FormulaBoinc Forum

I didn't read the whole long list of posts, so my apology if I miss any critical information. I think it is clear that we have a trust issue here in the FB sprint in particular about knowing the project ahead of time or even guessing the project correctly in advance. It is difficult to ascertain that this is inside information ( guilty by associations?) or just my lucky day or a strategy employed by downloading tasks of several likely projects ahead of the announcement with the intention of not processing and returning all the tasks once the project is known.

Whether trust is earned or given, the way the sprint is organized should focus on building that utmost trust and integrity and also without harming the BOINC project itself. Some project admins may detest if the sprint can cause problem to their server (and their project), so at least communicate with the project admins/owners in advance if they want to participate or if they can do special thing to handle the surge in load or the steering committee could just decide that this project is not suitable for sprint. Ok, I'm just repeating what others have said.

Lastly, as a comparison, I have to say that I trust SG pentathlon more than FB sprint when in comes to the integrity of keeping the project selection secret. Granted one can have a very good guess of this year pentathlon projects but that's not the point.

I offer no immediate or practical solutions but in my opinion the steering committee number one action item: TRUST.

P.S. might be a good idea to lay out the rules for selecting project in sprint. I couldn't find a single page that describes this clearly, at least not in here viewforum.php?f=5 or here https://formula-boinc.org/regles.py?lang=&year=2021. Can someone please point me to the right place?

[H]pututu wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 5:54 pm P.S. might be a good idea to lay out the rules for selecting project in sprint. I couldn't find a single page that describes this clearly, at least not in here viewforum.php?f=5 or here https://formula-boinc.org/regles.py?lang=&year=2021. Can someone please point me to the right place?

Hi

I do not think there are any "Sprint rules" laid down for choosing a project.

Originally the Sprint was chosen by a random, automated process that was running on the website and from a list of "suitable" projects...but this sometimes had issues and the website stopped working for a while until Sebastien (as "FB commander") fixed it. This caused some people to get angry and frustrated.

So, in 2020, a selection of "team representatives" voted on an online poll...and they (on behalf their team perhaps) could choose whichever project they wanted (from a selected list) and the project with the most votes was selected - if it was a "tie" Sebastien chose one. But few "representatives" actually bothered to vote...sometimes maybe less than 15 votes were cast from over 75 "teams". And sometimes, it was less than 10 votes.

This year, we have some volunteers who make up the "Sprint Committee". Only 4 asked to apply so there are only 4 people (plus Sebastien) who are on the Sprint Committee. These volunteer members choose freely which project they would like and the project with the majority of votes is chosen and then this is advised to Sebastien...and if he agrees then it is selected. (If there is a "tie" then a 2nd poll is taken of just the top votes).

That is how it has worked until now.

Sadly one Sprint Committee member made a "judgment of error" just as this 2nd Sprint was starting and has now resigned, leaving 3 members.

There have been calls made in this thread for a way to remove the "human" part of the process and I have submitted a proposal to Sebastien as to how we can make a random choice from the selected project list, which does not rely on some website code that might go wrong...and it removes the potential issue that some members think that the choice made (by the Committee members) has been pre-planned or staged to suit a particular team.

The Sprint Committee has already voted on the #3 Sprint project choice and this will be put forward to Sebastien soon.

But I am hopeful that the #4 Sprint can perhaps be "trialled" by the suggestion I have made and this could be the way forward, if it works. And it is such a simple plan, I am surprised it hasn't been thought of before - and it does remove ALL human involvement in the choice process...

This I hope will help to restore the TRUST in the method of choosing a Sprint project.

regards
Tim
(Site Admin)

PS: Please note that there is a "Steering Committee" AND a "Sprint Committee" - the two are NOT the same.

Perhaps it is time to look at separating the marathon and the sprint, each with their own rankings and winners? The sprint committee can oversee the sprint event if that's how it is been setup. Clearly both events require different set of commitments and strategies. The marathon probably benefits most smaller projects in the long run. The sprint (3 + 1 day) could wreck havoc to the project (e.g. server crash) at times and create distrust in this community. Let each team decides if they want to participate in the marathon, the sprint only or both.

[H]pututu wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 10:01 pm Perhaps it is time to look at separating the marathon and the sprint, each with their own rankings and winners? The sprint committee can oversee the sprint event if that's how it is been setup. Clearly both events require different set of commitments and strategies. The marathon probably benefits most smaller projects in the long run. The sprint (3 + 1 day) could wreck havoc to the project (e.g. server crash) at times and create distrust in this community. Let each team decides if they want to participate in the marathon, the sprint only or both.

Hi

Thanks for your input.

The format, AFAIK, is decided by Sebastien, so if a change was to happen he would need to agree to it.

However, the idea of Formula BOINC has been to emulate the Formula One racing series, first with the Marathon (which was simple yearly race) and then in 2017, came the Sprints, which (pre-Covid), took place on the same weekends as the F1 races.

And the teams on each earn FB points which are added together to produce the league tables.

Separating the Marathons and the Sprints might be possible and to be "more like" F1, perhaps there could be a Drivers Championship (for team members) and a Constructors Championship (for teams).

The two sets of "FB points" could be easily separated, but there is a problem if any member(s) switch teams, at any time during the season (and which can happen multiple times)...so the driver/member gets his individual FB points, but which of the teams he has "driven for" (ie teams he joined) would get his points on each sprint, especially if he switches "mid-race"...and getting a script to monitor these "driver" changes (and hence award points) could be tricky.

A way around this is to ask members to register their participation, in advance of each FB season and the driver/member has to stick with their chosen team for the year, else he loses the points? This sort of idea has already been suggested to Sebastien (for other reasons) so it could happen but not for this year.

regards
Tim

Keep it all combined. I think the sprint committee should just keep an updated list of projects that are viable and want to participate in a sprint, then have the project randomly chosen automatically. The list of viable projects could be public. That way everyone has the same info. If a project chokes, suck it up. That's what we used to do instead of gripe and complain.

And I think everyone needs to express a lot of gratitude to Sebastian for sticking with this as long as he has. I certainly appreciate all the effort he puts into FB and WUProp.

scole of TSBT wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 1:18 am Keep it all combined. I think the sprint committee should just keep an updated list of projects that are viable and want to participate in a sprint, then have the project randomly chosen automatically. The list of viable projects could be public. That way everyone has the same info. If a project chokes, suck it up. That's what we used to do instead of gripe and complain.

And I think everyone needs to express a lot of gratitude to Sebastian for sticking with this as long as he has. I certainly appreciate all the effort he puts into FB and WUProp.

+1

UBT - Timbo wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:21 pm The two sets of "FB points" could be easily separated, but there is a problem if any member(s) switch teams, at any time during the season (and which can happen multiple times)...so the driver/member gets his individual FB points, but which of the teams he has "driven for" (ie teams he joined) would get his points on each sprint, especially if he switches "mid-race"...and getting a script to monitor these "driver" changes (and hence award points) could be tricky.

I would suggest keeping it simple that for the drivers championship (i.e. the FB sprint) only consider team standing. Something to consider next year.

[H]pututu wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 6:16 am I would suggest keeping it simple that for the drivers championship (i.e. the FB sprint) only consider team standing. Something to consider next year.

Hi

Thanks for the post and view.

Keeping it simple makes a whole load of sense. And it would (might?) be easy to implement, though perhaps not as "easy or simple," as the existing "system".

But it is certainly a different way of generating interest in BOINC and helping the projects with the data we crunch for them.

PS: I have now respectfully moved this part of this thread to this "Suggestions and Bugs" section as it is perhaps more appropriate to tbe here as a separate post, rather than being "buried" in the other thread (which is about something else entirely).

regards
Tim