What about starting it right from zero all over again?
If we get a fair app that puts all on a even playing field and gives credit based on work done, no matter what the points are, why not go from zero?
I think that would make a lot of people happy, both the power users and the guy with his one machine.

I do hope you are joking here. I have not spent the time and $$$$ on crunchers and power to have credits zeroed out. That would turn me as well as many others away from the project permantly, never to return.

I do agree on a fair credit system, something like Seti, or E@H would work fine with most of the crunchers I believe. But credit per decoy ? It would have to be more than 2 credits per decoy or it would chase crunchers away, I have several old machines like many others here do, that crunch for 2 hours or more with only 1 decoy, maybe 2. Currently on Seti or E@H that same amount of crunch times returns about 40-50 credits on average.
R@H would have to be compatible with other projects or risk the possible loss of crunchers.

When SETI went to the new credit system, they did not zero out the old credits, neither did they create some stupid old or enhanced credit totals, neither has E@H, and neither should R@H.

SETI has seen the error of thier way in granting too little credit per FPOP, the new release 5.17 coming out is going to have a larger credit muliplier.

---

SETI.USA

...
There is the issue of the optimised clients. We and most of the top teams use them.
Is it a quest for higher points? NO! It is the awarding of points on a percentage FAIRLY between the different types of cpu's used.
...

What do you mean? IMHO using the optimised client, which applys CPU extensions to its benchmark system, is a form of overclaiming, unless science applications also apply the same extension. It's no problem to use both optimised client and application at the same time. Does Rosetta's application use any extention like SSE?

---

What about starting it right from zero all over again?
If we get a fair app that puts all on a even playing field and gives credit based on work done, no matter what the points are, why not go from zero?
I think that would make a lot of people happy, both the power users and the guy with his one machine.

I do hope you are joking here. I have not spent the time and $$$$ on crunchers and power to have credits zeroed out. That would turn me as well as many others away from the project permantly, never to return.

I do agree on a fair credit system, something like Seti, or E@H would work fine with most of the crunchers I believe. But credit per decoy ? It would have to be more than 2 credits per decoy or it would chase crunchers away, I have several old machines like many others here do, that crunch for 2 hours or more with only 1 decoy, maybe 2. Currently on Seti or E@H that same amount of crunch times returns about 40-50 credits on average.
R@H would have to be compatible with other projects or risk the possible loss of crunchers.

When SETI went to the new credit system, they did not zero out the old credits, neither did they create some stupid old or enhanced credit totals, neither has E@H, and neither should R@H.

SETI has seen the error of thier way in granting too little credit per FPOP, the new release 5.17 coming out is going to have a larger credit muliplier.

Kevin:
I said that in a delusional moment and I'm sorry I said it. I was thinking what can we do to end this seemingly endless discussion on the optimised clients and that came to me as a way to do so. It was a mistake and I'm sorry I said it.
I agree, like you I have a great deal of time effort and money involved in this. Off the top of my head I have maybe $15,000.00US in parts here crunching 24/7 and I'm far from the top in terms of dollars spent.
I know what we have invested in VNS to make 25,000 points a day and you are doing double that.( Didn't think I noticed did you?<BG>)
What is most likely to happen is like tossing a coin: one side the big contributers will be happy, the other side and the ones that are currently so outspoken against the optimised files will be happy and if the coin lands on it's edge everyone will be happy..
How often have you seen a coin tossed and land on it's edge?<VBG>
To be totally honest, I would not want to be the person(s) digesting all this and trying to come up with a solution that will keep all the players.
I just don't think thats possible.
Thanks for your time,
Movieman

---

Movieman, thank you for your reply, I am glad you corrected yourself because it would be a big mistake IMO for Rosetta to zero out credits.
I have a huge investment in this project, and well, several other BOINC projects. I have not always crunched Rosetta as you can tell from Boincstats - I just recently moved here after reaching my goal of 3 million on SETI.
I do have my machines hidden because of my business - as a mortgage broker the banking industry can be picky, but I do have close to 50 machines 24/7, still a long way off from some of the bigger guys out there but the small farm I have is growing. (watch your back :) ) The power bill I have incurred to reach the spot I am in so far is not pocket change, and by removing the earned credits would mean that the project managers do not care about what we have done in the past for them.
I would go somewhere else and crunch, and I am sure there would be many others that would do the same.

When SETI released the enhanced version, they had a similar issue with credits - because of the optimization of 4.18 many became disenchanted with the project. Credit dropped by about 20% for non-optimized crunchers and 30-50% or highly optimized crunchers. My personal credit dropped from 32,000 a day to 22,000 a day, but the science was improved.

From what I can tell, the only reason for the change here is because of what we call - ZERO RACers - the ones that complain the most it seems are the ones that do not have dedicated investments into the projects and somehow think that those of us who spend our money on the projects are getting away with something.

And for Haltech to say "SETI people mind your own business and go back to your alien project.
Love
Haltech"

ABSURD! - He is telling me to go away and mind my own business ?? He is a member of your team XS Put a leash on him if you can, we don't need that attitude here.

---

SETI.USA

....so why don't we all just wait and see what happens instead of speculating on what might/may/should/will happen?

---

Ok first of all I really dont like seeing SETI and Rosetta in the same sentance. They are 2 different projects and point systems so leave the sepprate.

I honestly dont understand why starting from scratch is a problem. We know you did the points, we know we can do them again. This is not costing you anymore money in any way. I myself love the competition.. Go ahead zero me and keep your points cuz you know what... I'll pass you again and again. I am getting really tired of all the compaining from you guys just crunch the project and get on with your life. Stop looking at the top computers and what client they are running and worry about yourself. Xtremesystems is a very dedicated team and we spend more money than you can imagine to get where we are today. I am not saying non of you guys are spending any money... But my biggest issue here is all the bitching and complaining. Did you see us complain when we had to remove 3.5mil points cuz we knew it was the right thing. NO. We just crunched harder and got more members. Do you SETI guys go on their official website and complain that you dont like this or that or someone's computer is faster so they must be cheating.... Just face the fact that we are faster and always will be optimized or not!

---

Two things that I'm not sure if anyone has thought of (trying to bring a fresh idea to the table).

First, people other than crunchers see the stats pages. I'm sure that, when grants are being considered, the board looks at things like which project seems the most popular (They wouldn't want to grant $50,000 to a DC project that nobody crunches for, right?). They probably look at a site like BoincStats or similar to see how the various project totals compare.

Now, this could go one of two ways, and I'm not sure which is more likely. (Hey, I'm not a psychologist...)

1. They see that Rosetta has a really low credit total, compared to other projects, and decide that it might not be worthy of a grant. This one doesn't seem particularly likely, to me (with all of the attention Rosetta has gotten, lately, in the scientific community), but it's a possibility to consider.

2. They dig a little deeper to find out why the Rosetta project credits are low. Seeing that it's actually very popular, but zeroed the credits in the interest of statistical fairness, might make it seem like it's more "user-focused", which is critical for a DC project. Thus, they might be more comfortable throwing money at it, since it is trying to treat its users well.

There is one thing, though, which would definitely be beneficial about re-starting the credits. (This works even better, with the recent publicity campaign going on here!)

Okay, let's say I'm brand-new to this whole DC thing, and I'm a fairly competitive person (The stats wouldn't be such a big deal if people didn't care about them, right?). So, I look at all of the other well-established projects, out there. Everyone else already has a massive lead, on me, and it'll take years for me to catch up with other people that have similar hardware to mine.

But then I read about this "Rosetta" project, and how its results will be helpful in my own lifetime. So, I check it out. Hey, I start right about even with everyone else! So, I attach.

So, yes, we might lose some people by zeroing the totals, but we also stand to gain a lot of new crunchers, as well.

Although my personal preference is to not zero the totals, there are compelling arguments, either way. I'm about 60/40 on the issue, myself. Honestly, I'll still be here crunching, regardless. It's a highly worthwile project, and my computers double as space-heaters in my house!

---

"There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may never be able to."
Leela (From the Mac game "Marathon", released 1995)

Movieman, thank you for your reply, I am glad you corrected yourself because it would be a big mistake IMO for Rosetta to zero out credits.
I have a huge investment in this project, and well, several other BOINC projects. I have not always crunched Rosetta as you can tell from Boincstats - I just recently moved here after reaching my goal of 3 million on SETI.
I do have my machines hidden because of my business - as a mortgage broker the banking industry can be picky, but I do have close to 50 machines 24/7, still a long way off from some of the bigger guys out there but the small farm I have is growing. (watch your back :) ) The power bill I have incurred to reach the spot I am in so far is not pocket change, and by removing the earned credits would mean that the project managers do not care about what we have done in the past for them.
I would go somewhere else and crunch, and I am sure there would be many others that would do the same.

When SETI released the enhanced version, they had a similar issue with credits - because of the optimization of 4.18 many became disenchanted with the project. Credit dropped by about 20% for non-optimized crunchers and 30-50% or highly optimized crunchers. My personal credit dropped from 32,000 a day to 22,000 a day, but the science was improved.

From what I can tell, the only reason for the change here is because of what we call - ZERO RACers - the ones that complain the most it seems are the ones that do not have dedicated investments into the projects and somehow think that those of us who spend our money on the projects are getting away with something.

And for Haltech to say "SETI people mind your own business and go back to your alien project.
Love
Haltech"

ABSURD! - He is telling me to go away and mind my own business ?? He is a member of your team XS Put a leash on him if you can, we don't need that attitude here.

Kevin:
We agree on the ZERO RACers totally.
I used the line that "little dogs bark the loudest because thats all they can do" and it is very fitting here.
As to Haltech, I think you got lumped in to that group by accident as it appears that most of the group that was doing the complaining came from SETI to Rosetta. He's a strong personality but the guy is as dedicated as any I know to DC.
As to me and SETI,I have no issues with it. The first DC I did was on the old SETI app, maybe for 18 months in it's early days.
I tend to try and put the DC apps in an order of importance and to me, a medical app is tops on my list and Rosetta tops the medical list to me personally.
That's not degrading the others, I think the climatology apps are very worthwhile especially seeing whats been happenning in the earths climate the past 24 months.
Like I said earlier, lets hope this coin lands on "edge"
Yes, I've noticed your growth recently and taken to wearing old shirts so the tire tracks from when you roll past VNS won't hurt as much!
Thanks for your time,
Movieman

---

After carefully reading this thread I have come to a few conclusions that many of you seem to elude too.

1. People have a lot of time and money invested in this project and to zero out the credits would leave many people disenchanted. What I feel would really hurt this project is NEGATIVE publicity. Please remember that Dr. Baker and many other researchers have dedicated a lot of time to this project and to lose people over credits and not science would be foolish. I have done research with my professor and know the pain and glory that comes with research.

2. The staff here at Rosetta have the cruncher's best interest in mind from what I have observed thus far. I am sure the Rosetta staff have looked and the mistakes of Seti and will definitely make the necessary adjustments to prevent a reoccurrence.

****Sorry if I am off topic. I felt these points were important to mention****

My Suggestions:

I would have to agree with Tralala that it would be best to give each workunit a fixed credit value so that optimized clients that attempt to artificially adjust the benchmarks are thwarted. Many of you as well as I am wondering what kind of values will be assinged to each workunit and how R@H will determine them.

I think they should base the credit on the number of flops needed to complete the workunit as was previously mentioned. I would suggest looking a past work submitted to get a benchmark idea of the amount of credit that should be issued (pun not intended).

As far as how to deal with the current credit accumulated, I feel the Rosetta staff should NOT issue a new set of credits and freeze the old ones like what was done with BOINC classic. I feel this way because everyone will still be on a level playing field. Creating a new credit category will just be more uneccessary work for the staff. Those with few credits (such as myself) probably will not be affected that much because we do not compete for credit on an individual basis and will never be on the leaderboard (nor do I care whether I am or not). Those with high credit scores are way ahead of people like me who only have one computer and will stay that way. The users that are cheating now will either slowly drop back or find another way to beat the system.

---

From what little ralph data I have we can now start to get an idea about where the 2 credits/decoy is. All data displayed is from standard boinc software and no optimized apps are involved. [edit]I've seperated old ralph and "ralph-new". Oh, and CC is claimed credit/hour, GC is granted credit/hour. I've highlighted Rosetta, ralph, and ralph new for easier location. All data was updated last night, so this is current.

From what little ralph data I have we can now start to get an idea about where the 2 credits/decoy is. All data displayed is from standard boinc software and no optimized apps are involved. [edit]I've seperated old ralph and "ralph-new". Oh, and CC is claimed credit/hour, GC is granted credit/hour. I've highlighted Rosetta, ralph, and ralph new for easier location.

Not sure why you are posting this here, Tony. Just to avoid any confusion: the 2 credits/decoy system that currently runs on Ralph is just for preliminary software tests and will never run on Rosetta, neither will it be used on Ralph after the end of the software testing phase (presumably in a couple of days or so ??). See this explanation of the new credit system by Rosetta developer David Kim that was posted on the Ralph forum:

The version that will eventually run on Rosetta@home will have work unit specific credit per model values that are determined from test runs on Ralph. It will be a requirement for lab members to not only test new work units on Ralph but to also determine the average credit per model value from their test runs for production runs. The credits should remain somewhat consistent with other projects since the average values will be based on the standard boinc crediting scheme. If things look okay on Ralph, Rosetta@home will use the credit per model crediting method while Ralph will switch back to the standard method.

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Team betterhumans.com - discuss and celebrate the future - hoelder1in.org

Hoelder1in he just wants another chance to post the unoptimized bs spreadsheet he came up with. Thats all! I honestly dont think he even cares about Rosetta at all!

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Not sure why you are posting this here, Tony.

Some users don't have a Ralph account, and can't see/participate in the new credit systems development. I posted it here so everyone can see what's happening and get involved. There are many posts earlier than this where users are "speculating" on what it might look like. Well, this is what it looks like so far.

tony

<double post>

---

Team mauisun.org

From what little ralph data I have we can now start to get an idea about where the 2 credits/decoy is. All data displayed is from standard boinc software and no optimized apps are involved. [edit]I've seperated old ralph and "ralph-new". Oh, and CC is claimed credit/hour, GC is granted credit/hour. I've highlighted Rosetta, ralph, and ralph new for easier location. All data was updated last night, so this is current.

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h228/mmciastro/Ralphnewprojectcomparison3.jpg

Please, in future if you start posting more charts could you link to them, this one is ok but a lot of the other threads have become a problem. I and many others are on slow connections and once two or more large pictures get into a thread they become unreadable.

Keep the small filesize pictues up but the larger ones please just post the link

thanks, i'll have a read of it now :-)

P.S. PNG files generally work better for 'text' pictures

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Team mauisun.org

Please, in future if you start posting more charts could you link to them, this one is ok but a lot of the other threads have become a problem. I and many others are on slow connections and once two or more large pictures get into a thread they become unreadable.

Keep the small filesize pictues up but the larger ones please just post the link

thanks, i'll have a read of it now :-)

P.S. PNG files generally work better for 'text' pictures

Most my pictures are in thread started by me for the purpose. I see your point though and will limit my pics to links (when outrageously huge) when I post to threads started by others.

thanks

tony

Please, in future if you start posting more charts could you link to them, this one is ok but a lot of the other threads have become a problem. I and many others are on slow connections and once two or more large pictures get into a thread they become unreadable.

Keep the small filesize pictues up but the larger ones please just post the link

thanks, i'll have a read of it now :-)

P.S. PNG files generally work better for 'text' pictures

Most my pictures are in thread started by me for the purpose. I see your point though and will limit my pics to links (when outrageously huge) when I post to threads started by others.

thanks

tony

Thanks, the thing is I do like pictures to be posted in a post (lol), just on dial-up/slow connections it is an absolute pain (so blanket switching off of pictures in preferences is a problem)

One idea that became popular at other places is
post the thumbnail picture they provide at the image host sites but put the link to the larger picture with the thumbnail.

i.e. [ url ][ img ]link_to_thumbnail[ /img ]link_to_main_picture[ /url ]

(I was trying to test it out, but I'm having to wait for my photobucket passwrod to be sent to me :-)

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Team mauisun.org

I have a better idea mmciastro stop making those stupid spreadsheets so you wont have to post them anywhere. I really dont think anyone cares for them anyway! you spend more CPU cycles making them and I really dont want to see your big RAC go down. Sorry I am just trying to help you out.

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without wanting to stir up the situation any more, I think it would be fairly straight forward to back-date the new credit system to all past jobs. The only info needed is the average run time for each target on a particular spec machine, and then that can be used to determine the number of credits assiged to each model completed. I assume there are numerous machines out there that have crunched at least one work unit of each type that's been released so far?

I would think that everyone would be happy with that as a system???

(I'm not hugely bothered what decision is taken, but I would like to see a level playing field - I think this would make the competition a lot more intense which can only be good for the project!)

cheers
Danny

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Going back to the zeroing out credit discussion and after hearing both positives and negatives to it wouldn't it be easier to just have 2 databases?

One database where the current stats could continue with the credits from the new credit system added on but also have a new database of credit from when the new system is put in place starting form zero.

This way all old credit is acknowledged, kept on record and continued but there is also a fresh database with the so called "fair" new credit system.