Hi,

I think the 3 day delay in being able to post on these forums is massively offputting to potential new data crunchers.
It's particularly disheartening to be told you are not a "contributing member". In my case this lasted the full 3 days despite crunching data for all of that time. I was unable to ask for any help or information on these forums during that time.

For a lot of people, I suspect this frustrating experience would be enough to put them off Boinc altogether.

Wouldn't it be better to implement a captcha, or appoint some moderators to delete spam?

Captchas are easily circumvented by bots. And the signup of bots that just post spam in the forum is AFAIK teh reason for that delay. If you're serious about "contributing", one should understand that reason and move on. It's not that it's like you're missing out on something...
For most projects, it will take at least 2 days before any stats will show up anyway, give or take a day depending on in which part of the world you're living...

Ralf

You're correct on both counts; some bot software is able to circumvent captchas, and the reason for the 3 day delay is indeed as a method of combatting spambots.

I administer an SMF forum and we don't need a 3 day delay to combat spam. I appointed some moderators and they deal with the small trickle of spambots that sign up - typically 1 or 2 per day. In almost all cases they are deleted before they even get a chance to post anything.




And if I have a burning question that I would like answered?
The policy turns the forums into an enforced clique. My concern is that potential new users will indeed decide to "move on" as a result of being made to feel excluded - and stop using BOINC altogether.
New users often will not start out being serious about contributing. It is only after they have been members for some time that they are likely to be "converted". Perhaps you own several dedicated crunching machines and have racked up tens or hundreds of millions of credits - are you telling me you had all that hardware and fervour at day one? Or did you start with a single machine and tried it out of curiosity?




My stats were already showing credit when I signed up here, and yet I was told I was not a contributing member.
Surely if a user processes even one work unit, that is a contribution?

I reject the notion that a 3 day delay is necessary to fully combat spam, and submit that it is a damaging policy to BOINCstats and to BOINC itself (new users may not necessarily understand that they are two distinct entities).

If BOINC is to become as powerful as it can be, surely efforts should be made to make the BOINCstats service highly accessible to new users.
Once again, I submit that a combination of measures such as a captcha and a number of moderators appointed by the Administrator would be more than sufficient to combat spam whilst also ensuring as many new users as possible are retained and become long-term contributers. More users means greater crunching capacity, leading to faster project turnaround, which ultimately means faster and better science.

I am myself a forum admin as well, I know how this all works and why some forums have somewhat stricter policies than others...
Negative on both counts. I do not have a single dedicated "crunching machine" (all are more or less normally used everyday working computers) and I have not even my first million so far...
As a matter of fact, yes...

Ralf