A new measure of greatness ;-)

[Bok]

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

[MarkRBright]

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.

[Werinbert]

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.

[MarkRBright]

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?

[Werinbert]

I saw Enigmax and I thought of shipping size limits...panamax, suezmax, chinamax, etc....

[MarkRBright]

So was I right? Is this one that only the retiring / retired are interested in? Perhaps the reason they don't come back (and comment on this) is because there is no EnigMax to tempt them back!
I am more and more convinced (as I play with the numbers in my spreadsheets) that excluding all the Top's/SubTop's, Vaios, Maxwells, MiRBs and TeraMiRBs as well as the Clanks / SubClanks, gives a fairly solid and static rankable Free-DC achievement level. But it has occurred to me that some of the great Boincers of the past may have Boinced for many years with relatively little kit, so I am now thinking of adding a weighting for the number of years boinced. This would make it trickier as you would have to track a last activity date, but it would also encourage people to stick with it. I am open to suggestions as to how this could be done but I am thinking along the lines of adding a 19% bonus if you've Boinced for 19 years sort of thing.
As I said though, the significance is not in the number itself - but in the Rank - so it could be put up into the header on the main stats page if it was easier - though ideally blinking with flashing lights and music and some animated fireworks when you hover over it.
And obviously it should allow you to click it and look at the Hall of Fame.
Given how I know you like the odd bit of mysterious Bok it would be quite funny if the only place anyone could work out how it was calculated was in this thread.
I would love to know where I rank on this. All I currently know is I have an EnigMax of 1607 by the above suggested definition (including weighting) and I suspect my rank is a long way short of my Squarepants Rank.

[MarkRBright]

Just had a thought about the name - Legacy. Something you would build up and would leave/keep forever sort of thing. Does that sound better? It's also slightly enigmatic, and slightly Pinnacle-ish

Come on now Bok, you've been far too quite here. What's your view on this? If you just hate it then that's fine by me, but I don't think you will, and now you have me worried about that storm!