Input from those in the TOP 100

[Ronald C. Spencer]

At the present time I am # 14 in our group. I am a professional astronomer who was diagnosed as terminally ill and I have a lot of
time being at home to contribute like all the fine folks who dedicate
their time to this research. Over the past week I noticed someone
called (SkynetV4) creeping up behind McAngus #16 and in just over
6 days this (SkynetV4) has moved up from behind Mc Angus #16 who
is at 47,300 to #6 at 77,924 as of 10.44 tonight est. Come on folks,
over 30,000 possible correct answers for finding a trac? Can you imagine
how many non callibrated movies one would have to go through to move
up 30,000 points? No human being can stay up non-stop for almost a week and even reach that 30,000 point increase. Something smells here. Most folks here are honest and work hard to help here. I usually put in around 10 hours a day. How can this be brought to the Stardust team's attention and get a response from them? Thanks for your input.

[Nikita]

Hi Ron!

First, I want to thank you for spending your time on the project and hope that all goes smoothly for you. This sounds like a perfect match for you. I can see why you would be concerned about a computer program when you have put so much time into it.

This has been addressed here:
Questions on ranking...
I'm sure that we will hear something about this one once the team gets the info and decides what to do.

Best of wishes to you.
Nikita

[Ronald C. Spencer]

Thanks Nikita for your kind words.

Regards,
Ron

[WorWizard]

Good Day,

I think my current rank is 56. I just hit the 20K mark yesterday, Yea!

On to the subject. I, as well, find it gorssly unfair. I have 2 jobs and 4 kids to take care of so my time is limited. I try to get in when I can. Usually an horu or so before bed while winding down for the day. there would never never ever be a day that I would have tie time to compete with anything that was/is automaited. It's frustrating. However, on the flip side, there are a few peoples that can and do effectivly compete with the automation. However I think that is a very short term thing. I don't believe that in the long term that the compitition would be fair.

I believe that there must be a way to detect automation and put it into a seperate group. But still as far as that goes, how could you give naming rights to a machine? The science is not affected as far as I can figure. But even if the person(s) program found a particle, it would not be just, in my opinion, to give naming rights to that person. Because, even though the person(s) that created the program used it to find a track, it that the CPU that found it, not the person. Sort of along the lines of the fact that Microsloth wrote excel, but they don't own my spreadsheet.

I know it it frustrating. I know I am very frustrated as well. Perhaps the statistics could be used to filter, who knows.

Wor Wizard

[Ronald C. Spencer]

Wizard,

Your one example of why I brought this to Stardust's attention. Your one of many who are a big help and your contributuion is important to this scientific research. Don't let the frustration stop your contribution. Keep up the good work.

regards,
Ronald C. Spencer

[Gamma^Ray]

First I want to say I hope Ronald can stay and not only continue with this project, But also on many many more to come ! Perhaps Stardust 15 maybe ? But I do agree that it is aggrevating, I haven't really been around for the past few months, And still even see CerealKiller listed on the rankings? I thought that they and any other PC programmed based searchers was to be put into perhaps a different list ? To not remove them from the "Peoples" list, Doesn't really do anything to the people who create and or use these programs, As they only are stopped once they have made it to the top 10 or so. Not taking anything away from the programmers who spent time creating them, There should still be two seperate lists for each I believe. Although I realize that there are more pressing needs to be done by the staff at Stardust at the present, An at least acknowledgement that they will be removed at the end or something, would be reassuring to the users who have and or will invest in SO many hours sitting in front of their PC's searching for the particles. JMO for what its worth.

Regards,
G^R

[Nikita]

G^R,

I believe at this point, there are only two programs out there. Since we are aware of them, I believe that we, as dusters, are simply ignoring their rank if we are keeping tabs on that.
From the point of view of someone who does not have the time to put in like some of our other folk do, nor do I have the knowledge to create a program to do it for me, neither are "fair" for me to be able to make it into the top 100. However, since it is about the search for stardust, I have accepted that.
There will be a day, however, when I will be retired, the munchkins will be out of the house, and I can really leave a mark on another project!
I am sure the team will recognize the efforts of the dusters approprately when the time comes. I think for now, they can depend on us to just know that the programs are there and we can move ourselves up two spots in our ranking if we want to see what our rank would be without them.

[elainekeefe]

I, for one, would like to say I have absolutely no problem with computer programs looking for stardust. I admire the intelligence and creativity of those who are able to create these programs, and feel their input is equally valuable. Since the movies are downloaded randomly, I don't think their chances are really any greater than ours for being the first to click. Yes, they see more movies, but many are probably repeats, as with the rest of us.

To tell you the truth, I would rather see a Top 100 List for quality, rather than quantity. Yes, it's nice to be in the Top 100, but I would rather be rewarded (perhaps) for my accuracy (99.95/99.91) than for having too much time on my hands.

[Howie]

At the present time I am # 14 in our group. I am a professional astronomer who was diagnosed as terminally ill and I have a lot of
time being at home to contribute like all the fine folks who dedicate
their time to this research. Over the past week I noticed someone
called (SkynetV4) creeping up behind McAngus #16 and in just over
6 days this (SkynetV4) has moved up from behind Mc Angus #16 who
is at 47,300 to #6 at 77,924 as of 10.44 tonight est. Come on folks,
over 30,000 possible correct answers for finding a trac? Can you imagine
how many non callibrated movies one would have to go through to move
up 30,000 points? No human being can stay up non-stop for almost a week and even reach that 30,000 point increase. Something smells here. Most folks here are honest and work hard to help here. I usually put in around 10 hours a day. How can this be brought to the Stardust team's attention and get a response from them? Thanks for your input. :)

terminally ill does not mean you cannot survive!
My dad did it twice!!!
Cancer and now has 1 lung!
Do not give up hope and prayers and the will to go on!
I wish yo the best!

Howie

[Gamma^Ray]

G^R,

I believe at this point, there are only two programs out there. Since we are aware of them, I believe that we, as dusters, are simply ignoring their rank if we are keeping tabs on that.

"We" only are aware of them based on the fact that the users themselves have notified you about them. Not because you are monitoring such things. Secondly, Perhaps it is true that you are not concerned with the rankings which is your choice, But the fact is the rankings are there, And were put in place by the Stardust creators in the notion to give people and or users a tool to be used to judge oneselves position versus the other users who are also participating, To expect that at the least these rankings should be based on some type of protocol from the start (Designed for users not programs) and KEPT that way, Is not unreasonable in my opinion.

From the point of view of someone who does not have the time to put in like some of our other folk do, nor do I have the knowledge to create a program to do it for me, neither are "fair" for me to be able to make it into the top 100. However, since it is about the search for stardust, I have accepted that.

I do not agree to this, Everyone has or had the ability to participate in the project from the beginning (Such as I did), Perhaps many did not find out about the project until afterwards and thus have alot of ground to cover to try to make it to the top 100 or top 1000 for that matter. But to say the users who did start early and invested a good deal of time to get to the position they are now in, Should NOT be considered as being done in an unfair situation. There are 24 hours in a day, How many hours you put into this project is a personal choice, Just because one decides to invest more time than another again, Doesn't make it unfair. What IS unfair is to have someone who uses a computer program to do what was designed to be done specifically for a person with the ability to seperate a possible track from a speck of dust etc. Using one's judgement based on the beginning instructions/Test that were reguired to pass to participate, All the way till the users have gone over thousands of movies and have fine tuned what they are looking for and what they are not.

Where as a computer program can and will look for what it is told to look for, Which although may be proficient to a certain degree, Will not learn more as it goes on, And thus will make the same mistakes till the end. It was talked about by the Adms recently as to how impressed the audience was at the latest meeting, Concerning the high rates of accuracy done by the users of this project, I don't think it was mentioned that two of the top ten members to the project were computer programs.

There will be a day, however, when I will be retired, the munchkins will be out of the house, and I can really leave a mark on another project!
I am sure the team will recognize the efforts of the dusters approprately when the time comes. I think for now, they can depend on us to just know that the programs are there and we can move ourselves up two spots in our ranking if we want to see what our rank would be without them.

Well I fear that by the time you do retire, There will be no need for any of us "Volunteer's by then, As these very same type of programs will have made us pretty much obsolete. And as for just moving ourselves up two spots for rankings, Well I think you will be having to add more than two by the time this project ends, If you are inclined to look at the stats.

And as far elainekeefe's idea of using the accuracy as a tool for one's rankings, I do not know why that wasn't used from the beginning. It would have made the issue of rankings alot easier to deal with. Or even the idea I had of showing the top 100's accuracy ratings along with the other data they show on the screen, THat also would help other users see how accurate these top one's are.

And for the record, Here are my stats thus far :

Calibration Movies Answered Correctly 21037
Calibration Movies Answered Incorrectly 15
Your Overall Score: 21022
Total Real Movies Viewed: 55690
Your Rank: 68 out of 23072
Specificity: 99.93%
Sensitivity: 99.92%

Regards,
G^R

[Nikita]

G^R,

I meant no disrespect to you. Although the team does not have time to watch the ranks for computer programs, both were found due to dusters watching. There is the remote possibility that someone is turning a program on and off, so it doesn't run continuously, but I really don't believe there are any others.

I don't think it is unfair that I do not have the time to search like others do. It isn't "fair" in the same way many things in life can be unfair, the project came at a busy time in my life, I should have been born older or younger so I would have more time, etc. That's why I put it in quotes. I wanted to point out that just because I don't have the time, nor know how to write a program, makes the people who do have an advantage over me. I feel that the programmers could add value as well, although as the team has said, not equal to us. I wanted to express that, I guess I said it wrong.

Bryan did state that computer programmers were welcome to attempt to create a working program, but if any others have, they are not as "successful" as these two or are simply not running all the time to keep under the monitor. I am going to dive into speculation here, but I don't know if the programs were talked about at the meeting. Perhaps they were and the audience was impressed even more with us, perhaps there wasn't enough time to discuss it, given it would have raised some questions on how they work. Perhaps since there were two, it wasn't important enough to bring up. Now if the results were very impressive, perhaps they would have. Again, guess work here, I wasn't there and not at Berkeley to know!

If I am not mistaken, the ratings are a combination of accuracy and volume. There programs could not have gotten up there without decent scores, remember our errors are counted against us, not just noted. We have many people with good solid accurate scores all over the place. In fact, what could happen if we removed the volume part is that a person could click bad focus or exit out of any movies that were questionable, click only on obvious calibration movies and keep a high score. The volume part prevents any one from doing this as the score is based on calibrations, not just viewing movies. With out current set up, a duster would have to go through tons of movies to get the easy calibration movies and a high ranking.

Remember that the team does have the ability to see how we work, how much time spent on the movies vs. calibrations, etc. In this way, they can look for programs if the need arises.

I am trying to say that they are only two known programs, they are allowed to participate in the research, they do not influence the results of the study as there are too many of us. The only reason to talk about them is that their scores are listed with ours. I don't want to sound like it's a trivial thing, I know you and others in the top have really put in a lot and deserve that recognition. My point is that except for the rank, they are not worth worrying about and I think that it will be addressed when they need to. I hope no one is worried that their efforts will go unnoticed, especially the ones at the top.

I don't know if I helped or not, I tried. It is interesting to think about what we will be looking for in the future. I have faith that there will always be something for humans to do that computers cannot. (But, it will probably be something that will be too easy for a computer or cheaper to get us looking. )

[Gamma^Ray]

I feel that the programmers could add value as well, although as the team has said, not equal to us. I wanted to express that,

I completely agree (Especially being trained as one ), Which is why I think that there should be a seperate listing for these programmers to run and fine tune them for future projects and such. As not for being the primary source of the detail work (Such as the users), But a good way to comb through all the movies in the beginning and could mark the one's that are of interest, Then the users could take it from there, Or something similar.

If I am not mistaken, the ratings are a combination of accuracy and volume. There programs could not have gotten up there without decent scores, remember our errors are counted against us, not just noted. We have many people with good solid accurate scores all over the place. In fact, what could happen if we removed the volume part is that a person could click bad focus or exit out of any movies that were questionable, click only on obvious calibration movies and keep a high score. The volume part prevents any one from doing this as the score is based on calibrations, not just viewing movies. With out current set up, a duster would have to go through tons of movies to get the easy calibration movies and a high ranking.

I figured loosely awhile back it was at least a 4/1 ratio of calibration movies versus movies viewed. So yea that does turn out to be a ton of them to get up to the top of the heap.

I don't want to sound like it's a trivial thing, I know you and others in the top have really put in a lot and deserve that recognition. My point is that except for the rank, they are not worth worrying about and I think that it will be addressed when they need to. I hope no one is worried that their efforts will go unnoticed, especially the ones at the top.

For myself its not so much a I want recognition thing, As if it was I wouldn't be using a "Nickname" instead, But I do think that for the users who have invested so much time and effort that did place them in the top 100, Would like to at least think that when someone does pass them by on the charts and thus causes them to lose another hardly worked for position, That it is a person who also invested in the same amount of effort for that position as you did, and not was a computer program that did it in a matter of days. It wouldn't really bother me that much even then, If occasionally someone could take some time once a month or two months or even three, And at least look at the users in question and if they are obviously programs instead, Simply to remove them from the users ranks and put them somewhere else. Doesn't seem like to much time or effort on the staff's side, Especially when compared to the time the volunteers are donating to the project, in my opinion.

I don't know if I helped or not, I tried. It is interesting to think about what we will be looking for in the future. I have faith that there will always be something for humans to do that computers cannot. (But, it will probably be something that will be too easy for a computer or cheaper to get us looking. )

I agree, Let's hope we can always at least have our hands on the plugs to these computers in the future, Just in case.

G^R