My rant: Why you should care about the credit-system
Anonymous
6 Sep 2006 9:09:42 UTC
Topic 13445
(moderation:
Quote:
Feedback is welcome :)
Ok, here are my two cents:
The amount of "credit" (which btw. is a term I don't like at all) a participant (well, I don't like "user", too) gets may look fair to him or not, but I think the research and (programming) effort we actually (have) put into the crediting on Einstein@Home should be enough to show that we care a lot about this issue.
Changing the credit system from benchmaked to server-side crediting wasn't silent at all. The server-based credit system was developed (and mostly pushed in the project team by me) because of the trouble we had with the traditional system (wrong benchmarks and cpu-time reports), it was announced for the switch to the new S5 analysis run long before the new run started, and is widely accepted by participants as being much more fair and predictable than the previous system.
The new system required to have a "standard" - how much credit should be granted for a "template", an atomar, equally sized unit our workunits are built from. As a reference we chose the credit the "average" machine got on S4, with some correction factor to make up for the difference to the average credit on other projects, at least the ones with the largest "user-base" (SETI & CPDN). The idea was (and still is) that the "average participant" should get the same credit for contributing the same "CPU cycles" on all projects.
That, however, turned out to be hard to achieve, as the average values change e.g. with new hosts and new applications. We actually had to reduce the amount of credit given for a template to stay on that same level as the other projects, and if we want to continue to do so, we will need to continously watch the credit values and may need to make further adjustments. Note, however, that we don't change the whole crediting system, but a single parameter of it, that affects all "work" (i.e. workunits) of the project proportionally. This should not affect the competition between e.g. participants within a project.
However, "credits" actually don't buy you anything "real". They are just there for the psychological effect. There is no "scientific" meaning of "Milestones", i.e. if a number reaches a value that happens to be a multiple of 10^n. Yet still most of us set such numbers as personal goals, and it gives a good feeling to have reached it. There's still some magic in numbers, even when they're used "scientifically". And that's the reason why I honestly don't feel good when the credit (for future WUs - we're not taking away anything that has been granted) is reduced. The psychological effect of this is pretty bad, even if there is no "objective" meaning to such numbers - credits are all for the psychological effect.
Currently, I'm afraid, we'll stick to that scheme, simply because we don't have anything better to keep fair within the community of BOINC projects. But we (at least I) are still thinking about it and the discussion is going on.
BM
My rant: Why you should care about the credit-system
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Sorry for my sloppines. I actually didn't distinguish between psychology and sociology, and didn't mean to attribute any of their work as being non-scientific. I was writing my reponse to Alexanders "rant", picking up his understanding of "scientific" (in terms of "science the project is about"). I should have been more careful, and surely your post would have pointed me in that direction - It was just that I was busy writing my response while you were posting yours.
So thanks for the clarification. I think that apart from my sloppy and incorrect use of terminology we aren't that much apart, and I fully agree with you in that the "social science of DC" hasn't got enough attention yet. SETI (and BOINC) has been started by computer scientists, which are rather focused on technical issues, and which are continously surprised by the social aspects of the projects, the participation, the engagement of the participants in every direction. The currently most burning question for me is what way of granting credit (or reward of any kind) would be the most helpful for DC in general and BOINC projects in particular. However, this again kind of reduces a social question (of fairness) to a technical aspect - I'm a computer scientist, after all.
BM
BM
RE: The only problem with
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Well, the gap between the two types of machines (actually there are more than two) is opened by the optimization, which, I think, isn't seen to be bad by anyone.
The reduction of credit within the project makes this look like a penalty to some participants, which it actually isn't from a different viewpoint - from this it simply doesn't matter if some hosts get the same and others get more credit, or some get less and others get the same.
In (our) reality, this actually even comes out as some getting less and others are getting more, because it's the average that stays (more or less) constant.
BM
BM
RE: I'd rather to have that
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We're working hard on the S4 postprocessing, but I can't predict when it will be finished. One of the characteristics of research work is that it is open-ended, and that makes it less deterministic than many other kinds of work.