I have searched the message 'boards' on this project and SETI, and for the life of me, I can find no explanation of what credits are and why they are desirable. Is this just a measure of contribution and/or for bragging rights, or do they benefit contributors in some tangible way?

I would think this would be low-hanging-fruit for any FAQ, but I can find no mention of it. HELP!

PS: Personally, I'm not looking for some kind of pay-out, I'm just wondering why I should care about credits.

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They are simply a measure of what your computer has done.

But there are Credit differences between projects. It does not mean that 1 credit is the exactly same computing power or importance on an other project.

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DSKAG Austria Research Team: http://www.research.dskag.at

Thanks, folks.

It really doesn't matter to me if credit = credit across projects. I was curious about them having monetary or trade-in-type values ... as the word 'credit' would imply to my mind.

Since they are just some abstraction of how many units of work that are done, I won't worry about them. It just seems some people think it is some sort of race that confused me.

Thanks, folks.

It really doesn't matter to me if credit = credit across projects. I was curious about them having monetary or trade-in-type values ... as the word 'credit' would imply to my mind.

Since they are just some abstraction of how many units of work that are done, I won't worry about them. It just seems some people think it is some sort of race that confused me.

They are actually called "cobblestones", credits is a slang word used instead of "cobblestones". Cobblestones was supposed to imply a stepping stone effect but we users messed it by continuing to call them credits, as even the programmers did before Boinc, and we users just didn't hop onto the cobblestone bandwagon. In most places it is still called credits but in reality they are "cobblestones".

Thanks, folks.

It really doesn't matter to me if credit = credit across projects. I was curious about them having monetary or trade-in-type values ... as the word 'credit' would imply to my mind.

Since they are just some abstraction of how many units of work that are done, I won't worry about them. It just seems some people think it is some sort of race that confused me.

Some do turn it into a race like anything else. 1 million used to be the big leagues, you needed mass computers to hit that, now a gpu can turn over many thousands in a day.

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Doesn't expecting the unexpected make the unexpected the expected?
If it makes sense, DON'T do it.