Future of the Formula BOINC

[UBT - Timbo]

If Rosetta or WCG are selected for one of the last 3 FB sprints, one of these two projects will have benefited from 15% of the FB sprints. I do not find this fair for the BOINC projects community.

This is my personal opinion. We are moving away from the original spirit of the FB.

Hi

I take your point. And I would like to think that this would not happen...and this is my personal opinion too.

BUT...the issue is selecting suitable projects that do have plenty of tasks...otherwise, there will be major criticism IF a project with few tasks was selected.

But you have to remember that in previous years, there were fewer Sprints and more projects to choose from.

And as I have mentioned before, there were 23 Sprints planned for this season...with 26 projects listed on the FB website...but as we know, at least 4 of those projects cannot handle a Sprint, another 3 have had few tasks this year and another 2 have restrictions on what sort of hosts can crunch their tasks. So, 9 out of 26 are "questionable"...

So, that means (in reality) 15 projects over 23 Sprints. So, some projects will be selected at least 2 times...

And with respect, both Rosetta and WCG are very well run projects and have an excellent reputation for using the time and resources of BOINC members for the "greater good"...

There are only 3 more Sprints that will happen this season...and I am sure that, whichever projects are chosen, FB members will do their best to support the projects....as I think this is the original spirit of BOINC.

regards
Tim

[marsinp]

Thank You Tim. for this post. (admin edit: In another thread, not this one).
I follow very accurate SETIBZH, also Sprint.
I think you konw who I am.
Your work is very apprciated. It help 'Seb" .
Some team are in real competition on FB.
One suggestion : the three first in league 1 goes to "super league".
Perhaps, it will increase interest for less powerfull team. And so open a way for new candidate.
And also to ban team, who are master in one year and then nothing do the next year !
Gridcoin is excluded. Nice. But there are not the only one with thousand of CPU/GPU.
The final goal is to h'lp research. On all projects.
But if some team can not grow up, it will result a full disinterse. Who will suffer ? The research !
Not the goal of PRJ.
Think about it.
Best regards

[PecosRiverM]

So if I understand your post:
A) You want the Top 3 (Best) Teams to be removed to their own League. So the rest can feel better about themselves.
B) You want a Team Banned if they decide to Not Compete after they Mastered the year before. Not with standing they may have Lost Team members,
Tired and need a Break, or any other reason?

I think both are Bad Idea's.. But hey that's just me.

[scole of TSBT]

Yeah, if you aren't happy competing in league 1 there is always league 2 or 3

[Cougarpelardou]

Yeah, if you aren't happy competing in league 1 there is always league 2 or 3

[UBT - Timbo]

Thank You Tim. for this post. (admin edit: In another thread, not this one).
I follow very accurate SETIBZH, also Sprint.
I think you konw who I am.

Hiya

Your work is very apprciated. It help 'Seb" .

Thank you

Some team are in real competition on FB.
One suggestion : the three first in league 1 goes to "super league".
Perhaps, it will increase interest for less powerfull team. And so open a way for new candidate.
And also to ban team, who are master in one year and then nothing do the next year !
Gridcoin is excluded. Nice. But there are not the only one with thousand of CPU/GPU.
The final goal is to h'lp research. On all projects.
But if some team can not grow up, it will result a full disinterse. Who will suffer ? The research !
Not the goal of PRJ.
Think about it.
Best regards

To be honest, I have always held the view that Project Challenges as well as those created by teams on their own website or within BOINCstats, are ONE WAY of creating a lot of completed tasks, which once uploaded, will significantly assist the specified project, in a short period of time.

And having a competitive element to this, (by way of some independent points system (as FB does) or perhaps with "badges" that teams can be rewarded with), is good because it helps to generate lots of member interest, in helping their team and thereby the project.

And I think it is obvious from the many Challenges in the past, that members feel excited if their team is doing well...and if it isn't doing well, then they should perhaps persuade more members in their own team to contribute.

And in simple terms, it should also be Fun !!

However, making things more complicated just turns people off (in my humble view)...Keeping scoring systems simple for teams, should make it easier for members to see how much their contribution is helping.

The current issue is that there are some teams who are very good at recruiting members to get involved with Challenges...and some teams have more difficulty in doing this, so we have a major difference between the "crunching power" of some teams (who have many hosts) and some other teams who have just a few active members.

This is why a few years back, the original single League was split into 3 divisions...with the more powerful teams in League 1, weaker teams in League 2 and the weakest teams in League 3.

And generally speaking this I think has been a good thing...but it does rely on their being many powerful teams who are all contributing...

We know how unfair this can be when one team was dominating almost every Sprint, through massive team membership numbers and the sheer volumes of credits they generated...though these credits were mainly from members who knew nothing about FB...

So, creating a new "Super League" and retaining the original 3 Leagues will not really "help" the projects and it won't really help the "competitiveness" of the Sprints wither (in my view), especially if some of the Super League teams decide to take a rest...

Personally, I think we should keep the 3 Leagues, but perhaps increase the frequency of promotion and demotion - so instead of this happening ONCE a year (at the end of the season), instead reward "very" active teams with promotion maybe every 2 or 3 months, based on their overall cumulative total credit score for the year....which will mean that competition amongst teams will be higher...and in a short period of time inactive teams will be demoted very quickly...which should be enough for them to either accept it, or to become more active...and climb back up the Leagues.

So, rewards can be given more often (by way of promotion), rather than building up to a "final" few days, when it could be quite difficult for any "overtaking" to take place, especially on the Marathon.

In the end, it will be for Sebastien to decide what should happen in the future. All we can do is to use this forum to put forward ideas and perhaps alternative ways of generating interest in FB (and in the projects as a result) can be found that is simple to administrate and interesting for members to get involved with.

If anyone has ANY ideas, (that are workable and easy to understand), please put them forward.

regards
Tim

[Cougarpelardou]

Only one team does the sprint in division 3. Shouldn't we ask ourselves questions?

[UBT - Timbo]

Only one team does the sprint in division 3. Shouldn't we ask ourselves questions?

Hi

Well, your observation seems to be true for the current Sprint involving SRBase...but other recent Sprints has seen more active teams in League 3.

Of course the question should be asked: Do these teams actually know about each Sprint? Or are the credits shown, just based on a teams "regular" support for each project?

Maybe we need to send a request to each team BEFORE each Sprint to see if they WANT to be included?

Those teams that do NOT respond can then be excluded? And then we can have a "real" competition between fully active teams.

regards
Tim

[Icecold-TAAT]

Of course the question should be asked: Do these teams actually know about each Sprint? Or are the credits shown, just based on a teams "regular" support for each project?

Maybe we need to send a request to each team BEFORE each Sprint to see if they WANT to be included?

Those teams that do NOT respond can then be excluded? And then we can have a "real" competition between fully active teams.

regards
Tim

It's an idea I've had before, and had posted about before, but I think it would be fairly difficult to contact most league 3 teams. I had looked into it before since I thought a grassroots effort to make sure teams were aware of what they're competing in(and maybe prompt them to actually compete) would be a good idea, but half the team websites listed for those teams go nowhere, and the ones that do go somewhere often have very limited or no information. Gay USA for example goes to a Facebook page where there hasn't been a post since SETI was cancelled, and the last post before that is somebody asking if it's even the correct team they thought they were crunching under.

"seti-teamartbell.com is parked free, courtesy of GoDaddy.com." etc. You could contact one of their top producers on a project website and hope to connect, I suppose, but it seemed pretty daunting to me.

Trimming the leagues of teams that don't want to compete would be beneficial. No need to ban them, just trim them out, and if they want added in the following year add them back in. Even if you ended up with only 15 teams or something overall, the current standings are confusing because of how many teams that are just in there by default. Once you figure out what teams want to compete it would make the league reorganization make more sense. I don't think most league 2 and 3 teams are even trying to compete(though Crunching@EVGA and OCN are killing it in league 2 this year - shout out to them!), a single person with a couple 5950x machines each paired with a 3070 could probably win League 3 at this point. That seems against the spirit of the competition if a single person could win an entire league just by having a decent PC or two and running it all year?

I'm not sure if Aurum is still around these forums but his team In Science We Trust probably should have been added to this year's competition as well. Maybe it can be added next year if they're still interested in competing? The shortage in teams wanting to compete seems to be the biggest hurdle currently.

[marsinp]

Thank You Tim. for this post. (admin edit: In another thread, not this one).
I follow very accurate SETIBZH, also Sprint.
I think you know who I am.

Hiya

Your work is very appreciated. It help 'Seb" .

Thank you

Some team are in real competition on FB.
One suggestion : the three first in league 1 goes to "super league".
Perhaps, it will increase interest for less powerfull team. And so open a way for new candidate.
And also to ban team, who are master in one year and then nothing do the next year !
Gridcoin is excluded. Nice. But there are not the only one with thousand of CPU/GPU.
The final goal is to h'lp research. On all projects.
But if some team can not grow up, it will result a full disinterse. Who will suffer ? The research !
Not the goal of PRJ.
Think about it.
Best regards

T
Personally, I think we should keep the 3 Leagues, but perhaps increase the frequency of promotion and demotion - so instead of this happening ONCE a year (at the end of the season), instead reward "very" active teams with promotion maybe every 2 or 3 months, based on their overall cumulative total credit score for the year....which will mean that competition amongst teams will be higher...and in a short period of time inactive teams will be relegated very quickly...which should be enough for them to either accept it, or to become more active...and climb back up the Leagues.

Hello Tim,
To change more often, will become (I think) unmanageable , and will bring much more problems.
Example : let us imagine, evaluation of league change on 01 august, when a sprint is running !?
Then the cumulative credit is perhaps not a good idea because the CR is very different between PRJ.
Look Collatz and compare with ODLK ! By cumulative CR, probably everyone will crunch on Collatz. It is not the goal !

Second point : imagine a team (top or latest) who know they will change. Perhaps, they will stop crunching, regarding the actual scores in the other league. It is opening a door for calculation and only tactic..

Third point.
Look on Collatz the latest league 1, who would go to league 2. He also be the latest. In fact, it will be the 23th in league 3

So, I really think, the system on cumulative credits is not a very good idea .

I stay with suggestion of a super league, why not based on amount user/CPU/GPU ?

I think to stay with our actual system.