Farewell for now

[maddog1]

Well guys, it's time to say farewell...
I'll stop sieving for a while :|
Worry not, I'm still on the project, but I have decided to try out some secondpass testing for a while. Since most people that matter seem to believe that the project is underpowered there, I figured this would be a good area to help in. :)
Since I was still using 1m-20m dat, probably I won't be missed much. :|
I'm going to be back again sometime in the future and I'll still be reading the forum even when not sieving to keep up to date.

Some things, I'd like to see implemented before my return:
-website accepting factors >20m, totally abandon emails
-having a single place to make reservations, maybe add the Beta site made by Matt officially to the project (making that part of the official site would be perfect)
-use of a single dat, 991-50m is fine as long as it gets updated daily, like the 1m-20m one I was getting from MikeH's site. Best option would be to get Mike to put this dat on his site IMHO, grabbing a new dat and browsing the stats at the same place is excellent.

NOTE: the things stated above are NOT the reason I'm stopping sieving and are NOT prerequisites for my return either!

I am just taking the opportunity of my farewell message to leave some insights from the lesser, know-no-math users, like myself.
I just feel that to attract more users, especially the non-technically minded to the sub-projects like sieving, it is necessary to:
a)make things as simple as possible
b)maybe even more important, have a single policy and everything kept at the same, easy to reach place-this means not useless confusion of the "reserve here (forum) or there (beta site) or at two places (forum&site)" and of the "download 1m-20m dat (Mike's site) or 991-50m dat (VJS site), submit through the site if factor <20m, through email if factor >20m" type of confusion. Hell, it sounds confusing even to write this down! This doesn't help newbs or the casual user get involved.

Personal suggestion on the way to take: totally abandon 1m-20m dat, making the 991-50m the only available one, preferably from Mike's site so that one can view the stats and grab a dat at the same place. Make website ASAP accept any and all factors, regardless of size and forget everything about emailing attachments. Make reserving possible only on Matt's site and have CLEAR links for everything on the main site. VJS's efforts today at linking everything in the sieve coordination thread is the way to take, but having a single choice and not so many double options would be much better for everyone involved.

Since this post dangerously approaches the size of unreadable rant, I'll shuddup now. :)
Goodbye sievers, I'll be back :thumbs:

Maddog's final stats (sieving, period one) *thanks Mike for excellent site!*
Time sieving: 8 months (13 Nov 2004-13 Jul 2005)
Ranges complete: 10.9T (1.36T/month)
Factors found: 246 unique, 165 duplicate, ca. 4230 excluded
Saved tests until now: 18 firstpass, 6 secondpass
Final position (while still sieving): 22nd (all time), 7th (2005)
Not bad at all for a single AthlonXP...:D

[vjs]

Maddog,

That's for the letter and not it's not a rant its some good honest opinions and suggestions, I will comment on your entire post b/c it is worth it.

Some of the suggestions that you have made have already been done, the 991-50M dat is linked to in the sieve reservation thread forum. Yes, I understand that it's not hosted at SoB but neither is the 1-20M dat, the direct link was long overdue and I thank Hans for pointing it out today.

Another point on updating the dat... it has been determined that the dat updates on the 991-50M dat have no impact on speed, hence the need for daily updates is not required. The 1-20M dat has been updated daily by Mike for quite some time, this update does actually have an impact b/c the dat is constantly shrinking with respect to the increase of secondpass. On that note the 1-20M dat has not decreased in size for quite some time, secondpass min is stuck at n=2.15M. Regardless this dat should be abandon for many reasons.

I agree that accepting all factors not only to 50M but above should be done on the server. Factrange is the only avenue currently unfotunately.

I'd also like to ask why you think the beta site is confusing. During the transitional period the site will be treated like any other user reserving a range. If people want both the forum and the site we can do that, if everyone uses one that's the one we will go with.

Regardless, I'd like to say that I didn't see your post as negative in any fashion. I'd also like to say that I'm glad to see you will stick with another portion of the project.

The sieve door is always open and please continue to browse and post in the fourms. Anything but just run the client seem confusing to people, the shear number of questions that I field is amazing at times. It would be nice if you stuck around the forums to help answer the questions that you know.

Good-luck in secondpass Maddog (ruff!!, or is that a gunship?) and thanks for helping out.
Jason

[maddog1]

VJS,
Thanks for the kind words. What I always liked on this project is that it has a "family" flavor in it, not some l33t people snubbing the newbs and that comments were always welcome! :)

Thanks for explaining about dat updates. Maybe you are right and daily updates are too much, replace the word "daily" with "regular" and we reach a satisfying agreement ;)
Maybe it's just me, but seeing the dat shrink even by 1K gave me a nice warm feeling of progress, which a static or rarely updated dat doesn't convey. Still, I may be a bit insane and this was the less important part of my recommendations. Why not get in touch with Mike and ask him to replace his dat links with your version? This can be done as soon as the website is tuned to accept all size factors, which (hopefully...) shouldn't be too hard to implement in the site's code and should be priority #1. Some gentle pressure to the project leaders should be applied for this, the whole email thing is a big hog for everyone involved.

As for the beta site, you misunderstood me. It's not the site itself confusing, in fact it was a very good and unexpected progress. What is confusing is unnecessarily having two options for the same thing. Make a choice and stick with it, in the long run it's better this way, raises fewer questions and makes the process more accessible to first timers. I think the transitional period was fine, but it's about 2 months now which should be enough for everyone. I suggest you take the site out of beta, close the forum reservation system and require users to reserve on the site only. The whole point of Matt creating the site was to increase the project's automation and making it easier to see what ranges are free and who has reserved what. On this front, it was a success but this is cancelled out if you stick with the dual option. There will always be people that will choose the "worst" choice if given an option, expecting to see everyone use just one of two choices is practically impossible.
Look at it this way: Imagine a new "I know nothing about these things" guy deciding to try sieving. It is better for him and everyone else to be presented with a clear single way to do the necessary steps! "Grab the (50m) dat HERE, reserve a range on THIS site (Matt's), submit all factors THERE (SoB site)" sounds and is a much better approach than "Grab the 1-20m dat HERE (Mike) or the 991-50m dat THERE (VJS), reserve a range HERE (forum) or THERE (Matt), submit factors <20m HERE (SoB site) or >20m THERE (email)"
Stick with the simple and single choice, that's all I meant to say! :)

Hope my secondpass efforts will help push this a bit along, already done one test tonight and seems this computer is perfectly capable of doing 2-3 of them daily. I will be around!

Cheers, Bill