One of the main problems in increasing the user base for a BOINC Project has been said to be security concerns by the users. While I agree that this may be a big issue, I don't have a suggestion on how it could be solved. ;)

At the same time, I've noticed that the difference between registered users/hosts compared to active users/hosts (ie those who have returned at least one result in the last 60 days) is huge. Many projects retain less than 30% of those who initially sign up. Do those just move on to other projects, or give up on BOINC entirely?

Looking at the total number of Boinc users vs active ones seems to suggest a lot give it all up - in my opinion, this is where some improvement could be made. After all those people only have to be convinced to come back - not to start in the first place.

A lot of people may have used BOINC in the past but formated, got a new computer or deinstalled BOINC for some other reason. That very well means they could have forgotten about it, or may be interested in giving it another shot.

To visualize the difference, let's take a look at some pretty graphs ;)



For those who'd prefere to look at the number of hosts:



The numbers are from boincstats taken today.

It seems to me A LOT of people were interested at one time, but lost it for whatever reason. While I also oppose any type of spam, I think sending out e-mails may very well be worth it.

Especially a call to come back for 2 weeks and help finish CASP7 may get some to return (not an open-ended task) and hopefully stick around afterwards. The e-mail should definatly include that the "solution" to what we're crunching now isn't public yet, but will be made so later and we can see how Rosetta (and distributed computing in general) did.

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Rosetta is quite well.
Look at the percentage of active users:
Predictor: 31.49%
Rosetta: 46.51%
BBC Climate: 39.89%
Einstein: 36.49%

For the hosts:
Predictor: 21.87%
Rosetta: 36.00%
BBC Climate: 40.24% (this is strange)
Einstein: 31.43%

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Member of Dutch Power Cows

Oh I didn't mean to imply Rosetta is doing bad in comparison - I just think there's a lot of potential for BOINC with people who already used it in the past. Maybe it'd be easier to convince some of those to return than to try and expand the market, so to speak.

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Well, I see your point and noticed same, all projects seem to lose ACTIVE users. We did send a newsletter back in May before CASP started to ALL Rosetta participants (that "opt-ed in" for periodic messages from the project).

At the time, the idea was to inform the base of participants about all the improvements and bug fixes that had been made, and to encourage them to fire up for CASP. We did see several days with 600+ active host adds, but this was later dwarfed when the article was published by the Associated Press and the large teams started working to meet Dr. Baker's challenge.

Unfortunately, it takes a longer timeline than 2 weeks to make such an EMail happen. It took 24hrs just to get all the EMails SENT (without monopolizing the campus network).

But I have seen a few posts indicating folks saw the message asking for more help which was posted on the news area of the Rosetta homepage (which gets replicated to boincstats and team message boards).

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

I think there are a large number of crunchers that have their favourite project, but join every new one that comes along, "just to see what it is like", without really ever intending to stay. That will boost totals but not actives.

Another issue which has affected a few projects, (in my opinion), is moving to longer wu crunch times. When members are crunching several/many projects, they, of necessity, have smaller CPU quotas, (not every project can have 100% type thing). So when the longer wu come along, the interval between result completion gets longer. People like to see results.

The credit whores have been hit by the new flop counting scoring, where before, they could get hyper credit from their highly optimised clients.

Just a few thoughts on reasons behind the observation of the OP.

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Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

Yes, "project surfing" if you will. That's exactly what I USED to do before gaining a better understanding of Rosetta.

Right now I'd say the largest audience is people that only have a partial share devoted to Rosetta, and Dr. Baker just tried to give them a nudge to lend a (larger) hand during remainder of CASP. If you look at RAC you can pretty clearly see fractional machines abound. Perhaps these machines are not powered on all day long, but I think it more likely they spend much of the day working on other projects.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

If corrent users would not be negitave about things in the Number Cruncing forums more would stay. I just stay away from those forums and crunch. Many of those threads are sounding like at SETI and many do not want to crunch for projects with that.

There are a large number of people who got BOINC because of hearing of one project someplace else and never go to the boards or other projects. If there was some way of getting the word out to them I am sure that a lot would do this. But getting there attention is a problem.

Yes Ray Brown! The most recent flame thread "User Data-sorted by Credit, CPU Type , and Ram" got killed today. Thank You Moderators!

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I think this forum/project is over moderated. It is difficult for teams to get a thread going - Look at the last FaDBeens thread (for instance) ( http:/www.fadbeens.co.uk -In case you don't know who we are :) ) Someone converted it to a general team thread. I know it isn't the be all and end all but it is nice to have a separate recruitment area and maybe even some additional forums for other things like hardware/software debates etc, etc. Projects rely on a sense of community and I don't think you get a very good sense of community by revolving all conversation around "high science" (that the average person has difficulty understanding/maybe isn’t interested in) or by (perhaps unintentionally) alienating the members and/or pretending your moderators are numberized robots!
I would suggest you loosen things up a bit (give the moderators proper human names and personalities :lol: ) and try and make the place a bit more homely and roomy. If the science is good then people will gravitate this way whether they understand it or not – To keep them/bring them back, I suggest, you will have to provide a friendlier and more expansive environment.

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Been there done that?
FaDBeens * Visit The FaDBeens Forum

Great science and no sense of community. Agreed, nec. Look at the discussion here to see how some of us were welcomed.

I detached from Rosetta@home a few days ago and may return later without my optimized BOINC client...after the "stats adjustment" issue is resolved.

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I didn't really care about the whole client/overclocking thing. The thread of which I spoke appeared to get out of control and I can't blame the Moderators for hiding it until things cool off a little.

I do agree that open discussion sould be encouaged on these forums as long as the tone remains civil.

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Heh heh. This computer won't run at the factory-unlocked processor's "normal" FSB. It BSODs when it goes too slow for the RAM. <shakes head...overclocking is cheating! ROFLMAO! I learned how to overclock on other distributed computing projects' message boards that had...er ah.. had.........t*chnical discussions. faint >

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Point made.

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Agreed.

That's the main thing that attracted me to this project.

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I said point made, not point taken.

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Coo......I wish I had said that! So true to life.

Well said Carl old chap.

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Lets see those that use optimized boinc arent welcome. Those that o/c their rigs aren't welcome. Also ex-Fadders still aren't welcome here. Your civil forum sure has had alot of flame fests of late.

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I see that Carl's post disappeared without a trace. It is in My Documents in case anyone missed it.
[quote]Message 21295 - Posted 28 Jul 2006 7:40:10 UTC
Last modified: 28 Jul 2006 7:46:39 UTC[/url]
How about getting rid of that obnoxious dog signature? 314 x 410 pixels and near 30 KB is over the top.

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No preview, and now I can't edit!!!

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