Teams... Features Request..

[RogerAdam]

I've no idea what your talking about Cap, however I will do just that, leave this DC stuff, it's petty (the politicing between users), unreceptive, and I tire from it.

[Brian the Fist]

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 (?).

Profanities are already filtered out (you'll know if you tried - shamoe on you). If you find any naughty words that we do not block, please e-mail me (trades@mshri.on.ca) (but only if they are really naughty)

Now, to the main point, I am happy to make the minor change of allowing the team leader to boot people off the team. This has the added benefit of cleaning up inactive users so I don't have to, and gives the team leader some power (since they technically have none right now..) They will get booted to the teamless users page, and the leader can enter an e-mail message sent to the user to explain why they were booted (so they know what happened). The e-mail might annoy inactive users but it can only happen once (and so they get spammed for deserting the team ) Ill stick it right on the leader's login screen and there'll be a drop down list of users and a boot button beside it.

I have no desire to get into the more complex stuff described in this thread, I think that will be sufficient to make most people happy. Remember if your team does not have a leader, all you have to do is e-mail me with the handle of the leader you want and the team number.

I'll try to get it done this week so just check once in a while for the new section on the login page if you are a leader.

As always, thanks for your input and ideas, I think that's what makes this such a great project. Now what I don't understand is if there's so many problems with SETI, how come they still have 100 times as many users??

[pijo]

Everybody wants that first interview with E.T.!!

[pointwood]

Originally posted by CapZap
Roger, just leave us alone.

If that is all you have to bring to this discussion, then I would like to see you leave.

RogerAdam: We are looking forward to see what you're capable of

[pointwood]

Okay, here comes my ramble

It looks like you, Howard, have already made a decision.

I would like to see some documentation for the stats. It would be nice with a short explanation of how the stats works for this project and something about what options the team leader have (especially this new option). I would be nice to have an explanation to link to *when* a user asks "why was I booted?".

A question:
If a teamleader boots a member of the team, is that permanent or will that user be capable of re-joining the team? Immidiately or first after some days or?

The mail that gets send to the user that gets banned should always contain some standard explanation from the project, no matter what the team leader gives as explanation.

I must say that I fear this a bit because it can be abused. Small "things" can quickly scale into "something big" and turn off a lot of both current and future participants. I would hate to see that happen.

We (Arstechnica Team Stir Fry) and others I believe also have another problem - no one "owns" our team - we all do. How do we decide whether a member should be booted or not? When we choosed who our team leader should be, we didn't know that the person would get this power. Now, I couldn't imagine that our team leader, Aegion, would ever abuse this power, but what how do you know whether the email with a team leader request you got, isn't from a user that just wants to make problems?

I'm very un-certain whether this new feature will be a good thing overall or not.

The two issues that creates these problems is:

#1: the fact that you take all your structures with you when you do a team jump.
#2: The fact that it is possible to change your username and organization as often as you like.

In regards to #1: If it should have been changed, it should have been changed from the start - it's way to late to change now. I personally prefer stats where you can't take your structures with you, but it's not a big deal to me (if it where, I wouldn't be here, would I? ).

#2: I don't quite understand why it is possible, but again, it's not a big deal to me. As can be seen in this thread, it too can be abused though.

[Brian the Fist]

Yes, if you get booted you can re-join right away, but youd get tired eventually Im sure. As for team leaders, please remember by default for any new team the team leader is the one who creaed the team. So I dont see why he shouldnt be allowed to kick people off if he so chooses. If you decide by consensus you wish to change your team leader, you just have to tell me. But presumably you have chosen someone responsible to represent you and they will only kick people off for good reason.

I cannot really envision any scenario where ths could be abused but if you do let me know. Remember the worst that happens is a user gets put back in the teamless users pool and must choose a team again.

[lemonsqzz]

Im hoping.. this is UID based and even if a user changes names/organizations that will remain the same.. So with a bit of snooping you can tell if a user has just changed names to try to join again after being booted.. and of course you'll notice if they have about the same number of structs as someone you recently booted.. So .. I don't think many people will attempt that game.

I will still welcome people to visit my team!!! just don't trash the place on your way out.

[Scoofy12]

As to the UID question, yes it will not change. In fact, there are now two UIDs associated with each person, a private one and a public one. Based on the public one, you can tell if the same member is joining your team over and over. They can suppress their public UID, but only by changing their username to "None" so it shouldnt be a problem either way.

[MAD-ness]

The only real issue I see is in the case of teams which were created BEFORE the team founder was selected as the team leader by default.

In those cases, the team, as a community , has to choose a leader and choose how they want the team to be run.

Looking to the future (where, hopefully, most of the contribution and relevance of this project still resides), I think that this is a simple and ethically sound decision.

If I found a new team, say, a BeOS team and I am the only member, if someone who is running an operating system other than BeOS joins the team, why should I not be allowed to remove them from the team? It seems like a silly thing to care about, to me, but if *I* found the team and organize it and put a lot of work into, why shoudl I not have control over who joins?

There are plenty of teams for teamless users to choose, if one team doesn't want them then they have many choices.

Also, for corporate teams, this could be a much greater issue. What if a cheater, a hacker, etc. joined a marginally corporate team? Then they have to worry about the name and image of the corporation which they represent, even if it is an unofficial team.

Anyways, I am very happy with the solution Howard chose to implement and the only concern I have is in regards to already existing teams where the leader might not be the founder.

One final note, SETI (again as an example) DOES allow the team founder to kick inactive members. They can't do much more, but there is precent.

I can't speak for the Stanford projects. I know SoB doesn't have a leader, you enter a team in the client and it is automatically created.

Anyways, if we all remain vigilant and keep an eye open, I am fully confident we can deal with any potential abuses or problems resulting from adding this feature.

[MarcyDarcy]

Here's my opinion about the teams/teamstats.
My opinion is based opun a few DC projects (RC5, Seti, ECCp) to explain it.

Let's go back a few months in time. ECCp-109 is in a roll. Nice teambattles, respect for other teams etc. But this all changed by some people who left their own team and joined some other. Points were userbased so teamhopping was possible. Other teams were upset because this wasn't 'fair play'. Imho i have to agree whit that and i stopped doing ECCp. Same with Seti@home, another project were points are attached with the user. Teamhopping is possible. And i think this has happed before and it's not nice for the competion.

So what do i think worked? The RC5/OGR project (ddistributed.net). Points are teambased and then userbased. If i crunsh for team1 about 1000 wu's and then deside to 'teamhop' i start in the new team with 0 wu's. But in the userstats i'm still on 1000 wu's. So i can join as much teams if i want, but the points i've crunshed for that team stay with that team.

In my 2 1/2 years of RC5 i've never seen a member who was upset by this rule.
What do you think about this?

[MAD-ness]

Many of us think that is a good idea, but most of us also think that it is something which must be implemented at the START of a project.

It isn't something that is major enough to make a project not worth running. However, in the future, I hope that new projects take it into consideration.

As has been mentioned before, the ability to remove a user from a team does not ONLY apply to team-hopping.

Someone will find some way to abuse something or cause trouble that none of us can think of at this moment and giving team leaders the ability to remove someone from a team will hopefully allow the problem to be dealt with quickly and easily.

[KWSN_robegeor]

Hmmm, I thought that we were all here to help Howard (et al) with some science and try to have a little fun in the process.

I guess I forget that some here equate DF results (and team results) into a measure of self-worth or something. Last time I checked, team jumping has zero effect on the science. Zilch.

And I personally feel pretty strongly about the science. The team wars, taunting, and such is just the icing on the cake that helps keep it fun.

-robert

NI!

[FoBoT]

yay!
we are back to the stats vs science arguement
yay!

[MAD-ness]

What argument is there?

As long as our clients continue crunching, we are helping the science of the project.

It isn't like we shut them off while we post our opinions here.

Atleast I don't think so...

None of y'all do, right?

[pointwood]

KWSN_robegeor: There are different reason as to why people participate in DC projects like this one. Some people do it for the science of the project they participate in, some do it for the stats, some do it for both and some do it for entirely different reasons.

The "fun" argument is an important one - that people have fun doing this is (IMHO) one of the primary reasons that people continue to do it. The other part is the stats.

What you seem to forget is that where you feel strongly about the science, others couldn't care less and only do it because of the stats (or whatever reason they have). Also remember that it doesn't matter whether you care about the science or not. All that matters is whether you contribute or not - why is unimportant.

From your post it sounds like you have an exact definition of "fun"?

What you think is fun, which most likely includes team jumps, isn't neccesarily what everyone else thinks is fun.

Note: This is not intended as a flame at all. I appologize if it sounds like that. It is intended as "informational". I personally don't really care that much about the team jumps.

[bubbadog]

I do understand that the science is the most important part of the project. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. However, a lot of people join the project for the fun of competing against other teams. I can think of several people on my team who have stopped running DF because they were so upset about all the team-jumping shenanigans.

[lemonsqzz]

My high is to constantly challenge my production rate .. which isn't really the science nor the stats (standings) In the mean time it all goes towards science. That is why I wanted the ability to keep my team free from too many spikes.. When my production goes way down Its a good sign something has gone horribly wrong in my lab.. Actually weeded out some bad proxy servers at work that couldnt handle all my requests.. I've worked out a deal with the harware guys here to let me exercise the new harware with the client and we compare the results with older harware.. so this actually helps us too.. I've fried some pretty expensive stuff in the name of science .. There were some cooling issues .. resolved now.. So in the end.. we all experiece this in our own way.. When ya die.. ya can't take your structures with ya !!

[KWSN_robegeor]

Pointwood -

No problem at all. I was just stirring the pot so to speak.

Some of us at KWSN were taken to task when we spoke out against a certain person moving results among teams in Genome@Home (which didn't allow that by rule). We were accused of caring only about stats and not the science. I was just throwing it back in jest somewhat.

Personally, I don't care. I see both sides of the argument to some extent. I have to admit when some jumped to FreeDC to keep Ars at bay, I found much enjoyment in it. Right or wrong, it struck me as quite funny. I too can understand why it would upset Lemonsqeez when his team grew unexpectantly. However, unless Howard decides to change the rule, expect some of this to continue.

I cannot speak for the Knights (in fact I am expressly forbidden to speak for the knights: Knightly Code of Conduct, Volume IIX, page 1345, paragraph 3, subsection 1a titled "KWSN_robegeor is a bleeping moron and cannot be allowed to speak for anyone on this team and probably shouldn't be allowed to even speak for himself"), but I think we will have discussions on this matter privately and simultaneously increase the medical dosages of the immates (err team members) in an effort to reduce actions that are deemed by the project as "nasty and mean". That or we will all just get drunk and invade a third world country...

Ni

[pointwood]

[runestar]

If people are going to playing team-jumping... it sort of defeats the whole purpose of team competition...

If the team can't hold their own, how is jumping to the team from your team going to help them? At the same time you also are subtracting from your team's efforts.

If they really want to help contributed to some other team, create a new account and join their team and get them some structures they can hold onto.

Better yet, join up together and then you can really dominate the charts. =)

TTFN,

RuneStar½

[KWSN_Millennium2001Guy]

Originally posted by runestar½

Better yet, join up together and then you can really dominate the charts. =)

Been there, done that!

[Paratima]

Originally posted by runestar½
If people are going to playing team-jumping... it sort of defeats the whole purpose of team competition...

BINGO!

You can fight fire with water.

You are trying to fight water with fire, a much more difficult proposition!

Try thinking outside the box.

[runestar]

Well...you know if you heat up water hot enoug that it'll catch on fire.... but I digress...heh.

RS½

[Scoofy12]

as long as we're digressing, you shoud note that water will *not* catch on "fire" (ie will not oxidize like, say, heptane), it will just absorb heat until it boils and then i guess if you got it *really* hot it might ionize.
This is why you can take a styrofoam cup and put it over a bunsen burner and boil water in it without burning the cup. that was a neat high school chemistry demonstration!

[runestar]

Originally posted by Brian the Fist

As always, thanks for your input and ideas, I think that's what makes this such a great project. Now what I don't understand is if there's so many problems with SETI, how come they still have 100 times as many users??

Ignorance. Many people just don't know about the cheating going on. They heard on a talk show or something and they loaded and they never thought about it again. They'll just crunch in bliss, no idea that the work they are doing may have been done several times already.

Then are just people who don't want to switch for whatever reason... time invested, too much trouble, screensaver doesn't work, just turned off by all the "crap" that is going on..

Personally, I don't see the purpose of running a project that is going to ignore rampant cheating and hacking or goes around breaking promises to their users. Not to diss F@H... well actually I am... you don't go deciding to beta test after the client is already out. Let's beta test the client that was already beta tested?

Those who follow Folding and Genome are aware of the broken promises, back-tracks, and abandonments that occured.

The nice thing about DF, aside from the interaction with Howard, is that its relatively simple, studying something important, and is non-profit.

Searching for key numbers and breaking encrpyption keys is good and well in its own, but just doesn't get me excited. There's just nothing out there that really catches my attention and at the same time as a nice, viable client. If I'm going to run something, I'd like to see something. Asthetics are somewhat important.

RIght now, there are two other things that catch my interest. One is DaliWorld which is a virtual distributed aquarium. Its pretty good, runs on Java... but its essentially abandoned. Which is really sad because it has a lot of potential. The other is globalclimate.net, although it hasn't started beta testing yet. It looks very interesting in attempting to create models of global climate changes and they make no qualms that it is a very CPU intensive project. No loading those Pentiums up for this.

As for future SETI... when and if they get out... it shall be seem if it lives up to everything they say it is going to be. If it is, heck, maybe even Howard might look into it... piggyback on the SETI project... Still in its shadow, but at least DF would BE the shadow..

Well, that's my rants for now... agree, disagree, genius, moron... its there for your praise or criticism...

Best,

RuneStar½

[runestar]

I was just thinking, as DF is slowly growing with more people, should be expand the Top 10 individuals so we capture more of the top DF crunchers? Maybe a Top 20? It'd be nice to recognize more people for their efforts. I don't think we're quite ready the expand the Top 10 teams though. I think teams still have hopes of reaching the Top 10 chart.

Best,

RS½

[KWSN_Millennium2001Guy]

lemonsqzz,

If you really are having problems tracking your stats, why don't you just check your stats here?

http://stats.zerothelement.com/cgi-b...nal.pl?Id=9788

This doesn't care who joins your team, you can tell what your personal pharm is producing.

Ni!