Drastic change to credit given for S5GCE (S5R6) WU?
2 Apr 2010 4:16:34 UTC
Topic 194858
(moderation:
Has anyone else noticed a decrease in credit given for the most recent work units (besides Arecibo)? I have work units that was giving about 250 credits start giving almost a hundred credits less. Does anybody have an explanation or did I miss a post somewhere?
Wait, not S5R6 but the other one
Drastic change to credit given for S5GCE (S5R6) WU?
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Yes, you did. You should look here
RE: RE: Has anyone else
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From what I read in that post it looks like it was the other way around and the credit for the Global Correlations tasks were boosted.
"It would seem the GC tasks run a bit longer than we planned for. For the time being I raised the flops estimation and credit for newly generated tasks by a factor of 1.6."
Or am I reading that wrong too?
RE: Has anyone else noticed
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I don't think you are reading things correctly as the GCE tasks are still giving about 250 credits.
As an example, here is a current page in the results list for your i7 showing some very recently returned tasks. Please note that the contents of this page will change over time as you download new tasks and return more completed ones. To see what I'm talking about below, you may need to examine further pages using the 'next 20' link.
There are several very recently completed GCE tasks all showing 250 credits. There are also several ABP2 tasks all showing 160 credits and there is just one S5R6 task that gave 176 credits. All these are exactly as expected. The S5R6 task (hover your mouse over the taskID and you will see the name) is actually the second resend (_3 extension) for the quorum and if you click the WUID you will see the details about that - one person already aborted it and another allowed it to exceed the deadline before it was ultimately sent to you. The fact that you completed it is a good thing since that WU and the 4 associated results can now be removed from the database in due course. You should feel very good about helping to clean up the dregs from S5R6.
If you use the 'next 20' link, you should also be able to find a GCE task that only returned 156.26 credits and perhaps this is the one that caught your eye. Once again, if you hover your mouse over the taskID, you will notice the full name, which contains _2 at the end. This is a resend of an older task that was created before Bernd applied the the 1.6 credit adjustment factor. That is why it is attracting the old, lower credit. If you click the WU ID and examine the full quorum, you will see that you got the task because someone else aborted it. In a way (as you will see later) this was perhaps a bit of poetic justice ;-).
It would appear, from the number of S5R6 tasks that you have aborted recently, that it wasn't your intention to actually crunch any S5R6 tasks. You did crunch the 176 credit task mentioned above but perhaps you mistook it for a GCE task. When it only returned 176 credits, perhaps you thought this was another example of a changed credit regime.
There is a not-too-complimentary name for selectively aborting tasks - it's called 'cherry picking'. This is when you deliberately reject 'low paying' tasks that have been sent to you, in preference for tasks that you believe will be 'higher paying'. Personally, I don't feel too strongly about this in normal circumstances, but I do in the rather special circumstances that exist right at the moment.
Since you have obviously been following the project of late, you would be aware that the long running S5R6 has recently finished and been replaced by the new GCE run. If you look at the server status page, you will see that there are still more than 13,000 S5R6 WUs still waiting for the clinching result and over 200,000 S5R6 results still cluttering the database while waiting to be deleted. It would be very much appreciated by the project if these 'dregs' can be cleaned up as soon as possible.
The deleting of S5R6 resends simply delays this cleanup. It also has a more unfortunate consequence. You were probably sent the S5R6 resends because you already had (at least some of) the necessary large data files onboard. If you already have the data, the sending of the resend tasks is a very low overhead operation. When you abort them sometime later, the server will 'sit on them' for a time while waiting for another host with suitable data to come along and request work. There is an ever increasing chance that the server will give up waiting for a suitable host and then send out the tasks plus all the large data files to some poor bunny who happens to wander along at the 'wrong' time. The sending of all the large data files for just the odd resend task is quite wasteful of resources and bandwidth for both server and client. That is why, at this particular time, it is very much appreciated if each host accepts its fair share of the cleanup work.
Please don't think I'm having a go at you because I'm not. There are many people who lurk on these boards who may not be aware of the full implications of aborting the old stuff. I'm just taking advantage of the opportunity presented by your question, to try to get the message out to as many as possible, concerning the consequences of aborting (or worse, letting time out) the S5R6 resend tasks. Crunch and return all that are sent to you and take satisfaction from watching the numbers drop on the server status page.
Cheers,
Gary.
Gary, I read a comment on a
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Gary,
I read a comment on a post not too long ago that I cannot readily find at the moment where a poster who seemed to have some sort of responsibility with the project in effect say that when he see things like "If you don't change your credit policy I will just go somewhere else" and to this he says that he often replies with "go right ahead and see if I give a p---."
If that is his attitude then this is my bourgeois way of saying the same thing back at him.
Read his comment in context,
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Read his comment in context, please.
It's over here. Mike said merely that it's an optional reaction given to people who demand that things change to suit their vision of how the project should give out credits, or else they'lll leave the project with their fleet of machines.
Tantrums. Demands. Blackmail. You name it.
I did not wish to bring out
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I did not wish to bring out names and get muddy but since you've already named the party here is the exact quote:
"Aside : My pet peeve, as a moderator, is the 'hostage taker' paradigm - "I'll take my valuable farm/team/services/battlecruisers elsewhere, and your project will suffer, if the following demands aren't met .....". Sharp punters may note the number of times, in reply, I've had to obfuscate the phrase "go on, p*** off then". :-) :-)"
I do not see how this is substantially different than what I said but it is possible I misunderstood the meaning from context not quoted.
While I'm at it I may as well go all the way. Yes, Gary you were having a go at me.
I don't know if you have some way of checking but in the last three years or so I've participated in this project, those couple dozen WU's I aborted were the sum total of those three plus years (as far as I remember). That comment I read and referenced earlier struck me as elitist (sorry if I misunderstood) but I have also noticed some elitist attitudes among others around here. However, I will not deny the motive you have attributed to me.
Gary, you have helped a lot of people in this project including me, freely giving of your time and expertise and no doubt the good has far outweighed the questionable but in my opinion you forget yourself sometimes and push your opinion of the way things should be done onto others in a way that comes off as holier than thou to me and present factual conclusions that are really just your, sometimes unsolicited opinion. I am not necessarily speaking of this particular subject. And yes, I do feel bad about casting a stone in your direction, not only because of all your positive participation and the help I have received from you but because I myself am showing the same poor attitude I complain about and there are few things worse (yes, in my opinion) than a hypocrite. Plus, in the end it is my own fault that I let posted comments bother me in any way but like most of us I dislike being attacked (thinly veiled or not).
RE: I do not see how this
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Dana, the context was humor! :-) :-)
We endeavour, but no doubt sometimes fail, to enact the moderation policy as defined by the project managers. As far as I'm aware that policy is designed to target the science goals of the LIGO consortium. Inevitably that's going to imply unsuitability to some personal ideas on occasions. But in reality that's hardly a cause for major concern, as BOINC DC projects are a broad feast. So on such occasions I try to politely say "Sir/Madam this is the chicken schnitzel tray, the vegetarian salad is over there ..."
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Out of genuine curiosity what's 'bourgeois' mean here? I thought that was a political term. I'm a math/sci grad you see, so I never went near that stuff ..... at answers.com ( for what it's worth ) I got "middle class", "conformist" and "capitalist"! :-)
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: While I'm at it I may
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As hard as it might be for you to accept it, I really wasn't.
I have no idea and I couldn't care less about how many tasks you actually aborted recently and whether or not you have ever done that previously in the last 3+ years you mention. I have no way of 'researching' what is going on that is any more sophisticated than what is freely available to any participant. I never go looking for things to pontificate about but sometimes, by chance, I stumble across things.
When you consider the magnitude of the project, what any individual does or doesn't do is rather inconsequential. I don't go out of my way to target any individual but what I do do, is try to have an influence on group behaviour. So if I happen to see an example of something that could be damaging for the project as a whole if adopted by a significant group of people, I would normally find it hard to resist pontificating about it. I would give as much detail as needed, so that none of the hundreds of lurkers who might read the epistle could ever claim that they didn't understand what the problem really was. Obviously, this is going to look like I'm targeting someone and in a way there is a small benefit in allowing that perception to run. People may be less inclined to adopt a course of action that they feel might draw criticism to themselves, if exposed.
I can't change what I am and it's hard to change the style in which I write. I am also perennially guilty of poor choice of words and phraseology so I fully accept the criticisms you raise. We're all human and we all do and say things that we later regret. And then it's always hard to undo the damage.
I doubt any of us can really see ourselves as others see us. Unless blinded by provocation, very few would deliberately set out to cause offense or in any way force our own opinions on others. There is a difference between holding and expressing strong opinions as compared to being dictatorial or overly evangelical in doing so. It's hard sometimes to know the difference - for the 'perpetrator', the 'victim' and the entire audience :-).
I'm very glad you decided to bring it all out in the open. You have made your points in a very articulate and persuasive manner. There is a lot of food for thought in there and I will try to think it all through very carefully. I'm also appreciative of the fact that you kept your criticisms of me at a very civil level. That's a skill that many others don't always possess. The only jarring note is that you chose to introduce criticism of someone else in a less than honest way into a place where it didn't belong. I'm not unduly perturbed by it but you should take the matter up directly with the person concerned.
EDIT: .... who, I now see has already responded to you. I actually started my response about 3 hours ago but have had to deal with some other 'distractions' along the way.
Cheers,
Gary.
I think the only exposure is
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I think the only exposure is you. I don't know who made you Sheriff of Nottingham but it is damn irritating to me when you put that hat on (am I the only one?). You have taken it upon yourself to voice what is ok and what is not to an extent way beyond others. The thing is that some of the time it is not what you say but how you say it that makes all the difference. Condescension is very off-putting to most. Most of all I hate having to be put in the position of feeling like I have to say these things out loud because it says as much about me as it does anything else so I really don't know which is the better off which is why I'm ejecting from here for a while.
Yes, bourgeois - middle class. As opposed to elite. My apologies if I misunderstood. I really did not intend for this to go this far but… well it did and I accept my responsibility.
RE: (am I the only
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I think you are. I have never seen that hat on Gary's head. ;-)
And "condescension" (I looked that up in the dictionary to make sure I got it right) is something I never saw in any of Gary's posts.
Gruß,
Gundolf
Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)
