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Thread: Future of DF project?

  1. #41
    Stats God in Training Darkness Productions's Avatar
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    Originally posted by brage
    I think that people who hear about the opportunity to contribute to science, folding protein, searching for radio signals from outer space, or what ever, do care about the progress the projects are making. After all we hear about the project, decide to join, download the program, install it and run it for hundreds and hopefully thousands of hours. And it's a fact that most people run the screensaver version (at lest that goes for SETI and probably also DF). I think the reason for that is so that they can monitor the progress and brag about the screensaver to friends and so on. But after a while you get used to the screensaver, and you have told all of your friends, and most people start wondering: "what happens with the work I contribute". Is there a reason for me to do this, other than a cool screensaver? This is when a good project never leaves the volunteer in doubt. Progress must be documented so that the volunteer feel like doing something useful as well. I do believe that lots of people "install and forget", but I also believe that they are the first to "uninstall and forget".
    I think you're wrong here. Provided the client works flawlessly (IE, distributed.net, Seti@Home, etc), if they're of the "fire and forget" mentality, it's exactly that. Install it, forget about it. That's the best kind of client. However, if the client is buggy (countless other DC apps), then they become the "uninstall and forget", as you coined it. I'd be willing to wager that 90%+ of the people that are running DF are running it for the science, but not in the way you think. It's a (possibly) good cause. I know that Howard and Elena are working on the client, the server back-end, the algorithm, and everything else, all the while doing any classwork, teaching, real-lifing that is left over. However, those 90%+ people are here for the stats. They could honestly care less what happens to the data, so long as it's being counted for something. The only way they know it's being counted is if they have statistics to back it up, which leads to your next statement:


    Statistics is one way of making it clear that there is a progress, but statistics isn't enough to make people stay with a project for many years.
    Wrong. People have stuck with Seti@Home for 5+ years mostly because of the stats. They like seeing their name in the lights, so to speak. It also helps that the client is stable, and there's lots of 3rd party add-ons.

    Personal contact with the people who run the project would be very bonding, but requires too much work. A project that want to grow large (and by large I mean 100.000+ cpus) has to give response to it's volunteers.
    Who says? Seti@Home has several hundred thousand users, and has almost never given response to its users.

    DistributedFolding now has approximately 30.000 registered users, and 1454 active users. This is nothing! Something has to be done to make people stay. DF has statistics, a good client with a really cool screensaver and a good forum but is lacking big time in response from developers. Participating in DF feels like contributing to statistics and no one is telling you anything else. I am about to quit the project; it feels like throwing cpu cycles into a black hole. It probably is more useful than that, but the result page is not convincing me otherwise, on the contrary, it strengthens my feeling with some old mediocre CASP results. I want a reason to believe in DF. I am not giving away cpu-time to anyone. There are lots of other useful projects that document their progress, but then again they don't have that cool screensaver... but in the long run, screensavers doesn't matter, only the feeling of doing something useful.
    I bet if you ask the developers (who are never here, as you say), what is actually going on, they'd tell you. There's a reason they don't have "roadmap" of what's going to happen: they don't know. Once they get the back-end stable, and the client working the way they want, maybe they'll have a better plan as to where they want to go. This project is still in it's infancy. It took Seti@Home 4+ years on a 2 year project to get the way they are (roadmap-wise), and they aren't even following it!


    And by the way, the CASP5 results were extremely promising for at least one reason, but one main reason I can think of: 2 developers, in their "spare" time, came up with a client and an algorithm that produced meaningful results. They might not have been the best results, but they were meaningful. They showed that this project is a serious contender in the protein folding world, and that it has lots of potential.

    dp out.

  2. #42
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    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.

  3. #43
    You're missing some points. First, imho the many inactive users are greatly explained by the periodic proteinupdates and clientupdates (ofcourse and people who just don't like it anymore and are switching over to another DC project). The client is in the normal install mode not allowed to update by hisself but asks the user what to do.
    Second, you refer to the populair Seti@home and the many users. That was 4 years ago. In the mean time there are hundreds of DC projects and so people have to choose what to do. In the past there were about 3 large projects (Seti, Gimps and Rc5-64) who all had a large amount of contributing members. Now is it much more difficult to impress users and attrack/intress them for the project.

    Little example. We (the Dutch Power Cows) recently had a stampede (like a gauntlet) witch means that 1 DC project gets extra attention. This resulted in a increase of flushing members from about 100 to at the top 1100 for our team by Distributed Folding. I can say that about 95% were in it for the battle/competition/stats. And we all loved it

    Third opinion. This project is missing a good 'slogan' / eyecatcher.
    Seti@home = searching for E.T.
    UD Grid (think) = cancerresearch
    TSC = searching for a medicine on Tuberous Sclerosis Complex
    D2OL = Anthrax, Ebola and Smallpox, were anthrax was recently a hot issue in the war on terrorism.
    Distributed Folding is wide in it's goal, (in short) understand protein folding. People can't associate this with something. It's 'fuzzy'

    You just can't look only at the active flushers. I have to agree, some short information about a current protein, client changes etc. are wonderfull, but there is little time for Howard and Elana and so much to do.
    Give this project some credit

    Last edited by MarcyDarcy; 03-18-2004 at 05:27 PM.
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  4. #44
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    I got introduced to the project from a mention on a hardware website's forums. Of the 3 team forums on DF I've followed - the emphasis was on the text client - since the text client is faster.. and the text client in invis is faster than that.. so that's the way the teams have encouraged new users to run the client. 100% of the stats hounds are running it as a service or running the text client - in my experience. Each of us seem to notice a different group to call "most". The single cpu, part time screen saver crowd are important to the project since there's a whole lot more of them than there are of folks willing to donate several (or groups of) machines dedicated to the project to run the text client.

    When you talk about how many people are active - you show that you don't know how the "active" list is made. If you really want to make the participation sound bad, take a look at a page that lists the active users 15 mins after a new protein has been released. There will be close to 0 active users. To be listed as "active" you have to upload at least one generation from the current protein. By the end of the protein we usually have 10% or more of the registered users listed as active. Some ideas on retaining active users or recovering our lost comrades have been presented in the past - especially things like improving the reliability of the current Phase II client to the point it was at near the end of Phase I.

    Most of science discussions by Howard (BrianTheFist) - now Dr. Howard Feldman and Dr. Hogue (FeedB0b0) with the various mathematicians and biologists in our midst have been migrated to the "educational" forum. During phase I - structures were created at random. They'd get analysed, and the one with the lowest RMSD score would be uploaded to the servers. With that approach, and the thousands of participants (each participant having between 1 and 200 cpus?) we had nearly perfectly centered results in all the CASP5 trials. Unlike the other approaches that were way better on some proteins, and way worse on others.
    With the Beta of Phase II - there were just 50 of us - running 1 to 4? of our systems on the Beta client. The tiny group managed in a week, to get protein structures that were several Angroms smaller than what the whole group got in a month. To do that with the Phase I client, we would have had to get 100 to 1000 times the number of cpus working on the project. (I still wanna see how well the first Phase II client would do against the other guys in the Casp trials..)
    The Phase II scoring was changed - since the project wasn't about generating known proteins - and we've gone through a few different approaches to pick out the best structure without first comparing it to a known native structure. When Howard updates the client - he usually mentions why it was changed and what the change is supposed to do - and he (and Dr. Hogue, and now Elena) has answered questions about the change from those that understand the topic better than most of us.
    With the next algorithm change, we'll get another question and answer session on the boards - and it'll eventually get stored away in the educational forum. And that's pretty much what you've been asking for, isn't it?

    My question would be how this client is doing in comparison to Phase I, and preceeding Phase II algorithms. The science may be great - but I'm a little more interested in how the blind testing is doing.
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  5. #45
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    First of all I would like to say that it was never my intention to start a big argument. In my first reply I simply tried to point out that I would like this project to give the users some more information regarding the changes done to the client. I wanted so say this because I believe it would be an inspiration for both me and probably other users to know. I said that a note was more than enough for me. My opinion is that it should not be a goal for DF to hide changes done to the client, as I would like to know about it. Constructively criticism. If you all don't agree (some of you say you agree and still tries to say that I am wrong) then it's all right with me.

    I know that it's hard to compare different dc projects, they all wary in size and resources and so on. But so what? I am not asking DF to employ someone just so that they can write notes to me. And by the way I compared DF mainly to F@H, not SETI. F@H is in my view very good at giving their users the ability to learn more.

    I know the DF history. I folded in Phase I. What is your point tpdooley? I still think that 10% active users at the end of a protein could be raised by informing users more actively. And it seems that you agree with me.

  6. #46
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    I know the DF history. I folded in Phase I. What is your point tpdooley? I still think that 10% active users at the end of a protein could be raised by informing users more actively. And it seems that you agree with me.

    My point? That we're getting the kind of information you're asking about when the client updates happen. That some of the things you're using as evidence aren't really as bad as you make them sound.

    There are a few aspiring Bill Nye "The Science Guy"s folding for the project. It's interesting to see them try and decipher what Dr. Howard Feldman/Dr. Hogue have presented in terms of the science and in turn describe it in a form that the rest of us can understand. I don't know that more frequent discussions of the science would significantly improve the number of active participants. And if there is something we are curious about, that hasn't been covered - we can ask. When I've asked what previous clients got with the current protein - Howard and/or Elena have answered me.

    I don't believe I was agreeing with you that more discussions would improve active users - I'm of the firm belief that at this point, a much more reliable client, reliable transmission protocol, and reliable backend are more important for increasing the number of active users than changes to the algorithm (i.e. moving on to Phase III).
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  7. #47
    Well, first of all thanks a lot for the input since my last post. Now, how is the new server backend doing for which the scientific effort was "reduced"? I would say worse than the one before...

    A simple question that answers very well how much effort is put into informing the DF contributers science-wise: Why are we folding this protein? Nobody knows, huh?

    And a final statement: The number of contributers has significantly decreased. If you compare DF to FAH stats-wise, DF is undoubtedly superior. Hence, stats are NOT likely the reason for why people go away from DF. Just an example for what really happens behind the scenes: Rechenkraft.net dropped out of the top 10 even though we were one of the first and strongest contributers over quite a period of time. I tell you why this is. It is because we do not have the impression that DF is currently doing much meaningful science-wise. Improve that and we will be back, because we don't fold for the stats (even though we like them).


    Michael.
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  8. #48
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    Before anyone starts repeating that DF has limited resources, and that the project is very responsive not matter what (etc...etc...) I would like to say that I agree with Michael H.W. Weber.

  9. #49
    Originally posted by Michael H.W. Weber
    Now, how is the new server backend doing for which the scientific effort was "reduced"? I would say worse than the one before...
    The new back-end is still in beta (have you contributed to the testing?), and this update merely points out how much it's needed. In the meantime, we crunch the current energy-function/scoring-algorithm with a couple different sizes/shapes of proteins to see how well it works.

    Personally, I don't need Howard and Elena to reassure me constantly or to hold my hand when I'm afraid of wasting cycles.

  10. #50
    Originally posted by RandomCritterz
    The new back-end is still in beta
    This I can see.

    Originally posted by RandomCritterz (have you contributed to the testing?)
    Well OF COURSE NOT. The reason for why I did not you can take from my postings above.

    Originally posted by RandomCritterz In the meantime, we crunch the current energy-function/scoring-algorithm with a couple different sizes/shapes of proteins to see how well it works.
    How many are there yet to come? How many have been folded with the same algorithm? What changes are planned/in the pipeline?

    Originally posted by RandomCritterz Personally, I don't need Howard and Elena to reassure me constantly or to hold my hand when I'm afraid of wasting cycles.
    Constantly? Would be enough if anything AT ALL would be said. And holding hands - well - a bit difficult over the internet. Instead of unnecessarily counter-argueing, you might better think a while seriously about what I said.

    Originally posted by brage
    Before anyone starts repeating that DF has limited resources...
    Well, this was also the case when DF started and look how much could be done science-wise with a "one-man-band" and limited ressources. Just repeat it, Howard - you are a post-doc now. Teach us who is boss.

    Michael.
    Last edited by Michael H.W. Weber; 03-20-2004 at 11:17 AM.
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  11. #51
    Originally posted by Michael H.W. Weber
    Instead of unnecessarily counter-argueing, .
    It wasn't an argument, it was a humorous statement of my position. No need for you to take it personally or feel defensive.
    you might better think a while seriously about what I said.
    I have. And I've dismissed it.

  12. #52
    Originally posted by RandomCritterz
    ...it was a humorous statement of my position. No need for you to take it personally...
    Well, I was not really amused but I think I have made my points clear, so there is no further need to deviate from the topic of this thread.

    Michael
    http://www.rechenkraft.net - Germany's largest distributed computing community

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  13. #53
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    Well, I'm off to D2OL and F@H. I would never have thought that suggestions and requests would meet this kind of resistance. Watch as five Athlons move along for projects that doesn't require a strong faith.

    ----
    By the way, D2OL was also criticized for not giving enough response to the users. Their answer was something like "Yes, you are right. We will improve on the response. Of course. I have already alerted our chemists". Say no more...

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