An Alarming Development

[mcscajun]

in the Folding @ Home Project.

While we are still making progress, a look behind the scenes at our team's daily production shows an alarming downward trend.



The reason? The number of Inactive members is growing faster than new Active members. Here are today's stats on membership:

New 1 (-4 )
Active 115 (-15 )
Inactive 96
Total 211 (+1 )
Avg PPD 118.9

At this rate, we'll be seeing more Inactives than Actives any time now.

What's to be done? I don't know. :shrug: When I first noticed the increase in Inactives on March 5th, I posted this:

Not-so-positive stats, showing we still have some work to do
# Users Active:
Free Republic - 175
Democratic Underground - 123

If you know an "inactive" please touch base with them and see if we can help resolve their issues and get them active again. If you are an "inactive", please let us know how we can help get you back in the action. :)

Nothing's changed, except an increase in Inactives.
Anyone else have ideas?

[shadowknows69]

1. You could offer pie

everybody loves pie :hippie:

[helderheid]

2. mmmmmmmmmmmm pie...

[mcscajun]

4. Boston Cream Pie!

[HereSince1628]

3. Well, you could trump up a war, that's what Bush does!

A war on disease and susceptibility to disease perhaps.

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. And I am thinking that might be the reason for the drop

With the war anniversary this weekend, there has been lots going on. Maybe people have just been busy.

[wakeme2008]

5. I have to wait until the prozy version comes out...

Tuxedo_programmer is on break.. :( :(

[Brazenly Liberal]

6. Dang SETI project is probably stealing them

As we have less and less hope of finding intelligent life on earth, we have to look to the stars or be riddled with despair.

[formercia]

7. Perhaps they figured out that Bio-med corporations

were getting free processing time from people that will have to pay twice. Once for the computer time and resultant electric consumption and again when they buy the drugs they helped develop.

[mcscajun]

9. The Bio-Med Corporations have nothing to do with it.

Please read:

From the Folding@Home FAQs:

Who "owns" the results? What will happen to them? Unlike other distributed computing projects, Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University's Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money off of it.

Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication. Next, after publication of these scientific articles which analyze the data, the raw data of the folding runs will be available for everyone, including other researchers, here on this web site.

This information is not going to be sold, traded, or held as proprietary; it's going to be disseminated widely and in a scientifically sound fashion. I think that's about as good a guarantee as you can ask.

[formercia]

16. Good to know, glad I asked.

My bad....

[Minnesota Libra]

8. I’m not sure this has anything to do with the “inactive” numbers.........

….but one thing I noticed as a newer DU member are the “attacks” and sometimes over the top sarcasm for differing views.

I’m not sure if it is even possible to convince everyone that such practices may indeed have a negative affect on our numbers. Some “questioning neocons” or potential voters that are yet “undecided” find the attacks as a put off. As I said, I’m not sure anything can be done about it but it’s something to consider anyway.

I do know one thing, there are many out there in middle America that are not at all happy with the neocons but they aren’t ready to go the route of the “tree huggers” as they see it. They want absolutely nothing to do with the “Nader’s” of the world, as it was put to me one time. The person went on to explain, “If my only choice to avoid the radical left is to go republican then so be it” I tried to explain to the person that there are radicals on both ends of the political spectrum but that Democrats at least care about the working person. Whether it did any good is yet to be seen.

Anyway, I hope I don't get flamed for this, these are just some well meaning thoughts here.

[mcscajun]

11. Mind you, I'm not looking at total DU membership, just those involved

in the Folding @ Home Project.

[corporate_mike]

30. LOL

[liberal N proud]

10. It could be the tide is turning

I don't know what the past trends were like here or at FP but it may be possible that as the tide turns and the media starts to report more of the crimes by the bu$h regime that you will see membership here drop while it climes at FP.
It could be an indication of the level of frustration on one side or the other. Currently Democrats, liberals and progressives are feeling better about the future. We may feel a sense that the tide could be turning and November could save our hide. Therefore, we are not in need so much for a place to rant and communicate with like minded people. I realize that we are nowhere out of the woods with these devils but since Katrina, Spying and other news, they are on the defensive and for some people that is enough for them to crawl back into their corners.
On the other hand those at FP are feeling a little pain as their boy wonder and his pack of criminals are not getting everything they want these days and facing tougher questions each day and so the people living on FP need a puke fix.

Just a theory

Some of us are just addicted to this place and may never go away, although of late, I have had trouble getting excited about many of the threads on DU, but it hasn't kept me away.

[mcscajun]

12. Mind you, I'm not looking at total DU membership, just those involved

in the Folding @ Home Project.

[liberal N proud]

13. Then I don't know

Sorry for the misunderstanding

[Minnesota Libra]

14. Disregard everything I said then - no more ideas here.....nt

[On the Road]

15. Mine's Running 90% of the Time

but I've periodically had to turn it off because it slowed down the PC too much when I was using it. Maybe the performance problems have caused some people to quit and not restart.

[silverlib]

17. Another membership drive?

That's how I got hooked. And then, being a ditz - it took me about a month to realize my Norton was blocking the program. I certainly can't tell that it slows me down, but I did shut down and turn off the computer during a thunderstorm last night. I was worried about how the program would handle the interruption, but it seems to have just picked up right where it left off.

So - I would highly recommend that all who can step up to the plate. This is very important work and is a very low cost donation.

Thanks for taking the lead on this.

[mcscajun]

19. Pretty much every "numbered" folding thread is just that...

...I think we need to move away from those numbers and find something new to attract attention.

All ideas welcomed. :)

[helderheid]

20. air america radio ad

[corporate_mike]

32. Front page link would help, imho

[mcscajun]

21. Kickin' it for Team DU!

:kick:

C'mon, DUers! Your CPUs cannot be That busy. Give the project a chance and turnover your spare CPU cycles to finding cures.

[corporate_mike]

26. Please join us!

every computer helps

[BewilderedCitizen]

22. WUs with more Frames?

I noticed recently that a few of my computers are working on WU's that have 20,000 Frames. My fastest computer is working on one now that has 20,000 Frames and isn't expected to be done until Thursday. Maybe this is common and a lot of the team CPUs are just taking longer to report their finished work.

If so, it should climb back up when they start reporting. If not, then I'm out of ideas.

[mcscajun]

23. Are you saying you're getting WUs that take longer than 7 days to

Complete?

[politicat]

27. I've been working on the current WU for well over 7 days.

I have a really complex molecule, and my machine is pretty solid, but by no means top of the rock. It has a 1 GHz processor.

There are some applications that don't do well with it, unfortunately.

[BewilderedCitizen]

28. Yes, it's taking more than 7 days on a couple computers.

The faster ones are taking 4 or 5 days for the 20,000 frame WUs. I don't remember ever getting WUs with 20,000 frames before, and I noticed it on a few computers. I just thought maybe this was happening to other team members, and that could be why it seems like some members are dropping off. :shrug:

[mcscajun]

29. Well that certainly seems to account for some...but I can't imagine

all.

::sigh::

[banana republican]

24. can you do this for the last 4 years????

Inquiring minds what to see....

[mcscajun]

25. The last four years? This is about Team DU, not all of DU.

This is about the Folding @ Home Project, not all of DU.

Just clarifying. :)

[Roland99]

31. ACK! Not a good sign at all!

I've lost 4 CPUs of late but I can get two more back soon.

[CabalPowered]

33. I hear ya.. I lost my fastest comp to heat failure

Ordered a new proc and then found the caps on my MB were bad. Waiting on Newegg now.