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  1. #1
    Senior Member MarkRBright's Avatar
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    A new measure of greatness ;-)

    OK so I'm winding down with Boinc after 10 years, after much thought, debate and putting it off, and basically finding one excuse after another to keep going that overrides the fact that everything tells me that lack of work since Covid has meant I can not justify the cost of the electricity. Roll on Quantum computers - I think I have plenty of quantums going spare that I am not using ;-)

    I love the concept behind Boinc, I love doing tiny bits of science to help science, but I also love that I can 'massage' my stats by picking and choosing projects and subprojects to maximise my various rankings. It just adds to the experience in my view. Some out there are aware that I am a bit of a spreadsheet nerd with regard to Boinc, and have persuaded Bok to introduce a couple of Milestones in the past. Anyway it's been interesting to watch my various Free-DC stats change as I gradually focus on fewer and fewer milestones that I want to achieve.

    So it set me thinking. I have always maintained in my spreadsheets two numbers in particular that are not available in Free-DCs excellent summaries. The first is the "best count I have ever achieved for each MegaMilestone", and the second is the total of all of these best counts. Now I am not suggesting that these be stored, however as my Squarepants dwindles, primarily due to a lack of Clanks and SubClanks, which in turn lead to less MiRBs, SubMiRBs and Maxwells, I realised that an ex-Clank (and related) total could in fact be a universally rankable measure of any Boincer. With this number you could compare yourself in Free-DC terms with anyone and everyone that has ever Boinced, whether or not you were actively Boincing. It would be a good measure of just how big a contributor you have been over the years and it would live on, in that even if you have long stopped Boincing, for whatever reasons, you could pop back into Free-DC and have a quick look and be able to say "Ooh! I am still in the top 10000!" or whatever.

    So here's what I am suggesting. A new ranked MegaMilestone, which is essentially Squarepants assuming both Clanks and SubClanks were 0, and taking into account the effects of them being 0. Simple! ;-)

    In short this number is the number of Squarepants any Boincer would have in a month's time if she/he stopped Boincing today1 (obviously you can't allow for the likes of Ralph sitting on work that's been done for a couple of months ;-)
    This number puts everyone past and present on a more or less level playing field. and could (I would argue should) be Ranked to make it significantly more meaningful. It should not itself be added to Squarepants, nor should it contribute in any way to MiRBs, TeraMiRBs and Maxwells in my opinion

    I can hear some of you saying that Total Credits is as good a Rankable indicator of everyone's contribution and is all we need, and it is already there. To a large extent - that is of course, true. However, there have been the odd times where a Project has 'skewed' the entirety of stats with its 'generosity' and it is possible this could happen again, but this is to some extent, smoothed by this new suggested MM and more importantly by its Ranking.

    As for a name for it, as I wrote this I thought how it Levels, Smooths, hints towards historic ranking, and how slightly odd it would be, sat there enigmatically changing relatively little compared to Squarepants, and it seems to me I would called it Enigma.

    So what do you think?


    Notes
    1 In theory the number should take into account the effect of removing Clanks and SubClanks on other MMs (effectively taking off zero, one or two off each of MiRBs, TeraMiRBs and Maxwells as appropriate), and then taking into account if that decrease in MiRBs, TeraMiRBs and Maxwells would in itself further affect the levels of MiRBs, TeraMiRBs and Maxwells! This just seems to be going too far. I would happily accept the argument that the total possible effect of removing them and their effect on each other could only ever affect the score by between 0 and 12 so if it couldn't be readily done, it wouldn't be the end of the world - the most dramatic effect would be that your score in fact dropped by a very few, a month after finally stopping Boincing.

  2. #2
    Senior Member MarkRBright's Avatar
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    LOL! Clearly you need to be a retiree to think this is a good idea worth pursuing, and just maybe they don't come to the forum very often I should have thought of that.
    Either that or I am just so longwinded that eyes glazed over long before I got to the point. Probably both. Points, not eyes, though that too!

  3. #3
    Administrator Bok's Avatar
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    I confess that i did read it, but did not understand it.

    Too much going on this week anyway, got an SAP Production migration this weekend and with all my colleagues in Dallas struggling with power/heat/water due to the storm there it's only more crazy

  4. #4
    Senior Member MarkRBright's Avatar
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    OK Sorry. Let me have another go.

    Total Credit is a good indication of any Boincers status, and I would never take that away from anyone. However, if you take out Bitcoin from the equation that would change the league table / rankings dramatically, so those who poured their resources into Bitcoin will pretty much inevitably be always and for all time ranked higher than others who did not, quite possibly because Bitcoin didn't last very long and they just weren't there at the time. Yet others may well have in reality contributed more CPU/GPU time.

    So I was looking for another method of ranking Boincers past and present, active and inactive, against each other, without taking Bitcoin achievements out of the equation. It seems to me that Squarepants is as good a measure as any other and better than most.

    However, as I personally was forced to wind down the number of machines I was turning on to Boinc every day, and consider what projects I wanted to get to some meaningful total before stopping completely, I watched my Squarepants tally drop quite significantly due to the effect of fewer Clanks and SubClanks, and in turn as they dropped, it took a small toll on my MiRB's, TeraMiRBs and Maxwells. This, believe it or not, then in turn took a further toll on Maxwells, TeraMiRBs and MiRBs!!! As you can get each of them for the other two! But never mind that.

    So my thoughts turned to a system of fairness in creating a sort of Historical Free-DC Hall of Fame. It seems to me if you were to total up all the MegaMilestones Except Clanks and SubClanks, and ideally exclude any MiRBs, TeraMiRBs and Maxwells that are associated with them, then that could be just such a measure to compare everyone past and present on as equal a footing as we are likely to find. Call the total Enigmas because it probably is, and rank it for all Boincers, and there you have a fairly sensible Free-DC Hall of Fame.

    And for reasons that I would hope are obvious, I would exclude Enigmas from being included in Squarepants, and would be tempted to suggest that you don't get a MiRB, TeraMiRB or Maxwell for Enigmas either.

    Hope that's clearer. And hope you get through the coming weekend Bok.
    Last edited by MarkRBright; 02-17-2021 at 12:38 PM. Reason: Typos

  5. #5
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    Mark, I hope you don't leave Boinc forever. Actually I hope you don't leave Boinc at all...

    Regarding this new MM, I assume that it only goes up and not down matching your best achievement at any given time. I think this is a lot better than merely total credits as it would include other MM factors as well. I for one have always tried for those other factors as my limited computing power has never given me a chance to push any sort of credit record.

    As for calling it Enigma, I would like to say that it sounds too similar to the Boinc project named Enigma. As an alternative name I, in an act of self aggrandizement, would like to see it called Werin....but like all my other MM suggestions that suggestion too will likely result in a belly flop. A more likely name, probably thought of by someone else, would be "Pinnacle" as it is the best that anyone has achieved.

  6. #6
    Senior Member MarkRBright's Avatar
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    I think something that only ever went up would give Bok too much of a headache in calculating it, when individual MMs went down.
    I was aiming for something that stayed pretty static for Ranking purposes, but now you have made me realise that it would be more static, and I think be much easier for Bok to calculate, if not only the Clanks/SubClanks/Squarepants were excluded but also the various (Sub)Top10's etc, Vaios, Maxwells, MiRBs and TeraMiRBs too, as they will generally decline as others pick up the torch. If they were taken out, then this new tally would stay static, and would therefore provide a stable basis for subsequent Ranking, and it is the Ranking that this is really all about.

    Pinnacle seems a little odd given that it will undoubtedly be a smaller number than Squarepants. Perhaps Brightys or Rankems? Oh! How about Enigmax?
    Last edited by MarkRBright; 02-19-2021 at 03:53 AM. Reason: Clarity

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