Stardust at home not very fun any more

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

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Orion_0169
Posts: 153
Joined: Wed Aug 02, 2006 8:17 pm

Post by Orion_0169 »

Atus, a few times it has seemed (because someone with a lower score was ranked higher than someone with a higher score) that they do factor in the %'s as well. But there are people with very high scores that also have very high sensitivity/specificity scores, so it won't matter that much.
Je ne peux pas regarder la Mer sans me demander qui vit au-delà de cela.
SDsearcher
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:04 pm

Post by SDsearcher »

Not to diminish people that are dedicated, and working long hours on this,

But if you turn this into a video game high score chase it will become a real boring grind. Just let it go. I can't imagine what kind of obsession could keep people doing this for that reason for the months and months to come.

Think about what really attracted you to this project in the first place. Think in those terms and ignore the herd.

For instance, maybe you wanted to see what scientific research work is like (even if you're not a PhD)? Or maybe you enjoy the sense of adventure in looking for something nobody else has found yet? Maybe playing an active (even if small) part in this NASA related project is the reason? Or maybe you enjoy becoming proficient at something new? They say you are what you do, maybe doing this is just one small piece of who you have decided to become?
captainkirk
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2006 1:56 pm

one last bit about scores

Post by captainkirk »

IceBike wrote--"I hearby release you from having to look at scores."

Scores are part of the process Ice. If you are seriously hoping to find something, then you better hope someone else finds it too.

FAQ: "Each focus movie will be viewed by many different people. When a volunteer identifies the focus movie as either having or not having a particle track the movie will be given a score. The score the focus movie receives will be weighted by the score of the volunteer."

If you don't keep a decent score and your percentages up, you may find something, but will anyone investigate it? They wouldn't have put all that information on the top of each page we look at if it didn't matter to them would they? Maybe you don't care about that, either. Fine. Good for you. Everyone is motivated to do this in a thousand different ways. If worrying about their score keeps them looking, let em!

I am not worried about my ranking overall, i.e. like I need to be top 100 or anything contrary to previous comments. It was cool to see it there once, but that was Day One. I just think it's smart to keep track of it.

After thinking about it a little IceBike, I can see your point about not knowing which are the Calibration Movies. I don't agree with it, but I respect you opinion.

P.S> If I sounded boastfull in my previous post. Throw the flag, I'll take the penalty. Not my intention. No one who's doing this for any reason is a slacker in my book. The more the better. . I could have said, I'm having fun a different way. :)
KarMann
Posts: 61
Joined: Wed Aug 02, 2006 9:05 pm
Location: Milwaukee, WI, USA
Contact:

Post by KarMann »

The project wrote:If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right
Actually, I just (re-)read an even better formulation of this idea last night, in a gardening book of all places (and why not, it's all about the dirt!):
Marcia Tatroe wrote:If you aren't having a good time, you're either trying too hard or attempting to live up to someone else's expectations.
Seems just about perfectly applicable to me.

I forget just where, but somewhere around here, there was a post about how the science team is getting all this free help from the netizens, they owe us at least this much explanations, and aside from all that what have the Romans ever done for us*, etc. I like to think of it the other way around: NASA spent millions of dollars and however many years and man-hours to bring me back some stardust to look for! 8) So I need to spend less time on these boards and get cracking now!

*It's a Monty Python thing, Life of Brian
Let it never be said that your **** retentive attention to detail never yielded positive results. - Loki, Dogma
Snoopy
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Aug 06, 2006 3:06 pm
Location: Germany

Post by Snoopy »

My motivation is to see some stardust in the first place, and having participated here and done some nice work to find it at all :)
It's not my intention to make a high score here...

BUT, this scoring system indeed has effect on my motivation and influences me, simple because it's there and it would be cool to see me somewhere at the top, i have to admit - of course it would :lol: even though my motivation is curiosity in the first place, i think.

I urge the stardust team to do something about it, because its an important longterm factor. There just a couple of tiles scanned and the top scorers are giving up! Maybe they return, but it's lacking some longterm perspective...
One's like me, who started late don't have another chance of scoring high than waiting for the top ones to leave and that's something that leaves a bad impression on me.

So I'd like to see more of these individual achievement milestones (and that they work at all) like having seen 1000 movies, 2000 movies etc. Having positively identified a particle or flagged something at least ten others flagged.

Then i think orions proposition is important, to restart a scoring chase in intervals, for each new batch would be fine. So you would have some kinda chase in regular intervals with even odds for everyone to start over.

With this combined something like review 100 movies and get as bonus 10 guaranteed never before seen movies i would really like to see. As to realize this you might be assigned these movies after the next batch launch and they are exclusively held back for ya for a few days until youve seen them. This would make me hot, to boldly see what no man has seen before :twisted:

Importing i think too, is to alter the scoring method from amount of calibration movies clicked to something that puts more weight on accuracy. Thats what we need if looking for microns. For example flawless calibrations in a row or some formula of accuracy and amount. (which would favor me, as it's a thrill not to let come a tiny little single shadow on my so far perfect stat ;) )

I'd like to see that it would make more points in total to have flagged well agreed things than you might achieve by calibration movies. That would move the focus back to the dust, not to these monotonous calibration stuff.
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