I was wondering where to post this. This sub-forum is perfect, but for the reverse reason.

This is a net graph. I would love to see the actual numbers of new folks joining vs current folks becoming idle, broken down by project too.

The point: I am not sure the problem is recruitment. I think the problem may be people not sticking with it. And I think a LOT of that may be due to the bad taste left in the mouths of new volunteers when joining a new project. 9 times out of 10, the admins have no clue about how to run a project, and are just bad with the communication. They are focusing on the science after-all, and tend to be scientists, not admins or programmers. But the new volunteer, excited about the science idea, quickly gets pissed off at the lack of communication, the failing tasks, and just bails on the whole concept of DC/BOINC.



From: David Anderson
Subject: [boinc_projects] declining volunteer population
Date: February 16, 2013 4:27:46 PM PST
To: Boinc Projects <boinc_projects@ssl.berkeley.edu>

The BOINC volunteer population began to decrease in early January,
and is now down by about 8,000:
http://boincstats.com/en/charts/-1/p...tive/chart.png

Let's try to reverse this trend.
There are a number of things you - BOINC-based projects - can do:

- Try to get in the media (as GIMPS did recently).
Ask your institution's publicity office for help doing this.

- Use BOINC's mechanisms for automatically emailing lapsed and failed users:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/...Reminderemails

- Send periodic email newsletters:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/...asedmechanisms

- Post news items on your web site, and export some of them as Notices
(so that they appear in your users' BOINC Managers).

If you have questions or problems doing any of these things,
please post to this email list.
And let us know if you have other ideas or experiences in this area.

-- David