Whilst I am aware that BOINC has a Policy om Project autonomy in which it is stated that there is no Central Directory or approval process, I wonder if we should have an internal BOINC Policy which dictates when a project is considered, Active, Inactive and or Retired.

It is getting very time consuming for users to research the status of a project as more and more projects either do not communicate with their users by keeping them up to date with News on their websites or just simply do not issue any Work Units or just simply disappear for months on end without explanation of any sort.

For example of the problems I am talking about:

1. BOINC Acive Project list as stated by BOINCStats as at Jan 11, 2015 as well as the official wiki pages list 68 Active projects. Without going into too deep, ABC@Home has not exported stats for 223 days and its webpage is inaccessible. DISTRrtGEN has not issued any WU's since Apr 2014 and there is no News about its future intentions.

2. In BOINC Manager > Tools > Add Projects only lists 41 projects as Active including the two as mentioned above, yet misses current Active projects like Bitcoin Utopia, Citizen Science Grid, SRBase, TN-Grid, WUProp amongst others.

My concern is that these lists are not updated, possibly because there is no real policy about what is considered active, inactive, or Retired project. Secondly because it is time consuming to keep these lists up to date no body is apppointed to keep them updated. Since currently 27 so called Active projects are missing from the list, users in particular New ones will give up after being told time and time to please try later.

My suggestion is to create an official policy to remove a project from our list of Active Projects after a reasonable time during which a project manager would have time to advice the users in their News Section what is going on. For example: No Work Units issued and no explanation given for a Month the project is removed as Retired. If there is a satisfactory explanation for their absence after that period, it can be replaced as Active again. If there is News that the project will not be issuing work Units say for three months than the project should be placed in the Inactive list.

As regards the list as promulgated by BOINC, I would like somebody to oversea it to make sure it is up to date I am sure somebody will have time to maintain it if we have a policy to follow.

Keep on crunching and have a nice day.

2. In BOINC Manager > Tools > Add Projects only lists 41 projects as Active including the two as mentioned above, yet misses current Active projects like Bitcoin Utopia, Citizen Science Grid, SRBase, TN-Grid, WUProp amongst others.

I wrote 2 times to DA to update this list....without result :-(

My suggestion is to create an official policy to remove a project from our list of Active Projects after a reasonable time during which a project manager would have time to advice the users in their News Section what is going on. For example: No Work Units issued and no explanation given for a Month the project is removed as Retired. If there is a satisfactory explanation for their absence after that period, it can be replaced as Active again. If there is News that the project will not be issuing work Units say for three months than the project should be placed in the Inactive list.

+1

ABC@Home has not exported stats for 223 days and its webpage is inaccessible.

I can get to http://abcathome.com/ and have read this long running thread, in which Alyssa Milburn only last October updated: We have a meeting on Monday. I'm in Amsterdam nowadays, and kind of busy there, but I think I'm the only one who is going to be able to work on this, and I don't want the project to vanish, so I think the result will be that I'll have to find the time myself. I think we should have all the IT dept stuff dealt with then. I realise it's a crappy situation; I was hoping there'd be someone in Leiden's math department who was interested in working on this (we *do* still have a budget available), especially since it's so close to being useful again.

So I wouldn't write off this project yet.

DISTRrtGEN has not issued any WU's since Apr 2014 and there is no News about its future intentions.

Plus its forums are overrun by spammers of all plumage, I agree this one seems dead in the water. Will forward that one.

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My concern is that these lists are not updated, possibly because there is no real policy about what is considered active, inactive, or Retired project.

Mon, 5 Jan 2015, BOINC web: remove SIMAP from project list
Thu, 18 Dec 2014, Add FiND@Home to project list
Sun, 11 May 2014, delete dead projects from project list

Since currently 27 so called Active projects are missing from the list

Only projects that have a public production status, who have announced to the world (through e.g. the boinc_projects email list) about who they are and what they plan to do, who have a budget of sorts and who have a good description in English on their web site, are considered active and eligible for the list. Projects with an Alpha, Beta, test or whatever other status, and who don't advertise their presence to the world, plus those who leave everything on their web site in their mother tongue language aren't really considered. No matter how long they've been throwing out work.

My suggestion is to create an official policy to remove a project from our list of Active Projects after a reasonable time during which a project manager would have time to advice the users in their News Section what is going on.

All nice and well, but who is going to do all this extra work of constantly checking if a project is still within those set boundaries? You do not expect the developers to do so, do you? As they have plenty of other stuff on their hands. Oh, but wait, you do:

As regards the list as promulgated by BOINC, I would like somebody to oversea {sic} it to make sure it is up to date I am sure somebody will have time to maintain it if we have a policy to follow.

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Maybe we could use the stats sites.

No updates greater than <time_period> then forward email to the Boinc Projects list. Similar if they are exporting stats but they haven't changed in <time_period>.

I'm sure there could be better ways but that might cater for the "retired" ones.

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MarkJ

Only projects that have a public production status, who have announced to the world (through e.g. the boinc_projects email list) about who they are and what they plan to do, who have a budget of sorts and who have a good description in English on their web site, are considered active and eligible for the list.

Dumb question, how do the stats sites learn what the new projects are if they aren't announced to the world?

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Dumb question, how do the stats sites learn what the new projects are if they aren't announced to the world?

How do individual users figure this out? There's plenty of posts about new projects in this forum alone, most of which seem too obscure to poke with a stick, quite many of them dead and gone as well.

So the stats sites will probably do it that way as well, users post about the project and ask that statistics get added.

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Projects with an Alpha, Beta, test or whatever other status, and who don't advertise their presence to the world, plus those who leave everything on their web site in their mother tongue language aren't really considered. No matter how long they've been throwing out work.

Can you explain the Alpha, Beta part a little more. I can't use BOINCStats as a reference as it is up to projects to update their info (insert my rant about that here). http://boincstats.com/en/page/projectStatusInfo However, I know for a fact that there is BETA Projects in the main list presently (and for quite some time... aka years). Even MindModeling and RNA has BETA in their name if you go to their page. (they will also tell you that their projects are still BETA if you ask.) Are you saying that characteristic + the language barrier or just the fact they are BETA could disqualify them. Just curious.

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My concern is that these lists are not updated, possibly because there is no real policy about what is considered active, inactive, or Retired project.

Mon, 5 Jan 2015, BOINC web: remove SIMAP from project list
Thu, 18 Dec 2014, Add FiND@Home to project list
Sun, 11 May 2014, delete dead projects from project list

Since currently 27 so called Active projects are missing from the list

Only projects that have a public production status, who have announced to the world (through e.g. the boinc_projects email list) about who they are and what they plan to do, who have a budget of sorts and who have a good description in English on their web site, are considered active and eligible for the list. Projects with an Alpha, Beta, test or whatever other status, and who don't advertise their presence to the world, plus those who leave everything on their web site in their mother tongue language aren't really considered. No matter how long they've been throwing out work.

My suggestion is to create an official policy to remove a project from our list of Active Projects after a reasonable time during which a project manager would have time to advice the users in their News Section what is going on.

All nice and well, but who is going to do all this extra work of constantly checking if a project is still within those set boundaries? You do not expect the developers to do so, do you? As they have plenty of other stuff on their hands. Oh, but wait, you do:

As regards the list as promulgated by BOINC, I would like somebody to oversea {sic} it to make sure it is up to date I am sure somebody will have time to maintain it if we have a policy to follow.

Jord, Please clarify your statements for I am not sure if I am reading the meanings of it correctly.

In all good faith, I pointed out the inefficiency of the ways we handle and promulgate which projects is available to a user and when should we declare a project Inactive or Retired.

1. Policy as to what project should be deemed Active. You have appeared to point out a policy regarding this. May I ask is this written as a policy somewhere or it is just your idea what it should be. As it has been pointed out by someone else as well, I can not determine which project is considered in a production status or in Beta etc for most projects do not promulgate that on their website. Are projects required to promulgate their status to the BOINC email list, if so where is it stated that it is a requirement?

Please explain why should ABC@Home should still be considered Active. At best the description should be Inactive. I repeat just because the Admin stated three months ago that she HOPE to keep the project running despite the fact that she was told that she is not on the University staff and therefore has no saying on the matter. Remember that there is nothing to that effect on their News site just some obscure statement hidden in their Message Board. It has been Inactive since April last year. How long are we going to waste our time searching every projects Message Board for News. I would like to see a clear unambiguous policy on this.

2. Administrator to maintain an up to date list. You indicate that you are concerned who is going to do this extra work of constantly checking projects.
May I suggest that once a clear policy is formulated ask for volunteers. For example I am sure that there are plenty of volunteers like me who are Retired and have the time to police it. All you got to do is ask and select the best candidate for the job.

This concludes my input, I do not wish to debate it any further for it could become an argument, I leave it up to the rest of the BOINC Community.

Even MindModeling and RNA has BETA in their name if you go to their page.

Their owners have asked that their project was added to the list. Simple as that. They've been sturdy, available enough to be granted that place. They also have results and papers to show with lots of outcomes of what people's computers have crunched.

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Jord, Please clarify your statements for I am not sure if I am reading the meanings of it correctly.

Which statements, of what? Because quoting my complete post and then adding something to the bottom is not making it clear to me what you want clarified. Then quote what you want clarified or added statements to.

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Jord, Please clarify your statements for I am not sure if I am reading the meanings of it correctly.

Which statements, of what? Because quoting my complete post and then adding something to the bottom is not making it clear to me what you want clarified. Then quote what you want clarified or added statements to.

I am sorry that you have trouble with my English and I can not speak Dutch. To make it a little simpler, let us take it one at a time.

In message 59582 you stated:
Quote:
"Only projects that have a public production status, who have announced to the world (through e.g. the boinc_projects email list) about who they are and what they plan to do, who have a budget of sorts and who have a good description in English on their web site, are considered active and eligible for the list. Projects with an Alpha, Beta, test or whatever other status, and who don't advertise their presence to the world, plus those who leave everything on their web site in their mother tongue language aren't really considered. No matter how long they've been throwing out work."
Unquote.

My question was and still is. Where can this policy be found or is this one that you think should apply? The reason for my question is that it is not very clear and I doubt that it is an Official BOINC Policy. Others have asked you to clarify your statement about Alpha, Beta states... In the event that your statements are Official Policy, once again please tell us where we or the Project Admins can read it. In particular how would they know that it is a requirement.

Keep on crunching and have a nice day...

So then it does NOT matter if they are Alpha/BETA status then. See, this is what I'm not finding as clear. Either it is a rule or it isn't. Making an exception for projects seems a bit against the point of having rules in the first place. If you are excusing a rule, why not pull the rule altogether. Just make those exceptions as potential requirements. If that is too much work, then pull the Alpha/Beta tag.

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Eight days ago I have indicated that I have a concern with the way we promulgate or state what project is considered Active, Inactive or Retired. To date my concern has not been answered adequately, indeed my question have not been answered in that time.

I have opened this thread with the following in thread 59546 on Jan 11, 2015:
Quote:
Whilst I am aware that BOINC has a Policy on Project autonomy in which it is stated that there is no Central Directory or approval process, I wonder if we should have an internal BOINC Policy which dictates when a project is considered, Active, Inactive and or Retired. Unquote.

Ageless the Admin of this Message Board indicated that there is a policy on this but did not state that it is an official policy. It appeared to be vague and not consistent in the administration of that policy, I and others have questioned its origin and legitimacy. To date I have not received a reply to my question if that policy is promulgated somewhere as an Official Policy or it is an Ad Hoc one that Ageless thinks it should be.

As a volunteer who spent thousands of dollars in supporting BOINC Projects, I demand an answer for I consider it my right to know why some projects appear to be favored and included in a list of Projects that we might pursue whilst others are not in the list. Why some projects are declared as Retired, removed from the list in less than a month whilst others are kept in the active list after nine months of inactivity?I am well aware that Stat sited have their own reasons what is considered active and Retired but because of their differences as a volunteers I was hoping that BOINC would lead the field here and provide an example to follow.

Jord, again, please answer my question: Where is the policy as stated by you written in other than this forum.? Is it to be considered an official policy and if it is how will project and or users know of its existence.?

I am not arguing the point, I am seeking answers for surely there must be a better and fairer way of promulgating what projects are considered Active, Inactive or Retired.

Keep on crunching and have a nice day...

Eight days ago I have indicated that I have a concern with the way we promulgate or state what project is considered Active, Inactive or Retired. To date my concern has not been answered adequately, indeed my question have not been answered in that time.

Answer: Ad hoc, no policy, subject to the vagaries of the people with the root password. Not what you want to hear, but what is.

As a volunteer who spent thousands of dollars in supporting BOINC Projects

BOINC is not a project. It is software that allows others to make projects and it is not the only such software out there.

I demand

LOL

why some projects appear to be favored and included in a list of Projects that we might pursue whilst others are not in the list

Ad hoc and it is up to projects to publicize themselves, not the BOINC software developer(s).

Jord, again, please answer my question

He can't. He doesn't set any such policy here if it even exists. Dr. A might know about such policies and you might respectfully inquire, but remember, he doesn't owe you an answer. There are also e-mail lists for project administrators and software developers, one or more of which might be used to talk about a policy, you might check their archives. Neither the developers or the administrators read this fora.

Keep on crunching and have a nice day...

Yes.

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Thank you Gary for putting a light on the subject that kind of answers my question that Jord chose not to answer. Having said that, I am not going to give up debating the issue for what you guys are doing is misleading and plain wrong to only advertise projects of your choosing and disregard those that you think does not meet the mark. It seems to me that over the years anytime somebody complains and justify that complaint he is shot down. What is bothering me however is that you seem to pick just a word here and there without quoting all of my sentence or answering the meaning of the paragraph suggesting that I am just a demanding kind of individual, whereas my intention was to put forward a constructive criticism and offering advice how to improve the software. In that light see my reply how I feel about your answers.

Quote:
Answer: Ad hoc, no policy, subject to the vagaries of the people with the root password. Not what you want to hear, but what is.
Unquote.

I take it by that answer that Jord was evading to answer the question and that is why he did not reply. I should clarify that, I am not against him for trying to guard the developers of the software. It now seems obvious that option for us to choose a project should not have been included without thought of how it is going to be maintained in order to be up to date and actually give New users in particular an option to choose a project.

Quote.
I demand
Unquote.

Why do you pick just one word out of my sentence. Please tell me why I can not demand an answer questioning where I might see an official policy on this. If there is no policy than why evade the answer, just say so. Why tell everybody that certain projects are not included because it does not meet the requirement. Since there is no policy than why give an answer that is not known.

As regards directing me that I should write in the developers forum or directly to Dr Anderson. First of all, I was under the impression that this forum was an official forum as it uses the official Boinc URL and it appears to me that it has been used as such for years. Secondly, it has been known to users that Dr Anderson do not have time or interest in any user bar his inner circle. I personally have written to him twice before about another matter with no reply.

No doubt for daring to suggest that we have a policy on this I am a markt person
and in time I will be told to shut up or banned.

Keep on crunching and have a nice day...



Quote.

Ad hoc and it is up to projects to publicize themselves, not the BOINC software developer(s).

Unquote.

Please tell me how an individual project is going to tell all BOINC users of their activity unless options in the BOINC software points out their existence and website address. The current method of advertising certainly does not help them very much or give choices to the users. Furthermore, why give users an option in the software if it is not maintained and kept up to date.

As regards directing me that I should write in the developers forum or directly to Dr Anderson. First of all, I was under the impression that this forum was an official BOINC forum as it uses the official Boinc URL and it appears to me that it has been used as such for years. Secondly, it has been known to users that Dr Anderson do not have time or interest in any user bar his inner circle. I personally have written to him twice before about another matter with no reply. Since you appear to be on the inner circle, please pass my concern to him for consideration.

No doubt for daring to suggest that we have a policy on this I am a markt person
and in time I will be told to shut up or banned.

Keep on crunching and have a nice day...

First, I'm not an official, nor have any inside knowledge, I just have been reading a long time. I'm not part of you guys.

First of all, I was under the impression that this forum was an official BOINC forum as it uses the official Boinc URL and it appears to me that it has been used as such for years.

Hint, there is no official BOINC forum. This because there is no official. The software development is open source. If you don't like it, fork it. No that is not a swear word, but a fork in the road. Because of that no person or board is really in charge. The code does pass trough Dr. A, but most everything else is by whoever realizes something needs to be done now, and sometimes no one notices. Also realize that is is 100% volunteer, no paycheck labor at this point. The little cash that comes in just keeps the lights blinking on the server.

As to the projects, as Jord explained, if the project admin announces his project is stable and ready on the correct e-mail list, someone is supposed to take notice and add it to the list of projects advertised. I'm sure if a project admin sent an e-mail to this list saying the project is closing, it would get removed from the list of advertised projects. I think Dr. A is webmaster here and that list likely falls under the webmasters tasks, but that is speculation.

IIRC you had a bone with ABC@home

Mon Jan 19 17:37:54 2015 | ABC@home | Project is temporarily shut down for maintenance

As you see this project still has a BOINC server that is responding to requests. It is not dead. Fight Malaria at home also went into long term quiescent, but it is now back as Find@home. You will have to check that e-mail list to see if the project admin(s) at ABC may had posted messages about their project indicating it will be revived. I don't know and haven't asked.

I see you have said you wrote Dr. A and did not get a response. From what I have inferred from what I have read this is to be expected. Dr. A does not seem to care about crunchers, they are not his priority or on his radar.

As to "demand", you can be frustrated and keep ringing the door bell, or realize the lights are on but no one is home.

I would suggest a snail mail letter to Dr. A might have a better chance of getting a reply, except I see you aren't in the USA and international mail might prevent his reply.

You might also volunteer to take on the task of updating the list, it does seem as if no one else is interested.

Gary

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I'm going to chime in here.

I demand

Umm...demand all you want-it won't get you anywhere.

As to Gary and Jord-they can't do what you want. Noone is "evading" you...they don't have the authority/access.

Contact this guy and you might get the answers you seek.

Hope the further detail helps.

I would suggest a snail mail letter to Dr. A might have a better chance of getting a reply, except I see you aren't in the USA and international mail might prevent his reply.

Contact this guy and you might get the answers you seek.

I send this mail 2 times:

Dear Mr. Anderson,
i'm one of the admins of Boinc Italy Group and i write to you after a message of Ageless (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=9191).
The project list in Boinc Manager may be updated:

1) DNA, SubnetSum and Wildlife go under CSG (http://volunteer.cs.und.edu/csg/) - The University of North Dakota.
2) Gerasim@Home (http://gerasim.boinc.ru/) - Department of coumputer engineering of Southwest State University (http://www.swsu.ru/eng/)
3) NRG@Home (http://bcb.med.usherbrooke.ca/nrg) - Najmanoviche Research Group (http://bcb.med.usherbrooke.ca/)
4) RojaScience (http://boinc.riojascience.com/) - Universidad de la Roja (http://www.unirioja.es/)
5) VTU@Home is now VGTU@Home (and i think is closed)
6) Wprop (http://wuprop.boinc-af.org/)
7) Wrong url of Volpex
8) Universe@Home (http://universeathometest.info/universe/) - Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw (http://www.astrouw.edu.pl/index.php/english-front).

Thank you
boboviz


No answer and no modification of the list....
Is it necessary a third email?

Is it necessary a third email?

It is necessary to use snail mail or the telephone.

(You are assuming that your e-mail isn't sorting into a spam folder and being auto-deleted)

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