Alpha list

[jelfving]

A new feature has popped up: the Alpha list. But nowhere do I find any indication as to what it's all about. Anybody willing to shed light into the darkness of my ignorance?

[harmony]

Ineresting! I see it, but have no idea what it is about?

[bmendez]

Hi All,

Glad to know that some of you are still watching us closely

We have just implemented a new feature on the Stardust@home website
to make our candidate selection procedure more transparent.

The Alpha list (link found on the News submenu) is a list of the top scoring movies as determined by all of the Stardust@home Dusters. It also contains some movies that were not top scoring, but that were mentioned here in the forums as being promising.

The science team members of the Stardust@home team have been reviewing this list and giving it an additional rating on a 10 point scale where 0 is not likely at all to be an interstellar dust impact, and 10 is the highest likelihood.

We will determine which few features are most promising for extraction and analysis based on the final ratings of the alpha-list movies.

We haven't made a special announcement about the Alpha List because we are still testing the system to make sure it works as we would like it to. So consider this a "soft launch" of this new feature.

Special note: we decided to allow naming of the candidates for extraction, even if they do not turn out to be interstellar, or even extra-terrestrial, since the results of close inspection of candidates will feed back into Stardust@home and improve our criteria for searching for interstellar dust.

Thanks,
-Bryan

[elainekeefe]

This request is a bit late, but I'm wondering if it would be possible to add a "sort" option to both the Alpha List and the Events List. It would make it so much easier to find a particular movie. Scrolling down a list of 400+ movies is tedious and time-consuming.

Thanks, Elaine

[Will]

This request is a bit late, but I'm wondering if it would be possible to add a "sort" option to both the Alpha List and the Events List. It would make it so much easier to find a particular movie. Scrolling down a list of 400+ movies is tedious and time-consuming.

Thanks, Elaine

Hi Elaine:
Instead of sorted by score? I can add request that to the wishlist. In the meantime you should be able to use your browser's page search function to see if the movie is present. You can often trigger the search function by typing control-f
Best wishes,
Will

[elainekeefe]

Thank you Will. The sort function, such as you have on the Members List, would, I feel, be welcomed by many. Although the search function may be fine for searching for one or two movies, it would be easier, if searching for several, to just scroll down the list. If, for instance, one wanted to check one's own Events List movies against the Alpha List, it would be easier if both lists were in numerical order. On the Events Lists, a sort function would also enable us to check for duplicates and also sort by status to group together first cuts, inclusions, etc. These lists have become, for the most part, very large and cumbersome, and a sort function would, I think, make the dusting experience much easier for everyone. Although these lists can be copied and sorted on the computer, the frequent changes make it almost impossible to keep up with.

Thanks again, Elaine