As a non-scientist, but interested party, I can find no rational connection between what my computers do and how much credit I have been granted. The formula is so complex that all meaning has been lost in the mishmash of calculations that go into it. I am not a cheater, but cannot in any reasonable way tell if I am being cheated. I would like to be able to audit my credits, but as a lay person without the technical knowledge to even understand how credits are granted, I am in a position where BOINC adminstration has in effect said, "We are scientists, trust us." My response is BS. I don't even understand what use the credits are to anyone. I do understand the general concepts of credit being granted on how my computers perform workunits in relation to system benchmarks. SO WHAT! In 90% of the cases, the credit granted to me is based on what someone else's computer has done. I'm not far from discontinuing my participation in SETI, and I have been a user for over four years, just because of this issue. I have three issues:

1. I have BOINC workunits going back to May and June of this year which are still showing PENDING status and the validator queue is now showing zero.

2. In many cases, I have been granted zero credit, when there are three results returned, and the other two results received credit.

3. Also there are many cases where the software has made an error, and I was granted no credit. You know, all I did was load BOINC's software on my system. Why should I be penalized, when your software made a mistake? I had nothing to do with it, and I have no way of fixing it.

So here's my conclusions:

1. Of what use is the credit system to anyone? What does it really show? If my computers' performances are not really reflected in the total credit granted to me, then why have it at all? Does my credit granted show me anything of use TO ANYONE, and if not, why have it?

2. Basically all I'm interested in, is how many workunits have I processed and how do I compare with others. I have two computers running workunits so I'll never be top of the heap, and I have no desire to be there, but I do want some relevant and understandable way of tracking what I have done. If the scientists want to keep track of the all the other junk that the credit system generates, that would be fine with me, but it has no meaning to me...in fact being rated on the current system angers me more than anything else.

3. The appeal of setiathome, I believe, is that us lay people could participate in science without having to be scientists. If credit is to granted at all, it shouldn't be so complex so that all meaning is lost in the process.

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Questions:
1) The validator queue may only consist of work that is ready to validate. If three results have not been returned yet it is not ready to be validated yet. It may also be because of orphaned work that is no longer on the server, if this is the case there should be less and less of these as the servers get more stable.

2) The results may have been returned late. They may have been caught in a server glitch.

3) You are only given credit for work that is useful.

Conclusions:
1) Mostly credit is not usefull for anything. It can still be compared to other peoples credit since they are laboring under the same problems as everyone else.

2) See c-1.

3) When you boil it down credit is just a number and it doesn't really matter how it is arrived at.

These are my opinions.

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