I noticed for awhile that Willy either does not have much time for retiring projects that we as users offer to the site that should not be included or there must be other reasons for stating that a project is Active where in fact it has not provided work units for months (or in the case of ABC nearly a year). It appears that some of the Projects Admin do not care to tell us what is going on and in time they are deleted as inactive.

I and I am sure a number of other users would like to know what is BOINCStats policy in this regard. If we have a known policy, we would not be wasting time requesting that a project be removed until a predetermined time or reason for Retiring the project. Personally, I do not believe that a project be still considered Active (please look up the meaning of Active) if the Admin of the project does not issue Work Units, does not export stats or communicate with their users telling them what the reason for that is during that time. If you had such policy than we would not be wasting time writing in the Forum about it and more importantly we would not waste time checking every day if the project is still alive. The cost of running our computers for the benefit of projects is considerable. The least I would accept is that they talk to us and tell us what is going on. If they are not interested in us and use us as cannon fodder than I will not be interested in them.

I agree.

I think that this would be a lot easier if the project admins where a little more worried of telling us when are they closing the door or throwing the towel.
A single message from a project admin like "We ended the data elaboration so we are closing this project" or "We don't have the requiered funds to continue with our investigations" would save us a lot of money, work, time and worries.

I mean something like this:

:'( SIMAP, One of the best projects. They had the detail of leaving us a goodbye note.

Not like other projects which admins got vanished leaving us with the problem of deciding if his project is dead or sleeping.

I have a feeling that willy is away and the Stats are running on Autopilot. He has not answered anybodies questions for awhile, I hope he is not sick or something. I am sure that if everything was in order, he would answer what his policy is regarding Active/Inactive projects. Should we continue to warn him that a project manager stated that the project is finished and should be retired? Should we continue to warn him that a project appears dead for it has not shown any activity for months and the site is either down or there is no news there as to why the long period of inactivity?. I just hope that this site is not going the same way as some projects where there is no news for months and appears that the Admins just plain do not care what we do.

If there would be any, I'm sure Willy would have posted it long ago as a sticky in the section as it happened with the announcements, posting and bug posting rules in the other sections.
As long as I can remember back since I'm here there always were users which informed him about retiring projects and then he did.
I noticed also that he isn't that much on the forum anymore as he was in the past (and there even was another mod named Son Goku 3SSJ, which probably also isn't here anymore since I've not seen him in years), but I'm sure if the site will ever close he would inform us just in time.

No worries, not sick, just busy with work. And after a week of coding (and other stuff) at work I don't always have the motivation to code some more in the weekend. And believe it or not, but sometimes I have other things to do in a weekend.

So, when I work on BOINCstats it's in the weekends, this includes retiring a project. Most of the time I just follow the recommendations posted in this forum section. Of course I'll check how long the stats have not been updated, if the website of the project is still online and if there is any activity by the admins in the forum. When I'm convinced the project is dead I'll retire it. If I'm wrong and/or the projects comes back to live it's easy to add it back to the stats but BAM! users will have to add the project back to their hosts by themselves.

Thanks for the explanation Willy, it is understood and I do not blame you. Having said that, I believe you need a hand in policing what is an Active project and what is considered a Retired project. You need a person who can police all projects, add a new project and delete and move a project to the retired list. You are falling behind other stats sites with BOINCStats.

Willy, I understand that your time is limited to maintain this site, but surely, we should know what is your policy on Active/Retired Projects. When will you add or delete a project?. As a user, I am tired of wasting time checking sites everyday for although I am retired, it is not so much the time to do so but the waste of Electricity that costs me to perform these activities. As far as I am concerned, and I am sure BOINC users will support me on this, if a project does not wish to talk to their users in the project site in particular in their News section so all will see it, than we should not follow them. Please ask for help to maintain your site for surely there must be people out there that can handle the situation. For example, tell me what to do and I will do it.(even if I have to learn it how to do) and I would be willing to take on the responsibility as Admin for your site, dealing with Project Activity only. I could look after the Active/Retired list of project. As it is, you are lagging behind other Stats sites. I am willing to warn sites that they will be removed from the stats unless they communicate with their users before I actually remove them from BOINCStats. Please note that David Anderson has already given me the authority to manage the "Known BoINC projects" in the BOINC Wiki and I can Add/Delete projects as needed as I check all project activity on a daily basis. Please PM me for further discussion on this topic for I do not wish to keep thrashing a dead horse.

The main point here is accountability. It should not be considered a privilege for us to crunch a project. The projects must understand that it is a privilege to them to have us work for them with no cost. In that regard, the least I would expect is that they talk to us and tell us what is going on in maintaining the project. The cost to volunteers to maintain their equipment and pay for the daily running costs is considerable and it should be appreciated by project managers. Talk to us for we will not listen and turn off support. I would like to be considered to be the voice of users or to be an Ambassador for them and act as an Intermediary between Projects and Users.

Keep on crunching and have a nice day...