An argument against useability as a means of education is really hard to swallow.
The goal isn't to stop people from understanding how BOINC works, the goal is to make people more productive. You can integrate GUI and education in the form of contextual help and links to the wiki, which would arguably be *more* informative. Lowering the bar (in this case) just means providing a UI that is convenient and productive for your audience. But perhaps it's not really necessary anyway... the BOINC management scripts are really easy to use and I wonder how much payoff there would be in the end. On 7/23/09, Nicolás Alvarez <[email protected]> wrote: > El Jue 23 Jul 2009 16:11:58 Jeremy Cowles escribió: >> It would be nice to distribute a VM where you could just start it, >> configure the network and then administer it completely from a web >> interface. I've seen some nice UI's for EC2 that do similar things >> (RightScale comes to mind). >> The BOINC admin scripts are easy to use, but having a good web interface >> would lower the bar even further. >> >> There would need to be a root web app for the entire server (as apposed to >> an app per project). I would be interested in helping/contributing to this >> if anyone is interested in making it happen. > > Everything in Windows Server has point-and-click GUI interfaces, I don't > think > you ever need a command line. That doesn't mean anyone can manage an Active > Directory domain without ever reading documentation. > > "Having a good web interface" doesn't help if you don't know the concepts. > On > the contrary, I think it would give negative results: if we lower the bar, > you'll be able to get farther in the process of setting up a server reading > less documentation, and the less admins know, the more we get users with > this > kind of opinion: > > <zombie67> your premise assumes an admin that knows BOINC, and cares about > how > it treats the volunteers > <PovAddict> if an admin doesn't care about treating its volunteers well, why > would I volunteer? :) > <zombie67> it's not the well-run projects that are the problem > <zombie67> I am not trying to solve for them > <zombie67> I am trying to solve for newbies > <zombie67> how many projects have problems getting email notifications to > work? All of them? > <zombie67> how many projects have to be told about credit issues by their > volunteers? All of them? > <zombie67> how many projects have to be told to turn on rac decay? all of > them? > <zombie67> the list goes on and on > <zombie67> opt apps? > <zombie67> HR > <zombie67> OSX > <zombie67> 64 bit... > > If kids are bad at school, would you improve how things are taught, or would > you make the exams easier to "lower the bar"? > _______________________________________________ boinc_dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ssl.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/boinc_dev To unsubscribe, visit the above URL and (near bottom of page) enter your email address.
