Fantastic! Thanks for taking the initiative.

Just a wild idea to throw in the midst.

How about a rank system based on ranges of numbers of credit. Rough example...

Noob: 0 - 9,999 credits
Nibbler: 10,000 - 29,999 credits
Cruncher: 30,000 - 49,999 credits
Floppin' Mad - 50,000 - 69.999 credits....
....Corporate Host Horder - 1,000,000+, etc, etc.

I've seen similar name rankings on forums reflecting the number of posts a user has made.

Then this could allow a person to break down the "Overall Combined" stats into smaller section, seeing how far up their "rank" they are. It also would place them with people of equal par machines once the initial stats climb has slowed.

Dare I say it may not be too hard to make a stats page which ONLY shows users with credit from 0 to 9,999 in a "Noob Stats" chart

Example...
Current Credit (based on incremental update) 17,249.64
Rank: Nibbler <-- Click hyperlink rank to show stats for 10K to 30k credited users (Nibblers)

This would then bracket the corporate users with access to 100's of hosts up the top of the stats and give a more realistic goal (albeit 2nd place rank) to the little people.
AND if a single host person manages to climb into the "Corps" rank, then fair play - bonus!

Does that make any sense???

And to go with the great idea of certificates from projects when reaching certain credit milestones.

Maybe a similar BAM Rank certificates could be awarded, either printable and/or a certificate gallery/milestones page. A page of empty squares which fill with certificates over time of project milestones and credit ranks. (Kinda brings back your pokemon collecting fettish, lol)

Or maybe some little BAM/Smiley/Rank Insignia/Milestone Trophy gif's dotted in peoples profiles?

Overall a sort of music industry Gold Disc / Platinum Disc type affair!!!

In going along with the title of this thread...in Boinc where you can set up the program to switch between tasks every 30, 60, or whatever minutes you want it too. Why not have it do this: Complete 25% (or whatever amount preferred), then switch tasks. I know that some of the bigger projects might consume more time like SETI or Einstein compared to Prime Grid or Xtremlab, but it might be useful...hopefully.

I not sure how this task switching works with the Seti@home Classic milestone level system, could you provide some info / comments on your ideas.




I think a credit system would have to include the user's number & type - speed of hosts vs the total credit level. So a single AMD x2 is not competing with 100 host / servers in some company with mega $$ to buy equipment.
A single 500mhz 256mb compaq should not have to be compared to the AMD X2 4600 2gb HP.

That wasn't exactly what I was talking about...I was just giving examples to what the new idea could do and what the possible problems might be. However I could have been a little clearer on what I was trying to explain. My fault; but anyways, In the actual BOINC program (5.10.7) there is an option in the preferences to "switch between applications every "x" minutes". So instead of using a time value to switch between different apps. why not use a percentage value? So the option would read "switch between applications for every "x" percent completed".

Very good idea, that way you could finish a long work unit like Einstein is sending out now. I also find some projects use due date and size to "jump ahead" of others even if you set their preference to 400 and others to 1000. This would solve that problem. I now have to set a project to no new work to stop it from loading up the computer with close dates and small wu's size.

Exactly!, I need to manually control the amount of work from the different projects I have as well. Now the only problem...where to suggest this so someone may actually put this in the next version of the program.

Create a ticket on Trac. It does require separate registration.

Thank you, I posted the suggestion on there. Here is the link if you want to look at it.
Trac Post

I just changed the milestone as 5.10 is released to the public and feature complete.

First, picantecomputing, great topic! How about this thought. We (The Boinc world active users) start a petition to top websites such as Yahoo, Google, Ask, MSN, Micro$oft, Apple, CBS, NBC... I think you get my point, to add a Boinc addvertisement to the top right corner of thier website. I am sure they could consider this a a tax deducable contribution in some way or another

Yah, it would definitely help to have a sponsor of sorts that already has the advertising infrastructure to make it happen. You would think a company like Google would be all over this, since apparently they're trying to get their fingers into just about every pie out there. Plus, they provided exposure to Folding@home a few years back as part of Google Labs. Really, some mega-corporation would need to take this on as a pet project, much like IBM has taken on WCG (for better or worse). Let me qualify that - some company would need to take it on, not take it over.

Anyone out there have connections we can put to good use? I have to think that in this kind of community there's a Google person or two that could help make it happen.

Or also - here's one for Willy - how about setting up a Send to a Friend feature to make it quick and easy to recruit family, friends and colleagues right from BOINCstats, much like this WCG page? We'd need to write a nice, concise description (in multiple languages, of course) of what BOINC is and how people can help (including maybe a quick list of setup steps), so that the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented every time someone wants to pass this on to someone else. Maybe there's even a way to track how many new folks come to BOINC this way - might make for nice publicity for BS (?). I don't know if Willy has time to read all these boards, so maybe I'll post in the suggestions forum as well.

Typically "ad space" has a monitary value assigned to it. If companies like Google, Yahoo, Micorsloth dedicated a small advertising space to Boinc I would think they could write it off as a donation to a Non Profit orginization.

I am wondering as a member of the Boinc community if I could take the liberty of writing said companies making the request for free advertising. But I wouldn't want to over step my bounds.

Grid Republic has free advertising space on adwords. They are also promoting the projects (though all links go to the GR website first).

Projects have that already (but not all have a visible link to it! that has to change...). See Tell your friends about SETI@home.

Yah, that's the thing...it's fine to have it, but if no one can see it, then it's useless. I'm talking about something that ideally would be a major left-hand link, get seen repeatedly by BS users - and USED often! Why the whole world is not participating in BOINC is, IMO, mostly a question of exposing people to the concept and showing them how easy it is. I realize the electricity thing is an issue for some, but I'd bet a sizable slice of the population (certainly FAR more than 1 million+ worldwide) would be willing to sign up. Hell, how many people break out their checkbooks every year to donate to one cause or another?

picantecomputing...I like and agree with your post 222681 -with emphasis on 'BOINCstats' (and not just randome projects)...just a quick note (Im not sure if this has been mentioned in this post yet) - All this crunching must be worth somthing to various research companies using the data gained from BOINCing (government grants etc.) it seems to me that this could help fund the basis for a reward points plan...

I think most of these projects are working off of grants and private donations alone and the only thing that Boinc really does is save them money on computing power. Since we (Boinc users) donate that to them from our own pockets in the benefit of science.

Hi,

Firstly I've only been running BOINC since jan/feb this year. About a year before that I ran WCG and before that I ran SETI.

I think first and foremost the encouragement to run BOINC is that by donating your spare clock cycles you can be helping a worthy cause and that is certainly the motivation for me. When I explain the credit system to a non-BOINCer (can't think of a better word) I quite often get a reply along the lines of "What can you do with them?".

I like the idea of prizes (who doesn't?) but as people have already pointed out there are 2 major problems: a) who pays for them and b) how to award them fairly. Part of the problem with providing money for the prizes is corporations will want publicity for their involvement and if they don't get that they pull the funding. Something some companies are doing here in the UK is they are combining "Green Issues" with their product - i.e. if you open an account with them they'll give some money to some project. What I was wondering is that there are credit cards out there that have some involvement with charity - for instance they might give 1% of what you spend to charity. If BOINC could get involved with something like that...

I really like the idea of certificates since they'd surely cost very little if it was just a webpage that the user printed off themselves. Also if some people chose to display their certificates that might bring others to "the cause". Perhaps in terms of hours and credit. So even if someone was running a slower computer they'd still get the hours certificate.

Something that would be great would be if large companies that leave whole floors of computers on 24/7 doing little more than word processing (when these computers are "over powered" for such a task) could be encouraged to run BOINC. I can understand that they might not want to do this for security reasons. Surely it'd be a feather in their cap and something to tell customers - "Our computers donate some of their processing power to help science" or something.

In terms of simple ideas to retain people - what about reminder emails? They'd need to be encouraging rather than nagging and with an easily seen unsubscribe link so as not to annoy people.

Already exists on some projects. It might even be part of the standard server software.




This feature also already exists in the standard server set up. WCG has sent them. Docking has sent them. Seti occasionally sends them. David A posts to the projects list every once in a while reminding new admins of this feature.

It'd be great if all the projects had/used these features then.

It is. Add cert1.php at the end of any project URL.