Teams... Features Request..

[lemonsqzz]

Well, I guess It can't hurt to ask...
I've noticed a few people jumped on the Sun Microsystems team from the KWSN group now. Don't get me wrong, Im all about fun.. but Its just not really a useful thing if they are just gonna come and go.. Messes up my own tracking system. I was wondering if Teams could have an Authorizarion Required setup that a team leader would to be responsible for making the decision. A team could also by default have an open status that anybody can join.. and no team leader needed. Minimally maybe just the ability for a team with a leader to be able to kick someone off the team

[FoBoT]

i have stated in other threads that i don't see the "fun" in team jumping either

but, the only way i see to handle it is to make work crunched for team "A" stay on team "A" and never move

since this wasn't done from the beginning of the project, it is EXTREMELY problematic to change now

i don't see a good solution

and the old "its all in good fun, lighten up" arguement is crap, i am not telling anybody to like/dislike team jumping, i am just stating what i think about it, my opinion is just as valid as all the "its fun to bork the stats" guys

also, with Dy's new stats engines, he has in place the option to filter team jumpers, so its not as big a problem when you look at those stats vs statsman.org stats

:/

[Gunslinger]

Hi lemonsqzz.

It is not our intention to be anything more than a nuisance and/or to stimulate other teams to greater effort (look at the recent output of TSF!)

I think the guys coming over was a mark of respect as we believed your team should be on the stats page by now.

Sorry if we caused offence. I think everyone except Lawrence has moved off again now. He normally hangs around a team for a week or so. Haven't heard from him on our board recently, but if you really want him to move early you can try PM'ing him (our board is at www.kwsnforum.com ).

Regards and Ni!

[Brian the Fist]

I think it keeps things more 'interesting' the way it is right now.

[Michelle]

It borks the stats and pisses people off, and it's a long standing debate. The way I see it is as long as the project allows structures to be moved around, it's going to happen. I've gotten used to the KWSN guys flitting around and it's just all par for the course.

The important thing (to me) is that all work goes toward the project itself.

[PinHead]

I would bet that if folds completed for a team, stayed with that team, then all of the jumping back and forth would stop.

I don't mean to transfer all work to one particular team, but if someone visits for 100,000 folds at a team. Then those folds stay with the team that the individual was working for.

It may be a pain to program, but I have noticed that quite a few of our teams higher producers start to shut down when these things start. Each team has it's own members challenging each other and when someone steps in for 3 days and causes someone else's effort to go unnoticed, then the residual effect on a team can take weeks to recoop.

Several team members have simply changed their boxes to another DC project where such behavior does not occur. They have not been back since a month ago when KWSN started these games with our group.

So although it's cute and harmless, it also reduces the number of people working on the distributedfolding project!

[lemonsqzz]

Minimally if a team with a team leader can boot/ban a uid .. that'd work for me.. A team name just woudnt show up in the dropdown list for that user in the users's personal info page. They would become part of teamless stats once booted till they go back to the dark void from whence they came.

[WxGuyII]

Originally posted by lemonsqzz
Minimally if a team with a team leader can boot/ban a uid .. that'd work for me.. .

I think this is a valid point. It would stop some of the childish harassment that occurs. Howard...please check out Team Techniverse. Someone just created an acct to put down the members that belong to this team. It doesn't bode well if this type of nonsense goes unanswered.
I hope you will consider some form of limitation on who can move or what is
allowed. What may seem as a little taunting can actually cause alot of damage.

[pijo]

Originally posted by lemonsqzz
Minimally if a team with a team leader can boot/ban a uid .. that'd work for me..

I certainly concur with that, lemonsqzz. I'm the founder of Team Techniverse, and what we're dealing with is not members jumping from team to team, it's a matter of malicious users creating accounts on the team simply for the purpose of deriding and angering the team. If, as a team founder, I could exercise some control over who joins (or more to the point, stays) on the team, it might not cure the problem, but I could minimize the impact it has on the rest of the team.

BTW, thanks for posting, WxGuyII. I appreciate the support.

[CapZap]

Well said by you three. I've always felt fun enhances the enjoyment of DC projects, but malicious actions/actors need to be addressed.

I hope some control is given the team founders to remove team members.

[wirthi]

I think the most important point that must be considered in this case is: what helps the project the most by producing the most structures.

Of course, that question is not easy to be answered. As it is currently, Free-DC is leading (with a little help from the Knights). The people of Ars know they have to put more machines on this project to take the lead. So, because of this enormous fight between mainly (FreeDC+some Knights) and Ars more and more machines are running this projects, what should help the project a lot. If Ars had taken the lead a month ago, they wouldn't use as many computers as they do currently for this project.

On the other hand, other teams could be annoyed of this and of Knights (and other users, don't just blame the Knights) visiting their teams from time to time. So, if you quit DF because of this, that's of course bad for the project.

One last point: I doubt the Knights want to do harm to any team. If every teamleder had a possibility to express "please no visits from other teams", the Knights (and others) would respect that. Another possibility would be to post such wishes to their forum.

Just my 2 €-cents

[grobinette]

I like the idea that a Team Leader could express "No Transient Visitors", or something to that effect. I think most everyone would respect that.

The drifters don't "visit" in the sense that they have not dropped into a teams forum and introduced themselves. All they do is move stats around.

It is one of the only things about this project that people seem to find irritating.

[Brian the Fist]

I would be OK with allowing the team leader to boot someone off their team back into the teamless users (although there is not really a way I can think of to permanently ban someone as there's nowhere to store that sort of info, but presumably if you kick them off enough times theyll get the message..)

However, Im not sure how this could be implemented in pratice, in terms of HTML. Somewhere on the team leaders personal login page, we'd need a list of team members and a 'boot' button? Would something like that work, or does that make it too easy?

[pijo]

I think that would help a lot. As you said, it wouldn't prevent a member from re-joining, but knowing that a team leader has the ability to boot a member would probably cause a lot of team-hoppers to decide it wasn't worth the effort, particularly if their goal was just stirring up trouble in the first place.

[lemonsqzz]

Howard, that was exatcly what I had in mind.. the Team leader's personal info page would be presented with a list of all users like the team's display page. OR maybe a button from the personal info page to a "Team Management" page.. A kick button would be an extra field added for each user. Click that and you will need a verification page .. AND have the team leader input their password or a separate kick password to prevent regular members from just figuring out the url + data to post and booting people maliciously.

This could also help cleanup teams that have many zero production users in their teams ..You should also let them have a reason field on the password verification page for kicking them that would be emailed with the kick notice. Next page would say user has been kicked and has buttons to return to Team Management or your personal area..

Banning:
If the user database is modifyable .. just give everybody a banned_list. table.. When they get banned from a team.. the team id gets added to that list.. and the user is de-listed. When they go to their pesonal info, the teams dropdown list gets created with the banned_list applied so they can only choose teams that still welcome them.

[lemonsqzz]

just a wee bit more rambling...
One more dream would be,, let a team leader create a "Join Team Policy" from a Team Management page with the ablity to choose the rules for joining.. Not as scary as it sounds...

Rules that may be set..
[ ] No policy
[ ] Joining member may not have more than xxxx existing structs.
( ) Joining member must stay a minimum of xxxx days
( ) Joining member may never leave the team unless kicked/banned.

... A field for some freeform welcome text ....

** xxxx is an input field that the leader can modify.

So... when a user tries to join a team the policy is apllied and if they are rejected due to the fact they are over the max allowed existing structs then they will be told that and can go back and choose another team. (keeps out people who are joining just to change the numbers dramatically) Otherwise.. they read the other rules + freeform text and they hit either agree and get added or disagree and go back to pick another team. Just need to figure out how to keep them for as long as they agreed.. Not presenting the teams list or create new team fields till they have stayed the minimum.. Or they email the leader and beg to be kicked..

Just trying to think of team leader-type things to do that keeps Howard from having to do too much babysitting here.. I think we'd be pretty well behaved after some of this was in place.

[MAD-ness]

Giving team founders/leaders the ability to remove members from a team (not delete the users stats or account, just remove them from the team and send them to the teamless users team until they find another team) can help to avoid a multitude of problems in the future.

For example, when someone is doing something rude or malicious (see team techniverse) the team founder/leader can simply deal with it himself and you don't have to deal with it. One less headache, both for the team involved and for you.

Also, in SETI this has been a huge issue, with cheats rampant and the request has been made multiple times. No one wants a cheater on thier team but they have no ability to remove them, so they have to rely on the seti admins to find the cheaters and with hundreds of thousands of users, this is a very tedious and time consuming process.

A *secure* log-in that allowed team leaders to remove a user from the team would remove a lot of hassles in the long-run, IMO.

I am sure someone will find some complaint to make in regards to this, but as a whole, I think it will minimize your management headaches and it will probably go a long ways towards mollifying both team leaders and stats junkies.

[TheOtherZaphod]

"( ) Joining member may never leave the team unless kicked/banned"

^ ^ ^ ^ Way to much control...

I have groused about team-jumping in the past, and I am not generally for it. But just recently I was in a position where I offered to 'lend" my WUs to a team, and it was a sincere offer, well within both the current rules, and my rights.

I would like to see a little better control on random team-jumps; but there is definitely a point when too much control is a bad thing. Ethically I would rather see things left as they are (and have been), than see the pendulum swing too far the other way.

...Let's not be too hasty here...


My $.02

[MAD-ness]

BTW, Team Stir Fry will soon make the antics of the Knights irrelevant, atleast in regards to the #1 ranking.

My suggestion to others annoyed by thier antics is to simply outproduce them to the point where they become insignificant. It might take a while, but it feels real satisfying when you get done with it.

[TheOtherPhil]

I'm all for this....sounds an excellent compromise to not allowing people to move teams outright. Great idea .

[Paratima]

Sounds to me like y'all are getting way too serious* about this "team" stuff! A "ban-button"? :bs:

However, if you are determined to have a revolution, may I suggest a simultaneous cleanup of the "teams" themselves? There must be, oh, say right around 296 "teams" with zero (0.00) contributions to the current protein. Many of these teams have not contributed anything for months. Many of these "teams" have had exactly one (1) member** in their entire history, who shortly thought better of the whole idea and went off to search for little green men (and presumably, women).

If your only real argument for a "ban-button" is aesthetics, which it seems to be, then I say let's beautify the whole neighborhood, and bury the flat-lined "teams".

*As usual.

**OK, sometimes two (2).

[lemonsqzz]

A bit of clarification on this...

( ) Joining member may never leave the team unless kicked/banned. (delisted if ya don't like those terms) by the team leader.

These are selectable rules that can be setup by the team leader. You don't have to pick that if ya think its too strict. If a joining member doesn't agree with your team's rules.. they are free to go somewhere else.. and that is the whole point..

[MAD-ness]

Partima: personally, I don't really care about the team-jumping, all that much.

Some people are really bothered by it.

The reason I support giving a team founder/leader the ability to remove people is that eventually, some other problems arise which this ability can help resolve.

See the aforementioned cheating example. Another example is people with un-authorized borgs. I tend to think this is between them and thier company, but some people (especially at Ars) find it to be a gross breach of ethics. If I had to choose between someone who had borged a work network without permission (and admitted it) and losing a lot of long-time members, I would prefer the illegal borger left the team, regardless of contributions in terms of stats.

The team techniverse situation is another example of something that teams could handle themselves without involving Howard and the without the rest of us having to hear about it/worry about it.

I prefer forward-thinking and reasonably elegant solutions to problems (or potential problems) and this appears to have the makings of such a solution.

[FoBoT]

this whole thing is starting to go down a road i never could have imagined

i don't think any current/major DC project gives control of a team the way some of these ideas would

this will be polarizing to the project if it moves forward, some will hate it and leave , others will find it very attractive, i think it will spawn more teams as well

:/

anyway, the whole thing is a moot point to me now :sleepy:

y'all do whatever you want, i trust howard to make the right choice for the project, he hasn't done us wrong yet

[ulv]

i agree with FoBoT

[lemonsqzz]

Remember this is just brain storming.. discussion.. Things that may or may not make the experience better. I value ALL input .. nobody has done anything yet.. Just be glad I didnt make my other 20 recommendations.. pure company teams was next on the list with employee verification.. This is why I am happy to be here.. Its all fun till somebody loses a shoe!! The bulk of the teams will probably elect to still do nothing and thats fine too.. I am not looking to be the DF Nazi where if ya piss me off its "NO DF FOR YOU!!"

I'd like to be able to close my eyes and go to my happy place where this thread will somehow never have to happen again .... SWEET!

>>switching to decaf for the rest of te day>>

(FOBOT ... your recent team hop has not gone unnoticed) ..I'll try not to take it personally

[RogerAdam]

Good points. However, the most prudent way to go would be for a team leader to ask the people running the DF project to wipe those aggregious accounts, simply allowing a "banning" or "allow to join" button for a team leader would imply the project run by teams of fascists, ie. they can simply ban or allow people on their teams as they see fit, more direct they can pick and choose based on whether or not they like a person, they can ban someone because they disagreed on some subject matter. SETI was a whole different ballgame and it's comparison is not warranted here, the cheats there were of common knowledge apparently (the "how to"), Berkeley did nothing about it until the press reported it, making for the possibility of a skewed project at a time SETI founders were trying to raise money for SETI2, naturally that forced their hand, IMO, it was an interesting thing to read about, the Knights pointed out the cheating in SETI back in March I believe, and someone here at FreeDC (I believe) finally went to the press exposing at least 6 ways to cheat in SETI, but in the end under ALL those circumstances and in some cases "the smoking gun", SETI project management THEMSELVES are in the process of weeding out the undesirables, no "banning" power given to the Team leaders, rather those Team leaders go through the project managers, IMO would be the right way to do things if restrictions were imposed here. Personally, I find the whole mater a non-issue minus blatant malicious usernames (which should be handled by DF's managemnt if they wish to control things more), it makes the Team game more interesting and more importantly has nothing to do with the science itself. So, if you are going to "control" things do it in a "non-facist" manner. May I add to this fray, the team and account created by KWSN to draw my old genome team here definately drew me to DF, to which I will be adding more machines, I recently started getting the feel for the client(s) (I will be running the client on 4 different OS's), so it does have it positive effects as well....

[FBK]

I am not bothered by team hopping. One of the thing I like about DF, is that people are free to move and take their work with them. I understand, why some folks are annoyed with excessive team-hopping.

Most teams came together without any formal management hierarchy. To give membership control to someone who was designated, (often arbitrarily), as team leader, seems unfair and over-bearing.

I don't think that giving someone the power to ban or drop members, will reduce conflicts, it will increase them.

If the main concern is excessive team-hopping, why not put a minimum time-frame on team membership, like 7, 14 or 28
days? That would seem to be fairly easy to setup.

For Example, set minimum team membership time to 21 days.
If I change my team affiliation, the date and time is noted in my user record. When I attempt to change my team affiliation again, it checks my user record for the last time it was changed and calculates the number of days that have elapsed. If less than the 21 days have elapsed, change is not allowed. After 21 days have passed, I could again change team affiliation to any team desired.


FBK

[FBK]

Duplicate deleted

[lemonsqzz]

That was excellent input!! OK.. so.. I'm still back to letting a team leader delist a user but give them a good reason .. OR .. if even that is too much .. a simple process be put in place so a team leader may submit a request of users they wish to have removed + reason(s) to the higher ups... If anybody could give an actual number of teams that have selected a team leader .. that would be a very good piece of info.. I don't think anybody would abuse this power.. it wouldn't be very productuve to the team. and they would quickly find themselves all alone..

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by lemonsqzz
(FOBOT ... your recent team hop has not gone unnoticed) ..I'll try not to take it personally

it isn't a "hop" and has nothing to do with you, so not taking it personally would be a good idea

please refer to my first reply in this thread, i don't like the temporary stats borking for fun stuff either. i just am wary of attempts to stop it, unforseen side effects are possible

peace to all DF'ers, this is my favorite DC project ever

[RogerAdam]

Originally posted by lemonsqzz
That was excellent input!! OK.. so.. I'm still back to letting a team leader delist a user but give them a good reason .. OR .. if even that is too much .. a simple process be put in place so a team leader may submit a request of users they wish to have removed + reason(s) to the higher ups... If anybody could give an actual number of teams that have selected a team leader .. that would be a very good piece of info.. I don't think anybody would abuse this power.. it wouldn't be very productuve to the team. and they would quickly find themselves all alone..

I see nothing wrong with the team leader (or EVEN it's members) submitting a request to remove malicious accounts, limiting team switches over a time period is a good idea as well, eliminating it though... I'm not so sure, for smaller teams who decide now or later that they'd be better off combining efforts to compete with an ARS, FreeDC, KWSN, etc... it is a good feature. Of course we can even go further as things usually do and turn this into a "segregating" project ala Stanford's F@H if top teams feel threatened by a "google-type" team because of an 'unfair' advantage and start to categorize the teams as well , all while telling people they should donate cycles to XXXXXX "for the good of humanity", while brooding over the trivial side of the project.

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by lemonsqzz
If anybody could give an actual number of teams that have selected a team leader .. that would be a very good piece of info..

there are almost zero, howard told everybody about it, but very few teams had a method in place to select such an individual, so in almost every case , a "leader" was never designated

with out a "leader" much of the above is moot

as with many things, the KWSN's antics have both positive and negative ramifications

i again defer to howard's best judgement, he will take all the input from this thread and weigh it out

[MAD-ness]

Less is more.

I, too, fear the negative ramifications of making too big of changes.

I am happy with the way things are, as a lot of people appear to be, so avoiding boat-rocking is something worth considering, but being afraid to take risks or try new things is not a great long-term plan either.

In the end, it is up to Howard anyways, so we will see what he decides to do.

[pijo]

I wouldn't suggest giving team leaders the ability to ban members. However, I don't find anything intrinsically wrong with giving them the ability to remove a team member by changing that member's status to that of a teamless member. There's nothing "fascist" about wanting to keep the team clear of dead accounts and/or troublemakers. As far as having to request that a "higher up" remove a team member, it just seems that that would be adding even more to the workload they already endure. Part of the idea here would be allow some things to be accomplished without adding even more admin hassles for Howard.

[RogerAdam]

I saw the ni ni ni ni account yesterday, I didn't see the "hiding" account, I see what you mean. On that same note, Sponge Bob had the "frog's are scared" or something to the effect in his descripter, also the Knights created that Team with "spankyouverymuch" as a lure to DF. Still, malicious or even comedic accounts are too few, and the management here should be able to handle requests, as they have the time to post here not only technically but jokingly. I did not refer to you as "facist" pijo, I've have a great respect to your dedication in these projects, but as with life Murphy's law would apply in respect to "bans" -there would be abuses, and that can take it's toll as well.

[pijo]

I understand what you're talking about, Roger. Again, don't misconstrue what I'm talking about. The ability to "ban" is not what I'm looking for. I'm simply looking for a means by which a team leader can manage members who are not looking to make any real contribution to the project, but rather are looking to disrupt things by their movements, whether in fun or not. To be able to go into a team management page and simply remove a member by designating that member as "teamless" would hurt nothing, and would give teams at least a modest defense against indiscriminate team-hoppers and troublemakers.

[RogerAdam]

Whew... got turn off the E-mail notification...

What would be beneficial I guess in that case would be the Team Leader's ability to change the name of an account within their team that is derogatory in nature, maybe some sort of flag for the project managers to see the offending name - this way if deemed malicious that team whom had the misfortune can seize the structures as penalty (?).

[CapZap]

Roger, just leave us alone.

[RogerAdam]

Originally posted by CapZap
Roger, just leave us alone.

Huh???