC doesn't have our accounts in the snapshot. And yet I had our computers powered on and rendering S@H data since November 2004 on all boxes.
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Message 85029 - Posted: 11 Mar 2005, 10:36:27 UTC

Look here and read the section "What will happen to my workunit totals?"
It states: "and a section of our web site will show the final leaderboards based on old work totals"
This is the official website, with an official statement that the final classic totals will be shown. What more do you need?
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Message 85096 - Posted: 11 Mar 2005, 17:44:33 UTC - in response to Message 85029.  
Last modified: 11 Mar 2005, 17:53:15 UTC

> Look here and
> read the section "What will happen to my workunit totals?"
> It states: "and a section of our web site will show the final leaderboards
> based on old work totals"

This is referring to "leaderboards" not individual work unit credits. In the same sentance you selectively quoted it also says "The old total is the workunit total from the current SETI@home. It won't change". This is what we have issue with. The snapshot is now over 9 months old. The totals are no longer "current" for people who are only now joining BOINC.

> This is the official website, with an official statement that the final
> classic totals will be shown. What more do you need?

Yes it is an official statement, and as I said in the other thread, it seems to support my position that the missing work units will not be recovered. This is unacceptable for a science project that supposedly has a measure of integrity.
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Message 85097 - Posted: 11 Mar 2005, 17:56:21 UTC

Quote:
Because of this change, SETI@home accounts will have separate old and new work totals. The old total is the workunit total from the current SETI@home. It won't change, and a section of our web site will show the final leaderboards based on old work totals. New work unit totals will start from zero.
End Quote

What's so hard to understand?
Old and new WUs are not comparable, the old ones will be kept in a final leaderboard, the new ones in a new, changing one.
Old in this context only refers to old seti, not old date. So nothing is lost.

btw: lost for science is nothing, that isn't lost because of some server hickups. The results have been evaluated, and that's it.
The credit/WU-Count system has nothing to do with science, but with competition, fun, bragging...
Gruesse vom Saenger

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Message 85104 - Posted: 11 Mar 2005, 18:14:26 UTC - in response to Message 85097.  

> What's so hard to understand?

Im not having a problem understanding.

> Old and new WUs are not comparable, the old ones will be kept in a final
> leaderboard
, the new ones in a new, changing one.
> Old in this context only refers to old seti, not old date. So nothing is
> lost.

Im not going to repeat myself, see my previous answer just below yours.

What is lost is work unit credits from the OLD project.

> The credit/WU-Count system has nothing to do with science, but with
> competition, fun, bragging...

Not at all. This is a convienient view if your aim is to place less importance on work unit credit, but what it is really about is appreciation and recognition. There are many in the same situation as me, but I can only speak for myself. In my case I am not being recognised for contributing over 2000 work units to the project. If you made a donation to a charitable organisation of $11,000, but they announced that you had only donated $9,000 wouldnt you feel that they had made a mistake?

Having apparently joined in October 2004, this issue does not affect you and you obviously cannot understand my point of view. Perhaps this example will help. Please lets not start talking about money - this is just an example I am using to illustrate my point.
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Message 85112 - Posted: 11 Mar 2005, 18:44:23 UTC - in response to Message 85096.  


> Yes it is an official statement, and as I said in the
> other thread, it seems to support my position that the missing work units will
> not be recovered.

Todd, you can believe me that the Berkeley developer team really want to do again a snapshot to update the SETI@home BOINC database from the Classic database. David Anderson told it me a month or two ago. But as a IT professional I know and I am sure you know it too, this will be a hard piece work and maybe not possible in all cases.

It was not the plan, that there is such a long time between the first snapshot and the end of SETI@home classic. There was no plan for a update, but the long time of running both project forces to do this. Hopefully it will be possible and succesfully.

> This is unacceptable for a science project that supposedly
> has a measure of integrity.

You can be sure that Berkeley staff know about that the paritcipants like the WU credits and do all to transfer as much informations as possible and as correct as possible. May be you find the result unacceptable, but you can be sure it will be all that is possible. If this is not enough, sorry. But SETI@home has small, very small resourses and possiblities and it is at all a limited science project, which was planed to end years ago. The transfer to BOINC may give the chance to continue some more years, but it will not be always possible to perform all of our wishes.

I hope you will continue to support this great project in any way. I am very sorry about everybody who leave it because there is something that can't be done because of the limitations. But that is life.


Greetings from Bremen/Germany
Jens Seidler (TheBigJens)

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Message 85146 - Posted: 11 Mar 2005, 22:29:54 UTC

If they can start with a snap shot to import our totals from last year, then it stands to reason that another snap shot should be able to update that data once the old S@H Classic program is completely shut down and over. At the very minimum we should be allowed to edit our old totals to get the most accurate picture possible.

Who cares if the totals have nothing to do with science or the overall big picture. You must remember that we are all participating for free and that we pay real $$ for the extra power consumed from leaving our machines on 24x7. I for one run three extra machines 24x7 that would otherwise be left off. I don't want to see a years worth of extra power bill expense not be recognized because the guys in the lab don't want to go to the extra effort to say thanks by moving over the stats.

If I lose my stats, I will likely terminate participation. Yes, the stats are mostly for bragging rights. So what. I've earned them, I want to keep them.

My 2 cents.
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Message 85163 - Posted: 11 Mar 2005, 23:21:10 UTC - in response to Message 85146.  
Last modified: 11 Mar 2005, 23:22:54 UTC

> If I lose my stats, I will likely terminate participation. Yes, the stats are
> mostly for bragging rights. So what. I've earned them, I want to keep them.

Seems to be my day to repeat all statements:

1. Yes, they will do again a snapshot to update the accounts transfered Mai 2004
2. Yes, they know about how importend credits are for many users
3. Yes, we all and the team in Berkeley too, will be sorry
if someone terminate participation, but if you believe it is your way, do it.
There is no chance to make more pressure where everyone is working as much as
possible.


Greetings from Bremen/Germany
Jens Seidler (TheBigJens)

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Message 85172 - Posted: 11 Mar 2005, 23:50:53 UTC - in response to Message 85112.  
Last modified: 11 Mar 2005, 23:58:47 UTC

> Todd, you can believe me that the Berkeley developer team really want to do
> again a snapshot to update the SETI@home BOINC database from the Classic
> database. David Anderson told it me a month or two ago. But as a IT
> professional I know and I am sure you know it too, this will be a hard piece
> work and maybe not possible in all cases.

Thanks Jens, this is good to hear, and satisfies me that at least an attempt will be made. You may like to look here for some situations which I think will be difficult to handle, and will need some consideration.

> It was not the plan, that there is such a long time between the first snapshot
> and the end of SETI@home classic. There was no plan for a update, but the long
> time of running both project forces to do this.

I have to say, that it seems like the work unit credits from the old project were not considered important enough to worry about. I can understand this from a scientific point of view, but as ive said before, the scientists have to remember that the bulk of us crunchers are not scientists.

> I hope you will continue to support this great project in any way. I am very
> sorry about everybody who leave it because there is something that can't be
> done because of the limitations. But that is life.

Personally, im running BOINC on 2 machines as a trial, with Classic still running on another 4 machines. Im sure that eventually I will switch the other 4 over to BOINC, but I cant say at this stage what projects they will be processing. I think that with better planning, and more importance given to existing credits, this whole problem could have been avoided, but we have to somehow move forward from where we are today, even if this is a more difficult task that it would have been originally.

I would like to add that I did not create this thread to put pressure on the project or its developers - I simply wanted some answers. Perhaps your statement below should be on a static web page somewhere prominent.
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Message 85176 - Posted: 12 Mar 2005, 0:18:31 UTC - in response to Message 85172.  


> Thanks Jens, this is good to hear, and satisfies me that at least an attempt
> will be made. You may like to look here
> for some situations which I think will be difficult to handle, and will need
> some consideration.

Ther are two different scenarios in this post.

1.
Lost of email address. This is the worst case. The people in Berkeley have not the resources to solve this problems. Only to validate if someone is owner of a account or only want to steal it is more then difficulty or may be impossible for them. And when up to 400,000 users change to BOINC there will be to much of this issues to fix it in any way.

2.
If someone change the email in his used and transfered BOINC account this is not a problem. The BOINC account include the classic account ID, which will be used for the connection, not the email.

Greetings from Bremen/Germany
Jens Seidler (TheBigJens)

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Message 85228 - Posted: 12 Mar 2005, 3:07:12 UTC - in response to Message 85176.  

>
> > Thanks Jens, this is good to hear, and satisfies me that at least an
> attempt
> > will be made. You may like to look <a> href="http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=12194#84714">here[/url]
> > for some situations which I think will be difficult to handle, and will
> need
> > some consideration.
>
> Ther are two different scenarios in this post.
>
> 1.
> Lost of email address. This is the worst case. The people in Berkeley have not
> the resources to solve this problems. Only to validate if someone is owner of
> a account or only want to steal it is more then difficulty or may be
> impossible for them. And when up to 400,000 users change to BOINC there will
> be to much of this issues to fix it in any way.
>
> 2.
> If someone change the email in his used and transfered BOINC account this is
> not a problem. The BOINC account include the classic account ID, which will be
> used for the connection, not the email.
>
3. Classic accounts created since 14th May 2004. They are going to try to get these credited, but no promisses. In this case I would suggest that you need to keep your email addresses carefully synchronozed as this is the only information that there is to go on.


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