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Why I cannot Donate - Closed
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Mike Send message Joined: 17 Feb 01 Posts: 34255 Credit: 79,922,639 RAC: 80 |
Thank you Fuzzy. Its only my time and credit card. I want to give the german members the ability to donate while they have no choice. Maybe it will come more in the future. Mike With each crime and every kindness we birth our future. |
Fuzzy Hollynoodles Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 9659 Credit: 251,998 RAC: 0 |
Thank you Fuzzy. Again, we are working on it, and we will try to come up with some ways that make it easier for foreigners to donate. See my edit in my earlier response about the form. And yes, it is a drag! ;-) "I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me |
Enigma Send message Joined: 15 Mar 06 Posts: 628 Credit: 21,606 RAC: 0 |
Enigma Look Pappa, you asked why and i'm giving you a reason. Note that i am not the only person that has posted requesting for project milestones/progress. Furthermore it is not my intention to question the effort of the many volunteers on this project as i am sure they are all doing their level best. IMO if you want to get serious about one time donations and RECURRING donations, (which is the subject of this thread) you need to get serious about project progress. Call it a 'sales and marketing' plan. Use it as a carrot if you have to.... allocate a portion of donated budget to the 'candidate analysis module' for example. While attracting donations to keep the overall project going, there is at least some light at the end of the tunnel in terms of having the ability to measure overall progress (candidate analysis). This would hopefully attract even more donations. Now once candidate analysis is in place you can dangle lots of potential carrots. Are we here to crunch data, and test a distributed computing client platform or find an ETI? |
Fuzzy Hollynoodles Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 9659 Credit: 251,998 RAC: 0 |
If you have experienced any problems about donating, or if you have any ideas of what can be done better, please post about it in this thread. Pappa and I are trying to extract and summarize from the posts here and in the similar thread on the Number Crunching board, so we can present some ideas for Eric and hopefully make it easier to donate and to make the donation drives better, so they can get the money needed to run this and the AstroPulse/Beta project for. They really need the money to pay for the current expenses. And please keep off topic posts away from this thread. Thank you. "I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me |
KB7RZF Send message Joined: 15 Aug 99 Posts: 9549 Credit: 3,308,926 RAC: 2 |
Enigma Without money, how do you expect things to continue, and progress? |
Pappa Send message Joined: 9 Jan 00 Posts: 2562 Credit: 12,301,681 RAC: 0 |
Jeremy Thank You I still am not sure how to say that Seti is fighting for Basic Survival! I hoped to not push until after the first of the year... Everyones efforts bought time into Feb, Mar and hopefully other things could be accomplished that might get information to a larger percentage of the Seti Users. Basic Operations cost about $700/day. That is the Network (outgoing Workunits and incoming Results) and people to keep the servers running. So as I have a "ton" of things on my mind besides Seti Donations... I will say at the risk of too much information my wife will be undergoing surgery on the 29th... I will be spending New Year's in the Hospital... Can You say Stressed! So while I have spent many hours Helping Seti, I have to spend time with Family! I Truely Hope that the daily donations equal the Operations Costs. I know that Eric is busy and working to get MultiBeam Data for Seti Main to Crunch before the old workunits run out... I know that Astropulse hopefully will show up in Beta in January... That other than Operations is the end of the First Donation Drive! We were very close to the "Will the last person leaving the room, Please Turn out the lights." I do not know how to impart that urgency without causing panic... Team Captains should be telling the teams that there is a need! Ideas about how to solve the problem should be what we see... So Yes the New Year should be where Seti Users are Helping and New Ideas about how to prevent this from happening again. That would be my Goal and Hope! You can find enough other negative things about the world and politics... Seti Should be Something Positive! Over 200.000 people are working on it. Please take time to make it a Positive Statement in the World! For those that have found a way to Help, Thank You! For those that would Love to Help that do not have the means Thank You, Your computer hours and electricity helps! Spread the word that Seti Needs Help! That is the Important Part! If You can not donate and can find two others that can Then you have been more help than many know! Yes, I believe in Seti inspite of the problems! That is why I and others are Here! My Very Best Wishes during this Holiday Season Regards Pappa Enigma Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project. |
Al Send message Joined: 4 Oct 99 Posts: 5832 Credit: 401,935 RAC: 0 |
I dont gots the cash so i donate CPU... Scorpions - Wind Of Change |
Cristiano Santos Send message Joined: 14 Apr 00 Posts: 3 Credit: 587,735 RAC: 0 |
Hi guys! It's my first post here at the SETI forum. I'm a native portuguese speaker, so forgive my poor english :) I've been following the discussion about the progress. I think people can get motivated by knowing the whole path, where they are and their targets. IMO there should be some effort on the elaboration of metrics to get people to know this kind of information. As Enigma said, it's easyer to keep people around than getting them back. About the donations itself... Again, IMO, I believe there shouldn't be a minimum value for a donation. For example, if a person can't affort to give US$10, the same person could affort to give US$2, maybe US$5. Then next month the same person could came back and give another 2 or 5. In the other hand, people who can give US$10, US$100, US$200 or US$1000 will not donate less because there's no minimum. My guess is: waiving the bottom limit will bring numerous recurrent 2 bucks donators ;) My 2 cents :) Let's find'em! |
KB7RZF Send message Joined: 15 Aug 99 Posts: 9549 Credit: 3,308,926 RAC: 2 |
Hi guys! It's my first post here at the SETI forum. I'm a native portuguese speaker, so forgive my poor english :) Hiya Cristianoms, welcome to the boards. In regards to the minimum donation amount, the reason they have it is because the University takes a cut of the donation and then the rest is given to SETI. I believe someone posted it before, probably in a buried thread now, and I don't remember the exact amount the University takes. But thats the reason behind the minimum dollar amount. Jeremy |
Captain Avatar Send message Joined: 17 May 99 Posts: 15133 Credit: 529,088 RAC: 0 |
Hi guys! It's my first post here at the SETI forum. I'm a native portuguese speaker, so forgive my poor english :) The costs to donate are more than 1 or 2 dollars. |
Cristiano Santos Send message Joined: 14 Apr 00 Posts: 3 Credit: 587,735 RAC: 0 |
Hi guys! It's my first post here at the SETI forum. I'm a native portuguese speaker, so forgive my poor english :) Hey Jeremy! That was fast :) The cut University takes should be a value relative to the total donated value, say 10%, is that right? If that's the case, the minimum amount still can't be explained. Now, if University takes an absolut cut of the donations, it's a complete other story :) Let's find'em! |
Eric Korpela Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 1382 Credit: 54,506,847 RAC: 60 |
Again, IMO, I believe there shouldn't be a minimum value for a donation. The problem isn't the University, it's the credit card companies. The credit card companies charge a transaction fee that is usually a flat fee + 2%. That comes out of the University's 10%. So below some limit, it costs the university more to process the transaction (credit card fee + accounting + acknowledgement letter) than the donation itself was. I don't know if that explains the level at which the university sets its minimum. But then again, as far as I know the minimum is not enforced, other than you won't get your star for donations of less than $10. But SETI@home will probably still get 90% of the donation regardless of the amount. Of course if enough small donations come in that the University starts losing money, they will probably start charging us 10% plus transaction fees. Eric @SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon) |
Fuzzy Hollynoodles Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 9659 Credit: 251,998 RAC: 0 |
Again, IMO, I believe there shouldn't be a minimum value for a donation. Thank you, Eric. Please make your donation big enough, so they don't lose money on it. But of course, a lot of 10 bucks will sum up also, so please make a donation after your ability. And to renew your star it's 10 $. Thank you all very much. "I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me |
Enigma Send message Joined: 15 Mar 06 Posts: 628 Credit: 21,606 RAC: 0 |
What i find really amusing is that according to PAPA there is no money for doing candidate analysis and it's a "CATCH22" as Eric but it, but as i said in my post above, (which was basically ignored, being politely told i am 'off topic') is that it is simply a question of priorities and candidate analysis doesn't rank! BUT budgets run MONTH to MONTH which means development such as the MULTIBEAM recorder WILL be making progress..... slowly but surely. So money is being spent developing the "MULTIBEAM RECORDER" which will allow the gathering of more information (MORE CRUNCHING MIND YOU) which AGAIN WILL NOT BE CORRELATED for further analysis in terms of candidates. More of the same. This logic is like having a car which is missing two wheels, but instead of putting money towards finding two new wheels, a decision is made to upgrade the engine and give it a paint job! Never mind being able to drive it and actually make some progress. For more info on the Multibeam recorder, visit Seti Plans In your words PAPA, i am quoting your post of the SETI budget. $ 58,800 $ --,--- Multibeam Data Recorder Equipment and Development $ 98,800 $ 98,800 New Client Application Software Development $ 50,400 $ 50,400 Candidate Identification & Data Analysis Software $ 25,500 $ --,--- Storage Server (11.2TB usable RAID 5) $ 11,100 $ --,--- Data tapes So, $150K (potentially approx $235K) has been set aside for Multibeam development (how much is spent, who knows?) Yet, the budget for doing candidate analysis is $ 85,000 $ 45,000 Client application/data analysis software development $ 19,400 $ 19,400 Equipment: Database and server hardware $ 28,300 $ 28,300 Candidate identification and followup observations or approx $130K. Perhaps it would be better to get all four wheels on the car first? Publicising this fact may actually help with your fund raising effort. Is it time the SETI team started listening to their community? Enigma. |
ejthedj Send message Joined: 20 May 99 Posts: 46 Credit: 3,574,999 RAC: 2 |
I must say that after reading all the Enigma posts (and replies), I agree with Enigma. I love this project and have been a member since weeks after it's inception. Yet here we are almost a decade later and I have no clue on any real "progress" of what's been done/computed/found. Am I mad? Not in the slightest. But it does drive me up the wall that this project has been going on for 7+ years and all I have to read on the Project's website is barebone statistics. What happened to the # of registered users and the # of "active" users? Gone since sometime in 2004. The website-pre-BOINC was much better than now. How does something so simple get WORSE over time? I've never heard of a website redesign getting worse for content. Emails. I get about 1 email a year from SAH...and I'll give you 1 guess at it's summary: "please donate" No hard stats. No warm and fuzzies. Look: 1)if you want this project to be successful, SAH **NEEDS** to listen to its hard core dedicated VOLUNTEER community! Put up the darn stats! As Enigma said, I bought a car to get me from A to B...I'm not going to start putting a new paint job on it if the darn thing doesn't have 4 wheels! 2)if SAH wants more donations, I have 2 suggestions: a)MORE EMAILS! Why not have monthly newsletters like every other Project I've participated in my life. Ask for donations while giving a real update. The last email I got was months ago and talked about something "soon" coming out. Define "soon". It's been like 3 months. b)Listen to the community (aka "the hand that feeds you"). If you constantly ignore our wishes, we are NOT going to donate and we are likely to leave. This would probably have some explanation as of why in 2004 there were like 5 million registered participants but only about 600,000 active users. That's very sad. Very. Sure, someone will reply "but we only intended on attacting 50,000 participants so 600,000 is a lot!"...it may be a lot but it's a sad percentage of 5 million. 12% retention if my math serves me correctly. This page, http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donation_history.php , will easily show you the eye-opening statistics of donations since Dec 31, 2005...less than 1% of the participants donated! And, amazingly, those people donated a total exceeding $300,000. If SAH could get the percentage up to 3% of its user base, the Project would be in better shape. However, let's get real, SAH isn't asking to achieve $50,000 in donations...they're looking for $600k and higher! If you want that kind of cash from your volunteer community, the Project better start listening to its community AND PROVIDING insight onto how the money will be spent. This lack of listening and providing are the 2 sole reasons why sponsorship is so low. 3)Where's the publicity? Why isn't SAH approaching extremely wealthy people (like Steve Balmer who built some kind of SAH project himself) or a group? Maybe SAH is...but I have no idea that they are. And if SAH did approach a few dozen people/groups that have some serious cash, I find it very hard to believe, that, in total, SAH couldn't muscle a simple $1m bucks from these types of people. Of course us participants will continue to donate but we're already MAKING the project run...now you want money? Sure, we can give, but I wouldn't bet your Project on the fact that it's participants are going to keep SAH afloat monetarily wise. Moreover, this project is being run at a nationally recognized school...where's the publicity? where's the money from the school? Why do I watch tons of Discovery and Science channel specials on SETI but each 1-hour show dedicates about 40 seconds to the SAH project?! Hello?! I thought long and hard about donating a few weeks ago. But I decided against it because I'm just very unhappy with the information (lack of) that is on the website. I understand everyone who works on the project is working 400% and are fantastic people, etc. But at the end of the day, my requests (and literally thousands of others who have same/similar requests) are being ignored. I cannot donate to a project who repeatedly ignores its dedicated volunteers. I'm already donating tons of computer time, and as I said, I am not mad and I am very very happy to help participate. But money donations? Not until we get some serious information on a regular basis. I really really hope this project continues and we find something, but if this project fails, in my opinion, it will fail due to prioritization and lack of participation. -Eric |
Pappa Send message Joined: 9 Jan 00 Posts: 2562 Credit: 12,301,681 RAC: 0 |
Enigma Your Post is on Topic! Really! Sorry for the Delay, I truly was busy... To say the least I would have prefered to to be answering posts here. The numbers you quote that I dug up were what was posted on the Seti Web Site. They were an attmpt at some information that progress is happening while it may be announched from the Highest Mountain... So the Catch 22 about programming to get other things accomplished... I suspect some work has been done but like many things is Not Visible... The Current push is to get MultiBeam here before they run out of things to crunch. So with potentially a new Seti Application to make things work and Astropulse being very close... Not to mention the Current Server issues... More funds are needed... A small thing has appeared incase some have not noticed when they log into there account on Seti and Seti Beta... I shows some statistics for the projects that you are running. Thank You Pappa What i find really amusing is that according to PAPA there is no money for doing candidate analysis and it's a "CATCH22" as Eric but it, but as i said in my post above, (which was basically ignored, being politely told i am 'off topic') is that it is simply a question of priorities and candidate analysis doesn't rank! BUT budgets run MONTH to MONTH which means development such as the MULTIBEAM recorder WILL be making progress..... slowly but surely. Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project. |
Pappa Send message Joined: 9 Jan 00 Posts: 2562 Credit: 12,301,681 RAC: 0 |
Eric On the 9th of this year I join the 7 year Club, those remaining members are the people that seem to be working the hardest. Not to mention a few outstanding Newcomers... Currntly if is not obvious, I am concerned and working to help Seti Survive... A part of the reason that I created this thread in all the Forums was to allow the people that do actually look to help identify what they feel important. Feelings Good and Bad need to be looked at. Then with more information those in the background have a better idea of what is felt as Important! Then the Seti Staff has a chance to "adjust" priorities with what funds they have... I do enjoy that people are "now" allowed to say things that they feel without everyone else jumping on them... So in the last year people are starting to listen to what other have to say! That is one of those items that was not in the budget... Regards Pappa I must say that after reading all the Enigma posts (and replies), I agree with Enigma. Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project. |
GalaxyIce Send message Joined: 13 May 06 Posts: 8927 Credit: 1,361,057 RAC: 0 |
Here are some 'technical' reason why I and others may not have donated, when we might have; Why make this thread 'stickied'? I understand why you might want to keep a thread at the top of a board, but it usually concerns posts which are not updated, which do not change much. I usually ignore the 'sticked' threads, because I have visited them and do not really notice the icon change to see it's been updated, not on a day-by-day basis. I see other threads popping to the top and I take a look - even occasionally at the German thread. But your appeals for funds are lost in that 'stickied' thread. If you want to get you message across you should think more carefully how you do it and it's impact. A thread full of posts with cluttered information is unlikely to be read or the impact you are looking for is unlikely to take place. Your request for funds is becoming a bit like an annoying blunderbuss splattered everywhere. Try to think how to target your audience in the best way, and carry out a properly structured and thoughtfully targeted campaign. Just my thoughts, respectfully. flaming balloons |
Fuzzy Hollynoodles Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 9659 Credit: 251,998 RAC: 0 |
Ice, thank you for your input. These threads are made sticky, not for you to read, but for people who want to give their input, some very valuable input, about what technical problems they have about donating, and also tell why they eventually chose not to donate, and as you can see, I read it. I'm making a summary from all inputs in these threads, so we can try to eliminate the problems or work around them. And so far a lot of good ideas and input have been given. So these threads on the different boards serve a purpose, they are sticky so they are easy to find for people to post in and for us to find them and read them. And as soon as they have served their purpose, they'll be un-stickied again. I hope this answers your question. And thanks for all input, they are more important to us than you know. :-) "I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me |
GalaxyIce Send message Joined: 13 May 06 Posts: 8927 Credit: 1,361,057 RAC: 0 |
It's all about psychology I suppose. For me stickies melt into the background and my instincts tell me the same thing happens with others. So I don't agree with what you say here;
Raising funds can be done is so many ways, but a stuffy technical scientific way is least likely to succeed for this as well as, eg, a TV campaign for breakfast honey. Some sort of campaign to make people feel proud to contribute money as well as computer time might help to prompt people into applying for the green star - a thread bobbing up and down to do this might help. But the important thing is to keep the comments coming and the interest flowing - stickied or not ;) flaming balloons |
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