Complete "BOINC Unification" in one website

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Eric Myers
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Message 17144 - Posted: 3 May 2008, 15:29:51 UTC - in response to Message 17125.  

John,

I can understand and appreciate your enthusiasm for tying all of BOINC together, and there are certainly areas where it needs it. But I also understand David's reasoning. You are looking at things now or in the near term, when the number of BOINC projects could be easily enumerated on a single web site. But I think David is looking ahead to when distributed computing of all sorts, including BOINC, will be much more common, and there would be no need for a central registry. In fact that could slow things down.

Some projects won't want to participate. (Pirates@Home would never be in such a registry). Most of the scientists using BOINC are primarily focused on their own project. What they want from a central site is documentation and support. They may also want to tap into the existing collection of volunteers, but lately that has not been a problem; when something new appears people flock to it. (How to retain vounteers is a separate issue.)

Some projects will only exist for a semester, as a student project, or maybe only for a year or two. A Ph.D. candidate has a neat idea, but it requires more computing power than the campus Beowulf machine. She writes her code using the BOINC API and sets up a small project on her office machine. Computers from both on and off campus attach and crunch on her problem. Six months later she has her results, and the project shuts down. She writes up her results as a dissertation, defends it, and away she goes to do other interesting things. And this could be happening all over the world.

And it doesn't have to be Ph.D level work. The project I'm currently working on is aimed at high school students. Right now I'm setting up an interface to another kind of distributed computing -- the Grid. But I can easily see this expanding to include BOINC. Each high school could manage it's own project, on which they crunch student's ideas about how to process the data they have collected (from either their own devices or some external source). Mom and Dad would be thrilled to connect their home computer to their child's project.

The BOINC client software is now a package in both Debian and Fedora distributions, making it easy to add to any Linux machine. A package for a project will also be developed, making it easier for people to create a project for any problem which the BOINC computing model is appropriate.

Something in between a totally unified BOINC site and just an on-line manual is an on-line community of people working on projects that use BOINC. This would be separate from the volunteer community and the developer community, though of course many people will participate in more than one. I think this kind of rought division is useful. The volunteers don't need to know developer details (unless they want to). Neither should project managers (eventually). So I'd argue that rather than one unified BOINC site, we have need of 3 separate but interrelated communities.

I think this kind of division will happen, but gradually and slowly rather than all at once. There is a new wiki for user documentation, leaving the technical developer and project details in Trac. I hope you'll help make that documentation better. Eventually I imagine separate documentation for anybody who wants to set up a project, and perhaps somewhat separate forums for projects (right now there is just an e-mail list). Maybe some day there will be a single web site for projects (a United Federation of Projects, perhaps)? Maybe it would only be possible to tie together a few of the many, many projects that BOINC will enable.

So again, I can appreciate your enthusiam for tying the BOINC world together. Though I disagree with it, I think the discussion has been very useful. I hope that your enthusiasm doesn't go away because things didn't work out just as you thought they should. Instead, I hope you can help us continue to build this thing which (I think) has the potential to be so useful. There is still a heck of a lot that needs to be done.

-Eric


-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
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Message 17151 - Posted: 3 May 2008, 20:37:14 UTC - in response to Message 17144.  

John,

...
Some projects will only exist for a semester, as a student project, or maybe only for a year or two. A Ph.D. candidate has a neat idea, but it requires more computing power than the campus Beowulf machine. She writes her code using the BOINC API and sets up a small project on her office machine. Computers from both on and off campus attach and crunch on her problem. Six months later she has her results, and the project shuts down. She writes up her results as a dissertation, defends it, and away she goes to do other interesting things. And this could be happening all over the world...


I just wanted to reiterate what Eric is saying. My project is an excellent example of this (quoted part). Our cluster did not suit my needs (nor could I compete for time). Having already been running boinc, I though it could be useful. Asked around on my team to see if anyone would help and before I knew it I have ~180 users! What will the future of the project be when, *knocks on wood*, I get the thesis written. Don't know (at least the url will change ;) ). That's one good reason for simply leaving every thing with the project up to me. I mean it's a free net you can always make your own website, install a wiki or some other thing and do all of the things you want, I don't feel the need to have another place to update things. It's your call.

I would also like to say I though the debate was quite informative and has given me a few things to consider on my own project as well (perhaps to add after my summer courses; 60ish students in 4 weeks O.O ). Thanks for the suggestion and discussion.


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John37309
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Message 17165 - Posted: 3 May 2008, 23:25:01 UTC
Last modified: 3 May 2008, 23:35:54 UTC

I will repeat again, the point of the unified site was to have one single common agreed place on the Internet where anyone can go to get 100% impartial information about BOINC or any of the projects using it. There are 1,000 websites out there doing it anyway. I just wanted half of the people in this discussion to agree on one place. Then to have the BOINC website recognize that website in a semi-official way. Then many users could collect information on ALL boinc projects without having to get consent from someone else. 100% impartial information.

I personally believe that i currently host the largest and most comprehensive list of BOINC projects anywhere on the Internet. The List is currently sitting on the Boincteams.com website and because several team founders, activists and enthusiasts contribute to the list, the list is growing. We currently have about 99 projects on the list but i have a personal log of about 128 projects in varying states of readiness or not.

People come and people go. People get enthusiastic about BOINC/SETI/CPDN/Rosetta/etc/etc and everybody gets fed up in time and quits. There is a hard core element that have been around BOINC/SETI since May 1999, i'm not one of them. I only found it in recent years. If i currently have the largest list of BOINC projects, in 6 months time someone else will have a bigger list somewhere else. Who knows, i might get fed up of BOINC and the projects in 6 months time. If i do, i will guarantee that i will have fully documented everything i have learned about BOINC and the projects and the information will be there for the next enthusiast to take over.

Apart from sex, there is nothing men like to do more than map things in a book. Its part of human nature to draw a picture, map and document things. It takes an open and transparent management structure to allow hundreds of people to contribute to that map.

I think its a shame that the BOINC management recently turned down the UBW and would not give that website some recognition for the massive work that has gone into it. The people that have worked hard to compile the information have to rely on supporters putting a link in their signature to advertise the website. Its just one example of the BOINC team putting their two fingers up at user attempts to help BOINC and the projects in one common website. What a shame!

And as for wiki's of any kind, i read another thread recently where "mo.v" stated quite clearly that she was never able to navigate the UBW or BOINC trac wiki. She also said that she could not even visualise a mental map of what the UBW looked like. I am exactly the same, i cannot navigate the UBW, or any other wiki. Wiki's seem to be massive collections of web pages that can only be navigated by using the "Search Function". Its a very poor way to try to introduce something complex like BOINC to a new user. I believe thousands of people have the same problem. CMS's or content management systems like Drupal, Joomla and PHP-Nuke make it easy for a web admin to structure and map his website so its really simple for the end user to navigate the website. These websites also look really good if you put work into the aesthetics of the template for the website. I agree that BOINC projects and the BOINC website are "Functional". But if you were trying to impress a new person and introduce them to something new, would you ware your best new suit. Or would you put on your old raggy and out dated track suit to go and meet them!

John.
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Gerry Rough
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Message 17202 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 0:11:33 UTC - in response to Message 17165.  

I will repeat again, the point of the unified site was to have one single common agreed place on the Internet where anyone can go to get 100% impartial information about BOINC or any of the projects using it. There are 1,000 websites out there doing it anyway. I just wanted half of the people in this discussion to agree on one place. Then to have the BOINC website recognize that website in a semi-official way. Then many users could collect information on ALL boinc projects without having to get consent from someone else. 100% impartial information...

John.


I don't usually get involved with stuff like this on the projects, but I think your idea is outstanding. But I also believe that the only way to make it happen, as has been posted already, is to go ahead and make it.

If you build it, they will come.

I have found that the boinc community really is a herd of kittens; they tend to find fault with everything. I do believe that if you try to advertise your project, that you are serious about getting it done and take steps to actually get it done, and perhaps eliciting the help of others who are close to this already, such as boincstats Willy, it WILL work. I would strongly recommend that you use an already existing site that is well known and try to go from there.

Get a couple of volunteers and make a great front page that is cool and you'll get a lot of attention. I for one would be happy to join your band of cats once you get going if I can get some time.

There is one way to herd kittens by the way: shake the box of friskies at feeding time. :-)

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John37309
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Message 17203 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 0:33:19 UTC - in response to Message 17202.  
Last modified: 6 May 2008, 0:37:10 UTC

I will repeat again, the point of the unified site was to have one single common agreed place on the Internet where anyone can go to get 100% impartial information about BOINC or any of the projects using it. There are 1,000 websites out there doing it anyway. I just wanted half of the people in this discussion to agree on one place. Then to have the BOINC website recognize that website in a semi-official way. Then many users could collect information on ALL boinc projects without having to get consent from someone else. 100% impartial information...

John.


I don't usually get involved with stuff like this on the projects, but I think your idea is outstanding. But I also believe that the only way to make it happen, as has been posted already, is to go ahead and make it.

If you build it, they will come.

I have found that the boinc community really is a herd of kittens; they tend to find fault with everything. I do believe that if you try to advertise your project, that you are serious about getting it done and take steps to actually get it done, and perhaps eliciting the help of others who are close to this already, such as boincstats Willy, it WILL work. I would strongly recommend that you use an already existing site that is well known and try to go from there.

Get a couple of volunteers and make a great front page that is cool and you'll get a lot of attention. I for one would be happy to join your band of cats once you get going if I can get some time.

There is one way to herd kittens by the way: shake the box of friskies at feeding time. :-)

Sounds great in theory Gerry!

But this has been done to a lesser extent by websites like Unofficial BOINC wiki and the BOINC team have not given the website any recognition what-so-ever. UBW is similar to what i was planning, but falls short on some of the ideas i mentioned in my first post.

As i have done on other sites, i could put massive work into this and produce the website but it relies on support from the BOINC project. David Anderson has said no and hence any new website would be a horrid waste of my time, and anyone that chose to help with it.

John.
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Message 17204 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 0:46:12 UTC - in response to Message 17107.  

boinc.mundayweb.com/; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No

Answer from Neil Munday on this:

Neil Munday wrote:
boinc.mundayweb.com has only ever striven to be a stats site that allows people to view their stats in various ways, e.g. via stats graphics, Facebook application and desktop widgets etc. It was never my intention to make it a site for all things BOINC (e.g. guides etc.) as I don't have the time and there any many many sites out there that do this already. When BOINC first started though, there were hardly any stats graphics sites - boinc.mundayweb.com has been there from the beginning and hopefully will be so for some time to come.

A unified site for all things BOINC sounds like a good idea, but hasn't this already been tried with the Wiki?

Cheers,

Neil.

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John37309
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Message 17205 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 0:58:01 UTC - in response to Message 17204.  
Last modified: 6 May 2008, 0:58:58 UTC

boinc.mundayweb.com/; Can any project admin or common user login and administrate or have any input to the information or running of the website? Answer; No

Answer from Neil Munday on this:

Neil Munday wrote:
boinc.mundayweb.com has only ever striven to be a stats site that allows people to view their stats in various ways, e.g. via stats graphics, Facebook application and desktop widgets etc. It was never my intention to make it a site for all things BOINC (e.g. guides etc.) as I don't have the time and there any many many sites out there that do this already. When BOINC first started though, there were hardly any stats graphics sites - boinc.mundayweb.com has been there from the beginning and hopefully will be so for some time to come.

A unified site for all things BOINC sounds like a good idea, but hasn't this already been tried with the Wiki?

Cheers,

Neil.

Thanks Ageless! My last post kinda covers a response!

Do you know why the BOINC FAQ service and the UBW guys never got together to combine the two?

John.
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Message 17206 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 1:38:28 UTC - in response to Message 17205.  
Last modified: 6 May 2008, 1:39:25 UTC

Do you know why the BOINC FAQ service and the UBW guys never got together to combine the two?

None of them ever asked me. I'm primarily writing the BOINC FAQs.
I only got and granted a recent request from David "Didactylos" Barnard to copy mainly the error descriptions over to the official BOINC Wiki.

I am more at home in Neil's FAQ software, plus I don't like writing these things in a Wiki, but anyone can do so after asking for permission.
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Message 17207 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 1:51:19 UTC - in response to Message 17206.  
Last modified: 6 May 2008, 1:52:42 UTC

Do you know why the BOINC FAQ service and the UBW guys never got together to combine the two?

None of them ever asked me. I'm primarily writing the BOINC FAQs.
I only got and granted a recent request from David "Didactylos" Barnard to copy mainly the error descriptions over to the official BOINC Wiki.

I am more at home in Neil's FAQ software, plus I don't like writing these things in a Wiki, but anyone can do so after asking for permission.

I would have thought it was the obvious line of thought to combine the two.

1. Why don't you like writing in wiki's?, that's what Dave A just installed on the BOINC website.

2. What is your general thoughts on what i was proposing and the discussion that has happened here?

3. What do you think of WYSIWYG editors? Have you used any? Do you use them for website stuff?

John.
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Message 17212 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 10:55:26 UTC - in response to Message 17207.  
Last modified: 6 May 2008, 11:04:48 UTC

1. Why don't you like writing in wiki's?, that's what Dave A just installed on the BOINC website.

Because there is no standard in them. If you think you can write in one Wiki, the next one has things so differently that you have to start your learning process over. And then there's a next one and a next one. I don't like to go in circles.

Then there's the trouble of everyone can rewrite your text. On the BFS (BOINC FAQ Service) there are a handful of (trusted) people who have admin access and can make, add-to/change or delete FAQs. It's easier that way.

People can always contact me by email if they see something different or outdated or have something changed.

2. What is your general thoughts on what i was proposing and the discussion that has happened here?

Sorry, I don't want to get involved. When I saw this thread pop up, I stickied it and only kept an eye on it to see that the flames wouldn't go roof-top high.

It was never my intention to give my opinion about any of it and I still want to hold myself to that. I've seen what this thread can do and don't want to have my opinion on this be read wrong or have the tags I have be misconstrued.

3. What do you think of WYSIWYG editors? Have you used any? Do you use them for website stuff?

Define WYSIWYG editors on their own and when in use with web-stuff.
If you mean, used a text editor that immediately shows what you type in the font and such that you want it in, then yes. If you mean something like Microsoft Frontpage or Mozilla Composer, then also yes. But otherwise, please give an example.
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John37309
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Message 17213 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 13:58:21 UTC - in response to Message 17212.  
Last modified: 6 May 2008, 14:06:13 UTC

1. Why don't you like writing in wiki's?, that's what Dave A just installed on the BOINC website.

Because there is no standard in them. If you think you can write in one Wiki, the next one has things so differently that you have to start your learning process over. And then there's a next one and a next one. I don't like to go in circles.

Then there's the trouble of everyone can rewrite your text. On the BFS (BOINC FAQ Service) there are a handful of (trusted) people who have admin access and can make, add-to/change or delete FAQs. It's easier that way.

People can always contact me by email if they see something different or outdated or have something changed.

I am also reluctant to learn yet another different text formatting language just so i can use it on one website. To be inclusive and not loose much needed and valuable contributors, BOINC should be using the most simple web page editing software possible. I'm sure media wiki is not hard but I'm just tired of having to start again. I cannot navigate them either.

2. What is your general thoughts on what i was proposing and the discussion that has happened here?

Sorry, I don't want to get involved. When I saw this thread pop up, I stickied it and only kept an eye on it to see that the flames wouldn't go roof-top high.

It was never my intention to give my opinion about any of it and I still want to hold myself to that. I've seen what this thread can do and don't want to have my opinion on this be read wrong or have the tags I have be misconstrued.

I understand. I'm sure others have held back for the same reason. That is why i personally did NOT hold back in asking Dave A for straight answers. This message was also very public, i advertised this thread in about 15 or 20 project forums. I have nothing to loose, but BOINC has everything to gain by publicly discussing this topic. If anything good comes out of this discussion, then it was worth it.

3. What do you think of WYSIWYG editors? Have you used any? Do you use them for website stuff?

Define WYSIWYG editors on their own and when in use with web-stuff.
If you mean, used a text editor that immediately shows what you type in the font and such that you want it in, then yes. If you mean something like Microsoft Frontpage or Mozilla Composer, then also yes. But otherwise, please give an example.

WYSIWYG editors for use either on the BOINC website for users to make contributions or in a unified BOINC website hosted elsewhere. WYSIWYG editors used for publishing very cool looking web pages. You can find an example on any news website like SKY NEWS UK, NBC TV US, ABC TV US, etc. Its what publishers use to publish news stories and not make news reporters have to learn html, java, css, bb code, wiki, whatever!

I have Joomla installed on several websites and it has an open source WYSIWYG editor called TINY MCE 2.0. It requires you to be technically competent to use it but you don't need to know any programming languages. You can try it here on TINY MCE test page. Its more advanced than what you would use on message boards but not overly technical.

John.
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Eric Myers
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Message 17214 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 14:33:02 UTC - in response to Message 17212.  

Ageless wrote:
1. Why don't you like writing in wiki's?, that's what Dave A just installed on the BOINC website.

Because there is no standard in them. If you think you can write in one Wiki, the next one has things so differently that you have to start your learning process over. And then there's a next one and a next one. I don't like to go in circles.

This is definitely a problem, with so many wiki systems out there. (I'm currently using 3 different ones, and the differences are annoying.) But it should not stop you from contributing to the new User Manual, because:

1. MediaWiki allows you to enter just straight text (blank lines separate paragraphs) or to use HTML (for all but links). So it's not that complicated. You should think of the wiki markup as a "shortcut" for things you would do with HTML markup. (Yes, I snort at that too, especially for things like the table markup. But you can adopt that approach, and that's how I view it). If you want a one-page summary of the most important wiki markup to know, see the Wiki Quickie, which we could import over to the new wiki.

2. Others will help. You don't have to write the full article, or worry right off about the finished version. Others who know wiki formatting will help clean up and adjust the text. That's the good side of letting others edit "your" text. You can also learn some wiki markup by seeing how others do things, either as changes to an article you started or examples from other pages.

3. MediaWiki is the same software used by Wikipedia, as well as other sites, so learning this particular variant of wiki markup is not just confined to this one wiki, but to many others, including Wikipidea and sister sites, and UBW, and many others. So it's not wasted effort.

4. MediaWiki now comes with a Help: namespace of pages to help you use the wiki. It's still not distributed by default (so we need to have it added to the Users Manual - a ticket anyone?), but it can help a lot. Or you may also like to look at the shorter versions I wrote over at Pirates@Home, just to get started. Each item is short, has a basic example, and then links to the full MediaWiki manual.

So it only takes a little bit to get started, and then anyone can contribute to BOINC by helping make the documentation better.

Also, if anybody wants to try out some ideas for wiki pages outside of the main public view of either the new wiki at Berkeley or UBW, then play around with the wiki on Pirates@Home. That's what it's there for (one reason, anyway). And in a little while I'd like to use that to test some extensions Nicolas found for multi-lingual support. If they work as well as expected it should be easy to have multi-lingual pages in only one wiki, not separate wikis for separate languages. That would be really useful for BOINC.

-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
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Message 17215 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 15:16:20 UTC - in response to Message 17214.  

2. Others will help. You don't have to write the full article, or worry right off about the finished version. Others who know wiki formatting will help clean up and adjust the text. That's the good side of letting others edit "your" text. You can also learn some wiki markup by seeing how others do things, either as changes to an article you started or examples from other pages.

Seeing how it's done on the UBW, if I go there to find something on an error, I never find a solution to it. There's just an explanation of what the error looks like and what the lines mean.

This is why I wanted the BFS, find the errors and explain what they are from a BOINC viewpoint and give a solution to how you get around them.

The problem with the Wiki (any Wiki) is that sure, I can write the error there and my full text explanation, have others clean up my text but there will always be people who add to the page or change things in such a way that what once was clear from the start becomes a jumble real quickly.

So anyone who wants to can contact me on permission to copy errors and other useful things from the BFS over to any Wiki, they can play around with the formatting and all, just as long as the answer gets across in a clear and set way. Not that you again have to check Google and 14 pages before you even have an inkling of a clue as to what it might be that's causing you the errors in the first place. Let me worry about that when I am looking into writing the answer to that error.

Now the other problem on BOINC at this moment is that on one side you have Trac (with its own way of setting up pages) and you have Mediawiki (with its own way of setting up pages). I know my way around Trac at this moment, I think I'll stick to that.
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Message 17216 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 15:19:19 UTC

Eric,
Undoubtedly media wiki is the wiki of choice because, as you described, its simple, versatile and popular.

But I speak on behalf of the user, not the programmer/developer. Why are we writing user documentation?.....Answer; So users can get all the information they are looking for quickly and easily so we keep them as BOINC users and they keep contributing computing time. You would want even the "idiot" user to be able to navigate the complete website without getting lost. Where is the most basic of all links, the "Home" button on the BOINC website?. Its definitely not on every page!. "Home" should be on every page and mean "boinc.berkeley.edu".

I just don't think any kind of wiki is a good way to present information to users. Land onto any website like the very cool new NASA website and try to get lost!. You cannot get lost because the website is really cool and has brilliant navigation because its a CMS.

BOINC is the worlds biggest computer, or so we like to think so. Amongst all the computer geeks, programmers and web masters using the BOINC projects, can we not recruit a hand full of people that can design our parent website, boinc.berkeley.edu and make a website we can all be proud of and tell our friends about.

No....Instead we have a website that is "Functional" but looks like it was designed in the 1970's. And you have to have 3 different user accounts to use the forum, media wiki and trac.

Is this the best we can do on the world's largest computing project?

John.
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Eric Myers
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Message 17218 - Posted: 6 May 2008, 18:01:19 UTC - in response to Message 17216.  

John wrote:
Why are we writing user documentation?.....Answer; So users can get all the information they are looking for quickly and easily so we keep them as BOINC users and they keep contributing computing time. You would want even the "idiot" user to be able to navigate the complete website without getting lost.

I agree completely on this. And here is where you have an advantage over the developer. You have "fresh" eyes, and they don't. You see where things are in need of improvment (be it simplification, amplification, links to other pages) where they see "that ought to do it". Having the users help improve the documentation _for users_ is important, because some developers are blind to the nuances. They don't see the difference.

Where is the most basic of all links, the "Home" button on the BOINC website?. Its definitely not on every page!. "Home" should be on every page and mean "boinc.berkeley.edu".

Agreed. And it often is, in the form of the BOINC logo at the top of the page. But because we have tied together different software systems they will sometimes not be configured to all do the same thing. They should.

This would be a good thread for the "Documentation" forum, (which I lobbied to have created so that we could have a place to discuss how to improve the documentation), one door up from The Lounge


I just don't think any kind of wiki is a good way to present information to users.

I don't think it's a good way to present "all" information, but it is a good way to do some of it. Forums help too, but for discussion. (And MediaWiki has a talk page for every article -- also a good feature).

One reason a wiki is good is that this is a volunteer project, with a shoestring core staff who are all writing code that nobody else can write, while those volunteers who are willing can help out at a level appropriate to their skills and abilities.

Ideally, we'd have a great site with all the info you need, like NASA. But NASA has paid staff to create their nice web sites. BOINC does not.


And you have to have 3 different user accounts to use the forum, media wiki and trac.

I don't like that either. Ideally only one account would be needed for all three. I've written an extension to tie the forums and wiki together, but don't know how to do Trac. But that's okay, as Trac is just for the developers, and they don't mind (too much). (Ideally, long term, a single-sign-on to the Berkeley site would be nice. But I'm sure other things are higher priority.)

Keep in mind that the only people who need to authenticate to this site are developers (which broadly includes volunteers helping with the documentation) and alpha testers.


Is this the best we can do on the world's largest computing project?

Well, is the glass half empty or half full? I think it's pretty good, for what it does. And keep in mind the old adage that "the cutting edge is also the bleeding edge" (or in this case the jagged edge). Functionality comes first, then improved form.
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
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FangRust

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Message 18562 - Posted: 17 Jul 2008, 3:59:49 UTC

Hey Mike O! Just visited your site and loved the balls and string. Now if you could just do that with DNA or Hydrogen or SETI or... It would spice up the website.
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Skip Da Shu
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Message 21257 - Posted: 15 Nov 2008, 6:07:39 UTC - in response to Message 17062.  
Last modified: 15 Nov 2008, 6:09:44 UTC

LOL. One word. Firefox.
____________
Kathryn :o)


Short verison: Ditto everything u said.
- da shu @ HeliOS,
"A child's exposure to technology should never be predicated on an ability to afford it."
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Matthew Blumberg

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Message 21297 - Posted: 17 Nov 2008, 4:32:40 UTC
Last modified: 17 Nov 2008, 4:33:47 UTC

By the way --

At GridRepublic, the community pages are now online (click "community" in the menubar).

As noted earlier in this thread, the essential motivation for creating GridRepublic (and the concept of Account Management) was essentially what John is describing: ' "BOINC Unification" in one website'.

  • With GridRepublic you can learn about, join and manage almost all projects, and all your computers, from a single and simple user interface
  • Now we have discussion forums and open documentation of the sort John describes. (...Technically, our documentation is a wiki. But we've added a nice WYSIWYG editor, so no special markup is needed. Anyone can edit any page; and in principle we could restrict certan pages to certain users or groups of users, though at present I'm not sure that's needed...)
  • We're also expanding into MySpace and Facebook. The Facebook app (in testing, coming soon) will especially be cool: It will bring full "BOINC Unification" into Facebook.

So: Is GridRepublic perfect? No. Is it a solid platform for the objectives being here described? Yes, I think so. And with the help of people here and elsewhere I think we can make it an even better. Please drop by and take a look, and let me know what you think.

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Message boards : Promotion : Complete "BOINC Unification" in one website

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