Complaints.........As this project moves on!!!

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Howie
Posts: 331
Joined: Wed Jun 21, 2006 2:47 pm
Location: Florida

Complaints.........As this project moves on!!!

Post by Howie »

To MODS and the Team,

If this is the wrong place to post,,,feel free to move it!!!

1.) I know you throw the CM's at us to keep us awake and alert and change the pace, and raise our score!

2.) I don't understand why the CM's tracks are getting Smaller???
I know the real tracks may be small not like the noticeabls ones.
Which are large to very small!

3.) We want to find real tracks and it seems you are trying to fool us
with small tracks and wierd CM's...

4.) You want to find tracks or do you want to fool us???

5.) I spent many hours over the weekend and it seemed like it was all
CM's which brought my score from 240 something down to 210???
OK, that's cool...Means I got about 3000 CM movies to go to get on
the 100 list...

6.) Monday and today it goes from very little or too many CM'S,
I want to look at real movies, Saturday I watched about 300 CM's
in about 6 hours during the day off and on for a break now and then

I do not mean to be rude here, just asking, the above questions...

Sincerely,
Howie
bmendez
Stardust@home Team
Stardust@home Team
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Location: UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab
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Re: Complaints.........As this project moves on!!!

Post by bmendez »

Hi Howie,
Howie wrote: 1.) I know you throw the CM's at us to keep us awake and alert and change the pace, and raise our score!
The purpose of the Calibration Movies (CMs) is to measure your ability to recognize tracks when they are present and to recognize when they are not. We use the sensitivity and specificity scores to weight your responses to real movies. If you have high sensitivity and specificty then your judgements (track, no track, etc.) are given more credibility.

That is their main purpose. The are not meant as a teaching device, nor a way for you to land yourself in the top 100 list. The tutorial and examples are the best place to look for learning what a track is and is not.

2.) I don't understand why the CM's tracks are getting Smaller???
I know the real tracks may be small not like the noticeabls ones.
Which are large to very small!

3.) We want to find real tracks and it seems you are trying to fool us
with small tracks and wierd CM's...

4.) You want to find tracks or do you want to fool us???
Those all seem like one point and not 3.

We aren't trying to fool you, and to my knowledge the CMs have not been changed in over a month. They are served up at random, so any pattern you think you see should be chalked up to the human predilection for trying to find patterns in randomness.
5.) I spent many hours over the weekend and it seemed like it was all
CM's which brought my score from 240 something down to 210???
OK, that's cool...Means I got about 3000 CM movies to go to get on
the 100 list...

6.) Monday and today it goes from very little or too many CM'S,
I want to look at real movies, Saturday I watched about 300 CM's
in about 6 hours during the day off and on for a break now and then
We are very grateful that you've spent so much time for the project, but the system serves up movies at random. Random is random.

Thanks again for your efforts, they are greatly appreciated.

-Bryan
"I am made from the dust of the stars, and the oceans flow in my veins"
- RUSH
greuti
Posts: 200
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 10:11 am
Location: Switzerland

Post by greuti »

Thanks again for your efforts, they are greatly appreciated.
Hi Bryan,

I am sure they are!

Even so I have some "complaints" too (if we agree to choose this thread to the "complaints thread" :wink: )...
From my point of view as a searcher who only connected to Stardust by internet, it would be welcome to have more insights into what happens "around" our "workstation".

Such as:
- to get (deeper/better focus) movies of the two candidates from this update and by other up coming hot IS candidates (and (why not) also by other nice tracks that we've found).
- how works exactly the movie pool system where we are searching therein (more precise: your handling with it)...
- how do you manage movies in the pool (is there a limit of negativ viewings which each movie has to reach before it will taken out? - besides containing no positive clicks of course).
- to indicate regularly how many movies are at the moment in the pool (roughly, for my sake).
- to have a list with the best candidates then, wherein they may be clickable to have a look at them.
- to get a video of the microscope and maybe other involved stations at work currently! :)
- ...

It seems other search mates are more frugal (how long yet) - however, to me to have fun, working on something should be as transparent as possible, keep interesting, and sometimes relaxed/constructive again.

From your perspective (as mentioned somewhere else) it may not be required to search through more than (roughly) thousend movies per person, but that should not be the point here (and also by similar public projects). I think the point should be to find maybe a track (personally) as long as the project runs and have fun in this time with it. :)
akith_kalo
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 10:15 am
Location: Brasov, Romania
Contact:

Post by akith_kalo »

To Mods and team,

I agree to some of the complaints/sugestions of greuti and howie, and I would like and something. Sorry for making the message quite long, but no one stressed this ideea as far as I've seen.

There are no training movies in the tutorial section that should teach the participants how to distinguish inclusions from real tracks. I know there is post (an update) on this theme, giving examples of inclusions and of positive IS movies, but this update is far from being ephasised.
I have a friend who joined the project recently (pased the test, etc) and didn't knew what to do with a movie containing inclusions and he finaly clicked on the movie... He did search the forum for similar problems before clcking it, but after 10-15 minutes he gave up, realising the forum is something quite large and there's a lot to read and he may not find anything anyway...
I thought I should write this because it would help the project go faster. I've gone through 500 real movies(not a huge number, still not very small) and so far about 10-20 % of them contained inclusions. And I suppose that most of the users don't read the forum, or probabbly not thoroughly. So if I estimated wright there are quite a lot of false positives, and there will be more. I found out about the inclusions only after writing an email on the forum.
So my sugesstion is to add to the tutorial one / two movies with inclusions in order to clearly define them. Or you could add a link on the message board related to inclusions, ( an explicit title - "Did I find a track?" or something similar).

I hope this will help.
Thanks.
whaleman
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Sep 03, 2006 9:52 pm
Location: California

sloppiness and poor design

Post by whaleman »

I have gotten only 10 CMs wrong out of the last 1000 CMs I've watched, so I'm good enough at this to say outright that about 1% of the calibration movies are just plain wrong. I get so irritated when I get a few of those bunched together that I stay away for days at a time.

My ststistics used to go back as I backed through the movies I'd already seen so I could learn from my mistakes, but no longer, making it impossible to catch a mistake unless I check my stats each time I change movies. I have been doing just exactly that, which is why I'm so sure that the CMs are wrong and not me. It's irritating to find this kind of sloppiness in a program like this.

You team guys talk as though you were jealously guarding your bandwidth yet you squander a nearly 20% of it on nonsense. The CMs were helpful and instructional for the first 1000 or so real movies I saw, and have been a complete waste of time ever since. You don't have to hand us a "win" every few minutes to keep us motivated. I could go for many hours at a time without seeing a track without becoming discouraged. When we are supposedly looking for about 45 needles is a haystack divided into 1.6 million sections, it is a bit unreal to be finding a track every ten movies or so. Most of us came to help you do science, not to play a video game.

Lastly, is anybody on the team paying any attention at all to what we are doing? That question kept popping into my mind as I read the posts from staff about how busy they all were, too busy to answer specific questions that might actually involve calling up a particular shot. This board needs somebody on staff who is not too busy, just one person full-time is all I ask. One such person could cut the frustration quotient here by 99%.
DustBuster
DustMod
Posts: 694
Joined: Wed May 17, 2006 8:12 pm
Location: Horsetown, USA

Re: sloppiness and poor design

Post by DustBuster »

whaleman wrote:I have gotten only 10 CMs wrong out of the last 1000 CMs I've watched, so I'm good enough at this to say outright that about 1% of the calibration movies are just plain wrong. I get so irritated when I get a few of those bunched together that I stay away for days at a time.

My ststistics used to go back as I backed through the movies I'd already seen so I could learn from my mistakes, but no longer, making it impossible to catch a mistake unless I check my stats each time I change movies. I have been doing just exactly that, which is why I'm so sure that the CMs are wrong and not me. It's irritating to find this kind of sloppiness in a program like this.

You team guys talk as though you were jealously guarding your bandwidth yet you squander a nearly 20% of it on nonsense. The CMs were helpful and instructional for the first 1000 or so real movies I saw, and have been a complete waste of time ever since. You don't have to hand us a "win" every few minutes to keep us motivated. I could go for many hours at a time without seeing a track without becoming discouraged. When we are supposedly looking for about 45 needles is a haystack divided into 1.6 million sections, it is a bit unreal to be finding a track every ten movies or so. Most of us came to help you do science, not to play a video game.

Lastly, is anybody on the team paying any attention at all to what we are doing? That question kept popping into my mind as I read the posts from staff about how busy they all were, too busy to answer specific questions that might actually involve calling up a particular shot. This board needs somebody on staff who is not too busy, just one person full-time is all I ask. One such person could cut the frustration quotient here by 99%.
Hello again, whaleman.
I can empahize with your frustration on the issues you've brought up, but I can only offer my own observations and suppositions:

There is a long, wide range of suggestions concerning changes to the VM, CM's and movie delivery system posted throughout the forum-
My Thoughts:
The VM and the delivery system, including the calibration movies, are working and doing exactly what they were designed to do- unless there is a malfunction or necessary update, the time of the team members is better spent on other areas of the project and not on enhancements.

Is anyone paying attention?
My Thoughts:
The StarDust team members are few, and only a few (or in some cases, one) members are qualified to perform a specific task; Scanning movies, processing movies, uploading movies, making calibration movies, reviewing candidate movies, talking to committees, overseeing the project, etc, etc... so it stands to reason that the most qualified persons for these tasks are busy doing just that.
Our forum Administrator, Bryan Mendez, in an education and outreach specialist focusing on astronomy and is well qualified to be our contact in the forum, but there are many questions from many users (and it turns out that a large percentage of being a forum admin takes place behind the scenes combatting spam and similar tasks).
And while Bryan may not be qualified to answer every question, the most pertinent information is not only passed along, but the other members do read the forum whenever possible (you have to admit it's hard to even catch up if you've not logged on for a few days) and any new information/resolutions are usually posted in the next update.

Finally, I think the intent of the forum was primarily for us, the users, to discuss the project and as a central location to dispurse/locate information related to the project and secodly to respond to individual questions when necessary and as time allows. Our part in this project is to use the tools and information we were given to perform our task (and I can't help but think that if 75% of the suggestions in the forum were part of the orginal release of the VM, there would be another 75% to take their place).

I hope these points help you find a perspective that allows you to avoid some of the frustration.
Howie
Posts: 331
Joined: Wed Jun 21, 2006 2:47 pm
Location: Florida

Good Job Bryan/Mods, and Thanks for the time consuming work!

Post by Howie »

For whaleman, grueti, kalo and all others.....................

Something mentioned in all above posts I would like to add further...

Correctly answering CM's is what brings up your scores for your rank against the other participants. That is, if you are concerned with your score. Otherwise, just finding tracks is your main goal, as it is for me, and so we feel like we are wasting time with CM's...

But, for me, and not bragging!!!
It is impressive to me that, I have viewed over 13,000 movies and rank now is about 205 out of 15,000 plus participants, score of 97/99%, about 400 or more clicked tracks, since start of project...at least 95% of them are in agreement with other participants clicks...

It is a good feeling that I am not alone on clicked tracks, although I have quite a few where I am the only one, or I was the first and long forgotten if I was first, cause others have since clicked them, so who knows till this is over, if you or I may have found one. No matter, it is nice to know we helped.

Remember!!!
It is supposed to be fun and for science...first and the rest is is for your feeling of accomplishment on project...

Go Here for some good info of laboratory procedure!!!
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/photo/cleanroom.html

Sincerely,
Howie
greuti
Posts: 200
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 10:11 am
Location: Switzerland

Re: Complaints.........As this project moves on!!!

Post by greuti »

bmendez wrote: The purpose of the Calibration Movies (CMs) is to measure your ability to recognize tracks when they are present and to recognize when they are not. We use the sensitivity and specificity scores to weight your responses to real movies. If you have high sensitivity and specificty then your judgements (track, no track, etc.) are given more credibility.
-Bryan
Hi Bryan,

You may be interested in that what I've observed by myself regarding the CMs and my guess of their value:

After a while of "dusting" it was no longer the track that mainly drew my attention first, but the look of the movie itself (the well-known lower resolution of the pictures :wink: ). In other words I have found these tracks not due to real search but since I know that there must be a track anywhere in this typical movie... Even today I mostly click on that blurry dark spot already when the CMs are still loading (during load time of at least 10 seconds for each movie here).

Therefore I would say it can (may) only have a real value "at the beginning" of each searcher's career. That means (to me) afterwards the CMs could get decreased dramatically or even completely be omitted (in this lower resolution).
gamalmfalyii
Posts: 30
Joined: Sun Jul 09, 2006 7:46 am
Location: New York City
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Re: Good Job Bryan/Mods, and Thanks for the time consuming w

Post by gamalmfalyii »

Howie wrote:But, for me, and not bragging!!!
It is impressive to me that, I have viewed over 13,000 movies and rank now is about 205 out of 15,000 plus participants, score of 97/99%, about 400 or more clicked tracks, since start of project...at least 95% of them are in agreement with other participants clicks...

Main Entry: brag
Pronunciation: 'brag
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English
1 : a pompous or boastful statement
2 : arrogant talk or manner : COCKINESS
3 : BRAGGART
"She said a good day
ain't got no rain
She said a bad day's when I lie in bed
and think of things that might have been"
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