Hello,

Overnight, from SETI and Einstein projects, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science disappeared from the projects' databases. Can anyone explain? Here's what I know:

1) Even if a vandal is intent on destroying a team, they can't delete a team with existing credit. I tested this (with my team's consent) on a few smaller projects, and it won't let me do it. The worst it'll do is let me kick out individual members (if I'm the founder), but that still doesn't wipe out any credit accumulated while on the team.

2) The team's name simply vanished from the database, and the founder is (was) the founder of the team on *many* different projects and has been for years.

3) All credits disappeared, which also should be impossible.

4) Not a stats export site issue, as it disappeared from the projects' databases themselves and team is intact on all other projects.

We're not a small team - we lost over 15,000,000 credits and had several hundred members lost overnight from the database of both projects.

What kind of issue are we dealing with? If it's not a flaw/malfunction in the BOINC software, which when tested on other projects prevented a recreation of what happened, how should I posit this problem to the projects? A database error?

Thanks to anyone who can help,

StandardbredHorse

Forwarded to development.

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?? team is here:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=140509

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?? team is here:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=140509

I believe some members have started re-creating the team from ground zero - see for example Einstein thread 7855.

Where does SETI team 140509 fit in the auto-increment ID sequence? Does it have a creation date of several years ago, and several million credits?

Edit - to answer my own question, the final three teams in the current (26 February 2010 13:05) team .gz dump are:

140513 Big McLargehuge
140512 BIONC BC
140509 Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

This is correct - we've begun building the team from the ground up, given the lack of alternatives. However, yes, we indeed had tens of millions of credits (~15,000,000 overall; it was our 2nd biggest project to CPDN). The team ID is the new team ID; the one previously was issued in 2005 or 2006. It was archived on the stats sites until last night's update. I'll investigate and see if I can find the original TeamID - I'd only kept track of #s and members.

For reference see http://boincstats.com/stats/boinc_team_graph.php?pr=bo&id=133060; I believe both incidents happened 2/25; 10,000,000 for Einstein and 15,000,000 for SETI - also see members
Thank you so much for the attention. Also please see the member add/remove (quit) list, in which members were unwillingly removed from a team that had disappeared: http://boincstats.com/stats/team_member_movement.php?pr=bo&id=1d7612acc19506bca7c27499d3156e15 which were 'removed' on 2/27, the stats update that was delayed for SETI for a couple of days; we knew the team had disappeared a couple days prior and had been trying to catch the problem and notify the appropriate personnel here prior to that update so it wouldn't make it any more difficult to roll back if that was possible.

Best regards,

StandardbredHorse

Another "Space Family Robinson" affair, perhaps?

Can you elaborate a bit for the uninitiated to the affair in question, Les? Thanks...any anecdote may help.

Best regards,

StandardbredHorse

Forwarded to development.

I have archived both the BOINCstats pages, so there will be an independent copy available for reference after they update again.

Jord, do you think there's any way you can persuade David to re-visit his, perhaps cursory, fly-by?

Thanks, Richard.

Keep in mind that these are updates from today, with large negatives on 2/25 (Einstein's update w/o RDRFS team) and 2/27 (SETI's, which was delayed due to general problems w/SETI reporting to stats sites, where there were no updates for a couple of days). Thanks for noting...appreciate the attention and work you've put in so far.

I had an archive from 2/25 with SETI's exact figures, team ID, and relevant data intact, but because we didn't think it was relevant, we passed it along without keeping a copy, so we'll see if someone has an archived copy. At the time, we thought it was confined to Einstein, so the SETI data was complete, but we didn't think it was relevant until later in the day when reports started to come in of problems here too.


StandardbredHorse

[quote
Jord, do you think there's any way you can persuade David to re-visit his, perhaps cursory, fly-by?[/quote]


I know you're treading lightly, but I believe it was a *very* cursory fly-by, because my PM to David explained the situation quite well (and briefly, respecting time constraints and priorities); i.e., large team deleted (not one with 113 credits), millions of credits unaccounted for, shouldn't be possible in the software, individual members (hundreds) disappearing, etc....so the check-in by him was quite appreciated but very cursory--naturally someone is going to reform the team, and naturally it is going to be a day or so after the original was deleted; seeing that team IDs are sequentially assigned, that should have been a very easy thing to ascertain (no offense intended).

List of Deleted Members (from archive):

*note - the members with new teams listed next to them legitimately left for other teams on different days (some over 2 years ago), but for some reason the credit they accumulated on the RDRFS team while in it have been deleted.

*note 2: the "official" group created by Andrew Chalkley was the first attempt at recreating the team; the official team actually operates under the original name without the word 'official' added (no reason). A.C. was concerned that the name was hijacked and no longer available since there was weird stuff happening during the pandemonium, and lots of rumours, etc., so A.C. can be reinstated to the team if need be.

Date deleted * Name * Number of Credits * New team (if any--cred was on RDFRS)

2010-02-27 3Lions 28,219.99
2010-02-27 Ace 13,789.40 Open University
2010-02-27 Ade 2,996.69
2010-02-27 Administrator 14,526.45
2010-02-27 Aggers 48,561.38 Bodgit, F**kup & Leggit
2010-02-27 AlunMurch 26,612.65
2010-02-27 AnchorWest 7,295.44
2010-02-27 Anders 12,015.46
2010-02-27 Andrew Chalkley 118,745.40 The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (Official)
2010-02-27 Anon327 18,594.13
2010-02-27 BayRidge 356,465.07
2010-02-27 Brandon Azzarella 667.86
2010-02-27 Brian Justin 672,094.59
2010-02-27 Chappers 111,587.32
2010-02-27 Chris 1,453.37
2010-02-27 Chris 8,458.98
2010-02-27 Chris Harrison 6,305.74
2010-02-27 Christopher Weigand 177,446.53
2010-02-27 Colin Jacobs 23,188.14
2010-02-27 Colin Steadman 1,257,785.89
2010-02-27 DEG 20,797.93
2010-02-27 Damien 7,602.97
2010-02-27 Darknase 39,593.51
2010-02-27 Desktop 14,087.05
2010-02-27 DocWebster 5,431.59
2010-02-27 DoktorSick 12,424.20
2010-02-27 Dr. Adam Joel Bukaty 2,357.28
2010-02-27 Drool 1,090.19
2010-02-27 Ed 33,651.32
2010-02-27 EeekiE 11,155.78
2010-02-27 EeekiE 44,516.34
2010-02-27 Exdeth 18,845.07
2010-02-27 Felipe Pina 7,502.39
2010-02-27 Fireball 192,519.23
2010-02-27 Gareth 33,656.72
2010-02-27 Geoff Coupe 182,755.59
2010-02-27 George Burruss 144.78
2010-02-27 GertFroebe 22,787.81
2010-02-27 GoranM 2,319.72
2010-02-27 Greenway 99,126.16
2010-02-27 Guildway 949,543.94
2010-02-27 Gurmit7431 4,911.73
2010-02-27 Hally 7,267.66
2010-02-27 Hans 105,394.45
2010-02-27 Hendy 6,529.23
2010-02-27 Ian Edmond 12,289.19
2010-02-27 Ircha 32.16
2010-02-27 Jake 9,991.40
2010-02-27 Jared 5,247.63
2010-02-27 Jeff 115,398.80
2010-02-27 Jeroen 34.56
2010-02-27 John Allen 12,079.66
2010-02-27 Jon 72,081.07
2010-02-27 Jonny 372.75
2010-02-27 Josh 418.38
2010-02-27 Jukka Lattu 1,206.06
2010-02-27 Kevin Swinton 922,216.84
2010-02-27 Kreell Keiser 29,096.03
2010-02-27 Kyle 17.48
2010-02-27 Kyle Rybski 102,775.79
2010-02-27 Lawrence D. Clark 15,581.91
2010-02-27 Lay 7,255.85
2010-02-27 Lee Christie 85.49
2010-02-27 Leila 284.77
2010-02-27 Lightborn 1,777.62
2010-02-27 Lightborn 3,974.87
2010-02-27 Loriba 42,824.97 Open University
2010-02-27 Magico 18,826.73
2010-02-27 Manitoba 644.00
2010-02-27 Marcus 7,412.86
2010-02-27 Martin 13,477.71
2010-02-27 Master of the Multiverse 94,153.37
2010-02-27 Matt 19,213.72
2010-02-27 Matt 473.58
2010-02-27 Maxley 143,583.00
2010-02-27 Michael 103,701.18 OcUK - Overclockers UK
2010-02-27 Michael Armenta 32.05
2010-02-27 Mikkel 119,156.20
2010-02-27 Miranda Hale 590.42
2010-02-27 Mitja 12,544.60
2010-02-27 Moisei 444.72
2010-02-27 MolecularMonkey 4,245.55
2010-02-27 Neil 31,950.38
2010-02-27 Neil Davies 465.95
2010-02-27 Nick 1,381.57
2010-02-27 Novak 42,801.99
2010-02-27 Ole 4,470.38
2010-02-27 Paco 6,001.27
2010-02-27 Pads 50,773.77
2010-02-27 PaulW 2,981.06
2010-02-27 Peter 535.82
2010-02-27 Pharyn Gula 1,372.37
2010-02-27 Philip 858.41
2010-02-27 Psycho 32,228.13
2010-02-27 RDFreader 186,689.77
2010-02-27 RWilson 2,423.61
2010-02-27 Rand0m 33,948.79
2010-02-27 Richard Fannin 852.20
2010-02-27 Samuel 351.65
2010-02-27 Sean Williams 152,490.90
2010-02-27 Sir Pwn4lot 15,304.15
2010-02-27 SpEcImEN128 14,236.46
2010-02-27 StarryEyed 9,375.79
2010-02-27 Stephen Boyd 934.15
2010-02-27 Steve 13,837.14
2010-02-27 Steve 312,677.53
2010-02-27 Steve Folly 145,247.16
2010-02-27 Steven Zaionz 805.51
2010-02-27 Stig Edvartsen 162.33
2010-02-27 Sujit Prasannakumar 52,703.48
2010-02-27 SverriOlsen 344.17
2010-02-27 The Revolutionary 13.19
2010-02-27 TheLordYourGod 3,310.32
2010-02-27 Tom 3,744.19
2010-02-27 Vanpastel 5,633.27
2010-02-27 Vegetable 686.29
2010-02-27 Wosret 561.92
2010-02-27 Xander 289.95
2010-02-27 Xenopsychosis 121,240.52
2010-02-27 ZetaSagittarii 42.98
2010-02-27 Zeus 2,033.83
2010-02-27 ZootZ 60,940.05
2010-02-27 andrew.lyons 7,228.60
2010-02-27 anniversary 46.71
2010-02-27 anomalous_result 24,449.12
2010-02-27 ashtonb 248,431.04
2010-02-27 bremas 27,502.87
2010-02-27 chamitoquai 92,613.21 UK BOINC Team
2010-02-27 compaqxp123 2,376.17
2010-02-27 daniel.frazer 161.65
2010-02-27 dinoboy 6,344.31
2010-02-27 empyredon 16,545.56
2010-02-27 eskimosound 38,268.09
2010-02-27 ff5167 89,814.24
2010-02-27 flankingenfilade 29,998.90
2010-02-27 flibble 678.92
2010-02-27 flyingscot 1,970.64
2010-02-27 gbamber 619,421.40
2010-02-27 gnasher373 32,546.84
2010-02-27 huusis 422,872.93
2010-02-27 jenny 452.98
2010-02-27 jsau 3,143.80
2010-02-27 lordy 25,880.66
2010-02-27 mdavies 34,975.82
2010-02-27 newolder 76,949.43
2010-02-27 njwong 13,947.06
2010-02-27 obscured by clouds 2,129,450.69
2010-02-27 philippic 154,269.25
2010-02-27 ron allan 1,233.03
2010-02-27 sam_j 105,184.80
2010-02-27 shaun.stuart 361,320.30
2010-02-27 simplyyes 0.06
2010-02-27 smooney3 3,975.95
2010-02-27 starship42 120,408.59
2010-02-27 steve8282 1,576,557.98
2010-02-27 tarnishedXhalo 12,692.35
2010-02-27 thegashman 3,292.17
2010-02-27 tomasp 112.76
2010-02-27 tony 9,624.11
2010-02-27 tubular_trekkie 41,912.29
2010-02-27 user 12,780.88
2010-02-27 zappa100 14,412.24
2010-02-27

I've discussed it with David, he is looking into things, but could really be helped if he had the original teamID, not the new one.

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I've discussed it with David, he is looking into things, but could really be helped if he had the original teamID, not the new one.

I sometimes download the stat files for other research: I've had a look, but the only old one I can find at the moment is a year-old "hosts.gz", and it doesn't have any team IDs (they're not stored in that database table - checked the schema).

We know that SETI have a mid-January dump lying around - it was on the web server backup image that they restored recently, and got downloaded by mistake. If David could make the team.gz file from that backup visible somewhere, I don't mind doing the search.

Edit - and likewise, if the matching user.gz was accessible, I could create a membership list as at that date - it was 16 January.

Here is the team at Seti. It seems the original team founder is still place, but he has just kicked everyone off the team and renamed it to "aset".

A team owner can remove all members of a team, then delete the team.

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Here is the team at Seti. It seems the original team founder is still place, but he has just kicked everyone off the team and renamed it to "aset".

A team owner can remove all members of a team, then delete the team.

I am a team owner, and though I can remove any and all members of a team, I cannot simply delete a team with credit. The BOINC software doesn't allow this. If you need, I can share the error message that is incurred when an attempt is made. In addition, credits accumulated while on the team stay with the team even when an individual leaves or is kicked off the team.

What you described sounds like a case of vandalism - renaming a team and kicking off all the members; with foundership changes and some original emails not being updated, this can happen to any team--and will again, unless you set a precedent that this behaviour will not be tolerated. We would really appreciate it if you could somehow restore the original team, one with years of history and tens of millions of credits. Otherwise, we believe this renders the entire credit/cobblestone system meaningless. Imagine if this had happened to SETI.USA or L'Alliance Francophone - what sort of uproar would we have heard, and how would the integrity of the credit system have been criticised? Yet, we're not much smaller than those teams.

We certainly appreciate all the hard work and investigation into the situation, and reversing this act of vandalism should be next on the agenda, and anything you can do to do so will be much appreciated. Again, the BOINC software is written so that even a team founder cannot simply delete a team with credit - I'm a team founder on quite a few projects, and I tried and failed. Sure, we've re-formed the team, but we're starting years from scratch, with most members unaware they've been removed from the team. In addition, we've put out a team-wide alert to stop work on SETI and focus on the many other projects on which we maintain a significant presence until the situation is resolved, since it would only complicate things further to continue without resolution. Hopefully this can happen.

Thanks again for the help and attention and hard work - anything else you can do to undo the vandalism?

Best regards,

StandardbredHorse

What you described sounds like a case of vandalism - renaming a team and kicking off all the members; with foundership changes and some original emails not being updated, this can happen to any team

But it hasn't happened to this team entry. The original founder, "obscured by clouds" is still in place. He may have just kicked off everyone.

Seeing his stats at BOINCStats, he has done this on Einstein, Rosetta, LHC, Seti and SZTAKI.

You may want to contact him, ask him what's up with this behaviour. Checking his account though, I see he is not on a team.. not on any of the projects listed above. But he is still founder of the team on Seti.

So you will have to contact him first, or get him to respond in this thread, before we talk about restoration. For your information, Seti.USA was hijacked a couple of years ago, they got their original team founder to make the request for restoration, which was followed at the time. So until that's done, until you know if it was done without the team founder's consent, our hands are tied.

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Thank you Sekerob; that is exactly the point I was trying to make and you made it eloquently as well as with some brevity (my weak point).

Ageless, thank you for the insight. When the original team ID was discovered thanks to you and other admins here and at BOINC, I was able to see what had happened and am investigating further now.

My original point has still not been addressed, however--the BOINC software is supposed to have safeguards so that one person cannot do what's been done here. There are steadfast rules which have been in place since time immemoriam (BOINC-wise) that even a founder of a team cannot delete credits once they've been accumulated, and we have a situation in which this has happened--somewhere there's been a failure of the software. I'm team founder on many teams, and it simply will not allow me (I tested on PrimeGrid, Collatz, and one or two more to be sure of replicability and universality) to erase credits/delete a team with credits. I can kick someone off the team, but it does not reduce credits of our team. In this case, that situation was not prevented. Perverse (credit to Sekerob) is a word which describes the backdoor method by which the 'impossible' seems to have been done. Now we have to go contact this individual, 'beg' them to undo their vandalism to a multi-million credit team (irrespective of what their motive is; of that we can only guess), and have them rename it to restore our credits? Somehow that does not seem a just final resolution.

So it DID happen to SETI.USA...wow. I guess the point I was trying to make is that the 'big boys' are susceptible to this abuse as well, so no team is safe, and that cements my point. I'm a lone voice here representing my team; it's been decided that a cacophony of histrionic voices would be counterproductive, but many teams may not show that restraint *when* this happens again (because obviously it will, unless specifically thwarted, discouraged, penalized, etc.).

Being a founder of your own team shouldn't give you 'GOD'-like powers (analogy apropos given the name of our team), and it's apparent that the author of the BOINC stat software had this in mind when creating it. We will do our part by contacting this lone wolf who managed to undermine tens of millions of credits and hundreds of individuals and make a mockery of your statistical compilations. However, if you don't take any further action, the credibility of your stats will be at stake; in fact, that this happened to both our mega-team AND the top team on the site has already made a mockery of the whole statistical compilation competition. Yes, I know that science, in this case the search for ET, has a priori importance; however, the point of introducing some friendly competition via a way to quantify one's individual and collective contributions to whatever project's scientific goals adds incentive - this has been proven in innumerable ways, most positive in nature but also by things like 'team raiding' and the situation we're addressing in this thread. Again, to summarise, the fact that 15,000,000+ credits on your project and tens of millions more on others have been misappropriated/abused by one individual despite supposed safeguards undermines the whole thing. Why bother with my stats when I can build a team from scratch, ascend to competitive prominence in good faith, attract hundreds of members, and have it all wiped away in a couple of clicks by a (assumedly) single disgruntled individual?

To all other teams and all other individuals involved, how does this situation affect your confidence in the integrity of SETI's stats? Are you sure of your team's ranking? If an email gets sent to your spam folder, if you're preoccupied or otherwise miss a message and your team gets taken over/renamed, how confident are you that you can restore order and that you won't be wiped off the map, to have to start from credit #1 again, maybe after years/millions? Perverse indeed.

As a collective, our team is happy with and astounded by your rapid and thorough investigation; however, we are also quite dissatisfied with the proposed resolution of begging a saboteur to undo his/her sabotage. There must be another way?

Regards,

StandardbredHorse
member of currently defunct Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

Having visited OBC's profile, I can see he's now listed a forum--a competing forum to RDFRS. Disgruntled lone wolf hijacks high-ranking SETI team and destroys it. Day-um. Now what?

I'm set to reg on his new competing forum and deciding what to do; how to open talks with a vandal. Negotiations with OBC will commence soon--could use some help from a professional, SETI.USA, maybe?

Thanks,

StandardbredHorse
over and out *nicker*

My original point has still not been addressed, however--the BOINC software is supposed to have safeguards so that one person cannot do what's been done here. There are steadfast rules which have been in place since time immemoriam (BOINC-wise) that even a founder of a team cannot delete credits once they've been accumulated, and we have a situation in which this has happened--somewhere there's been a failure of the software.

I'm not so sure about that. Among the options for a team founder, there is the option the remove the team, Allowed only if team has no members.

The source code also shows this, in team_manage.php

$action = get_str('action', true);
if ($action == 'delete') {
    require_founder_login($user, $team);
    if (team_count_members($team->id) > 0) {
        error_page(tra("Can't delete non-empty team"));
    }
    check_tokens($user->authenticator);
    $team->delete();
    page_head(tra("Team %1 deleted", $team->name));
    page_tail();

Now, this is normal BOINC code. The project may not have updated to this code yet, or the project administrator may have edited it to suit his own needs/wants. I know Rytis of Primegrid runs lots of his own code, he also used to keep up the BOINC forum code until he got too busy to be able to keep up with it.

Now we have to go contact this individual, 'beg' them to undo their vandalism to a multi-million credit team (irrespective of what their motive is; of that we can only guess), and have them rename it to restore our credits? Somehow that does not seem a just final resolution.

I never implied that, you've read something in my post I didn't say. I asked you to contact the team founder, ask him if he knows of this situation, if he had a hand in it, if he wants this situation and if not, that he contact us through here or through email (David's email address is easily found).

So it DID happen to SETI.USA

What happened to Seti.USA happened on Milkyway. Their team was taken over in the early days of the team-founder change code. At the time, if the team founder had his preferences set not to receive email from the project, he would not get the email when someone challenged him to take over as team founder. So after 2 months the team would be the new guy's, to do with what he wanted. Including kick off all team members and be there with a million credit team, that he owned.

That was corrected only after the original team founder contacted Milkyway admins.

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Looking a bit further, perhaps it has to do with this?

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