duster participation

Discuss your experiences with and ideas about Stardust@home here.

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Chuck Crisler
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duster participation

Post by Chuck Crisler »

There are over 27,000 registered dusters. However, I have been checking the scores of people around me and they aren't changing very quickly. As a result I am steadily climbing in my position. How many people are actually reviewing movies on an average day? How many dusters are actually contributing to the project?

Thank you,
Chuck
jsmaje
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Post by jsmaje »

Chuck Crisler wrote:There are over 27,000 registered dusters. However, I have been checking the scores of people around me and they aren't changing very quickly. As a result I am steadily climbing in my position. How many people are actually reviewing movies on an average day? How many dusters are actually contributing to the project?
From what I can recall, it was said some time back that only about 10% of those who initially registered for phase 1 have continued participating in phase 2 (i.e. ~ 2,000), but despite repeated attempts I can't find the precise link, sorry. It would be good to know the present figure.

By having risen 21 places in the Top 100 so far, Chuck, you've certainly demonstrated a degree of enthusiam above many others! The top 100 dusters were a quite stable group until recently, but many are now dropping out, obviously to be replaced by others, but total scoring has been steadily dropping. I suspect that most of us still hanging in there are waiting for the LONG-awaited phase 3, initially promised last summer; if it doesn't materialise this year I predict another decimation of participants.

It could be argued that this may not jeopardise the project - indeed, it may make it more streamlined by being left with a relatively small, but dedicated & skilled duster base. How much the team may have been calculating in this regard I've no idea, but suspect that having pioneered this distributed observer project they soon realised they'd bitten off a little more than they could chew (given their small number and other important things to do, such as the actual scientific experimentation!), so are content to depend on the natural processes of attrition and self-selection allowing it to become more manageable; rather like one of my indoor palms, said to thrive on 'benign neglect'! In fact, since Stardust scores seem to follow a Zipf-Mandelbrot distribution, I guess they are perfectly justified in depending on the 'Law of the Vital Few'.
Just as long as the few are given reason to still feel vital :wink: .

John
DanZ
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Post by DanZ »

jsmaje wrote: I guess they are perfectly justified in depending on the 'Law of the Vital Few'. Just as long as the few are given reason to still feel vital :wink:
Yes, things have been quiet John. But we expect interest/activity to climb again in Phase 3, for which we'll begin new recruiting efforts. But in the meantime, we don't want anyone to feel neglected, nor should anyone feel there's a reason to stop searching (if they still enjoy the activity). As you can learn in the recent update just posted, exciting things are happening with Stardust@home right now (including good reasons to re-search old movies!): http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ... nation.php
DanZ
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Re: duster participation

Post by DanZ »

Chuck Crisler wrote:How many people are actually reviewing movies on an average day? Thank you, Chuck
When dusting activity was at its highest, there were around 10-15 dusters online at any given moment. Currently the range is more like 0-5.
jsmaje
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Re: duster participation

Post by jsmaje »

DanZ wrote:
Chuck Crisler wrote:How many people are actually reviewing movies on an average day?
When dusting activity was at its highest, there were around 10-15 dusters online at any given moment. Currently the range is more like 0-5.
So, how many participants are currently active in total, e.g. scoring at least one point over the last month or two? My guess would be ~ 2000 (10% of the original 20,000+).
DanZ wrote:Yes, things have been quiet John. But we expect interest/activity to climb again in Phase 3...
...which is likely to begin when?
Bryan Mendez was full of promise that it would start at the end of last summer (2008), telling us that Anna B had been busy making new movies, but of which there has yet to be any sign.

As repeatedly remarked by many, it can be dispiriting not to be kept (say at least monthly) aware of the status and plans regarding SD@H. We're grown-ups here (most of us) and can take the gory details, knowing of course that they are contingent on so many, often unpredictable, factors.
Despite the occasional welcome 'ISPE Update' and technical 'blog' (the last sadly back in November), neither have proven to me a satisfactory substitute for the more frequent and scientifically-detailed contributions the team originally found time to make to the forum during phase 1.
Ah, the 'good old days' of phase 1 ... :wink:

John
DanZ
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Post by DanZ »

Well, first of all, if you haven't yet viewed Update 4 (especially slides 19 on), you definitely should: http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ... ash_HQ.php

But otherwise, you are quite correct about the lack of information currently being passed along via these forums. I'll research the current status of "Phase 3" (as well as the possibility of more detailed and regular science team posts) and get back to you. - DZ
jsmaje
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Post by jsmaje »

DanZ wrote:Well, first of all, if you haven't yet viewed Update 4 (especially slides 19 on), you definitely should: http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ... ash_HQ.php
Yes, as posted here I viewed the 4th ISPE Update as soon as it appeared on 7 April and described it as "quite reassuring", but dare I say yet again, somewhat bland. I still can't work out exactly who these occasional slide-show Updates are directed toward; the emphasis seems to be on what a great job the Berkeley team are doing, and on convincing others what a good idea distributed computing projects can be, with nothing new for established dusters. Have they been designed for other wider educational or grant-raising purposes?

And am I right that the slide-shows are now intended to replace the previous Blog reports (and long-abandoned forum Update section) and, more worryingly, are we no longer to expect any further direct contribution from the scientific team to this forum? If the latest posts are anything to go by, it seems you, Dan, are in fact the latest to be handed the dirty job of keeping up any appearance of interest, Bryan Mendez (last post Oct 2008) and ZackG (Jan 2009) for example, having moved on or finding better things to do; we've not been told to my knowledge, as usual.

Sadly, your promise to "research the current status" of phase 3 implies you are no wiser than the rest of us about it; why can't Andrew Westphal, who seems to have time to make slide-shows, tell us directly where matters stand?

Sorry to be a nuisance, but you'll find that's in my job description :x !
(PS: what's yours?)

John
DanZ
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Post by DanZ »

jsmaje wrote: Sadly, your promise to "research the current status" of phase 3 implies you are no wiser than the rest of us about it; why can't Andrew Westphal, who seems to have time to make slide-shows, tell us directly where matters stand? Sorry to be a nuisance, but you'll find that's in my job description :x !(PS: what's yours?) John
Ah, you've read me like a book John! But to your other requests:

1. Bryan Mendez has just posted a new update to the forum here http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ... php?t=3301

2. Dr. Westphal is working on a new update as well (for which I MISTAKENLY confused with the "Update 4" mentioned in my previous posts). I'll post that link here as soon as it is up.

Cheers!

Dan
MylesMidgley
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Post by MylesMidgley »

I agree with Chuck's observation that there don't seem to be many dusters active. I exchanged emails with Brian last summer and he indicated Phase 3 would begin no later than the fall -- so I never signed up for Phase 2 -- at least until a couple months ago. Now I wish I would have signed up sooner.

To see if folks are active, I put up just enough points to tie the person in front of me -- or go past them by one point -- I wait to see if they respond. To date, I have climbed to 56th place, and only two dusters have responded. And each of them for only one day.

My goal is to continue to climb through the rankings and to try to challenge those along the way to put up a few extra points (and maybe find some stardust along the way).

If Phase 3 is delayed long enough, who knows, one day we could see how Kevin A Courtney responds.

This is fun
jsmaje
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Post by jsmaje »

Thanks for your response above, Dan, and to Bryan for his What are we up to forum update.

It's always good to know something of what's going on behind the scenes, and I can well see that patience is order of the day.

In fact, as anonymous so aptly put it, given all the hi-tech & number of stardust participants brought to bear on only a few tiny objects of interest:
"Con la patciencia et la saliva l'elephante la metio a la formiga" (with patience and saliva, the elephant screws the ant!) :roll:
[don't blame me, it's from Cassell's Companion to Quotations 1997, ? of Mexican Spanish or Catalan origin].

John
DTF
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Post by DTF »

jsmaje wrote:"Con la patciencia et la saliva l'elephante la metio a la formiga" (with patience and saliva, the elephant screws the ant!) :roll:
[don't blame me, it's from Cassell's Companion to Quotations 1997, ? of Mexican Spanish or Catalan origin].

John
I thought contemplating infinity, the vastness of the universe, or the size of subatomic particles was mind boggling enough. You have introduced us to an entirely new meaning of this genre and to the understanding of the sanity of a mind that could conceive of such a possibility and the motivation of an elephant behind it!
laserphil
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Questions for Myles

Post by laserphil »

Hi Myles,

I believe that I was one of those dusters who challenged back but I wonder if you consider the dusters internet connection speed or the time they have available? I for one do not have high speed internet nor have a lot of time to dust - I am lucky if I can do 200 scans a day - that's only 40 odd points - so you blasted past me in a sitting or two! I have noticed that a reasonable number down in the last 10 of the top 100 are still moving forward all be it slowly!
John (jsmaje) could probably tell just how many of the dusters are still active in the top 100. I think that many are waiting for phase 3 to start!
jsmaje
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Re: Questions for Myles

Post by jsmaje »

laserphil wrote:John (jsmaje) could probably tell just how many of the dusters are still active in the top 100. I think that many are waiting for phase 3 to start!
Well, since my stats only cover the top 100, I can't say whether those who may have dropped below that particular arbitrary cut-off point are still 'active' or not, unless they reappear in the published list.

What I can say is that, of those dusters in the top 100 at the end of phase 1 (30 July 07), 47 were still keen enough to be listed when I started my phase 2 baseline on 6 Feb 08 , of which 44 in fact continue to feature. There have been many comings and goings since then (at least 27), some of course re-entering after having temporarily dropped out.

Overall though, there are an impressive 82 of the phase 2 baseline members still in the top 100. However, there are currently 5 who have scored nothing since 6 Feb 08 (including one Red Team member, Crumplestiltskin - make of that what you will).

John
jsmaje
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duster participation encouraged by updates

Post by jsmaje »

Many thanks to Andrew and the team for responding to the forum requests for a comprehensive update about 'What has been happening'. Hopefully such information will continue to be provided on a regular basis, not only about what's going right but also the welcome honesty about what has occasionally gone wrong and for various reasons may be delayed. It makes the project so much more real and thereby worth supporting.

So, it seems HATs (ex-LATs) such as862370V1 have assumed unexpected interest. I seem to remember someone saying we should 'expect the unexpected' of course, and the revised idea about particle masses and hyperbolic paths in one or other direction makes sense to me, until perhaps, given new data, this idea may in turn be revised - such is science.

Having unearthed the latest forum post about the above movie (by fjgiie 2 1/2 years ago!), I can't see anything in it that could possibly have been mistaken for the obvious track. What (or who) went wrong? And I personally remain to be convinced that the first proposed IS candidate 'Alpha' was ever reliably extracted...

Meanwhile, despite such inevitable hiccups and the slow pace of things, as long as kept informed I look forward to finding out what the remaining two-thirds of the collector might eventually reveal in due course .......

John
DanZ
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Correct Link to Update

Post by DanZ »

In a couple of previous posts of mine within this discussion, I refer to a recent science update, but incorrectly provided a link to an older one. As John has already discovered (and linked to), the science update I was referring to is available now and can be found at http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/blog.php. Sorry if there was any confusion. Dan
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