Just 500 credit for 20+ hours of crunching is not much, given the risks associated with these units, with testing where, as you say, "Don't expect ANYTHING to work here". Perhaps we deserve a bonus for crunching for such an uncertain project, wouldn't you think?

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No.

Also from the front page: "Most of the time Albert@Home will have no work to run at all, and when it has, the applcations are experimental, might be unstable, unreliable and may even damage your computer. Validation might be unreliable and we may cancel workunits without prior notice. If you care about credit, this project is certainly not the right one for you."

Also see my post here. Albert@home doesn't even export stats.

BM

Hm. Credit is the only currency we crunchers get for crunching. Strange that you feel giving credit would cost you something... All u get for credit is more crunchers. Is that bad for this project?
And why not to export stats? All projects test stuff from time to time. So what if servers need to be reset, units canceled, etc., it can happen in other projects as well. I crunch many alpha and beta projects. And they still try to treat crunchers somewhat normally...
But from your post I'm getting the feeling that discussion is not appropriate here, perhaps even asking questions like this. Well, couldn't help it. If things don't feel right, they don't feel right.
Otherwise, good luck in testing and developing the project. And this I mean sincerely.

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Albert@Home isn't an alpha or beta project, it's merely a testing ground for new applications for Einstein@Home. It's no use to attach your whole farm here, there's only need for so much testing.

Once the application and its back-end (feeder, assimilator, validator, scheduler) is deemed to work without too many problems, it can go to the main project, Einstein, where you can rack up all the credit in the world for it.

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Jord.

BOINC FAQ Service

They say most of your brain shuts down in cryo-sleep. All but the primitive side, the animal side. No wonder I'm still awake.

Several projects have alternate development sites (RALPH, SETI Beta, etc), and they *all* issue credits. They export them too. No reason to *not* award credits for work done.

As for how much/little to award, it doesn't matter, so long as the credit remain internally consistent. Cross-project parity is impossible anyway.

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Dublin, California
Team: SETI.USA

Albert@Home isn't an alpha or beta project, it's merely a testing ground for new applications for Einstein@Home.

[nitpick] Not precisely. We can and would test new applications (and application versions) either privately or on the main project. What we intend to test on Albert is server side code that can't be tested on the main project without risking serious damage. The OpenCL support of BOINC requires server side modifications, too, that's why we test the OpenCL apps here. [/nitpick]

BTW: In what sense is Albert@Home different from an alpha test project, in particular related to credit?

Several projects have alternate development sites (RALPH, SETI Beta, etc), and they *all* issue credits. They export them too. No reason to *not* award credits for work done.

I asked David Anderson about how they handle credit "on Alpha test projects". His answer was "I ignore them, and I don't run the script that exports statistics.". Thus I decided to do the same here. Did I get wrong information?

The point for me is that having to care about credit generates an amount of work (thinking, maintenance) that I don't want to commit to for a project where I may want to test something completely different. If workunits turn out to don't work for an application I want to cancel these. If for some malfunction of me or a daemon (or just for comparison) I decide to restore an old copy of the database, I will do this. If I just want to watch how one credit system compares to a different one, I'd like to run both systems in parallel or one after the other. In any of these cases (and many more) I don't want to spend time thinking about and taking measurements against people losing their valuable credits, and won't apologize for anything that goes wrong. Something going wrong is the normal case on test projects, it's the reason why these are there.

I think I didn't miss any opportunity (front page, announcements, forum posts) to point out that I don't care about credit over here, and don't want to have to; and that if you do, you shouldn't run Albert@Home but sign up for the main project.

This decision isn't final, though. When certain development currently going on here has settled a bit and we need a larger community for testing something else, I may find that worth the work to commit to proper "credit management". But not right now. I certainly have all my hands full with a lot of other things.

BM

That's all fair enough, and you've certainly made it clear in enough places regarding credit :)

But just a couple of points:

The hardcore milestone collectors will crunch *any* project that's available to them (that includes me BTW, 110 projects and rising). I took the risk, got some credit, quite happy despite losing loads of pending credit a while ago.

Your user base was inherited from Einstein, so you automatically got a whole bunch of people who were bound to be interested. Maybe if you'd started out as 'invite code only' ... But I can see that would have taken more time/effort than this approach.

As for turning off stats export, how about either leaving it running until a clearly defined date, or run it just once more at some time in the future. Maybe set the cutoff time to the dealine of the WUs (2 weeks IIRC?). And announce it in big red capitals on the front page ;) Perhaps you could email it to everyone, but I don't know how much effort that would take.

Personally, I'm not bothered whatever happens. But I can understand the angst of others :)

Cheers,

Al.

Your user base was inherited from Einstein,

The user table was copied from Einstein. But no host that was attached to Einstein was automatically attached to Albert.

As for turning off stats export, how about either leaving it running until a clearly defined date

That's certainly worth a thought. I'm still pretty busy with other things (download server), but I'll try to arrange for that.

BM

Several projects have alternate development sites (RALPH, SETI Beta, etc), and they *all* issue credits. They export them too. No reason to *not* award credits for work done.

I asked David Anderson about how they handle credit "on Alpha test projects". His answer was "I ignore them, and I don't run the script that exports statistics.". Thus I decided to do the same here. Did I get wrong information?

Yes, DA was not accurate.

DA has one "test BOINC clients" project, aka BOINC alpha, does not do real work (just UPPERCASE), and *does not* export stats.

On the other hand, his SETI Beta project, which tests new apps and sub-projects, and does real work, *does* exports stats.

And RALPH, which is the alpha project for Rosetta@home, which tests new apps, and does real work, *does* exports stats.

Amelegrid Testgrid (an active test project for Amelegrid), also exports stats.

ABC@home also had a test project, and exported stats.

Malaria Control had a test project, and they exported stats.

Cels@home also had a test project, and they exported stats.

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Dublin, California
Team: SETI.USA

I'm rather boggled by the queries here. Which part of "If you care about credit, this project is certainly not the right one for you." ( .... etc ) was unclear ? :-)

So hence quite explicitly the 'user contract' for Albert@Home is exactly that - don't ever assume credit. No surprise. As Bernd says we don't/won't have the capability/interest/manpower to account for the user credit concerns of those at Albert.

So if the question now reverts to "let's change the definition of Albert@Home" then E@H loses the primary purpose for Albert existing at all - a simple playpen for technical testing un-encumbered by the more complex milieu that applies to E@H.

What is or is not done elsewhere ( +/- Mr Anderson ) is a non-question, and argument by plurality is a non-sequitir also. We aren't elsewhere, we're here. :-)

So to be excruciatingly precise : you ought not be surprised/offended for the refusal to alter the machinations of this project !

This reminds me of a sign in a local shop "don't ask for credit as a refusal often offends" ..... :-)

Cheers, Mike.

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"I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short." - Blaise Pascal

As I have ream in other projects forums...
The boinc system is based on credits so we crunch for credits.

So my sugestion is. Use a fixed credit system. And export stats if possible.

If you want just a few people helping out: a small credit for each task.
If you feel the need for more people, just increase the credit and put a notice in for instance in www.boincstats.com and more people will join.
And let people know what kind of hardware you are developing the application for.

So I guess :

A simple "NO you can't" from a program developer would have been a nice reply

hasn't suited you for this thread then ? ;-)

Cheers, Mike.

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"I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short." - Blaise Pascal

Well, I downgraded boinc manager to 6.12.34 and installed Catalyst 11.9
Cat 11.9 works with all other projects on my ATI 5850 except for SETI(lunatics astropulse app), well it works and uses 100% CPU(an ATI bug they say).
So I am sad that I now can't do any tasks here.

But I'll be around reading the forum, maybe there soon will be a stable boinc 6.13 soon.
BM 6.13.12 really messed up the scheduling.....

//TQ

So I guess :

A simple "NO you can't" from a program developer would have been a nice reply

hasn't suited you for this thread then ? ;-)

Cheers, Mike.

...

Cheers, Mike.

Mike,
there are no cheers anywhere in your message. Just a complete disregard for crunchers.
Sorry that I even asked anything in my first message of this thread. So just let it run as it was... as TRuEQ says, at least let's have the stats export running.
Cheers to all the projects that give credit and export stats, as that is the only reward we get for burning electricity and buying expensive hardware to help project owners crunch their stuff, be it science or crap (that we cannot influence).
KPX

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I'm rather boggled by the queries here. Which part of "If you care about credit, this project is certainly not the right one for you." ( .... etc ) was unclear ? :-)

The fact that one can lose crunching time and credits because of whatever reason (bad batch, bad app, etc), that part is always inherent in test projects. That risk is always part of the testing process, and people are used to that.

The unclear (or rather the "surprising") part is where stats were being exported. This attracted a bunch of testers, and now they are being told the tasks in process will not be rewarded (assuming they validate). It would have been nice to be told in advance that this was going to change in advance. That would have given everyone time to empty their queues first, if they did not want to continue testing under the new policy change. I will ask again, Can the stats please be exported one last time (after the server has come back up and we have a change to return work in progress)?

What is or is not done elsewhere ( +/- Mr Anderson ) is a non-question, and argument by plurality is a non-sequitir also. We aren't elsewhere, we're here. :-)

My list was not an argument either for or against exporting stats. The project asked the question, so I answered the question for the project. Simple as that.

Finally, I was never asking for more/less credits. I was (am) just asking for credits, whatever they may be, to continue to be exported. This was in another thread. But that other thread got locked, and discussion was redirected to this one.

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Dublin, California
Team: SETI.USA

The fact that one can lose crunching time and credits because of whatever reason (bad batch, bad app, etc), that part is always inherent in test projects. That risk is always part of the testing process, and people are used to that.

I have to agree, the Project Abruptly Aborted over 700 Pending Wu's of mine several weeks ago giving the reason the Wu's couldn't be Validated. Yet the very same day the same Types of Wu's were being Validated for other Participants and still are up to this day. I didn't complain about it even though I lost Thousands of Hr's of Processing Time as many of the Wu's were run by CPU & took up to 15 Hr's to run.

I even reported the Gravitational Wave S6 GC search v1.01 (SSE2) Error Messages here >>> http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=8819 & what was my Reward, 700+ Wu's Aborted by the Project. Thanks for Nothing, the Project got the work done & I got the Green Weenie. Now all I see from the Project is if you don't like it then leave.

Well that's exactly what most Participants will do except for the Die Hards, If the Project can't at least give Credit whatever it may be & Export the Credit's then there's not much to keep most Participants here & you'll end up running the Wu's yourself.

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STE\/E

there's not much to keep most Participants here & you'll end up running the Wu's yourself.

Actually the latter is exactly what this project was originally meant for. We never ever asked anyone to sign up (or use the old Einstein@Home account key here) for this project except for friendly developers in order to develop and test some technical features. (BTW, that's why I still doubt that the Albert@Home participants that do care about credit are the majority, i.e. "most participants".) Exporting stats was rather accidentally, as the configuration was copied over from a working project which exported stats (actually Albert@Home is an old Einstein@Home project server). Albert@Home stats were never intended to be listed anywhere, and e.g. BOINCStats still doesn't include these.

Which stats sites do list Albert@Home, and why? How did they learn about Albert@Home? Until a week ago this project had never been announced anywhere.

BM

This reminds me of a sign in a local shop "don't ask for credit as a refusal often offends" ..... :-)

too bad this is YOUR local shop. not in real life, but in boincworld. some out here do care for credits, others do not. but crunching without any chance to get ones efforts listed on the stats sites is senseless in boincworld.


if you do not want to run things like other offical test-projects do, just block public access and close the whole case.

Which stats sites do list Albert@Home, and why?

Free-DC List the Stats from Albert, "Why" apparently they were exported at some point in time, other than that I don't pay attention to the other Sites ... http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=proj&proj=alb

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STE\/E

[...] in boincworld. some out here do care for credits, others do not.[...]

if you do not want to run things like other offical test-projects do, just block public access and close the whole case.

I don't understand why we should block access for people that aren't interested in credits.

BM