Carl,
I've noticed the increase as well. However the people behind the project should really be aware that this project differs from the other seti's ea. The time to finish a workunit takes up several weeks on a recent system. Sometimes its not much 'fun', however useful it may be, of doing model after model with average temps of 13-15°C. The main project pages are way too static and are not up to the job of keeping people committed.
I'm glad so many people join in. I only hope they stay in and the project remains viable in the long run. If I were in the project team I would make the marketing of this project one of the cornerstones. This is the nail Graham keeps on hitting, and I believe him right.

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Maybe my signature will make the forum more user-friendly ;-)
OK, there is always room for improvement, but I agree with Carl that the CPDN team have done a great job and I seem to remember a lot of discussion about improving the old forum, so, nothing new.

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Forum search Site search

Well I came here for the crunching and I'm staying here for that. Everything else is just extra.
Like Thyme Lawn at the start of this thread, I was on the board when it went dead.
So, of course, I wondered what I had done wrong. Then, that BOINC was bench-marking, so I looked at it.
And it wasn't. (I think slowly these days. :( )

How many of you looked at the phpBB link when Thyme Lawn ORIGINALLY posted it?
It was a forum of board operators discussing the problem.
The hackers took out a lot of boards, one of which had large amounts of info about cars.
And the operator didn't have a backup of most of it. He was not happy!

The Brazilian attack is the 3rd episode.

What's needed here is a different type of board; one that doesn't use php or phpBB, but has a similar 'look'.
But I lost interest in programming a decade ago, and don't know what's around these days.
And I don't understand the modern languages anyway.

Les

> but I think we're making a mountain out of a molehill. There's 31333 active
> tricklers of CPDN/BOINC as I write this, which is an increase of 50% over the
> past week or so. So I think we're "reporting" the few misses but not the many
> "hits" -- and I think BOINC boards are up to the task for user support &
> questions etc (and are better at that with the new-ish BOINC msg rating
> systems etc).

Statistics!
It's all about stamina: do we have 50% more completed runs in about a month?
The only excuse not to revive the old board is a lack of manpower IMHO.

Gr. Jan

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.... wind turbine generator ....
One of the 'alternative' items I've been looking at for a few years. The wind coming down my driveway
is scary at times. It gets funneled by my wall and next door's wall. And a series of small turbines would not
need to 'turn into the wind', as the walls collect every thing from the south to the west.

And it recently occured to me to look at a Stirling engine to remove the heat from Prescotts and generate power
for something, but they need a 'cool' side, which just uses more power in some form, possible water.

Les

> And it recently occured to me to look at a Stirling engine to remove the
> heat from Prescotts and generate power for something.

Could hook up the output to the 3.3V rail - computing without global warming!!! --- ;0}

Andrew

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Andrew

<a href="http://cpdnforum.info">CPDNforum<a>

&gt; Carl wrote...
&gt; -- and I think BOINC boards are up to the task for user support &amp;
&gt; questions etc (and are better at that with the new-ish BOINC msg rating
&gt; systems etc).
&gt;
&gt;
Hmmm. The new boards could be improved considerably, but will they ever be. Question after question after question on the same thing. Why...well at least one of the reasons is the search function sucks. The only links to it are on the beginning pages for the Message Boards and Questions and Problems board. No new person sees the link. Then if they do, they hit enter on a search item which hardly ever works. Most people when they are in a forum expect a search item available on every page. So they think the "Search Site" button is the search for the forums, and of course it doesn't help at all.

And as for the rating system, I long ago stopped sorting by rating as no one uses it, even if a question is answered nicely and with clarity. The good posts that should rise to the top are often never rated once. Which leads into the lack of stickies and announcements. Since the rating system is ineffective, and the search is not seen or used correctly, announcements and stickies could at least have easily available the answers to questions that are asked over and over again.

Then the things that are easy on phpBB such as inserting an image, bolding an item, having a quote stick out, making a link active are not easily done in this forum. Let's see. backward pointer,a,space,href=yourURL,forward pointer,your text,backward pointer,slash a, forward pointer...to make a link active. Give me a break. Not everyone is as geeky as you or I and wants to know html to make their posts more effective or easily readable. Despite the fact that DC people may, on average, be geekier than most, you see a lot who know minimal about PCs and nothing about coding, and don't think they should have to to participate in these projects or post effectively in the forums.

Then again, the posts like how to use HTML here aren't found by the search because few people understand where it is and how to use it, and the posts on using search correctly and html usage aren't readily available because there are no stickies or announcements.

For those helping a considerable amount on the forums, you pretty much have to keep a list of links to important posts handy, or you end up using the search over and over again. Another thing you wouldn't have to do if stickies were available.

Once again, this forum could be made into something better, but will it? Starting with improving the search and its availability would be large, and having announcements and stickies would also be. I don't see anything being done in those areas.

Adding a few new boards
<ul><li>help</li><li>BOINC - help</li><li>BOINC - general</li></ul>
would help. Even better would be to duplicate the php boards and have some way of cross-posting to both php and BOINC based boards.

Perhaps all the information which was included on the php anouncements and stickies should be put into html pages somewhere on the web site (or maybe as a read only board).

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____________________________<br>
<a href="http://www.boincforum.info/boinc/">boinc forum</a> and <a href="http://www.uk4cp.co.uk/">United Kindom</a> team, my climate change <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/mike_atkinson/">blog</a>.

Hi,
I miss the stickies of the phpBB forum: I learned a lot from them: parameters, hardware, climate, Cpview, hot and cold run, etc: there were a lot of material and links.
And I think that without phpbb forum, we've lost the historical side of CPDN: reading the earlier threads could learn you what had been done about THC models, about who are the first users, about CPDN classic, etc.
When I enter a project, I like to learn what has been done before I start and to have as much infos as possible.
Even if I know HTML tags, I find it's quicker and more user-friendly to have buttons to insert pictures and hyperlinks.
And the smilies give a human touch that the BOINC forums haven't.
Bye :o) <img src="http://forum.boinc.fr/icones/smilies/hello.gif"><img src="http://forum.boinc.fr/icones/tongue.gif">

I'll vote for the stickies and the extra boards.
And I've already put in a <a href="http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/forum_thread.php?id=1757#8480">suggestion</a> about the search form.
The other thing missing is moderators. We get duplicates on the same or different boards. Who's checking for that.
About HTML and all that:
<ul>
<li>don't forget your quote marks around the address (<i>a href="http://address"</i>)</li>
<li>I didn't find BBcode so easy to use either. :oops: </li>
</ul>

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Forum search Site search

Graham,

you can use "copy image location" on Mozilla (and Firefox)
and then paste into the editor
<img src="http://forum.boinc.fr/icones/smilies/hello.gif">
&lt;img src="http://forum.boinc.fr/icones/smilies/hello.gif" alt="hello"&gt;

use
&amp;lt; for &lt;
&amp;gt; for &gt;
&amp;nbsp; for a non-breaking space i.e. if you need to put more than one space between words

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____________________________<br>
<a href="http://www.boincforum.info/boinc/">boinc forum</a> and <a href="http://www.uk4cp.co.uk/">United Kindom</a> team, my climate change <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/mike_atkinson/">blog</a>.

How difficult would it be to add additional sections or sub-sections to the board? One of the nice features of the phpBB was the organisation into different categories thus making it easier to find things. 'Climateprediction.net Science' is a very general heading compared to the global warming/extreme climate/etc we had before....and that was difficult enough sometimes.

I also notice that E@H have a facility on their board which marks posts as unread...<a href="http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_forum.php?id=1"> here - left hand column </a>

Marj

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_________________________________

If any of the admin people are reading this, I will offer phpBB on my hosting site server for a cpdn forum so as to keep it off your servers so it doesn't compromise your security. I have a BB up already at www.txeagle.com/cpdn(a test), I just don't want to run it (mods?). Maybe you still have a gzip backup? Also,I would bb willing to get cpdnforum.info (or .com)so it will have a seperate addy from the hosting business.

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Thanks for the offer, Beezlebub, we're still looking in to it, but suspect that the legal/ security issues for participants (you will have access to everyones email addresses, which they werent asked to agree to when they signed up, and if phpbb is vulnerable then we cannot put the board back up knowing that the database with everyones e mail addresses in it is vulnerable...) will mean that its not possible.
We're still working on it!
Sylvia

&gt; If any of the admin people are reading this, I will offer phpBB on my hosting
&gt; site server for a cpdn forum so as to keep it off your servers so it doesn't
&gt; compromise your security. I have a BB up already at www.txeagle.com/cpdn(a
&gt; test), I just don't want to run it (mods?). Maybe you still have a gzip
&gt; backup? Also,I would bb willing to get cpdnforum.info (or .com)so it will have
&gt; a seperate addy from the hosting business.
&gt;
&gt;

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