how to make our team stronger

[Philippart]

Our forums were very silent for some time, fortunately they got more active lately!

Ananadtech is one of the biggest computer tech websites on the web, however our DC team (I'm talking about Boinc) is only at spot 19 of the world ranking and this doesn't look good at all!

Furthermore we have a RAC of "only" 813,830 while the top25 average is 2,683,422!

That's why I want to contribute in making our team more popular! The reason why we're a bit slow compared to equivalent teams is not that people don't want to contribute or don't have enough quads, but it's the lack of publicity.

Here are some ideas, please add yours!

• Add a button to the frontpage "Join TeAm Anandtech" linked to a page or thread explaining our goals and how to join
  
  Other teams like xtremesystems stickied a thread explaining the DC team on every subforum of the message boards
  
  Other teams use the profiles to make publicity via the user of the day (not a great idea to me)
  

 

[theAnimal]

Originally posted by: Philippart
Other teams like xtremesystems stickied a thread explaining the DC team on every subforum of the message boards

At least have a sticky in "CPUs & Overclocking" and "Video Cards & Graphics".

 

[Philippart]

Originally posted by: theAnimal

Originally posted by: Philippart
Other teams like xtremesystems stickied a thread explaining the DC team on every subforum of the message boards

At least have a sticky in "CPUs & Overclocking" and "Video Cards & Graphics".

Right, but we need to rework our welcome thread before that, to make it easier and better illustrated.

 

[Spacehead]

Originally posted by: Philippart
Right, but we need to rework our welcome thread before that, to make it easier and better illustrated.

That would be a good idea. It's been awhile since the last update.

 

[Insidious]

It all comes down to feedback folks!

If you want your team to be stronger, you have to give people a reason to be a part of it.

Yeah, it's a PITA to do a regular stats post, but that's where it all begins. Some people get a certain amount of satisfaction from trips to the stats sites, but today's participation levels show about how far that goes.

What really changed around here? That answer is obvious. Anyone remember the SETI stats threads? Anyone remember the Rosetta threads, the Folding@Home threads? That sense of belonging is what brought people in. The friendly competitions, the brags of new machines, etc... Heck, even the mindless banter that was welcome in those days made AT mighty! Now days, if there even is a stats thread it gets a couple people willing to ante up with "thanks for the stats" but the majority won't even put out that much effort.

BOINC has more projects than participants. No matter which one you do, it's only a matter of time until the people you thought were crunching with you will be posting that it's "old hat" and they want do do something new.

I don't care how many stickies you make or where you put them.... When a potential participant takes one look at our forum and finds there are only about a dozen people that can even be bothered to post, they probably aren't going to be saying to themselves.... Hey, I want to join in on this!

So if you want to make this team strong.... find those special people willing to be the stats masters... find the people who can write them a script to retrieve and parse those stats effeciently. Show a little love when someone tries.... A little friendship goes a looooong way!

-Sid

 

[NDGeist]

I haven't done any crunching for TA (or any Distributed computing program) since Distributed.net RC5-64, back when Russ had built his giant rack of P2 450's, and coming back in the last few days since I have a bunch of nehalem CPU's to test for the next hundred days I was surprised as to how inactive the forums were.

It's odd, back then there were only a few apps (Distributed, seti, folding) that the team was working on, so there was more comroderie (sp)... I remember we used to "trade" AMD cpu workunits for P4 cpu time for each others programs. I'm a little worried about how inactive the team is anymore. That said, i've got 80 2.0ghz nehalem cores folding 24/7 for the next 100 or so days.

-Chip

 

[Spacehead]

Originally posted by: NDGeist
It's odd, back then there were only a few apps (Distributed, seti, folding) that the team was working on, so there was more comroderie (sp)...

I think(& many other do too) that part of the problem is there are so many projects that the TeAm is spread too thin.


Sid has a valid point too about stats threads.
Feel free to speak up on this... but how many think having basically one weekly stats thread hurts overall participation? I know i used to do daily SOB stats, & i did that taking over from some one else but didn't have the time after awhile, but there used to be daily stats for several projects. Now there's the occasional daily DPAD the Assimilator1 does.

Thoughts?

 

[sundev]

Get the word out in other forum sections. I just started recently, discovered the team by accident.

 

[Philippart]

I took a moment to think about a sticky for the other forums:

What is distributed computing (DC)?

Distributed Computing means donating your computers idle time (the time when you're not using, the "screensaver-time") to a research project of your choice. These cover medical/biological research, earth sciences, physics, chemistry, astronomy and mathematics.

What are the benefits of doing it?

DC has a lot of benefits: firstly you take part in the science you're interested in and by providing the resources you help accelerate it and some project even publizise your name in scientific papers if you agree with it. Thirdly this is very addicting stuff and you'll catch yourself continuously finding new excuses for upgrading your computers. Fourthly the feelgood factor of being part of scientific project and climbing the stats ranks (as in benchmarking) Finally it is a great long term stability and benchmark test for your hardware.

Does it cost anything?

No, it is completely free, it's a kind of donation without loosing money, hardware or time, it works on your computer when you're not using it. Your computer will use a slightly more power, which is estimated by IBM to be equivalent to having an additional low wattage light bulb in your house.

Why TeAm AnandTech?

< paste benefits of our team>

Posted by TeAm member Hurricane Andrew
The amazing thing about this forum over the years has been the camaraderie. I've never witnessed such civil discourse on an internet forum, even ones where everyone claims to be there for the same purpose. Everyone here respects each other, and the vast majority truly care about each other, and what happens in the "real world". I'm constantly amazed at the diversity represented on this board. Folks of all ages, from around the world, with vastly different personal views, faiths, interests, etc. come together to pursue different goals. Some are here for the science, some simply enjoy the thrill of the race, and some crunch just to be a part of this wonderful community.

Is there an overview of the active projects?

<paste an easy overview with one sentence descriptions, no overcrowded list>

How can I join?

<paste install instructions>

what do you think?

It still needs to be cleaned a bit, completed, highlighting, underlining, ...

 

[TAandy]

Originally posted by: Philippart
I took a moment to think about a sticky for the other forums:

What is distributed computing (DC)?

Distributed Computing means donating your computers idle time (the time when you're not using, the "screensaver-time") to a research project of your choice. These cover medical/biological research, earth sciences, physics, chemistry, astronomy and mathematics.

What are the benefits of doing it?

DC has a lot of benefits: firstly you take part in the science you're interested in and by providing the resources you help accelerate it and some project(s) even publizise your name in scientific papers if you agree with it. Thirdly this is very addicting(addictive) stuff and you'll catch yourself continuously finding new excuses for upgrading your computers. Fourthly the feelgood factor of being part of scientific project and climbing the stats ranks (as in benchmarking) Finally it is a great long term stability and benchmark test for your hardware.

Does it cost anything?

No, it is completely free, it's a kind of donation without loosing money, hardware or time, it works on your computer when you're not using it. Your computer will use a slightly more power, which is estimated by IBM to be equivalent to having an additional low wattage light bulb in your house.

Why TeAm AnandTech?

< paste benefits of our team>

Posted by TeAm member Hurricane Andrew
The amazing thing about this forum over the years has been the camaraderie. I've never witnessed such civil discourse on an internet forum, even ones where everyone claims to be there for the same purpose. Everyone here respects each other, and the vast majority truly care about each other, and what happens in the "real world". I'm constantly amazed at the diversity represented on this board. Folks of all ages, from around the world, with vastly different personal views, faiths, interests, etc. come together to pursue different goals. Some are here for the science, some simply enjoy the thrill of the race, and some crunch just to be a part of this wonderful community.

Is there an overview of the active projects?

<paste an easy overview with one sentence descriptions, no overcrowded list>

How can I join?

<paste install instructions>

what do you think?

It still needs to be cleaned a bit, completed, highlighting, underlining, ...

like the post
i've highlighted a few mistakes (in bold).
at least i think i have, keeps giving me an error every time i try and preview the damn thing :laugh:

 

[Philippart]

you did the preview function doesn't work for me either

 

[Insidious]

WTG Philippart :thumbsup:

Thanks for your efforts in making this happen!

-Sid

edit: Preview worked here.... IE8, latest updates and java

 

[caferace]

TAandy, you put the Z in the wrong spot.

Your Pal,

-jim

 

[theAnimal]

Originally posted by: caferace
TAandy, you put the Z in the wrong spot.

Your Pal,

-jim

He was only highlighting the errors.

 

[caferace]

Originally posted by: theAnimal

Originally posted by: caferace
TAandy, you put the Z in the wrong spot.

Your Pal,

-jim

He was only highlighting the errors.

d'oh. I should just shaddup and go crunch.

-jim

 

[TAandy]

Originally posted by: caferace

Originally posted by: theAnimal

Originally posted by: caferace
TAandy, you put the Z in the wrong spot.

Your Pal,

-jim

He was only highlighting the errors.

d'oh. I should just shaddup and go crunch.

-jim

:laugh:

 

[FallenHero]

Well...I haven't crunched in awhile and would like to come back once I get my new rig. The problem I see is everyone is too spread out over too many different projects. I think the team needs to be directed to 3-5 different projects and concentrate the "firepower" so that we aren't all spread out. Maybe this is starting to happen, or maybe I am reading things incorrectly, but the 50 different projects thing is crazy. Thats just from an outsiders perspective and it does seem a bit overwhelming.

 

[ochadd]

The total/combined stats and total team computing power would be cool to see. Something like the main Boinc page displays but for our team that's always available:

Active: 330,814 volunteers, 570,391 computers.
24-hour average: 2,796.54 TeraFLOPS

Not sure where that comes from but I'd like to see 24 hour stats for Team Anandtech. Getting it on Anandtech.com main page somewhere would probably grab some folks' attention. Something that shows that each contributer isn't just a face in some massive crowd but makes a real difference.

When I started attaching machines to the team I figured I'd be in the 1000th spot or something. Surprisingly and saddly I'm in the top 25 on RAC for weeks . A single 3ghz dual core would probably make the top 100 every day running optimized apps. Letting people know just how big adding a single GPU or dual core can be for the team might make a difference.

 

[Philippart]

I check fairly often the xtremesystems DC team forums, they had a big increase in new members thanks to forum signatures that makes people from other subforums stumble upon the team.

here are some examples:

1

2

3

4

We could create similar sigs to attract other forum members!

 

[IJump]

What happened to free beer, girls, hottub visits, etc?


I think more signature links and more presence in the other forums would help. I stumbled on the DC forum after seeing a link in a signature. I had spent a lot of time in the FS/FT forum up to that point. The more inventive and interesting the signature, the better I think it would be.

Stickys are good too, but I think people tend to ignore those sometimes.

 

[Assimilator1]

Re stats thread ,yea your not kidding sid. I see my 2nd to last stats got about 144 views (which is amazing!:Q) but only a handful of replies. That said, for DPAD anyway that's about 1/2 the active crunchers, lol.
However for SETI when RD was doing the stats the post & view stats were about the same & theirs a huge amount more people crunching that!.

I know my stats threads have become infrequent (more infrequent?) lately, partly because I'm busy but also it's not very encouraging when only a few people post.

As for the sig idea that is a good one, if not exactly new, I've been doing that for 8-9yrs , but it would be good if more people could do it, I guess mine could probably stand an update.

And stickies will catch some people, main page link would be a big boon, I have a feeling we did have one many years ago going to teamandtech.com.
More daily stats would encourage the regular banter we used to have.......

NDGeist
That's a huge boost to TA F@H![img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-shocked.gif[/img]

 

[Spacehead]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
Re stats thread ,yea your not kidding sid. I see my 2nd to last stats got about 144 views (which is amazing!:Q) but only a handful of replies. That said, for DPAD anyway that's about 1/2 the active crunchers, lol.
However for SETI when RD was doing the stats the post & view stats were about the same & theirs a huge amount more people crunching that!.

I know my stats threads have become infrequent (more infrequent?) lately, partly because I'm busy but also it's not very encouraging when only a few people post.

I realized a long time ago it is the numbers "Views" as opposed to the "Replies" that's important. I know not many reply to my weekly threads but alot look. I assume alot are not logged in. I know i do that more lately.

 

[GLeeM]

Everyone has so many fine ideas!

1. What really brought in lots of people was the two times (since I've been here) that there was an article on the Anandtech.com main page. The first time brought me in, and many others too; the second also brought in many!

2. Would it be considered "spam" to PM some of the inactive TeAmmates? Even ones you don't know? Or should I say - Even ones you know or at least recognize as posting in the forum at least once?

---
Hey Sid, you are preaching to the choir But all good points!
Especially to support stats threads, even if only with a smiley

Spacehead, the weekly stats are great! :thumbsup:

BOINC does have quite a few projects, but how can you say "Don't do this one."? The TeAm has always, and for the best, said crunch what you like.

Sigs are good, but that is a personal choice. Visiting other sub-forums helps too, but again that is a personal choice.

Stickied threads would help lots, I think, but when they have been there too long the tendency is to overlook them. Maybe put them up for 2-3 weeks every three months or so?

 

[Spacehead]

Originally posted by: GLeeM
2. Would it be considered "spam" to PM some of the inactive TeAmmates? Even ones you don't know? Or should I say - Even ones you know or at least recognize as posting in the forum at least once?

I wouldn't consider it spam. We used to do that in the SETI classic days if we noticed some one had flatlined

Originally posted by: GLeeM
Stickied threads would help lots, I think, but when they have been there too long the tendency is to overlook them. Maybe put them up for 2-3 weeks every three months or so?

Yeah, stickies in a few of the forums is a good idea, but only for a short time. People do tend to ignore them if they're there too long.
As some one mentioned, these would be good:
CPUs and Overclocking
Video Cards and Graphics
maybe a couple others
maybe OT also


edit-
fixed my errors in bold

 

[Assimilator1]

Originally posted by: GLeeM
Everyone has so many fine ideas!

.................

BOINC does have quite a few projects, but how can you say "Don't do this one."? The TeAm has always, and for the best, said crunch what you like.

Yep, I meant to say that earlier too, you can't tell people what to crunch (excluding volunteers like TAS). This idea of focusing on 1 or a few projects has been banded around before even before the BOINC days, best we can do is to have a massive recruiting drive. Front page support has a huge effect but it is very hard to get, IIRC it's happened just 2-3 times in the last 9-10yrs.

Agreed on short term stickifieds are a good idea, they help too , & I don't think we've had them for sometime.

When did we last have them?