Folding Forum

JC,

It's been a few months since you were introduced to the FAH community. I'm hoping that in that time, you've had an opportunity to assess the status of donor communications and identified improvements that can be made, along with a sense of the timeline to implement them. Would you mind giving us an update on your progress?

Thank you,

NB

NookieBandit wrote:JC,

It's been a few months since you were introduced to the FAH community. I'm hoping that in that time, you've had an opportunity to assess the status of donor communications and identified improvements that can be made, along with a sense of the timeline to implement them. Would you mind giving us an update on your progress?

Thank you,

NB

Do you really think things are going to change.It has been 8 months and it still looks like the same old same old.There still are NO donor communications.That is why I only fold less then 10 days a month if that.If and when donor communications ever starts I mite fire up whats collecting dust now but my hopes are low.Donor communications is going to team web sites posting there,I have not seen 1 post from JC . But you know I think FaH is hopping that bit coins gets it done for them no need for donor communications with that.

NookieBandit wrote:JC,

It's been a few months since you were introduced to the FAH community. I'm hoping that in that time, you've had an opportunity to assess the status of donor communications and identified improvements that can be made, along with a sense of the timeline to implement them. Would you mind giving us an update on your progress?

Thank you,

NB

A good question. I hope she's doing well, still with the project and we hear/read soon from her.

kerryd wrote:But you know I think FaH is hopping that bit coins gets it done for them no need for donor communications with that.

... then it should be renamed "Folding@Business" ,

What breaking news has taken place that PG has failed to communicate in the last 8 months?

What if anything has changed recently? Not much. So not much to say. What little there was has been posted in the blog.

How many blog post have there been in the last 8 months?

7im wrote:What breaking news has taken place that PG has failed to communicate in the last 8 months?

The change in the points allocation for NaCl WUs for one, leading to a totally unnecessary spate of posts here wondering what the hell was going on. An announcement of a change in strategy that directly affects donors after the fact is not good communication.

A clue as the status of the NaCl client wouldn't come amiss either, a couple of blog posts give the distinct impression that it's full release, the word "beta" silently disappeared from the relevant forum header a few months ago (though the separating semi-colon is still there!) and nobody from PG seems much interested in that forum. I hope that's not considered as an announcement that it's no longer in beta...

They don't really pre-announce changes to a beta client on the Blog. But they should have done that in the beta forum.

The forum is third party, not PG. Titles are controlled by those third party people. You might ask them about that one.

If the status of the NaCl client has changed, I would like to see that announcement as well. But I don't think it has.

Any other examples?

7im wrote: Any other examples?

A few minor ones, which I can't be bothered to search for, but this topic isn't untypical- no word ever came back as to what happened to the WU or the credit (which never materialised afaict).

Same goes for this topic, despite the project leader having been notified (twice, I think) in each case.

JC isn't going to overstep a researcher to go check an individual work unit. Doesn't apply to JC and general communications.

The mods followed the process of contacting the researcher. It's up to the researcher to comment or not. Some don't comment on missing an individual WU as long as the science keeps progressing, and only comment when the feedback leads to a bigger issue. IMO, missing one WU might be written off as user, network, or hardware error when there is no history of the WU on the server. Other researchers may be more communicative.

The position JC filled was not simply about notifying donors about late-breaking news. It had a much larger job definition than that.

Along with notifications, a number of ideas have been discussed over the years, some of which emanated from the Donor Advisory Board discussion, some of which have been discussed ad naseum in different postings about donor relations, and other ideas which would help recruit and retain donors:

• 1. Summary of the current issues and discussion items from the last meeting of the Donor Advisory Board.
  2. Helping the donor community understand the decreasing number of donors, and why that matters (or does not)
  3. Hardware changes PG is considering and soliciting feedback from the donor community
  4. When changes are made, to explain the rationale behind the change so whether donors agree or not, at least everyone understands why a change was made
  5. The product roadmap (features/functions) for future development of FAH software
  6. Possibility of talented donors contributing time to FAH code development (eg if the code existed on Github)
  7. Perhaps beginning to address some of the concerns I raised in my first post on this forum: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=23074&start=30
  8. Distilling research results from FAH donor contributions into a form that’s easily digestible for the non-biologist/researcher
  9. Tools (presentations, public acknowledgement, awards, etc) donors can use to help recruit companies to contribute unused computer cycles
  10. Pulling smaller groups of donors together with specific expertise to develop non-technical ideas to help with donor recruitment and retention (i.e. charitable tax deductions for the electricity used to provide FAH work unit results would be a great one to tackle)
  11. Organize buying groups so donors can get discounts on group purchases of new CPUs/GPUs

billford wrote:

7im wrote: Any other examples?

A few minor ones, which I can't be bothered to search for, but this topic isn't untypical- no word ever came back as to what happened to the WU or the credit (which never materialised afaict).

Same goes for this topic, despite the project leader having been notified (twice, I think) in each case.

In both cases the WU still has not shown up in the database. The project lead did respond in the second topic, either a cause was not found or they are still looking into the issue.

From personal experience and having followed up on some missing WU reports in the past, sometimes they do not get credited until one of the re-crediting passes that PG periodically runs. In one case a WU received credit over 6 months after being turned in.

7im wrote:The mods followed the process of contacting the researcher.

Yes, I know. I've never had a problem with communication with the mods.

7im wrote:It's up to the researcher to comment or not.

Exactly- whether to bother to tell those doing the actual work for them what's going on. It's plain simple discourtesy if nothing else.

7im wrote:IMO, missing one WU might be written off as user, network, or hardware error when there is no history of the WU on the server.

With all due respect, it's not your opinion that I'm interested in.

Joe_H wrote: From personal experience and having followed up on some missing WU reports in the past, sometimes they do not get credited until one of the re-crediting passes that PG periodically runs. In one case a WU received credit over 6 months after being turned in.

OK thanks, I'll wait and hope for an unexpected 30k of points to arrive sometime

1. DAB hasn't met recently, that I know of.
2. Big decrease was explained. An anonymous corporation's donation ended it's current run. See the Blog post about it. And to a smaller degree, BA exit. IMO, doesn't matter. Corp donations and personal donors come and go all the time.
3. No HW changes being considered. What would you suggest?
4. See #3.
5. See beta forum.
6. See open source FAQ, and NaCl GitHub page.
7. This list addresses some of your concerns, although your link didn't work, so I'm not sure.
8. The Blog posts on new Papers attempt this, but deep science is always going to be just that. The Project descriptions also try to do that in more every day terms.
9. Again, those are in the Blog, FAQs, FAH Youtube channel, etc.
10. See DAB. See also Folding Forum. See also Team Forums. See also other FAH Youtube videos.
11. Not going to happen from PG. PG is hardware agnostic, same for software, etc. You are more than welcome to start a buying group in the anything goes Section, but the hardware agnostic rules still apply.

Most of this list does not fall under the circle of influence for JC or PG no matter how much you want it to or discuss it ad naseum. Some things maybe do, and I will let PG address those if they so choose.

7im wrote:1. DAB hasn't met recently, that I know of.

Does it still exists, who are the member ? What is the purpose ? Should it be revitalized or discontinued officially ? What ways of communication between PG and it's donors else could be established.

In the BA battle was also a discussion included about the point system overall and it's imbalance. That could have been a good topic to further work on.

Maybe another broader donor survey on donors thoughts.