Dear David, Rom, Matt, Jeff

First an acknoweledgement, and a couple of bouquets. What you have achieved with the BOINC project, and SETI with limited resources is nothing short of amazing. You deserve all the credit you get for designing and implementing such a complex system. SETI has been plagued with its difficulties over the last few weeks, and the effort that has been expended to keep the project running has been exemplary.

Please remember, though, that the distributed computing resources on which you depend (i.e. my computers, and thousands like them) are not 'free'. The machines require time and effort to maintain and manage, and the interest and support of participants needs to be cultivated.

Many of us are in it for the science, some are here because they have a competitive spirit, some like the community feel, and some just don't want to waste machine time.

There is a price to be paid for this support, (here comes the brickbat) and that price is measured in involvement and communication. Information from the SETI team is at best sparse. Sometimes it is terse almost to the point of being rude. Often, crunchers such as myself are left casting about for information. We occasionally find it posted by a SETI team member, buried in the forums under a misleading heading, but mostly we find just 'best guess' answers posted by other participants.

Please remember also, that if we are to be involved then our contribution should be valued. Over the last few weeks SETI@Home has lost substantial amounts of work due to various problems. We are now suddenly faced with an upgrade to an incompatible client, and once again we are faced with the prospect of abandoning completed and part completed work. A week's notice would have allowed much work to be completed and reported. If CPDN and Predictor can announce their intentions to introduce BOINC 4.xx two weeks or more in advance surely SETI can announce it more than 24 hours ahead. Far more information about the upgrade and the implications for the client should have been posted, as should the client itself.

This cavalier attitude to the contributions made by your supporters devalues the work. For myself, I have largely given up crunching SETI data for the time being since so much of it is being lost. I hope to return when the project is stable again.

It doesn't matter if SETI is ahead or behind CPDN or Predictor in client version or server side binaries. As the number of BOINC projects increases it will be impossible to synchronise them anyway, and if everyone knows what is happening much heat will be removed from the situation.

For the future then, please can you consider these suggestions:

1) Regular news posts, with more than one sentence. If there is a problem don't just fix it - explain it and be seen to be fixing it.

2) Plan changes to the project in advance and communicate them in advance.

3) Allow time for changes to settle - don't pile one large change on top of another.

4) Manage the data systems properly - no one will object to regular daily down time for backups and maintenance. The client cache can handle it - that's what it's for.

I am sure that this post will attract its fair share of supporters and detractors. Please accept it as an attempt at constructive contribution to the SETI project.

Very well said and professional. I hope your letter will
have positive impact on the project.

Regards
Marc

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Ditto, well put and to the point.

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Account frozen...

excellent post MikeW
very well written. lays out your points without insult.

I wish more poeple could do it like this

-Fox




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I wholeheartedly agree.

And most importantly - even if the original post implies this, it should be said:

Even if you just "Do the Right Thing": Go ahead and talk about it. There's a lot of people who know that "no news" doesn't mean you aren't doing anything, but telling us what you do will silence many of the short-tempered minds out there - and it's just interesting to read about what's necessary to keep things afloat.

Thanks anyway,

Jerry

Amen, MikeW

Most sensible points anyone has said on this forum for a very long time, MikeW.
--
Prototype - The Raw and Untamed.

I'd be happier if things had gone smoothyl.....but they didn't.

The SETI team told us to go back to S@H classic as BOINC had some problems. I stayed with BOINC - and chose to put up with those problems.

That seems to be the branch in the logic here:

1 - want no problems? Go crunch classic.
2 - want to do BOINC? Put up with problems.

Either way, the science is suposed to be the same.

If you're annoyed, then you MADE THE WRONG CHOICE! :-)

Go crunch classic.

I agree.

This is constructive critisism ;-) (not my post, but your post ;-) )


S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club © member

Amen Steve withers !!! :)

As a member of the Astroseti team, I have been authorized by several of our team members to say: Thank you! to all of the SETI team group in Berkeley whom are in charge of trying to keep things running smoothly and for all their efforts in trying to put things up and as fast as possible.

They also have families and other things to take care of! So let's all be patient.
This is not a contest, nor an Olympic competition of any kind. If it is not this week end, it will be next week, when we will get the V4.x

I concur with the comments expressed by MikeW, especially the congratulations and the request to keep users better informed. I love SETI@home and have been crunching since May 16, 1999. But I have switched over most of my resources to Predictor because they keep their users much better informed about their project. I realize that it takes time to communicate to users, as Predictor's team does, but I also realize that it keeps the user-base happy and content. I wish someone at SETI would look at the Predictor web page to see how they communicate with their crunchers and then bring that spirit back to the SETI project.

Mark

Me too, I agree. I have been crunching S@H WUs since April, 2000 but because all of the outages I have switched my resources to Predictor & CPDN. They keep their users much better informed about their project. Yes, I still love S@H but I don't think I will raise again my resources shares to over than 2.5% for your project. I understand some hardware failures may happens over time, I accepted it, it's normal. At this time, it's too late for me. You did too much PR mistakes since last 2 months.

Good work guys & take care of your (remaining) users.

Francois

> Me too, I agree. I have been crunching S@H WUs since April, 2000 but because
> all of the outages I have switched my resources to Predictor & CPDN. They
> keep their users much better informed about their project. Yes, I still love
> S@H but I don't think I will raise again my resources shares to over than 2.5%
> for your project. I understand some hardware failures may happens over time, I
> accepted it, it's normal. At this time, it's too late for me. You did too much
> PR mistakes since last 2 months.
>
> Good work guys & take care of your (remaining) users.
>
> Francois
>
>
>
>

I agree with you as well I have also switched my computers to Predictor (1) and CPDN (3). When Seti gets things running again I probably will switch back then again maybe I won't.

Tony

One of my favorite TV shows is the original Junkyard Wars (Scrapheap Challenge) out of the U.K.

Teams build incredible machines out of junk -- all in a single day.

If a team wins, they get to come back for the next round, and the winner gets a trophy welded together out of junk from the same junkyard.

... the teams banter back and forth and have a wonderful time.

Compare that to "Survivor" where the winner gets $1,000,000 and the participants are constantly out to get everyone else. I can't watch it -- the level of competition is not sportsmanlike, it's just mean.

They aren't having fun, they're after the bucks.

What does that have to do with us here?

There are a number of people who seem to subscribe to the "Survivor" model, behaving exactly like it was $10/cobblestone or something.

The original SETI@Home demonstrated that you could do massive computing based solely on the kindness of strangers -- strangers that were literally so kind that they developed BOINC so they could share their largesse with others, like CPDN and Predictor.

In fact, they are to some level sacrificing their own project (SETI) to make sure everyone can participate in CPDN if they wish. S@H could stay at 3.0 and make everyone choose. They're not.

We're supposed to be donating our excess clock cycles, not building huge farms of workunit-crunching monsters. We're not supposed to use electricity for SETI that wasn't going to be used anyway.

... and I suspect that the VAST MAJORITY of people out there don't read these forums, don't buy new machines for SETI, and probably don't even notice when things go up and down.

For those who do visit these forums, this should be a fun place for everyone to hang out. It should be interesting to talk about the technology, to "watch over the shoulders" of the developers like Rom Walton and Dr. Anderson.

Unfortunately, no good deed ever goes unpunished -- and the community suffers as a result.

... and for those of you who keep bitching, it is true that there are more clock cycles then there is work -- and when you "threaten" to move from SETI to CPDN, you're really just validating the model that brought BOINC into existence in the first place.

My (proverbial) hat is off to the BOINC team, not only for their time and effort, but for assembling the biggest supercomputer ever, and then handing the keys to the rest of the research community.

... and for putting up with the yammerheads who keep bitching about how they've been mistreated, and how they're going to leave -- but don't seem to actually GO.

> ... and I suspect that the VAST MAJORITY of people out there don't read these
> forums, don't buy new machines for SETI, and probably don't even notice when
> things go up and down.
>
> My (proverbial) hat is off to the BOINC team, not only for their time and
> effort, but for assembling the biggest supercomputer ever, and then handing
> the keys to the rest of the research community.

Well I want to adhere to this very last statement, which I have mentioned in other forums, and add the proverbial hats off from my team members "cabezon", "vincent price", "Offler" (our web master), "djfran28", "morpheus", "domingo dominguez", "kanijo", "saltamontes" and several others whom want to congratulate the BOINC team for all their time and effort.

We do notice things going up and down, but don't we also?

Congratulations BOINC team, and for the SETI team as well.