drop in numbers

pastaboy · Post by **pastaboy** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:39 pm

I was just wondering how many dusters were still here. I not a prolific duster (only access at work, chemistry to do, that sort of thing) and I seem to have a suspiciously high rank. And the things I have clicked on have only been seen by a small number of people (typically less than 10). Are there only a few hundred of us left? does this mean we will end up looking at every movie so each one can be rated by enough people?

Not that I mind, just wondering.

harmony · Post by **harmony** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:23 am

I think we are down to about a 1000 judging from my ranking. I have done little dusting in phase two due to time avalability but have rapidly dropped to 600 something with only a score of about 40. Clearly the big hitters are still dusting though. Hoping to get back to it soon but never enough time to get in the top 100.

pastaboy · Post by **pastaboy** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 10:28 pm

thanks for that. I was hoping I could sneak inot the top 100 by dusting when there was less than 100 people, but there were about 200 people faster off the rank than me. I am happy to stay around the 1% mark, even if 23000 of the other people have stopped trying.

joot · Post by **joot** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 4:53 pm

How about getting some news coverage to renew interest in the project?

I just started phase 2, and I'm discouraged when I see that the hits I've marked have only been viewed by 3-10 people. I thought this method of finding tracks relied on large numbers of people viewing the vids - the more who view it, the more indicative the percent marked will be, right? It does not seem like it will be very informative when every vid has 50-100% (e.g. 4/6 people) marking it.

Or was it intentionally left like this, with only the most dedicated people who have viewed the most videos remaining? ~2000 people who have "self-trained" by each viewing hundreds of videos?

At times with the new training vids, I suspect they are hoping to be able to limit "over-selection" of inclusions by weighting hits by specificity more than sensitivity. If something is marked by someone with high specificity and low sensitivity, it might mean that is more likely to be something real. Like, if a person has a high threshold for marking something, then if they do mark something, it is probably of interest. Does that make sense? I notice training vids even in the "Review Tutorial" that I would still not click on.

Titanium · Post by **Titanium** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 8:57 pm

I've been idle for about 2 or 3 weeks now and my rank has stayed around 155...

harmony · Post by **harmony** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 12:36 pm

joot
I dont know, but I dont envy anyone new starting phase 2 with some of those new CMs to contend with. However, I did think the same as you, that perhaps a bit of publicity to get some more active members might be benificial.
I dont think it was intended to have hundreds of views on each movie, I think that was pehaps a logistical problem in getting fresh movies scanned and put up on the server.

Post by **bmendez** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 4:51 pm

Hi All,

The numbers of regular dusters are definitely down to a few thousand. However, given the rate of new movies being uploaded and the dedication of those few thousand we are still in great shape with the project. It would always be nice to have more eyes looking through the focus movies, but we haven't felt the need to do any large concerted push.

I have tried small things like starting a MySpace page for Stardust@home, but haven't had much time to go out there looking for friends to link up to it. Those of you out there in MySpace should add yourself as a friend. That might help bring in some interest from a new crowd of people.

I always welcome suggestions for other more low key approaches.

The Press is the best way, but until we've got a confirmed interstellar dust grain found, we'll probably hold off on that. At that point, I'm sure you all will have lots of new friends here.

-Bryan

pastaboy · Post by **pastaboy** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 5:11 pm

thanks for the update Bryan. I know I will sound like a teenager saying this but myspace is so last year. Apparently the demographics for New Zealand (kiwi that I am) is that <20 tend to stick to Bebo, and 20+s are on Facebook. Don't know about other countries but Facebook is quite good for getting people information about things (through Groups) as I have experienced recently with the wave of Burma discussion going on.

harmony · Post by **harmony** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 4:27 am

Bryan
How about sending an e mail to ex dusters to inform them of phase 2. Many may have left due to the large number of views of their events in Phase 1 and maybe feeling they where not adding anything to the project.
They would already have experience.

Hermax · Post by **Hermax** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 6:34 am

Would it be a difficult software update if the ranking would only be counting active dusters (=score not equal to zero)? So that instead of "231 out of 24649" I have now, would be something like "231 out of 2310"?

Nikita · Post by **Nikita** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 7:00 am

You know, it may not be realistic, but I do like having it been all the dusters and not just the active ones. Then I feel like I have done more!

Post by **bmendez** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 4:13 pm

Hey all,

Thanks for the info about Bebo and Facebook. I'll have to check them out. My niece and nephew spend practically all their time on MySpace so I figured that was where "the kids" were

So, I checked out the database and was able to determine that since Phase 2 started about 2,400 people came back and gave it a try. The email about Phase 2 went out to every registered duster (24,000+). So about 10% of the Phase 1 dusters came back to check things out. Of those about 1,800 actually did enough searching to achieve a non-zero score.

Thanks,
-Bryan

harmony · Post by **harmony** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 4:00 am

Bryan. thanks for info.
Didnt realise that a phase 2 email was sent. Ididnt receive one, or pehaps it went into my junk mail. I am registered as johnberry.

PovAddict · Post by **PovAddict** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 2:41 pm

bmendez wrote:So, I checked out the database and was able to determine that since Phase 2 started about 2,400 people came back and gave it a try. The email about Phase 2 went out to every registered duster (24,000+). So about 10% of the Phase 1 dusters came back to check things out. Of those about 1,800 actually did enough searching to achieve a non-zero score.

I had gone away after quite little time in Phase 1. Now came back

And I really think you need more users. I had suspected since almost the beginning that it would happen: LOTS of users for a start but quick decline. And, surprise, happened to me; played around a bit then gone away.

PovAddict · Post by **PovAddict** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 9:46 pm

My initial impression after the new tutorial and tests is that I will be doing it wrong, ie. not having fun. The test seemed to try hard to frustrate me, I clicked in one that seemed to have even a particle at the end of the track, but it said I was wrong and pointed somewhere else with some vague "smoke" saying it was a h.a. track.

I'd rather solve captchas as those at least aren't frustrating: http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html
(I already "digitized 75 words" in that demo page)

drop in numbers

drop in numbers

PR ...?