XS Crunching - Team Suggestions

[Snow Crash]

With the renewed interest in the team and some general chatter I find myself drawn in - that's the whole point right????

• XS - [Fugger] has been very good to us over the years, I would say if there are things we would like to do here that we don't think we can, let's ask.
• Sticky threads - should we review - what needs to be updated and what can be un-stuck?
• BOINC user names ... how about driving traffic to this site and hopefully the team by using the XS url as a suffix - snowcrash@xtremesystems.org (prolly should float this by Fugger first) .
• Do you think polls are a good idea in general - are they an easy way to get folks here who are not hardcore crunchers involved?
• Do you think I should turn these each of these into separate polls?

[PoppaGeek]

I very much agree. If there are things we need I think we should bring these up with Fugger first.

I think we need a team web site with the forums here. The web site would be all the distributed computing teams and projects. Info, links, pics, howtos, project results, etc.

I like the idea of XS email.

We need Tapatalk back. What is needed for this? Busy lives mean people use smartphones when they have a few minutes. Home time is too busy to sit down at a PC and browse forums.

We need to stop depending on one or two heavy hitters to make the big points and keep us in at least the top 5. We need many people each do whatever they can and being recognized for it.

I also think we need to make more of an emphasis that this is an international team. Not sure how, maybe display flags of team members on the web site.

[yojimbo197]

As far as stickies go, the section on how to crunch with Ubuntu should be added to the stickies list, maybe with post #130? D_A's fire and forget protocol for installing Ubuntu up top.

Too bad we couldn't make an XS flag, ie. one team, one flag.....

XS e-mail would be nice, especially when the website goes down. It's also useful when I'm away and have my smartphone with me, but can't get a good internet signal. E-mail seems to work even on crappy signals for me.

Maybe a team chat room that doesn't rely on old technology?

[stoneageman]

We should have a competition, decided by poll, to create a generic team logo for all projects, including a motto. Something like

[Sparky]

We need a poll to decide on the poll about polls.



I have a possible idea about XS email... you mean email like poppageek@xtremesystems.org for example?

[Otis11]

Agreed - Fugger has taken good care of us. With the exception of the period when reliability was an issue, couldn't have asked for anything more from him. If we ask, I'd guess he'll comply as long as it's not a terrible amount of work.

And yeah, we need to get back to having 200 "little guys"... while the top 10 get a lot of publicity, they used to only make up a small percentage of our total points... (1-10 made up ~15%, 11-50 about 40%, then 51-200 the remaining 45% or so) That was a great mixture - a few heavy hitters, a bunch of dedicated guys and a whole community contributing what they could to pull it all together!

XS email - don't know that I'd use it... but I'm all for additional XS publicity. I do think we should do something subtle to distinguish that we're team XS...

An informational website would also be great! Could post all of the background and how-to stuff there, then keep the forum for interacting... Just need someone to manage all of that - think it might be too much to ask Fugger. (PG, you feeling ambitious?)

Love the new team banner idea - going to make it my WCG logo when we decide on one! (That should help with publicity!)

Also, what about running internal competitions? Like chose arbitrary divides, form a team for a month, and see which team wins?
Team 1: Above 40 years old, Team 2: Below 40. (or arbitrary amount)
Team 1: Gamers, Team 2:Non-Gamers
Team 1: Beer, Team 2: Spirits

Really, any arbitrary divide... and see who wins in a week/month/whatever.

Any easy way to do that?

And yes - more polls. Way more polls. Sparky's on the right track, but I think we need another layer or two before his polls start.

[PoppaGeek]

Agreed - Fugger has taken good care of us. With the exception of the period when reliability was an issue, couldn't have asked for anything more from him. If we ask, I'd guess he'll comply as long as it's not a terrible amount of work.

And yeah, we need to get back to having 200 "little guys"... while the top 10 get a lot of publicity, they used to only make up a small percentage of our total points... (1-10 made up ~15%, 11-50 about 40%, then 51-200 the remaining 45% or so) That was a great mixture - a few heavy hitters, a bunch of dedicated guys and a whole community contributing what they could to pull it all together!

XS email - don't know that I'd use it... but I'm all for additional XS publicity. I do think we should do something subtle to distinguish that we're team XS...

An informational website would also be great! Could post all of the background and how-to stuff there, then keep the forum for interacting... Just need someone to manage all of that - think it might be too much to ask Fugger. (PG, you feeling ambitious?)

Love the new team banner idea - going to make it my WCG logo when we decide on one! (That should help with publicity!)

Also, what about running internal competitions? Like chose arbitrary divides, form a team for a month, and see which team wins?
Team 1: Above 40 years old, Team 2: Below 40. (or arbitrary amount)
Team 1: Gamers, Team 2:Non-Gamers
Team 1: Beer, Team 2: Spirits

Really, any arbitrary divide... and see who wins in a week/month/whatever.

Any easy way to do that?

And yes - more polls. Way more polls. Sparky's on the right track, but I think we need another layer or two before his polls start.

What is that? Oh do a web site? I dunno laddie. There could be issues. I need to ask, is sobriety a requirement?

[PoppaGeek]

Web site:

Use one of the providers that have templates. Pick 5 and vote on it for style.

Content: Boinc howtos, Linux Howtos, trouble shooting, project results and successes, project status, pics of crunchers, farms, science articles, personal stories, links to forums, chat, projects, stats, competitions. Any other ideas?

I am willing to work on content. Others need to register domains if needed, xtremesystemsteams.org, xtremesystems.info, whatever. Forums here, email, chat and static web at web site.

By using templates everyone gets to vote on style. Only content on web site is xtremesystems boinc team info and project info and stats and science. No tom foolery or pretty lassies.

Forums drive traffic to web site, web site drives traffic to forums. Entry on wikis. Advertise in project forums. Maybe take up donations and do ads on XS web site.

Yes/No/Don't care?

[PoppaGeek]

We should have a competition, decided by poll, to create a generic team logo for all projects, including a motto. Something like

Yes.

[Otis11]

Web site:

Use one of the providers that have templates. Pick 5 and vote on it for style.

I'd say pick your favorite and go for it. Focus on content for now, making it cutsie can be done once everyone sees the vision we're (corporate we - and by that I mean you ) are trying to make it.

Content: Boinc howtos, Linux Howtos, trouble shooting, project results and successes, project status, pics of crunchers, farms, science articles, personal stories, links to forums, chat, projects, stats, competitions. Any other ideas?

I'd start with What is Distributive computing, followed by BOINC, WCG and then project results and successes. Then Basic how-tos for Windows/Mac/Linux/Android?. I'd put a FAQ on there, but probably leave troubleshooting to the forum... that's what we're best at! Project status would be good - and you're current one that has pics of farms, mega cruchers and stories is awesome! Transplant lots of that content...

Idk what there exists for chat, might be better for the forum? Someone with more chat knowledge should answer that...

Kinda like Science articles on here - keeps things lively and easy to have a conversation about it too... about the rest I can see it either way.

Maybe an important updates section on the front page, and a "User of the week" randomly chosen from anyone who contributed to the team total that week (preferably by a random number generator).

AND MAKE SURE THE WEBSITE SUPPORTS HTTPS! (Google is actually taking that into account in it's rankings now, if you don't support HTTPS you get penalized in your page rank - might be something to mention to Fugger too...)

Other's thoughts?

I am willing to work on content. Others need to register domains if needed, xtremesystemsteams.org, xtremesystems.info, whatever. Forums here, email, chat and static web at web site.

XSBOINC.info? Probably a poll here... after we brainstorm some ideas...?

By using templates everyone gets to vote on style. Only content on web site is xtremesystems boinc team info and project info and stats and science. No tom foolery or pretty lassies.

Forums drive traffic to web site, web site drives traffic to forums. Entry on wikis. Advertise in project forums. Maybe take up donations and do ads on XS web site.

Yes/No/Don't care?

For the cost - how much are we talking? $/Month figure? And can we cut some of it by hosting at someones house with a fast connection, etc? (I haven't done a website before - closest thing was a personal file server hosted over the internet... and that was free...)

And of course we should get our new Captain to weigh in... OJ!!! Where you at?!?

[[XC] Oj101]

Hey guys, I've been a bit swamped with work the last few days but I've read everything here. Firstly, I received an update from WCG support:

Hello Jonathan,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We will email the current team captain (sierrabound) and will give them 14 days from today to respond. If they do not respond, or we get an invalid email alert, we will make you the new team captain.

Thank you for your support!

World Community Grid Support Team

I agree that the stickies could do with an overhaul. It's a bit much to expect of Movieman, so I'm working on a solution. If things go as planned, I will be making some changes this weekend.

I'm all for a website for the team, considering we ARE part of XtremeSystems I think we should keep it here if possible - I'll drop Charles a message and ask if anything can be done for a subdomain to keep it within this site - something to the effect of wcg.xtremesystems.org could be good. What do you guys think? As a bonus, it can save domain registration costs. Again, this is just an idea. It will need to be proposed to Charles before we can even think of working on it, I'd just like to know what you guys think of the idea. This has an added bonus of potentially driving more traffic to both the forums and the WCG site; as it's all part of xtremesystems.org it should help with SEO ranking as well.

I have a fair amount of experience with WordPress, having run both my own site (flyingsuicide.net, a now-defunct enthusiast news site that got far bigger than me far too quickly - you can find it on the internet archives) and work on other sites such as TheOverclocker. I can fairly easily put together a decent site if need be. On the other hand, if we could have it as part of XS it should be possible to use the vBulletin CMS which will allow the XS style to propagate to the WCG side of things.

Sometimes a little bit of incentive is all it takes to get people to crunch. Instead of reserving the maroon titles for the more dedicated crunchers only, what if we could give it to everyone who could add a bit to the team? I've noticed on other forums I admin that any sense of exclusivity or involvement/acceptance/whatever you want to call it is normally enough to motivate people to do something relatively simple. Once we've "roped them in" we can make them feel like they're part of the family and hopefully they'll become one of us

I'm used to having a right hand man who helps me out with the running of things; however, as we're a family here, I'd like all of you to feel free to approach me if there's anything you need done/feel needs to be done differently. I have both approached some of you and been approached by some on personal matters unrelated to WCG, any one of you is welcome to talk to me should you ever need a shoulder.

I don't think I NEED to say this last bit, but I will anyway. The only thing I ask of you guys is completely mutual respect amongst everyone. It doesn't matter to me whether you contribute a few points here and there or single-handedly steamroll team IBM, you're ALL important to the team. Someone running WCG on an Atom-based netbook and submitting 100 PPD (do Atoms even manage that?) is doing what he can and yes, he is making a difference

[Otis11]

Huzzah! Leader has spoken!

Seriously though - well said.

And while I agree with asking charles - things will take a long time to put together. Is there a problem with starting to flesh out content while we finalize details?

wcg.xtremesystems.org

May I suggest teams.xtremesystems.org or boinc.xtremesystems.org so as to include GPUGrid and Einstein@home?

Someone running WCG on an Atom-based netbook and submitting 100 PPD (do Atoms even manage that?) is doing what he can and yes, he is making a difference

And sadly, only a few of them... When I last shut down my atom, I was looking at 31 ppd/thread (slightly higher per core as HT isn't as efficient in those, but not huge). While there are some dual core with HT that might break that milestone, to my knowledge most are single core with HT or dual core without... Is there even a quad core Atom?

Ah ha! There are: http://ark.intel.com/products/84072 (Though they're incredibly new!)
And a lot more dual core with HT than I thought... so, some might!
WHAT?!?!?!: http://ark.intel.com/products/77988

[MaxCFM]

May I suggest teams.xtremesystems.org or boinc.xtremesystems.org so as to include GPUGrid and Einstein@home?

I was thinking on this and agree that it should be inclusive of all Distributed Computing like dc.xtremesystems.org. If you want to create an informational site I would be on board with WordPress. If you want forums use whats here or look at other forum based CMS packages. Using XS's forums may pose a problem if we want features that the main site can't handle with the version of vB it uses.

[PoppaGeek]

I was thinking on this and agree that it should be inclusive of all Distributed Computing like dc.xtremesystems.org. If you want to create an informational site I would be on board with WordPress. If you want forums use whats here or look at other forum based CMS packages. Using XS's forums may pose a problem if we want features that the main site can't handle with the version of vB it uses.

[Otis11]

I was thinking on this and agree that it should be inclusive of all Distributed Computing like dc.xtremesystems.org. If you want to create an informational site I would be on board with WordPress. If you want forums use whats here or look at other forum based CMS packages. Using XS's forums may pose a problem if we want features that the main site can't handle with the version of vB it uses.

Favorite one so far!

[stoneageman]

Some key aims for another site

• Encompasses all XS team projects
• Should still be accessible when this site is down
• Have a chat room but not a forum, keep that here

[OldChap]

Concur on all of those Sam

[OldChap]

If we are going to have that SC week (2 weeks to make up for not having any recently) then the advertising for members to help should start now

Also advise that to hit the ground running folks need to start around the 10th of November and hold their results upload for day 1 on Nov 16.

I know it will be a while until Team Captaincy is officially changed at WCG so maybe ask Dave to get the ball rolling ??

[stoneageman]

Think we need to set some near & long term achievable targets for the team

[PoppaGeek]

Does anyone have an idea of what they want for a chat room? Is a web interface like Mibbit for IRC not acceptable? Or something like Openfire running on a server somewhere?

[MaxCFM]

Does anyone have an idea of what they want for a chat room? Is a web interface like Mibbit for IRC not acceptable? Or something like Openfire running on a server somewhere?

I prefer OpenFire on a server somewhere as its more robust in terms of options and usability and security IMHO.

[Otis11]

Has anyone else noticed that it's now $1 to register on this forum now?

Yeah, that needs to go away IMO... highly discourages new members, which we desperately need...

[Otis11]

It'd also be really good to set goals like "10M ppd" or "Take 7th team daily production rate!" and create threads to drive up excitement to reach those...

Man... quiet weekend...

[[XC] Oj101]

I thought the $1 registration was dropped?

[[XC] Oj101]

Yeah refer to this thread http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...FAQ&highlight= Unless things have changed again?