. . . the Politics of Rights regarding Participation

from the Past - an attempt @ putting things into perspective Today . . .


~ Excerpted ~

1) More formally define the relationship between the participants and the project.

2) Create a way to mediate cross-project and project participant issues that are not solvable within a project.

3) Projects and participants would be accepted as members of the community and upon failure to comply with the standards of the community would be removed. Participants would have more of an assurance that they are "safe" by checking if a project was in "good standing" while the projects would likely most gain from a potentially larger pool of participants.



We should note that history has shown that the powerful accepting limits upon their use of that power and extending rights towards and protecting those without power have led to greatness. Unchecked power also has been shown by that same history to inevitably lead to tyranny.



I have an initial "go" at a list of rights and responsibilities. Included at the bottom, named "Participant Rights and Responsibilities" this could be the starting place. Initially cribbed off the US Bill of rights then heavily modified. I in no way assert that this is a complete, or even a good start, but it is a start. My suggestion is that we put this up for debate on the projects, collect and collate the best ideas through a couple rounds of debate and refinement. Projects that wish to be part of the formalized community would have to agree to abide by their side of the extended definitions (and I think the primary concession is only that of allowing external and neutral arbitration), and for them to select an initial governing board.



For that board I would suggest that the projects each have one primary and one alternate. These members would form the pool of mediators (a mediator from project "A" could not of course, mediate a dispute involving their project) and aside from this would maintain the list of projects in good standing and maintain and evolve the "Participant Rights and Responsibilities". Other activities I am sure would make themselves known in due time.



I think the biggest limitation my proposal suffers from is the fact that I have primarily a participant's perspective. As a "neutral" party and as a participant in many projects I have represented to participants to the projects, and the projects to the participants (usually earning the ire of the party on the "opposite" side in those discussions) over many issues and have tried to be fair and balanced in the initial draft. However, what else could you use from us, the participants?



One last caveat and warning. Other DC networks and projects have, through their actions, "contaminated" or damaged their reputation to the point where derivative projects still suffer from participant aversion. Are we to suffer the same fate? I would submit to you we are already part way down that path.



I do not have all of the answers, but I do have the willingness to seek them out. Does the rest of the you have the same will? In that regard, I would suggest that those participants that are active in other BOINC forums, such as team sites, copy this proposal. For those of dual language capability if there is interest please translate this and make the proposal known in that language also (SIMAP, boinc.dk, etc.). In addition, if you know someone that has left BOINC, encourage them to participate in the poll. If we participants cannot solicit a reasonable level of return then we shall have little room in the future to press a demand upon a project, and will well and truly deserve what treatment we become subject to.



Note: registration is required as is used to prevent stuffing the ballot box.


So, a way to express that will is to goto the CPDN forum and vote in these two threads:

* Participant's Rights and Responsibilities

* Participant's Rights and Responsibilities - Discussion



. . . Please look at this Matter in a New Light - per se

Thank You Each for Any & All Contributions - Past & Present Inclusive . . .

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

Neeeek ... Breeeek ...

It is so quiet in here I can hear the crickets from way across the county line ...

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SETI@home looking for more volunteers . . .

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 02 January 2008

. . . excerpted:

According to project scientist Eric Korpela, the new data amounts to 300 gigabytes per day, or 100 terabytes (100,000 gigabytes) per year, about the amount of data stored in the U.S. Library of Congress. "That's why we need all the volunteers," he said. "Everyone has a chance to be part of the largest public participation science project in history."

The 1,000-foot diameter Arecibo dish, which fills a valley in Puerto Rico, is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center operated by Cornell University with funds from the National Science Foundation. Since 1992, Werthimer and his team have piggybacked on radio astronomy observations at Arecibo to record signals from space and analyze them for patterns that could indicate they were transmitted by an intelligent civilization.

When the team's incoming data overwhelmed its ability to analyze it, the scientists conceived a distributed computing project to harness many computers into one big supercomputer to do the analysis. Since SETI@home was launched, other distributed computing projects have arisen, from folding@home to predict the three-dimensional tangle of a protein to the newly-launched cosmology@home to model possible universes. Most are now on a platform called BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), which was developed by SETI@home's director David Anderson so that the various projects could share resources.

<snipped>

SETI@home has been funded by various organizations over the years, including the Planetary Society and Sun Microsystems, and continues to be supported by individual donations from its volunteers . . .

. . . know anybody else that would like to Participate in the Project?

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

. . . know anybody else that would like to Participate in the Project?

Alternatively, the project could do more to make the existing participants' work more efficient, i.e. adding full SIMD support in the applications rather than just partial support.

Forest, meet Tree. Tree...Forest...

:sigh:

NO ...including me ... :(

Worse, in the SHORT time I have been back I have run into 10 bugs/shortcomings in the BOINC application that would be REALLY off-putting of a new participant.

I guess my simplistic way of looking at the app and web sites to see them as a newcomer would for purposes of documenting has not gone away ...

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. . . To Those That It May Concern:


1. Look at the Following Threads, and READ CAREFULLY What Each had to Say

. . . and the Previous Links re: Paul D. Buck in this Thread / Forum


a/ Message boards : Cafe SETI : alternative solution to help desk - Posted 12 Jan 2007 by billhamel.net - whamel


send a Private Message to: billhamel.net (whamel)


Posts by billhamel.net (whamel)



b/ *Unofficial* Boinc Help Pages - In Development - Posted 16 Jan 2007 by Bob Gibbon's


send a Private Message to: popandbob



c/ Boinc Help Pages


d/ Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Good Things Seti Users Saw in 2006 by Pappa - CLOSED


send a Private Message to: Pappa




2. and IF YOU have any Ideas / Suggestions OR would like to Volunteer Your Skills to Assist the Project / Berkeley . . .

CONTACT: send a Private Message to: Eric Korpela


NOTE: i have given some Volunteer Names to Eric, SETI at Home Users that would like to Volunteer their Time & Expertise . . .

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

. . . To Those that are NOT aware of the BOINC Survey:

BOINC user survey

Note's:

Several volunteer computing projects, including Climateprediction.net, Einstein@home, and SETI@home,

use software called BOINC. If you participate in projects like this, we request that you answer the following questions.

This will help BOINC-based projects increase participation and achieve greater scientific results.

If you previously completed the survey but your answers have changed, please

complete it again - your new answers will replace the old ones

The Current Results of the BOINC user survey are here. The page is updated every hour



. . . Thank You (from me Personally as a User / Participant)

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

. . . To Those that are NOT aware of the BOINC Survey:

BOINC user survey
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Thanks, Dr C.E.T.I , That link appears to be inaccessible to me for some reason (down or whatever) . Just thought I'd mention it, in case others are having problems. I'll try it again tomorrow.

[Edit: Oh it's seems to be up again ;) ]

[Later: spoke too soon, "An internal error has prevented us from recording your survey response. Please try again later." ... :O ]

[Even Later: "Survey Response Recorded : Thank you for completing the BOINC user survey." ]

Jason

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Link worked for me and I filled it out

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Link worked for me and I filled it out

I just wonder if any devs bothered to look at the results, in particular the comments.

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Link worked for me and I filled it out

I just wonder if any devs bothered to look at the results, in particular the comments.

You beside me and you?

Um, you missed my collection below? :)

So, the answer is yes by one person ... :)

Though I did not understand the ones not in English ... Though I know what they say, at least in part ... English language help is fine, but what about German, French, Spanish .... etc.

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Link worked for me and I filled it out

I just wonder if any devs bothered to look at the results, in particular the comments.

You beside me and you?

Um, you missed my collection below? :)

So, the answer is yes by one person ... :)

Though I did not understand the ones not in English ... Though I know what they say, at least in part ... English language help is fine, but what about German, French, Spanish .... etc.

I learned that there is _almost only_ help in German available on the websites of German teams (like SETI.Germany or BOINC@Heidelberg). So I suppose that help in other languages might be available on the several team websites using one of those other languages as default... But it would really be great if the FAQ or the wiki could be translated into each of the languages used by the participants as well.

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I learned that there is _almost only_ help in German available on the websites of German teams (like SETI.Germany or BOINC@Heidelberg). So I suppose that help in other languages might be available on the several team websites using one of those other languages as default... But it would really be great if the FAQ or the wiki could be translated into each of the languages used by the participants as well.

ANd I looked in vain for such people .... lots of people that complain that I did not provide material in languages other than English, but no bi-lingual translators step forward. Theory says that you can run the stuff through one of those English to ... translation pages ... but, were I to do that I would have spend all my life making alternative language pages rathr than adding and correcting material.

So, it is the same elephant ... lots of complainers, little actual help for real problems ... no matter to me anymore ... I am well shut of it now ...

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I learned that there is _almost only_ help in German available on the websites of German teams (like SETI.Germany or BOINC@Heidelberg). So I suppose that help in other languages might be available on the several team websites using one of those other languages as default... But it would really be great if the FAQ or the wiki could be translated into each of the languages used by the participants as well.

ANd I looked in vain for such people .... lots of people that complain that I did not provide material in languages other than English, but no bi-lingual translators step forward. Theory says that you can run the stuff through one of those English to ... translation pages ... but, were I to do that I would have spend all my life making alternative language pages rathr than adding and correcting material.

So, it is the same elephant ... lots of complainers, little actual help for real problems ... no matter to me anymore ... I am well shut of it now ...

Uhm... well... If the English text is not too much of "IT geek speech", I could try my best to do the translation into German every now and then (as often as I have time for it). As you possibly have seen already I'm quite fluent in English, and being a German, I also know my first language pretty well ;)

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Uhm... well... If the English text is not too much of "IT geek speech", I could try my best to do the translation into German every now and then (as often as I have time for it). As you possibly have seen already I'm quite fluent in English, and being a German, I also know my first language pretty well ;)

Well, when I WAS writing the Unofficial BOINC Wiki the whole point was to AVOID "Geek Speak" though I was roundly criticized in some quarters for writing in a style unlike an encuyclopedia/thesis paper ...

At this time the UBW is in other hands than mine so I am not sure what the plans are for sure as to the direction it will be going (if anywhere) though I do agree that the initial entry is/was a little daunting.

My trouble then, and now, is a startling lack of artistic talent. So, I did the best I could and what you see is what you get ...

I did not mind many of the critics because a usual retort to request for a better way to do whatever it was that they were complaining about was that all they had to do was "jump" in and clean it up ... where I got anyone of a dozen excuses that amounted to "I love to complain because that is easy if you are going to do all the work ... but I have no taste for doing work that might be itself criticized on its own merit..."

{edit}
For those tracking these things, I joined QMC and with ONE work unit returned I have already done more work than 2% of the participants ... let us see what the next couple WU do ...
{/edit}

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Uhm... well... If the English text is not too much of "IT geek speech", I could try my best to do the translation into German every now and then (as often as I have time for it). As you possibly have seen already I'm quite fluent in English, and being a German, I also know my first language pretty well ;)

Nothing stopping you. You could start right now if you want to. Unofficial BOINC Wiki

If you think it's better to completely split English and Deutsch, I could talk to the admins about it.

If you find something super-outdated, your choices are updating it yourself, or somehow marking it as outdated (say something in the talk page?) and skipping it for translation.

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If you find something super-outdated, your choices are updating it yourself, or somehow marking it as outdated (say something in the talk page?) and skipping it for translation.

I cannot recall, it has been so long since I did wiki

But, I think there is a way to mark the articles "naturally" ...

As a quick work around, a simple way is to use the "classing" (they call it something else) that is entered at the bottom of each page.

If people WANT to start on this project, then that would be one of the first steps, start looking at articles and changing/adding classing at the bottom.

"reviewed", "Dated", "Obsolete" etc. But, you have to agree on the number and names of the way you class the pages... with that done, the pages that need updating can be more easily found by the subject matter experts and they can start to bring the material up to current.

For those that have been making FAQ, well, there was a basic FAQ, but if you HAVE TO HAVE your own, why not still put it into the Wiki so that we can stop sending people all over the planet looking for reliable information.

It is, after all, YOUR wiki ... never mine ... I just had time and a brain ... now I only have time ...

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But, I think there is a way to mark the articles "naturally" ...

As a quick work around, a simple way is to use the "classing" (they call it something else) that is entered at the bottom of each page.

If people WANT to start on this project, then that would be one of the first steps, start looking at articles and changing/adding classing at the bottom.

Yes, categories.

But I should better find a way to do it similar to Wikipedia: a template that adds the page to a category and also shows a banner on the page.

EDIT: I just looked at one of those templates in Wikipedia, and the trick is *so* simple :) I'll make the UBW "outdated" template today, if I can (it's already midnight, parents complaining).

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... But it would really be great if the FAQ or the wiki could be translated into each of the languages used by the participants as well.

BOINC FAQ in German

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Uhm... well... If the English text is not too much of "IT geek speech", I could try my best to do the translation into German every now and then (as often as I have time for it). As you possibly have seen already I'm quite fluent in English, and being a German, I also know my first language pretty well ;)

Nothing stopping you. You could start right now if you want to. Unofficial BOINC Wiki

If you think it's better to completely split English and Deutsch, I could talk to the admins about it.

If you find something super-outdated, your choices are updating it yourself, or somehow marking it as outdated (say something in the talk page?) and skipping it for translation.

Sorry but I have absolutely no idea whether some info is outdated or not, not to speak of super-outdated. I'm just glad that running BOINC doesn't disturb the other programs I do normally use. When you guys are saying that there is outdated info out there I just take it for granted because your posts already told me that you have more insight in all this BOINC stuff than I.

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