I think the powers that be at CPDN are reluctant to send a mass e-mailing to their thousands of users affected by the project reset because they would end up on anti-SPAM lists.

What we need is a seventh tab on BOINC called Announcements. Any message that appears on a project's main page will appear in the Announcements tab with a link to more detail.

Such messages would have to be sent through the already overloaded servers of some projects, plus here is a question: How many times a month do you look at the Disk tab in BM? If ever, that is. ;)

If never, then how many times would you check the new tab?

Want to know the latest news? Use the RSS feed that almost all projects use.
or just make it a habit to go through the front page of the project, or to check that one at least once a week.

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Yeah, that's what I had in mind with this thread:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=787


The vast majority of participants in the BBC/CCE experiment are passive (don't look at the web site, forums, unless there's a problem). But if they saw the project date reset, they would at least look at the first page in the manager, if not the others. Hence the flashing 'news' button! :-)

In answering many queries, I have to explain where the messages tab is, how to cut and paste into a post, why backups are difficult, ... which is why I was trying to find a straightforward solution to the communications problem.

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I understand that, but why post it at the Boinc forums where neigh on no developer ever looks? ;)

best post this on the Developers email listing. You need to register to get onto it to post.

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Thanks for that, I'll post it there, although my plan was to let it sit here for a few days to pick up any feedback before I posted it ... none so far!

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OK, my feedback which I posted in response to the message I saw on the E-mail lists and the one here is.

I don't think it is needed download a RSS Reader plenty of them out there and then sign up to the feeds, then your always in the know about what is going on.

why complicate BOINC more by adding a tab that is not needed as there is software out there that works perfectly already with RSS Feeds?

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Also there is already a option for a project to send a message to the BOINC client so that people will see it in the messages tab, predictor used it the other day but they buggered up slightly.

This code below is what can be used by a project to send a message, I think? someone tell me if i'm wrong

<gui_url>
<name>Abeta news</name>
<description>Please abort all abeta workunits</description>
<url>http://predictor.scripps.edu/</url>
</gui_url>

If I am correct in asuming that the above is for sending a message then BBC CPDN could of done this also, so that it would have showed up in the messages tab

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Hi,

I'd intended the idea to be relevant to the sort of people who have no idea what an RSS reader is :-) Which is probably at least 75% of the participants in BBC/CCE. Most IT literate people read the forums and news after an issue arises if they have time, so it's much less relevant to them. I would guess that probably only 5-10% of BBC/CCE particants use RSS.

Regarding the messages tab, yes, that's an idea, but tends to get filled up with messages about stuff which they don't understand, so they don't look at it.

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Its a good idea, but I don't know if the guys at BONIC will take it up as they already have loads on there hands as it is.

Will have to wait and see if they say anything on the E-mail list

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I'd prefer to see them work on splitting the graphics out from the project science thread first anyway, since i think that stability has to be the highest priority (particularly in projects like CPDN where the work units need to be able to run for thousands of hours without a crash, if the participants don't know how to make a backup).

There's no reason why an RSS reader can't be added into a third-party build of boinc, for example the BBC/CCE customised version could have it. This would provide two tiers of boinc manager - a simple one which does a lot of hand-holding for non-IT literate users, and then the standard client for everyone else.

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