Hey Everyone,

I'll be shutting the server down for about an hour or two tomorrow at noon EDT (4 PM UTC) to take care of the loads of WUs stuck waiting for validation. They are from leftover Separation WUs trickling in after the project was shut off. Unfortunately I do not think that credit will be given out for these stuck WUs, as they were turned in after the project was shut down, and the validator is not running to give people credit.

N-body WUs will not be affected by this, and all credit will be assigned as per usual for N-body WUs.

Best,
Tom

I have 105 tasks pending validation.
You guys should not have shut off the validator until all tasks are in.
That is an insult to us, we give you our time and you don't give us credit?
Come on....I quick glanced my pending validation tasks and I have a lot of stuff that ran around the 6 minute mark. Some faster. If I have 105 at a average of 5 minutes (300 some seconds) I gave you 1.75 hours approximately of time that I get no credit for, yet you use the data. That 1.75 could have been used on another project that DOES give credit.

I'm not all gungho about credit, but it does keep my graphs even or climbing and that I like.
There might be others that are all about the credit.
I see credit as a "payment" for my donation to your project. So now your not 'paying' me?
Not right.

When you have all the results in (stuck or otherwise) then you can turn off the validator and the project. Your doing it backwards. You already killed all the pending tasks, so why not wait for the rest?
Something to talk to your higher ups about.

I have 504 results "pending validation" and 26 "validation inconclusive" would be nice if you can grant us credit :-)

Hi,
Please clean up your BOINC notices they're filling up my notice screen and they are now obsolete.
Thanks

"(...) yet you use the data."
Actually they have said they will not use this data for anything.

Hi,
Please clean up your BOINC notices they're filling up my notice screen and they are now obsolete.
Thanks

Once they are sent they can't be unsent, it's not Google they are using

So true Mikey

I have over 15000 work units waiting for validation. Just dumping them and not rewarding credits will make me rethink supporting this project.

This lack of giving credit is very disappointing. It was very unclear in the previous announcement whether there is any point in still running the tasks already allocated, and despite several people posting to ask about this they remained unanswered. It was certainly implied or able to be inferred that credits would still be given for existing tasks, but that you were just not handing out new tasks. There were several people posting with suggestions on how to not cause wasted time or frustration in your close-out process. It's hard to not feel a bit ... 'used'. You certainly said that you were going "to properly shut things down". Turning off the validator first without letting assigned WUs complete, or advising people to cancel any tasks, well that is not proper at all.

19-Jun-2023 17:08:24 [Milkyway@Home] Scheduler request completed: got 71 new tasks
20-Jun-2023 22:08:15 [Milkyway@Home] Scheduler request completed: got 89 new tasks
20-Jun-2023 22:15:56 [Milkyway@Home] Scheduler request completed: got 232 new tasks

These logged times are UTC + 10:00 so the server may have decided to give these out before you got around to shutting the processes down.
They have been returned and are probably the majority of the 405 I have pending. You wanted what was out to be returned that has been done.

regardless of if they are of scientific value to you or not Just going well it's easiest if it's consider null and void because we don't need it for the project. It was sent out to a volunteer and it was returned.

I have over 15000 work units waiting for validation. Just dumping them and not rewarding credits will make me rethink supporting this project.

They are not dumping the NBody tasks just the Separation tasks, the Separation tasks you are crunching and have crunched mean nothing to the database anymore so giving you credit isn't the Scientific Method of doing things. YES they could have done this shutdown ALOT differently as MANY people have pointed out but what's done is done and woulda coulda shoulda isn't going to fix it.

This lack of giving credit is very disappointing. It was very unclear in the previous announcement whether there is any point in still running the tasks already allocated, and despite several people posting to ask about this they remained unanswered. It was certainly implied or able to be inferred that credits would still be given for existing tasks, but that you were just not handing out new tasks. There were several people posting with suggestions on how to not cause wasted time or frustration in your close-out process. It's hard to not feel a bit ... 'used'. You certainly said that you were going "to properly shut things down". Turning off the validator first without letting assigned WUs complete, or advising people to cancel any tasks, well that is not proper at all.

Tom has said he didn't do it the 'right way' but you can't undo the past, they took their data without your current tasks to write their papers and they aren't going to go back and start over again.

I have over 15000 work units waiting for validation. Just dumping them and not rewarding credits will make me rethink supporting this project.

They are not dumping the NBody tasks just the Separation tasks, the Separation tasks you are crunching and have crunched mean nothing to the database anymore so giving you credit isn't the Scientific Method of doing things. YES they could have done this shutdown ALOT differently as MANY people have pointed out but what's done is done and woulda coulda shoulda isn't going to fix it.

The problem is that 99.9% of them are the separation tasks. At least giving credit for doing the work is the least they can do.

Tom, if it is possible, I would love to get credits for the 9,429 work units that I have in Validation Pending. It might take extra time on your part, but I, and a whole lot of other people would sure appreciate it.

If I understand you post correctly you plan to purge all tasks awaiting validation and not award any points, even those turned in before the shutdown. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding, but if so that is completely unacceptable. The vast majority if not all of my pending tasks were completed before the shutdown, so your statement about the pending task being completed after shutdown doesn't seem accurate. I'm sure a lot of others with a significant amount of hardware pointed at this project are in a similar boat. I have over 19k validation pending or inconclusive tasks. I completed the work, so you need to award points, that's the deal between us. If you screwed up the validation process that's on you and not the users. If milkyway can't abide by that and make things right, then they shouldn't have access to Boinc and it's users.. The level of desrespect from admins of multiple boinc projects shown to contributers is really annoying, but screwing over users on points at this scale is a new one for me. The short notice and haphazard shutdown are ridiculous. Make it right or only do computation on your own hardware at this point. You just need to award points to every submitted task at this point, that saves you from actually validating the task and doesn't screw over the users. I will not contribute and will discourage others to contribute to this proejct unless thsi is fixed properly, and I've screenshotted my tasks so I have a good idea on what points I should receive.

Hi,
Please clean up your BOINC notices they're filling up my notice screen and they are now obsolete.
Thanks

+1

.... great user name !

"(...) yet you use the data."
Actually they have said they will not use this data for anything.

+1
but actually the worry is about waisting 1.75 hours of electricity (not time).
Things like this are to be expected.
If one wants "dead sure" valuated results, then maybe a consideration for a different non "expensive" pastime is due?

So true Mikey

... don't understand your answer.
The messages in the NOTICE tab of BOINC are usually gone after reading them.

I have over 15000 work units waiting for validation. Just dumping them and not rewarding credits will make me rethink supporting this project.

Wonder how you managed to get so many unvalidated tasks?