Based on a post on the World Community Grid statistics system, I have decided to write this post hopefully starting a discussion on the pros and cons of each system. World Community Grid uses total run time dedicated to each project instead of relying on the point system that basically every other badge awarding project uses ( though there seems to be no firm set standard for what gets a point/ credit between projects).
While World Community Grid attracts a different type of cruncher rather than the point based crunchers of several other well known projects. In theory total run time helps put everyone on an even playing field, where it really just measures how many hours each core has been logged on and crunching. So the amount of money people pour into their machines, or spend on building farms for crunching, does not make as large of a difference on other projects. I.e someone with a 10 year old machine, can not lag far behind someone with a 3 year old machine, even though the 3 year old machine has a far faster and more efficient CPU.
My issue, is that World Community Grid minimally takes into account how much work someone is actually doing towards their projects. I have a GPU that has crunched quite a few of World Community Grids Help Conquer Cancer's GPU tasks, which from what I have read is roughly the equivalent of 2 of the CPU tasks for Help Conquer Cancer. A HCC CPU task takes about 2.5 hours on average based on the statistics on the World Community grid site, while the run time awarded to an HCC GPU task is the total run time of that task, so for me it would be about 30-40 minutes. This seems very odd as for the same amount of work towards the project, one person can be awarded 5 hours, and another person can be awarded half an hour towards a badge.
I see both sides of this argument, in GPU Grid people basically buy their way to the best badges, and into places of high recognition, though having several of the top of the line graphics cards. So I understand why World Community Grid wants to try and avoid that, but at the same time I feel they fail to properly acknowledge someone actual contribution to a project in terms of work done.
Thoughts?
No comments:
Post a Comment