http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php shows a list of projects whose information has been verified by the BOINC project. There is also a link to a complete list of known BOINC projects. My issue is with the Complete list of projects and in particular when should a project be listed there and when should they be removed.

Bear in mind that the BOINC developers and the University of California have no control over the creation of BOINC-based projects and in general do not endorse them. Projects are independent:each maintain its own resources without a central control..Therein lies the problem. As a volunteer user if we just spend 1 minute on each project to check if it is still Active it will take you over an hour a day. On the other hand if we reduce the size of the list to those who are considered Active, issues Work Units, give information on what is going on in their NEWS section we could save considerable time.

I propose that we discuss in a thread: "Time to Retire" any project that we consider should no longer be listed. Give your reason why and allow a week or so to let others comment before it is removed. Remember that if we make a mistake or the project suddenly appears again, it will be easily be reinstated.

Your thoughts please. Personally, I believe that if a project does not talk to their users in the NEWS section (an area designed by the software developers for that purpose), does not issue work units without explanation for a Month than the project does not deserve to be listed.

Cruncher Pete, I would be fine with what you said on the last sentence. I personally don't think most donors are really checking in on the activity status of that many projects on a daily basis. I think a project is lucky if the majority of its users check in on a monthly basis. Even then, the mass majority of donors only support a hand full of projects at any given time. So, the example of how much time one needs each day to check in is a far stretch.

But I do like useful lists that make things better. We don't need a grave yard list of projects. So, I think your suggestion of active communication in the News section may be too strict as there are some project that just don't have "news" for a long period of time. However, they still communicate well in the forums. I would prefer the news feed to be used for actual news rather than a heart beat. Otherwise I'm spending more than an hour sifting through what could have just been posted in another forum/message board instead of getting "news".

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...if a project does not talk to their users in the NEWS section (an area designed by the software developers for that purpose)...

Only in the newer (post r19949) back-end code and forum software is it rather easy to add News that also shows up on the front page. Make a new thread in the News forum and it automatically shows as news on the front page.

But this News forum is not automatically enabled when a project decides to upgrade to the newer BOINC back-end and forum code. One has to specifically enable it, and run a converter program to convert old news to this new format. In the older days, the administrator(s) had to write News in HTML form directly into the front page at html/project/project_news.inc, something that not everyone found (and finds) so easy to do.

There are also project admin who find that the newer back-end and forum code are incompatible with their project, and so they do not update. It's not that easy to only install the forum software, as it has many hooks into the back-end code, so the best thing to do is update both at the same time. But if that breaks things and causes your project downtime (and costs you money), it's not something you would like to do.

Then some projects have their own personalized front page that doesn't work (well) together with the BOINC back-end and forums, which means that although they may add news to a news forum, it doesn't automatically show up on their front page news.
Or projects that use phpBB forum software, which doesn't work at all with the BOINC front page or News section.
Or projects that have personalized their older forum software so heavily that it's near impossible to translate to the newer BOINC back-end and forum code, without severely breaking things.

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