Few Takers For Free Crunching

[Z-TAC]

Since I started the offer for free crunching (http://www.setiusa.us/showthread.php?6436-Zorro-The-Anonymous-Cruncher&p=72385&viewfull=1#post72385) in early February 2014, only 5 new forum members have accepted the offer out of 100 eligible. The 5 who did accept have become among the most active new members in the forum, which is great. However, I have increased the number of days of free crunching from 5 to 20 without attracting new requests for free crunching. The concept seems to be flawed, but I'm not sure why. Any insights, especially from new forum members, are appreciated.

[Sarge104]

Personally I like pitting my own equipment against the other teams so earning my own credits without depending on another cruncher appeals to me. I do like your idea for helping new crunchers to the team build their accounts though. You have to realize that a lot of new crunchers do not even stop at the forums or just make an account and do not log back in to see the additional forum topics that open up when you make your account. Keep at it though, I'm sure the ones that you have crunched for appreciate it.

I've helped out other teams on occasion but the thought of just helping one individual doesn't ring too well with me, I salute you in your efforts though.

[c303a]

Personally, every credit I have I crunched myself. If needed I would help someone else and I think your idea has had a positive result if you got 5 new crunchers to be active on the boards and putting up some good credits. You may want to try to send a PM to the new people and let them know about your offer. Maybe as Sarge104 said they just aren't reading the forums. Of course being from Madison you may be scaring them away. ;););) Keep up the good work.

[Duke of Buckingham]

That is quite confusing to me either. I have done almost the same what you are doing, in the team Musketeers, some time ago and had exactly the same problems you have now.

I think you can crunch for our team and help some new crunchers meanwhile. There are many ways of helping, since some simple instructions how to use Boinc Manager and add new projects.

Crunching for them is not always easy, for all the reasons of the poll and much more that some suspicious minds can think of. I had all kind of replies, some trying to be nice to others in a very agressive tone but I dont blame them, we are on the net for a while and had been victims of all kind of dirty tricks.

And then there is one more thing, maybe the most common, new people come here to give, because they believe on one project message, or on BOINC communitty helping message, as we did in the past and feel kind of strange to start accepting before giving, I dont blame them.

You have the will to help, on your own terms. I, for myselfe, am very glad to have you in our team but never forget, we can only give what others are ready to accept, you can be in here, helping on a lot of ways, and then on the right time, give someone else a push on a challenge or on a favorite project but give them time, For they dont know enough and can get suspicious of something ,,, I wonder what could be?

You are one of my favorite characters on BOINC world that I can tell you.

[DrPop]

Hi Z-TAC. I think your offer is generous, brilliant, and bold. It's a great thing, please don't give up. I think over the years we've found that just a fraction of the new crunchers that sign up to the team actually come onto these boards. So the biggest thing that I see, is since the offer is of course for new members, there just aren't tons of new members every week that make it all the way here to the boards.

If you want your offer of crunching for the new members to stand for a quite a while, maybe one thing we could do is edit the "about SETI.USA" paragraph that people see when they decide to join the team at every project. We could directly mention there that IF they come on to the boards here and register, you will gladly offer to crunch for them a few days to get them started. Might attract a few more of the "casual crunchers" to the boards. :)
Does that sound like it would help?

[Z-TAC]

I don't want to interrupt the flow, and thanks for the comments thus far. In clarification, the 100 eligible members I mentioned are people who have actually created a username in the forum between January 4 and today, though many seem not to "upgrade" their membership to access our private topics, and many more seem never to return after gaining restricted access.

Please keep the comments coming, along with thoughts about DrPop's idea. Z-TAC is first and foremost a recruiting and retention initiative. :)

[Shandia]

When I joined the team, I had a hard time signing up for the forum. I actually kinda forgot about it for a year after the first week. When I managed to finally sign up on the forum, I mainly felt that despite being new to the forum, I had been a member of the team for quite some time and had some credits under my belt. At the time, I felt that new members that were just getting into crunching would be more deserving of the extra help. P)lus, I was quite content and satisfied that every credit I had, I earned myself....with no outside help....no computers at work.....they were earned with my own shit. After a little time and really understanding what participating in the team meant and learned about the long road ahead I had to to acquire credits, the more I thought about not taking you up on your offer. I also learned that as a team we are there to help each other. The more experienced and better equipped members especially. If I could become a brand new member again, I would take you up on the offer simply because I know my arsenal just isn't that great and I'll be lucky to get my first WUProp badge by the end of the year despite having over 1000 hours on several projects. At least I can say I earned every one myself. Maybe you should have a deal to not so new members that you haven't crunched for before. ;) After all, if one of us is trying to reach a goal and you have the free box, I know you and most of the team, would jump in to help that member out. But of course, the new members need to be first in the queue.

[Shandia]

and many more seem never to return after gaining restricted access.

I want to suggest stream lining the gaining restricted to full membership status. It takes a little digging and effort to figure out how to go from restricted access to to full access. It took me a little while myself to do that. (a few days) Once I finally got past the captcha after the year of non forum access, I wasn't about to give up just because I had to read several articles in the forum to figure out what to do next. I'm sure some people who sign up are not at the level of wanting to participate in the team effort. But I'm also sure there are o9thers who just gave up trying to go from step 1 to step 3. At least it's not as bad as one forum I can think of and actively wrestled with for months to no avail.

[myshortpencil]

Maybe you need some endorsements from members on your offer page, like, "Endorsed by the following members:"

Myshortpencil 1717, etc :)

[Justgeo1]

I've never asked you to crunch for me, because it's for new member and I've been here a while... And I was a member at the old site for several years before that... I'm an old fart! :)

[c303a]

Maybe if people are having trouble gaining full access someone who knows how that process work would like to re-visit the procedure. I don't remember having any trouble but maybe there is a quirk in the process. Of course I'm just another old fart who isn't very computer savvy.

[myshortpencil]

I want to suggest stream lining the gaining restricted to full membership status. It takes a little digging and effort to figure out how to go from restricted access to to full access. It took me a little while myself to do that. (a few days) Once I finally got past the captcha after the year of non forum access, I wasn't about to give up just because I had to read several articles in the forum to figure out what to do next. I'm sure some people who sign up are not at the level of wanting to participate in the team effort. But I'm also sure there are o9thers who just gave up trying to go from step 1 to step 3. At least it's not as bad as one forum I can think of and actively wrestled with for months to no avail.

^ +1 I'm not even sure that some people who join even know there are 2 levels of access.

[finalfugue]

As one of the fab five, apparently, I think I can strike at the root of the problem with pretty much one word: TIME.

It takes time to do everything required for this, much less to be any *good* at it. The learning curve isn't the worst I've ever encountered, but it is there. To just qualify for the free crunching offered by Z-TAC took hours. I had to come up with posts that weren't utter crap to reach the minimum to request unrestricted access. I had to set up several projects and put some numbers up, making sure each one was attached to SETI.USA. I had to look into this "wuprop" thing and manually enter it into my hosts (a mild PITA on misc. Android devices). I also had to ask quite a few questions in PMs to people like CrazyBob who helps oversee the newbies.

Once I had read up on everything and wasn't afraid of the connotations of a phrase like "account keys" (hmmm, says here it's tied to my password- OMG really?!), saw that all our credits (in a way) go into a big bucket and Z-TACs participation wasn't going to put some Scarlet Asterisk(finalfugue*... God now there's a horrific sight for so many reasons) next to my name, AND had full access to the forum, I was deep in this for my own reasons.

You've wisely put in place for yourselves a bit of a double-edged sword. Becoming a true member of the community around here takes time, involvement, research, attention, effort, and a bunch of things people don't want to give in the age of "So-and-so has accepted your one-button friend request. Congratulations for doing nothing!" As you've seen, about 1-in-20 are that interested in crunching. Not that I mean to disparage those who just set it and forget it, people have other things going on in their lives. I can't tell you whether your offer Z-TAC is the cart or the horse. Only those motivated and interested will take you up on it, and you're trying to recruit/attract/involve people to help them become motivated and interested.

Streamline the process and what will happen is what happens ANYWHERE you make things easy on the Internet- prepare for @#*holes. Keep the bar where it is and you'll continue to get fairly low participation rates. Obviously I fully support what you're doing and see no problem with the requirements where they are, so I would throw my vote out. It's your machine and these are the team's forums, but there's the crux of the issue as I see it.