First of all I think you are wrong about your assumption that the best client is the "install and forget" client. It's not even the preferred way of participating. If this where true then there would be no good reason to make fancy screensavers and a service install of DF would be ideal. I have been actively participating in these kind of project in almost 6 years, and it is my impression that the best way to motivate people for long term participation is to make them believe that it not just fancy, it's also useful.
Maybe you are right about your statement that 90% of the people are here for the stats. If that is the cast then I think that is the explanation for the sad fact that roughly 3% of the registered users are participating in the project today. We have had some bugs in the client, but not nearly enough to explain that 97% of the people who volunteered in the past don't participate anymore.
People do SETI for the stats, but not entirely. One of the many reasons for SETI's success is the projects easy-to-grasp goal: "We have created a program that analyze radio waves received by this telescope (picture of Arecibo). We cut these radio waves in portions for you to analyze on your computer". It's not at all the stats that have made SETI popular, it's an easy to understand goal and a good screensaver. People know what they are contributing to. The stats are important, but you don't get medias attention on stats. Folding@home (witch where in my thoughts when writing the last reply) has been getting a lot of attention from their articles.
Take a look at Folding@home. Almost the entire page is filled with educational stuff. There is "home" witch offers a short explanation, and then there is "FAQ" and "Help!" for more depth but still no articles and heavy reading required. Then there is "Education", "Science", "Results", "Papers", "Press", and "Awards". It's pretty massive stuff, but a bare necessity in my view to make people interested over time. They have 130.000 active CPUs and it is my impression that no other DC users come close to the loyalty many F@H users shows. They feel very comfortably with their project.
Read the stuff under "Science" on the SETI homepage. People do care. Almost every one I know that participates in this kind of projects does get curious over time. "What do the things the screensaver display really mean?"
It's OK to not make a roadmap and stick with it no matter what. That is a part of the fun actually! All I am saying is that I think it is a bad mistake to not satisfy people's curiosity.
I do understand that the resources are limited in this project, as I have said before, but I am not asking for more than for "Brian the First" to reconsider his statement earlier in this thread: "... Usually this is invisble to you, the user - as it should be. You should not need to know or care precisely how the algorithm is choosing structures at each step". If Darkness Production don't agree with me, then that's fine. Maybe need to find another project. I am very bad at doing things I am not even given an opportunity to understand. There are many interesting articles on the Fodling@home homepage... unfortunately.