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

"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

Enigma

If you can not pay for gas how can you drive your car? If you can not pay for bread how can you feed your family? It goes on...

What I get is Seti is down to the major players and other that used to take of some of these problems got PINK Slips... So unless it is MAJOR it goes to when we have funding... If You provide information that it a Serious Flaw then it will be looked at... Otherwise "noted and unresponded."

What is everyone missing? It came very close to Turn Out the Lights the Party is Over! They are still not to a point where they can get more people back. The Users that have Donated have Purchased Weeks of Life...

So with the Wife facing major surgery on the 29th and having lost 5 machines to power outages in the Pacific Northwest not to mention me spending time here trying to let people know that Seti is at Risk... You have an issue, about "You" and think No One cares...

I Care and do the Best that I can many Volunteers do Everything THEY Can... The Seti Staff, Volunteers and myself are only Human... I know that people are doing everything that they can and more... Donations can help...

Best Wishes for the Holidays

Pappa

Enigma

If you can not pay for gas how can you drive your car? If you can not pay for bread how can you feed your family? It goes on...

What I get is Seti is down to the major players and other that used to take of some of these problems got PINK Slips... So unless it is MAJOR it goes to when we have funding... If You provide information that it a Serious Flaw then it will be looked at... Otherwise "noted and unresponded."

What is everyone missing? It came very close to Turn Out the Lights the Party is Over! They are still not to a point where they can get more people back. The Users that have Donated have Purchased Weeks of Life...

So with the Wife facing major surgery on the 29th and having lost 5 machines to power outages in the Pacific Northwest not to mention me spending time here trying to let people know that Seti is at Risk... You have an issue, about "You" and think No One cares...

I Care and do the Best that I can many Volunteers do Everything THEY Can... The Seti Staff, Volunteers and myself are only Human... I know that people are doing everything that they can and more... Donations can help...

Best Wishes for the Holidays

Pappa

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?

Enigma

If you can not pay for gas how can you drive your car? If you can not pay for bread how can you feed your family? It goes on...

What I get is Seti is down to the major players and other that used to take of some of these problems got PINK Slips... So unless it is MAJOR it goes to when we have funding... If You provide information that it a Serious Flaw then it will be looked at... Otherwise "noted and unresponded."

What is everyone missing? It came very close to Turn Out the Lights the Party is Over! They are still not to a point where they can get more people back. The Users that have Donated have Purchased Weeks of Life...

So with the Wife facing major surgery on the 29th and having lost 5 machines to power outages in the Pacific Northwest not to mention me spending time here trying to let people know that Seti is at Risk... You have an issue, about "You" and think No One cares...

I Care and do the Best that I can many Volunteers do Everything THEY Can... The Seti Staff, Volunteers and myself are only Human... I know that people are doing everything that they can and more... Donations can help...

Best Wishes for the Holidays

Pappa

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?

Without money, how do you expect things to continue, and progress?

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 know 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 2, maybe 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 or US$200 will not donate less because there's no minimum. So by waving the botton limit should help raising founds.

My 2 cents :)

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 know 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 2, maybe 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 or US$200 will not donate less because there's no minimum. So by waving the botton limit should help raising founds.

My 2 cents :)

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

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 :)

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

Again, IMO, I believe there shouldn't be a minimum value for a donation.

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 :)

Again, IMO, I believe there shouldn't be a minimum value for a donation.

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 :)

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

"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

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.

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

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.

"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

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.

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. :-)

they are sticky so they are easy to find for people to post in and for us to find them and read them.