Ok, I will admit that one thing we could do better (myself definitely included) is to 1) included more science talk and 2) perhaps you're suggesting, mo.v, make sure the information on the scientist(s) is available. I think solving both could help. I mean for example I was recently at a conference and talked about the project and I'm going to do a poster at the AAS meeting in St Louis. I plan on posting the papers/abstracts on the web. So one thing (and this has been mention on the mailing lists) listing publications related to the project will address both issues, because it'll show 1) science about and resulting from the project and 2) who the scientist is and what his/her credentials are. So that's a good solution to that problem. That doesn't require unification or me meeting David Anderson (not that I wouldn't mind, but we haven't been to the same conferences :/ ).

---

Team Picard

I don't think that when David Anderson says he 'knows' project administrators he necessarily means he's met them face to face.

Perhaps some projects prefer not to be on the 'recommended' list because they have enough crunchers already and don't want a big new influx. It would still be nice to know whether Berkeley considers that these projects have all the security measures in place.

I don't think that when David Anderson says he 'knows' project administrators he necessarily means he's met them face to face.

Perhaps some projects prefer not to be on the 'recommended' list because they have enough crunchers already and don't want a big new influx. It would still be nice to know whether Berkeley considers that these projects have all the security measures in place.

Hmmm, I understand. I think this is a good point. Or perhaps a tag at the bottom of the project page like what exists for w3c compliance. A boinc security check logo? I kind of like that idea.

---

Team Picard

OK, i really like the tone of this conversation, its very good and very constructive. Now there are some really good suggestions being made.

What do i mean by the Idea of Unification of BOINC projects?

This is not going to effect any individual project, so yomshleeshee, you can relax. I am not suggesting in any way that anyone is going to change your project. You are running a fine project and doing an excellent job!

David, and others, have made it quite clear that its not a good idea to carry combined project information of "ALL BOINC PROJECTS", none excluded, on the BOINC website.

So that means that we need a second website where we can put "ALL BOINC PROJECTS" information. This second website would carry all the information that David and the BOINC team do not want on the BOINC website. I have been speaking to another BOINC project administrator and i think we might have an appropriate website where this can be done.

If we can reach agreement with David Anderson to support this second website through "BOINC-LINK", then we can use it for all the things that i suggested in my first post.

I would be willing to personally run the website if others agreed. I would also be willing to give several other BOINC project admins full access to the administration of the website, David Anderson included if he likes.

The new website would be, in a way, a duplicate BOINC website. It would contain everything that is currently on the BOINC Berkeley website but everything would be better organised with complete navigation, BOINC-WIKI, documentation, user forums, etc, etc.

The big difference between the new website and the BOINC Berkeley website would be the fact that this website would have an open management structure where any BOINC project administrator could login to the administrative features of the website. But equally, ordinary BOINC users could also create an account on the website and submit contributions to any of a number of different categories. Any project admin that does not want to be part of this is welcome to just continue as things are now, nothing would change. This new website would just be a common place to collect information about BOINC and ALL the projects.

We just need David Anderson to consent to something like this type of "BOINC-LINK" bar on the BOINC website;


Or this;



If David Anderson does not support this idea through "BOINC-LINK", then this second website will be no better than any of the thousand website that are currently involved in BOINC, documentation, chat, etc, etc.

John.

---

| Irelandboinc.com | PaddysInSpace.com

This is not going to effect any individual project, so yomshleeshee, you can relax. I am not suggesting in any way that anyone is going to change your project. You are running a fine project and doing an excellent job!

Lol. Thanks John! Well, I think your and Mike O's suggests were starting to diverge a good bit. But this post is quite well put. So...

The big difference between the new website and the BOINC Berkeley website would be the fact that this website would have an open management structure where any BOINC project administrator could login to the administrative features of the website. But equally, ordinary BOINC users could also create an account on the website and submit contributions to any of a number of different categories. Any project admin that does not want to be part of this is welcome to just continue as things are now, nothing would change.

Again, I really hate to sound like a squeaky wheel here. But this seem a bit redundant with teams and Account managers. BUT that being said. Look if you guys want to host the one big site full of information. More power to you. I would say though, if you going to do that, you need to give the project managers admin access (at least to their own content). Because don't forget this is their own intellectual property. I mean I've already seem my own images altered and posted on team pages. I don't particularly care for some of the "artist" licenses, but nothing that has really bothered me. However, if you're mirroring the science part, say papers (links would be preferred), project admins should get some oversight. But a big boinc mirror which is what this new John post is sound like is fine. I mean, again to me it seems redundant, but if you want to do it. Go for it. I mean most of this could and is done a big team page, like mine. I never go to project pages, except to post on a forum (which admittedly is rare).

---

Team Picard

A lot of Boinc crunchers would like projects to show a security compliance logo. For example, when the BBC project was set up and many thousands of people joined straight after a BBC television programme about climate, there were several forum queries about how safe crunching would be.

But I have a funny feeling that the Boinc people in Berkeley won't feel able to actually guarantee projects' compliance with security measures by awarding a logo. A logo looks like a guarantee.

Instead of creating a new website, what about adding new pages to the Unofficial Boinc Wiki which anyone can edit. I know that parts of it are outdated and should be deleted if/when they're superseded by pages in the new Boinc Wiki, but I very much hope it won't disappear any time soon. There's already stuff there about projects.

One advantage of the UBW is that there are already many links to it from websites and forums.

Let me address the the current problem with all the other really big BOINC team and information website. I will name a few big ones.
Teams websites;
SETI.USA; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No
SETI.Germany; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No
BOINC Synergy; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No
L'Alliance Francophone; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No

Info websites;
boinc.mundayweb.com/; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No
www.boinc-wiki.info; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No
GridRepublic; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No
www.boincstats.com/bam/; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No
Boincteams.com; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No


BOINC Berkeley website; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No

**********

So the answer is NO in every case!

This new website will have a proper management structure based on the merit and ability of the individual.

Can yomshleeshee be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; Yes, if he chooses to be involved.

Can mo.v be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; Yes, if he chooses to be involved.

Can Eric Myers be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; Yes, if he chooses to be involved.

Can Any Project Admin be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; Yes, if he chooses to be involved.

Can David Anderson be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; Yes, if he chooses to be involved.

*********
Can Everybody be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; No. But there will be a management hierarchy or chain of command that will be completely transparent and posted on the website. Anybody will be able to get involved in some way!

******

You get the picture!, everybody can play a part in the website, its the whole idea!

John.

---

| Irelandboinc.com | PaddysInSpace.com

Im sorry if any one as felt insulted by my posts.. I didnt realize so many people would get so bent out of shape over some ideas I threw out.

That aside.

Here's an idea that popped in my head at work today about that unified link bar.

Some one could have the menu stored at thier site.. Anderson's maybe.. Maybe BOINC's.. A single small html page that contains the Unified bar. Everyone's sites that are hosting projects could have an iframe, top or bottom with its content pointed to the site that has that single html menu stored.. The idea here being.. make one change to one menu and presto-chango, all menus are updated. Of course, all the links to the graphics in that html would have to be full internet paths back to where that little html menu is or the content on the bar would not show up. The iframe could be set to ALLOWTRANSPARENT and if the little html's backgorund color is set to transparent, the individual logos would look to be just floating on each projects page.
In the root on someones site, some one could make a folder and call it unified_menu.
there should be some sort of backup at another site incase access to that first site is down for some reason and code to look there if it cant find it at the first location.

About us non-scientist....
We are the people that are going to crunch the numbers for projects.. I think WE have every right to decide if a project looks like a waste of time. If you can't put your project before the ones that will be using watts and clock cycles to run 'your science'.. AND your science cant be explained in a way that an average cruncher can understand at least part of, that in it's self makes it useless in my opinion.

I think very few projects would be rejected.

This new website will have a proper management structure based on the merit and ability of the individual.

Can yomshleeshee be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; Yes, if he chooses to be involved.

Can mo.v be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; Yes, if he chooses to be involved.

Can Eric Myers be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; Yes, if he chooses to be involved.

Can Any Project Admin be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; Yes, if he chooses to be involved.

Can David Anderson be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; Yes, if he chooses to be involved.

*********
Can Everybody be involved in the administration of the website?; Answer; No. But there will be a management hierarchy or chain of command that will be completely transparent and posted on the website. Anybody will be able to get involved in some way!

******

You get the picture!, everybody can play a part in the website, its the whole idea!

John.

I think this is a great idea..
As you know John and everyone that has an active site, every single folder can have its own password. some parts of the site should be unreachable just for the sake of something being messed up some how like the database location for forums and such. All of that is up to the ones that decide to put a site together and need to decide on what folder structure is best.
Just my 2cents..

Bam.boincstats.com; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No

I have really thought about this. One problem I had with is, how do I determine who is the proper admin of a project, and, like David said it, how to find out if they are being legit.

Another thing: BAM! and BOINCstats are well known in the BOINC world, yet out of all projects currently available on my site maybe 3 or 4 asked to be included. All others never contacted me and I found them because somebody (other than someone involved in the project) mentioned the project or by some nasty browsing through my apache referral logs. This makes me think: do these project admins actually want to be involved with anything other than their own little part of the BOINC universe?

---

BOINCstats | BAM!

Bam.boincstats.com; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No

I have really thought about this. One problem I had with is, how do I determine who is the proper admin of a project, and, like David said it, how to find out if they are being legit.

In reality Willy, the website is not going to need 50 admins. It might need 2 or 3 super Administrators, there can be 15 or 20 people with access to the back end. There can be 10,000 users submitting stuff in some way or other if they choose.

To be honest, it will be very difficult to get this going in the first place. It sounds great in theory, we need David to state that he will back it first. Its very hard to get people involved in anything!

John.

---

| Irelandboinc.com | PaddysInSpace.com

About us non-scientist....
We are the people that are going to crunch the numbers for projects.. I think WE have every right to decide if a project looks like a waste of time. If you can't put your project before the ones that will be using watts and clock cycles to run 'your science'.. AND your science cant be explained in a way that an average cruncher can understand at least part of, that in it's self makes it useless in my opinion.

I think very few projects would be rejected.

The cpdn project is about a very technical, emotive, subject that most people don't understand, and an awful lot think is a waste of time. Your president and his pals in the oil and gas industry, for example.

For those that do want to know a bit about it, there's always the Open University's short course 'Modelling the Climate', at the OU, Milton Keynes, England.
But how many will/would bother to do that? People don't even read all of the research papers that are linkled from the projects website.

All of what is being pushed in this thread can be done a lot more simply by just having a locked, publicly visible, list of projects, a short description, and where to find it.
To get on to the list, a few volunteers would check out new 'projects', perhaps on a computer set aside for the purpose in case of nasties, and then decide if it seems safe.

And the BOINC Wiki, unoffical or not, is a suitable starting place for lots of info on BOINC.

But don't start assuming that you know enough about all areas of science to decide if it's worthwhile.
And forget this "logo bar" idea - it's too cluttered and "noisy".

BOINC Berkeley website; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No

Um, actually, Yes. Almost all of boinc.berkeley.edu is in Wiki form.

According to Matt Blumberg, GridRepublic is using Joomla and will soon support user-supplied content.

I think the following division is fine:
- Documentation of BOINC software: boinc.berkeley.edu
- To learn about and join projects: GridRepublic and BAM!
Let's concentrate on improving these resources rather than starting over.

---

About us non-scientist....
We are the people that are going to crunch the numbers for projects.. I think WE have every right to decide if a project looks like a waste of time. If you can't put your project before the ones that will be using watts and clock cycles to run 'your science'.. AND your science cant be explained in a way that an average cruncher can understand at least part of, that in it's self makes it useless in my opinion.

I think very few projects would be rejected.

The cpdn project is about a very technical, emotive, subject that most people don't understand, and an awful lot think is a waste of time. Your president and his pals in the oil and gas industry, for example.

For those that do want to know a bit about it, there's always the Open University's short course 'Modelling the Climate', at the OU, Milton Keynes, England.
But how many will/would bother to do that? People don't even read all of the research papers that are linkled from the projects website.

All of what is being pushed in this thread can be done a lot more simply by just having a locked, publicly visible, list of projects, a short description, and where to find it.
To get on to the list, a few volunteers would check out new 'projects', perhaps on a computer set aside for the purpose in case of nasties, and then decide if it seems safe.

And the BOINC Wiki, unoffical or not, is a suitable starting place for lots of info on BOINC.

But don't start assuming that you know enough about all areas of science to decide if it's worthwhile.
And forget this "logo bar" idea - it's too cluttered and "noisy".

Im biting me lip here. Why is it that you think I cant understand the science behind modeling global warming or trends or anything to do with atmospheric patterns?? Im tired of this debate. Why is it so many cant understand what this whole concept is of BOINC UNIFICATION? All John and I and a few would like to see happen is ONE SITE built that has a pannel of project admins, selected end users, developers and site designers working towards protecting clients and real projects from being f'ed over. To have one place to use as a portal to APPROVED PROJECTS with all the info and documentation everyone can understand. A place where crunchers have the possibility to become part of the site thru different teams pretaining to the site or other means.

And yes.. I am citizen of the USA but please dont put me in the republican side here.

Every person from age 18 and up has the right to vote in the united states. How many do you think 'know enough' about politics? Your statement has no bearing on what the rights of the boinc users should have. By placing projects that are useless all over the f'ing world, the real science projects are getting less CPU time. That is all I was trying to get at here.
Im starting to side with John here.. this is a lost battle because of the arrogants of some of the project admins. To think we cant understand science enough to make a rational decision on its ligitmacy is absurd!! Most that participate in ANY of the project or boinc forums are showing there 'want' to understand more.

BOINC Berkeley website; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No

Um, actually, Yes. Almost all of boinc.berkeley.edu is in Wiki form.

According to Matt Blumberg, GridRepublic is using Joomla and will soon support user-supplied content.

I think the following division is fine:
- Documentation of BOINC software: boinc.berkeley.edu
- To learn about and join projects: GridRepublic and BAM!
Let's concentrate on improving these resources rather than starting over.

Are you willing David to install something like the "BOINC-LINK" bar on the BOINC website? As i spelled out in this post; http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=2656&nowrap=true#17094

John.

---

| Irelandboinc.com | PaddysInSpace.com

All of what is being pushed in this thread can be done a lot more simply by just having a locked, publicly visible, list of projects, a short description, and where to find it.
To get on to the list, a few volunteers would check out new 'projects', perhaps on a computer set aside for the purpose in case of nasties, and then decide if it seems safe.

Like this?

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

Im biting me lip here. Why is it that you think I cant understand the science behind modeling global warming or trends or anything to do with atmospheric patterns??

Because you're the one proposing someone make a judgment call on whether projects should be allowed to use the BOINC framework and/or be publicized on the "unified site". Are you a master of all things science? Is anyone a master of all things science?

Why is it so many cant understand what this whole concept is of BOINC UNIFICATION? All John and I and a few would like to see happen is ONE SITE built that has a pannel of project admins, selected end users, developers and site designers working towards protecting clients and real projects from being f'ed over. To have one place to use as a portal to APPROVED PROJECTS with all the info and documentation everyone can understand. A place where crunchers have the possibility to become part of the site thru different teams pretaining to the site or other means.

Again, we have it. It exists. I don't understand why we need yet another place to put BOINC documentation. The entire reason for installing the mediawiki on the Berkeley servers was to help unify the documentation. David already has a list of projects linked to from the main page. Teams and stat sites have more information on projects than is contained on the BOINC site.

Who is going to approve projects? You need someone to read the source to make sure nothing bad will happen when I run it.. Oh wait, some projects won't release their source.

Im starting to side with John here.. this is a lost battle because of the arrogants of some of the project admins. To think we cant understand science enough to make a rational decision on its ligitmacy is absurd!! Most that participate in ANY of the project or boinc forums are showing there 'want' to understand more.

I think it's a lost cause because it already exists. The wiki on the main site is open to editing by all, as is the Trac wiki. BOINC is open source. If you want to redesign the web code, go for it. Then submit the changes to David to consideration for inclusion in the server software.

Nobody knows enough to make a judgment call as to whether a project is *useful*. Legitimate is another question all together.

---

Kathryn :o)

All of what is being pushed in this thread can be done a lot more simply by just having a locked, publicly visible, list of projects, a short description, and where to find it.
To get on to the list, a few volunteers would check out new 'projects', perhaps on a computer set aside for the purpose in case of nasties, and then decide if it seems safe.

Like this?

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

Yes, that's what I was thinking of. Although I had in mind hotlinks for the address.
But on refreshing my memory just now, (needs doing every few minutes, these days), the note there about Copy and paste into BOINC client is fair enough.

I do like the mouse over popups; reduces clutter, and makes reading the list easier.

Just a general update on this topic of "BOINC Unification" in one website.

I got a definite answer from David and BOINC will not be supporting a second website through linking or recognition of any kind.

I believe you can chat, debate and argue about whatever you like in this thread now. This discussion has served its intended purpose. Everything else is just small talk.

Thank you to everyone that participated in this discussion!

John.

---

| Irelandboinc.com | PaddysInSpace.com

Just got back from shopping, perhaps a little too late.

Been thinking while I was out:
Why does a new "all in one" website HAVE to replace the present BOINC, or have approval from David?

Those who want something cool and flashy (both figuratively, and literally), can STILL do this, and just link all of the present info, such as BOINC (BOINC/dev), stats site, a list of all projects, warnings about everything you think of, etc.
2 warnings that I thought of while out:

1) "Any computer(s) that a person wants to attach to one or moe projects needs to be powerfull enough to handle the workload."
2) "It's not a good idea to attach to EVERY project on the list on one computer. Some combinations tax the hardware too much."
Or something similar for these 2.

Plus a disclaimer that the site isn't the official BOINC site.

Then those of us who aren't impressed so far can SEE what you have in mind.
If it is good, then it will get recommended by numerous others as a suitable site "to find everything".