Free-DC
06-23-2010, 02:32 PM
It seems lately there's been a bit of confusion as to how the new validator works, so I'm making this post to help explain everything to everyone.
All workunits are initially generated with a quorum of 1, so they all go through a first pass of the validator. During this first time through, the validator checks to see if the result is going to be inserted into one of the populations of our evolutionary algorithms. If it is going to, that means we'll be using it to generate new workunits. Because of this we need to validate it to make sure the result is a good one. The validator will then set the quorum to 2 and wait for another result. When this happens, your result will be set to "Completed, validation inconclusive." This doesn't mean your result was invalid or anything was wrong, just that the server is waiting for another result to validate it.
If your result won't improve one of our populations, there's still a chance that we're going to validate it. This is to make sure that people aren't using bad applications or scripts to scam the server for credit. In this case, the server will again increase the quorum of that workunit to 2, and your result will be set to "Completed, validation inconclusive." Again, nothing here is wrong with your result, its just that the server is waiting for another result to validate against.
Some results are simply validated without being checked, because we won't be using them to improve our search populations, and we didn't pick them for extra validation, they are simply marked valid and awarded credit. Previously, this happened to all results that didn't improve our searches, which is why you didn't see too many results being verified.
So this is how the new validation is working. Again, if you're seeing "Completed, validation inconclusive," that doesn't mean you won't be getting credit, it just means it went through the validator once and we're waiting for another result to compare it against. After that (if it's a valid result) it will be awarded credit.
If anyone has any other questions about the new validation system, please post inside this thread and I'll be happy to answer any questions.
--Travis
More... (http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_thread.php?id=1693)
All workunits are initially generated with a quorum of 1, so they all go through a first pass of the validator. During this first time through, the validator checks to see if the result is going to be inserted into one of the populations of our evolutionary algorithms. If it is going to, that means we'll be using it to generate new workunits. Because of this we need to validate it to make sure the result is a good one. The validator will then set the quorum to 2 and wait for another result. When this happens, your result will be set to "Completed, validation inconclusive." This doesn't mean your result was invalid or anything was wrong, just that the server is waiting for another result to validate it.
If your result won't improve one of our populations, there's still a chance that we're going to validate it. This is to make sure that people aren't using bad applications or scripts to scam the server for credit. In this case, the server will again increase the quorum of that workunit to 2, and your result will be set to "Completed, validation inconclusive." Again, nothing here is wrong with your result, its just that the server is waiting for another result to validate against.
Some results are simply validated without being checked, because we won't be using them to improve our search populations, and we didn't pick them for extra validation, they are simply marked valid and awarded credit. Previously, this happened to all results that didn't improve our searches, which is why you didn't see too many results being verified.
So this is how the new validation is working. Again, if you're seeing "Completed, validation inconclusive," that doesn't mean you won't be getting credit, it just means it went through the validator once and we're waiting for another result to compare it against. After that (if it's a valid result) it will be awarded credit.
If anyone has any other questions about the new validation system, please post inside this thread and I'll be happy to answer any questions.
--Travis
More... (http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_thread.php?id=1693)