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.

+1

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.

remember: we are volunteers -- that includes all (expectable) problems. this is also true for other projects or life experiences.
That is part of science -- no one is free of failures.
Have a case of beer on me!

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.

Please read the posts in this thread ...

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.

Oh my goodness ...

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

THANKS for also stating UTC time.
AND I mean it !!

In order to give out credit, I will need to rewrite and recompile the validator code. I will take a look at that and see if there is a reasonable way to validate all WUs that are currently in the queue using the validator in a way that will give people credit.

If there is not a reasonable way to do that, then unfortunately there is no way to give credit for most of these jobs without also running the WU generator, which will send out more jobs, which defeats the point of shutting down the project.

I apologize that many of you feel used because you may not get credit for the work that you've done. I understand that shutting down the WU generator and letting the validator run would have been a somewhat smoother transition, but that would have still left many unvalidated jobs because they could not have had their wingman jobs completed. In the end we opted for fewer wasted cycles on the hardware you're kindly volunteering time on; however, I've heard your complaints and I'll see if there's something I can do about it.

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?

How? I power through work units and it builds up. It's been like this for years.

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.

remember: we are volunteers -- that includes all (expectable) problems. this is also true for other projects or life experiences.
That is part of science -- no one is free of failures.
Have a case of beer on me!

There's a difference between having a problem with the project and outright disregard for its users.

And no, it is not a part of science, it is disrespect.

In order to give out credit, I will need to rewrite and recompile the validator code. I will take a look at that and see if there is a reasonable way to validate all WUs that are currently in the queue using the validator in a way that will give people credit.

If there is not a reasonable way to do that, then unfortunately there is no way to give credit for most of these jobs without also running the WU generator, which will send out more jobs, which defeats the point of shutting down the project.

I apologize that many of you feel used because you may not get credit for the work that you've done. I understand that shutting down the WU generator and letting the validator run would have been a somewhat smoother transition, but that would have still left many unvalidated jobs because they could not have had their wingman jobs completed. In the end we opted for fewer wasted cycles on the hardware you're kindly volunteering time on; however, I've heard your complaints and I'll see if there's something I can do about it.

Just a thought, is it possible to award credits based on the users average credit per work unit they received for previous work? Or if it is the same for all users, award a flat credit to every work unit for everyone?

Heads up, it might take some extra time for me to figure out this validator redesign, so the server could be down for a little longer today. I wasn't able to work on this earlier today.

Also I saw some people talking about notices so I set this thread to not export. Are you all seeing every reply as a notice in the boinc manager? Or just the original post? I'm confused about the concern that we apparently send too many notices.

Just a thought, is it possible to award credits based on the users average credit per work unit they received for previous work? Or if it is the same for all users, award a flat credit to every work unit for everyone?

It is very difficult to manually assign credit in BOINCs framework. I am not comfortable manually editing the DB for credit because I don't know where the different BOINC systems pull their information from regarding RAC, gridcoin, etc. and there is no good way to be sure that those systema all update correctly.

Also I saw some people talking about notices so I set this thread to not export. Are you all seeing every reply as a notice in the boinc manager? Or just the original post? I'm confused about the concern that we apparently send too many notices.

Original post only.

Just a thought, is it possible to award credits based on the users average credit per work unit they received for previous work? Or if it is the same for all users, award a flat credit to every work unit for everyone?

It is very difficult to manually assign credit in BOINCs framework. I am not comfortable manually editing the DB for credit because I don't know where the different BOINC systems pull their information from regarding RAC, gridcoin, etc. and there is no good way to be sure that those systema all update correctly.

Understood.

I've brought a modified version of the separation validator and assimilator online. These should go through all the existing separation WUs waiting for validation and mark them as valid but ignored (because they aren't actually checked, so they won't go into any system), but it should give out credit as due. I think any wingman tasks should be validated as per normal.

I'm going to monitor this and see if it actually starts making a dent in the number of tasks waiting for validation. Hopefully we should see a decrease soon.

Original post only.

Thanks! I guess people just don't like getting pinged.

I've brought a modified version of the separation validator and assimilator online. These should go through all the existing separation WUs waiting for validation and mark them as valid but ignored (because they aren't actually checked, so they won't go into any system), but it should give out credit as due. I think any wingman tasks should be validated as per normal.

I'm going to monitor this and see if it actually starts making a dent in the number of tasks waiting for validation. Hopefully we should see a decrease soon.

It's going down but they end up invalid with validate error.

That isn't working: The pending tasks indeed disappear but are marked as invalid without credit being awarded.

Noted. I've turned things off again and am working on a fix.

Okay, I've brought things back up with new settings for the validator. Let me know if you see things getting validated with credit now.