Hi Jord and all I thought that research publications had been listed on Milky Way. And some projects by their nature lead to discoveries that don't lend themselves to publications. I would have thought for example that if a new prime number is discovered, this wouldn't necessarily lead to an article; maybe just a mention somewhere or an addition to a preexisting list. But the work's been done and the result is ready for future use.
In the case of Seti no result can be published until the day when / if some alien signal is detected. But the project's search processes are constantly being refined and I think its developers make an excellent job of informing members about process developments. Several projects lead to PhD theses. In the UK a copy of every thesis is deposited in the library of its own university and probably at the British Library and the Cambridge Uni Library as well. Other countries doubtless have similar systems. But I don't think there's a system yet for making a copy of each thesis available online. For example, quite a few theses have come from CPDN work but I've never seen any. This must also apply to a number of other projects. Even if theses can't yet be looked at, even to read the acknowledgements and (presumably) see the crunchers thanked there for generating the raw results, I do find it disappointing that doctoral students don't automatically after completion come onto project websites or forums to tell crunchers what the research was about and say that they've gained the qualification. So there is more research going on at Boinc projects than is immediately obvious, but some researchers and admins really should make a greater effort to communicate this to the crunchers. Regarding unpleasant and unacceptable behaviour by a tiny minority of project members. We all know we wouldn't want to be friends or spend much time with everybody we meet out on the street. We certainly can't allow our lives to be made miserable by the tiny minority who are unjustifiably rude. I believe that the project mainly alluded to by Jorden has now pretty well cleaned up its act. We have to put behind us some of what happened in the past. What matters is how people are behaving and speaking here and now. We all know whose opinions matter. I'm going to make a suggestion about how Boinc could make it easier for admins and moderators to do a good job on the forums. On CPDN we also have an independent forum with completely different software from the Boinc forums. We have a hidden section available to the researchers, admins and mods. We can discuss tricky situations, difficult members, what to do, log the actions we take. We can have a laugh and support each other. Tell each other whether we've done the right thing or not. I know that email lists can be used for behind-the-scenes communications. But they're far less efficient than a hidden forum area, if only because on a forum you see all the posts in the right chronological order. I work in a school where I do not know how we could function without the staffroom. At CPDN I do not know how we would manage without the hidden forum area. I am suggesting that Boinc could provide an optional hidden forum area for each project. _______________________________________________ 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.
