Neil-B wrote:... and no one else is frustrated??
Thanks for the rant it made my day so much better ... I won't try to explain the various erroneous assumptions/assertions in the rant (from my perspective) - as a backend engineer for a large enterprise you obviously know how easy change really is - especially for a long established stable academic non commercial volunteer supported project when swamped by a 20x increase in demand pretty much overnight .. have a nice day
Apologies ... I have had my rant now as well !! ... No multi-national corporate (and I know a few) that I know of would have predicted/managed this any better even with comparably unlimited resources - tbh most would still be trying to define the problem and running around laying blame on other departments.
Understand what this effort is and then you will actually be amazed by the fact it is even still running under these pressures.
... and I really did mean it ... Have a Nice Day - Stay Safe - Stay Healthy
Hey man, I don't think the snark was entirely warranted. Yes, as a backend engineer for a large enterprise I'm exposed to constant issues of this nature all the time and no it's not easy, but then is any of it? if it were childs play then anybody could do it. However, It's frustrating because a lot of this is either still really rough 6-9 years later since a repos' creation, or straight up broken. (Not a big deal of course, but a funny bug is choosing the third theme from the dropdown in the advanced controls, straight up crashes the program lol)
A 20x increase in activity isn't an unheard of measure to deal with. But we're not talking about a small time start up getting their first influx of traffic from an article singing their praises which brings down their low cost server due to bandwidth overages. We're talking about an existing global effort that's been around for a good time now, one that even had a partnership with Sony with the global release of the PS3 coming pre-packed with F@H on it. That must have seen quite the influx as users across the world enabled F@H to take over when their console's went idle. I know I did. And I know I wasn't alone.
No multi-national corporate (and I know a few) that I know of would have predicted/managed this any better even with comparably unlimited resources
This is what I mean though. In 2005? I agree. In 2010? I'd still kinda agree. But In 2020? we have so many elastic scaling tools available to us in order to run at your regular cost for the most part, but then scale resources up as needed by traffic requirements automatically, and come back down when things settle and people drop off. These tools are widely available both in the cloud and installable within your own walled garden.
I even mentioned I get the lack of WUs available, I get that entirely. That's a different kind of scaling issue, one that likely can't be helped. Where my frustration lays is in the shakey foundation of everything surrounding that all these years later.
For myself, I've forked the web Interface and I plan to make my contribution to the project by helping improve that aspect. It's minimal to be sure, but it's most donor's first experience with the software and it can be both confusing and the bugs in it also a turnoff.
As I browse this forum, I see hundreds upon hundreds of posts of people frustrated with the things inexplicably broken or not functioning or not transparent enough in function or purpose. So again, I'm not alone in this. Difference is, I'll bet most of the people are brand new to the F@H project. I've been here off and on for 11 or so years in varying ways and capacities as mostly an anonymous donor. I'm quite aware of volunteer run projects, I've been apart of a few myself. I've also been apart of small business and large enterprise alike. Nothing's perfect of course. Shit happens. But when shit happens, that's usually code red for someone or some people to come in and unclog the pipes. I've been apart of those response calls too, both as a paid employee and as a volunteer.
Four days for a user to still be "not found" is not an experience a user will take lightly too, and that ought to as well be a priority considering the user's are a large part of what this project even is.
However,
I won't try to explain the various erroneous assumptions/assertions in the rant (from my perspective)
Without any hint of hostility and nothing but the best of intentions for a civil discussion, where I'm curious is where I'm coming at this wrong? I'm just going to go through what I've written point by point
I find the lack of proper scaling measures for a globally targeted product in 2020 to be frustrating to see
This is a personal opinion to an observation from not just where I sit, but as has been pointed out by staff regarding the issue with the increased interest in COVID-19. It's bringing their systems to a grinding halt, nevermind the manual processing involved. The manual processing problem can only be "solved" by either engineering more automation or hiring more people, and neither of those options seems to be totally in F@H's interests.
With this functionality missing from the experience, it somehow feels like im just blowing smoke into the wind.
I didn't say I was, just saying now that im attempting to be attached to an identity with it's own stats, it simply
feels like it, which is just a subjective emotion
Sounds to me like some major retooling might be necessary to polish out the donor experience.
I don't think i'm wrong in this assertion. It really does sound to me like some portions of this project ought to be relooked at, and given another go, or a couple rounds of proper polish.
The protein viewer? busted.
It is. As simply aesthetic as this component is, I promise you it's the first question I'm asked anytime I bring a new user into this project. "Why does the viewer always say Demo?"
One shouldn't need to dive through GitHub issues to find a workaround. This is promising however I look forward to this:
https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/fah-issues/issues/1283
Web Viewer? requires web tools to be open otherwise infinite refresh issue.
This is the second question I always get "Is the web view supposed to just refresh infinitely?". The answer is of course simple "F12, on network tab make sure 'Disable Cache' is enabled". A basic search shows confusion over this issue all over the place, not even just this forum
https://www.google.com/search?q=folding ... e&ie=UTF-8
Advanced Viewer? Shows your EST PPD, but doesn't show your points, nice.
Okay, I'll bite. If the advanced interface does show this, I'd like to see it. This is my basic at home PC, sitting as a single node. I see PPD fields, my username, my team ID. But I just don't see the the one field I'm interested in seeing when I wake up in the morning lol If there's a way to enable it, I just haven't seen it, and would love to know
ps: I've also forked this.
F@H Daemon? Randomly fails to download new WUs requiring a hard restart.
I have to do this all the time. My sattelite of friends have to do this, all the time. I figured for myself, it's simply because of my VPN firewall messing up communication thanks to working from home lately. But for everyone else? Not the case.
It's not a super new issue
https://forums.evga.com/Download-Fails- ... 01306.aspx
Stats? seeeevveeerly lagging behind.
Well, I mean that's the core of this post lol and everyone's facing this one
Confusing interfaces? strange.
For a system that dishes out points to donors, that really technically mean nothing to the donor themselves aside some form of proof that they're contributing in some small way, the interfaces do themselves no favours in being clear about what a person might be awarded for the WU they're working on, and/or why. Just to get a muddy understanding of how points are awarded requires a bit of searching around, and there's a LOT of posts out in the wild about this.
There's also a lot of confusion over the roles of user names and passkeys. Basic concepts like this shouldn't need much explaining yet it's not just these forums that are loaded with confused users about how these things function in the world of F@H.
And scaling is the issue in 2020? it's absurd to think honestly.
As I've described before, yeah it's absurd to think that in this day and age something like this can grind to a weird halt for several days when the tools to deal with this very issue aren't even new, and the project itself also isn't a stranger to spikes in growth.
I know the team has their hands full and there's an issue distributing the work units to the massive influx of new donors, and that's fine, I get that. I can't even pretend to understand what it takes to generate a single WU to send out.
I again emphasise that
THIS issue is not the one im concerned with. This one is more than reasonable.
But for a project that's been around this long, there's just still way too many rough edges
and there are, and I've detailed. From top to bottom, from client to server, there's a lot of issues that ought to be focused on to have a polished experience. But as of right now? Just from a pure usability standpoint from a new donor as discussed in private with me, it "works" but it's, and I'm paraphrasing here, "uncomfortably rocky"
That's all.
Understand what this effort is and then you will actually be amazed by the fact it is even still running under these pressures.
But it should. As a globally accessable crowd-sourcing tool with practically zero regional intentional exclusions, it should be expected that at some point a good chunk of the world might join one day. It's a herculean effort and not cheap to boot, and that should be considered at every step of the process.
How a free to download tool that donates idle or unused computing power to help research efforts towards a global pandemic issue affecting a hyper connected world such as today, COULDN'T predict a massive spike in interest and allocate the resources necessary to deal is weird to me. Sure. We're there going to be problems? Sure, why not? Even the best scaling efforts can have it's problems. EA releases a new FIFA every year to woefully underscaled server, and those guys have all the money and resources in the world at their disposal. Shit Happens.
I'm simply "frustrated" as a regular ass donor. And I ranted because expected base functionality of the user experience is taking several days. This is not a "my points arent being allocated like I'm expecting them too be", this is a "This is day 4 now and I still have no idea if this user account even exists properly" which is currently affecting the specific point I made this indentity for in the first place. I know full well that points allocations and work units were gummed up, but why a user identity refuses to show up when accounts registered at the same point in time and afterwards do? That's absurd.
Show me as 0 points with 0 WUs. That's fine. But I, and others, shouldn't be 404'ing this long after registering either.
... and I really did mean it ... Have a Nice Day - Stay Safe - Stay Healthy
The inflection of this reply might seem like I mean otherwise, truly it feels like a response created in defence of an attack, and this reply might (and likely will) come off as feeling similar. I'm not interested in a fight or debate. But your reply made me feel like I had to go from 0 to 60 as I was being talked down too like an inexperienced naive child.
I truly do, in no form of snark or underhanded attitude, do wish you a nice, healthy, and safe day as well. We're all in this shitty situation together, all trying to do our small part to a larger thing.
