Hi All

During the recent downtime (which I know this project doesn't have much of), there was a distinct lack of communication from the project team, and consequently a number of people left. In the future it would be beneficial to the project to have updates during the down-time rather than afterwards, even if it's just "bear with us- we're working on it" on twitter every day or two... I know it's a distraction when you're busy, but it makes a huge difference to the perception of the project.

thanks
Danny

I too was frustrated by the lack of any communication from the project team.
This is all to frequent of a problem.

You guys add Twitter but do nothing there.
Paul Allen makes more frequent posts than you do.
So does the President Obama.

If they have time to tweet, why don't you guys?
Last tweet by you guys was on the 13th and there is no update to say the system is back!

Hope you guys do better at communicating this year than last.

Hi:)
I could feel how frustrated you all are, and so with me. I am guessing that the project team is not a large group. They are under heavy pressure to fix the problem. Infront of them is a giant task to fix an old system and behind them are screaming frustrated volunteers not having work for their machines. I built 5 quad machines fully dedicated to running Rosetta wu 16 hours daily. I cannot afford to be frustrated, I am 16 years retired and just want to take it easy. I write this in defense of the project team. I do not know them. But I have been in their situation in the past, many times. Relax. Have a great day guys:) joseps

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I turned off my 5computers when I went on vacation. When I return today, I can not upload work. Need work units to run computers.
joseps

In this day and age it is critical to keep your group informed.
Even brief statements are good.
A short tweet or a short message on the home page would take only a few minutes and would keep us informed of progress and make us happy.

If you notice, the home page has not been updated to reflect the status that the system has been "restored" to a working point. But then I guess they figure we know that since we are getting tasks.

Also, it seem that Mod Sense is left to explain what he thinks has happened.
Although he is just a volunteer and has no "official" role in the project's computer side.

The common theme here and in other threads from previous outages, is that we would like "SOME" sort of communication from the network administrator KEL or someone else that works with the system or can relay something from him to us via the homepage or twitter about what is going on. It does not have to be very long, just a precise short statement of what has happened, what is being done to fix it and how long it will take. If it is like this outage with the SAN server, then every other day send out a short update saying how close it is to being fixed. When it is fixed, send out a message saying the system is restored to an operational point. End of story.

This does not take very long and goes a long way in keeping people informed and also keeps people from leaving the project in frustration.

We'll try to be better. When the filesystem went down we didn't even have the website operational so our only other option was through twitter etc. I'm new to this twitter thing so I'll admit, I didn't even think about using it. Sorry about that. We were indeed busy trying to get the system back up again.

I do appreciate updates. It helps to know what to do with Boinc and project settings.

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Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.

yeah - thanks for the reply David. I think the main thing, other than getting some feedback for communication's sake, is to know how long the project is likely to be down for. As banditwolf says, it helps with choosing BOINC settings to use.

TIA
Danny

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I run other projects besides Ralph and Rosetta to keep my system going.
But when Rosetta is down then I have to suspend the project in BOINC to keep from getting my message box flooded. When I know the project is back and running then I update and go again. But I only find this out via the message board posts from people. With no official update I have no idea.

I keep your Twitter account in my RSS tabs, so it's easy to see whats going on without needing the Homepage. So if for some reason you guys lose the whole project again or take it down for maintenance, don't forget to put the word out via Twitter.

Personally, I don't really mind Rosetta going down... I mean everything simply fails out of nowhere. I simply join another project that has similar goals as rosetta. Although, it'd be cool if R@H would post updates more recently about current events, such as system failures, etc

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I run other projects besides Ralph and Rosetta to keep my system going.
But when Rosetta is down then I have to suspend the project in BOINC to keep from getting my message box flooded. When I know the project is back and running then I update and go again. But I only find this out via the message board posts from people. With no official update I have no idea.

I keep your Twitter account in my RSS tabs, so it's easy to see whats going on without needing the Homepage. So if for some reason you guys lose the whole project again or take it down for maintenance, don't forget to put the word out via Twitter.

Ya know I have thought for a long time that there should be one central place where every project could post their status when they have problems, so we users could keep track of what is going on and be 'in the know' about when it will be back up. I have thought of maybe one of the stats sites, but have also thought of maybe Seti itself, although they are not very good communicators themselves, and they have ALOT of down time lately!

May I suggest: News on Project Outages for when the rosie boards are down?


Best,
Snags

May I suggest: News on Project Outages for when the rosie boards are down?


Best,
Snags

That again is second hand information.
What we are looking for is first hand detailed information.
So I think Twitter would be the best place.
That can be accessed via cell phone and computer and both can see the information via SMS or RSS feeds.

May I suggest: News on Project Outages for when the rosie boards are down?


Best,
Snags

That again is second hand information.
What we are looking for is first hand detailed information.
So I think Twitter would be the best place.
That can be accessed via cell phone and computer and both can see the information via SMS or RSS feeds.

It doesn't have to be second hand information. The point is that when the rosie boards are down the BOINC boards are a logical place to look for information. I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't have a Twitter account. When the rosie boards are up I can click on the big boxed t at the top of the page to read the twitter feed (not that I ever had before today) but when the rosie boards are down Twitter is no use to me. (And when the rosie boards are up the most sensible place to supply information is on the rosie boards or in the news section of the home page).

I don't intend to discourage the use of Twitter but a Twitter account shouldn't be a necessity to receive information from the project.

Best,
Snags

I don't intend to discourage the use of Twitter but a Twitter account shouldn't be a necessity to receive information from the project.

Best,
Snags

You can view Twitter pages without signing up.

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I don't intend to discourage the use of Twitter but a Twitter account shouldn't be a necessity to receive information from the project.

Best,
Snags

You can view Twitter pages without signing up.

You can read the Twitter post here

May I suggest: News on Project Outages for when the rosie boards are down?

Not bad, but I'm also aware that posts into News on the R@H front page gets propogated to boincstats front news page too.

This should be used for 'good' news as well as updowntime reports as it gets seen by Boincers who may not be aware how active the work of this project is.

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May I suggest: News on Project Outages for when the rosie boards are down?

Not bad, but I'm also aware that posts into News on the R@H front page gets propogated to boincstats front news page too.

This should be used for 'good' news as well as updowntime reports as it gets seen by Boincers who may not be aware how active the work of this project is.

Well either one or both should work.
Here is some news on the hardware front from Dr. Baker's journal: "First, I would like to thank everybody for bearing with us while we recovered from a critical server hardware failure. Over the next month or two we will be installing more powerful and more robust hardware so hopefully this will not happen again."

May I suggest: News on Project Outages for when the rosie boards are down?

Not bad, but I'm also aware that posts into News on the R@H front page gets propogated to boincstats front news page too.

This should be used for 'good' news as well as updowntime reports as it gets seen by Boincers who may not be aware how active the work of this project is.

Well either one or both should work.
Here is some news on the hardware front from Dr. Baker's journal: "First, I would like to thank everybody for bearing with us while we recovered from a critical server hardware failure. Over the next month or two we will be installing more powerful and more robust hardware so hopefully this will not happen again."

This quote is old news, check the date... ;-)

Ralf

May I suggest: News on Project Outages for when the rosie boards are down?

Not bad, but I'm also aware that posts into News on the R@H front page gets propogated to boincstats front news page too.

This should be used for 'good' news as well as updowntime reports as it gets seen by Boincers who may not be aware how active the work of this project is.

Well either one or both should work.
Here is some news on the hardware front from Dr. Baker's journal: "First, I would like to thank everybody for bearing with us while we recovered from a critical server hardware failure. Over the next month or two we will be installing more powerful and more robust hardware so hopefully this will not happen again."

This quote is old news, check the date... ;-)

Ralf

Looks fairly recent to me.

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Warped