Protest all you want but nothing will change. Braun has even less class than Paris Hilton if that's possible. He won't resign, the project won't fire him, he will not apologise and the project will not apologise for him.

The only way to force change there is to organise a DDOS. I cannot think of a man/project more deserving. Unfortunately the repercussions to participants in DDOS are frequently not nice.

Yes, we protest
and if you're speaking of distributed denial of service attack, sorry but we are not attackers.

I've been readin this thread and watching Predictor stats and have found it quite interesting.

As a newcomber to this debate I understand that some unusual results appeared regarding WATE's account which obviously would be a cause to question if they've become that noticable. And when questioned through the Predictor forums it sparked a whole chain of events, mainly banning of accounts and users and deleting of credits.

I'd like to add my point of view and agree that regardless of who was responsible of the actions of WATE's account, that the account be suspended/checked and/or revoked.

I also agree to, what seems to be, unfair banning and supension of other account users who have simply voiced concerns on Predictors forums. (I would agree if any posting were pointlessly insulting/abusive,etc. Concerns should atleast be atleast politeful at first and maybe stonger worded if not addressed)

I find the actions of Predictor's forum admin staff to be very poor in handling this situation and it seems a good idea to contact Scripps for further advice and support with this whole mess.

I just hope someone at Scripps will investigate this further. If a consumer or client is unhappy with a service and complains, the service provider should always look into any complaint even if the complaint has or has not any foundation because the bad PR it can create is not desirable for any company or business. (A simple rule followed by almost any high street store or any other company)

More is the case with such projects that use BOINC for it is us users who provide the time/effort and kindly volunteered out of their own kindness to help such projects, free of charge (a company with such computational power such as the combined users on BOINC would be able to charge a large fortune), our only reward being credits, a simple number on the internet with no real value.

My home PC cost me £500+ GPB and runs BOINC 24/7 (at my expense), I would be a little cheesed if Predictor (or any other project) blocked my account and erased my credits without any explantation. Hence I would like to stand by the people who would be interested some kind of explanation to what has happend and still is happening at Predictor.

Thanks for reading,
Gopherboy

Thanks for the words Gopherboy. Funny thing is that if you posted this at Predictor, you likely would find yourself without and account.

@ Dagoroth, as much as I would like to see something like that, it would only prove dlb's point. The best way is to notify Scripps of the problem and not crunch for Predictor. I would encourage people not to crunch it either. There are better run projects out there that value our time and efforts.

GopherBoy said


What was done with Wate's account was very noticeable indeed. Here is my original post copied from cpdn news. The trojan attached more than 5000 computers to Wate's account:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=1571



This was done within a week by all the affected projects except Predictor. Predictor acted after the furore erupted on its forum a month later and after private communications urging action from a number of people.



Most posters on the Predictor forum assumed that the Predictor admins had known about Wate since mid-February, when Sänger copied my announcement to its forum, and that they had decided to take no action. Many therefore reacted angrily and in some cases rudely.

In fact, Predictor appear not to have accepted the veracity of the original notification from Boinc admin in Berkeley, and to have ignored Sänger's post quoting the announcement. The Predictor admins in their ignorance had no idea what had hit them and reacted most unreasonably.

However, the Wate affair is only one episode in a long history at Predictor of the admins ignoring posters and crunchers. See, for example, the reponse committed cruncher Conan's query received:
http://predictor.scripps.edu/forum_thread.php?id=2499
or Barry last week
http://predictor.scripps.edu/forum_thread.php?id=2618
or Pooh Bear's request over a year ago - he is one of boinc's most assiduous and long-serving helpers
http://predictor.scripps.edu/forum_thread.php?id=2307
Another post over a year ago started KNOCK KNOCK! ANYBODY THERE?.

It has been suggested to the Predictor admins both privately and on the forum that they should take on some outside moderators to remedy this lamentable situation. Predictor (or Scripps?) have decided against this.



While some of the banned members had probably been rude, others appear not to have been. In addition, instead of the Predictor admins following the normal boinc project procedure for non-spammers (deletion of post with reasons, warning, then short ban, warning, then longer ban, warning, then permanent ban, with reasons given in public or private at every stage), they went straight to 31-year bans with deletion of acounts. All the while, spammers' posts were left untouched and are still there.

After the whole Predictor forum was massively spammed 42 days ago (results still visible here , the admins took action against the entire BFL team, banning all who were not yet banned and annulling all their credits. As far as I know, such action is unprecedented on any boinc project. The following day this was the news on the Predictor website's front page:

Due to recent attacks on the Predictor@Home forums by a small group of malicious hackers we have enabled some restrictions in the forums. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause our volunteers. As so often is the case a few bad apples can spoil the lot and their behavior has forced us to enforce policies we would prefer not to. The accounts used by the attackers have been deleted. Despite these issues, which we will weather, we continue to value your efforts and the resources you volunteer toward the scientific objectives of the Predictor@Home project.

I'm sure I don't need to expand on the view of human nature and relationships suggested by the phrase 'a few bad apples can spoil the lot'.



I (and I believe others too) have contacted the Scripps Institute but received no response. My last email to the Predictor admins received no response either.



I thoroughly agree. If the carefully-prepared and restrained email does not receive a satisfactory and reasoned response from Predictor or the Scripps Institute within a couple of weeks, I would suggest that the teams could then copy it to some of the Scripps Institute trustees. Two of them are, for example, UK academics who might be more concerned about the wider damage to the reputation of the Scripps Institute.

Dagorath, I'm sure that any spamming or DOS attack would simply confirm the Predictor administrators' negative and reactionary view of human nature in general and some of their (former) members in particular. This isn't a view any of us should encourage or provide a basis for.

LOL, by the sounds of things, yeah! It makes me VERY hessitent to post anything over at Predictor, regardless of the topic, incase my account magically "disappears".

Well, I've already signed up on the On-line petition and hope someone at Scripps checks out this whole mess. (Predictor will probably kick me for just signing that, LOL)

By the sound of things on these forums and elsewhere, further "negative" actions on Predictors forums, especially after this petition is presented, will probably result in alot (more) of people here leaving the project and site all together, which would be fine with me.

I'm sure alot of other projects will be happy and very much appreciate gaining that extra % of computing power kindly donated by us. Just checked and averaged other project stats, Predictor show 56,000+ reg'd users. We're talking between a possible 50 - 100 TerraFlops of power.
One hell of a loss for a project, for the sake of some over-powered, disgruntled admin staff!!!



@ mo.v. - I very much agree there too. Exhaust all possabilities, atleast we'll be giving Predictor a fair trial and explain our actions!!!

I thought this little nugget of info might be of interest for people here if they've missed it.



Banging our heads and brick wall come to mind! It may seem a little drastic but personally I'm suspending any further WU's from Predictor until things are smoothed out or everyone up and leaves. I've got 11 other projects crunching atm who seem to appreciate my donated CPU time.

Original thread --> http://www.boincsynergy.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10384

Sorry all, couldn't help but inject a little humour here....

What took you so long? LOL

Looking at the top level stats here, Predictator@Home is barely generating the number of credits in a month that other mainstream projects are doing in a day. Even many of the "smaller" projects are out-producing them.

It looks like many people have spoken with their feet, and cycles.

Yeah, a bit late on the uptake but so far Predictor hadn't really wronged me but considering there handeling of not just this problem, the same appears across other threads in Predictor - I thought it was about time I joined the exedus.



56,000 users down to under 5,000 active - man that's a kick in the nuts! Scripps have GOT to be looking into things by now cos someone should have noticed those figures.

That's exactly what I was saying before. Watch the stats and you can see that the BOINC community is making it's voice heard.

As of today here are the active user numbers:
Total Users___Credit/Day___/Week____/Month
56595___________498______3382______4920

These numbers are dropping everyday as the RAC drops off. Right now it is <1% of total users.

Just keep an eye out for a new project opening that may look very similar with possibly the same type of wu's and admin.

edit: tryed to line up the #'s

Definately!!!!

If there isn't some serious worryies/concerns/ass kickings going on in the Predictor camp, then they are too stupid to notice such a pathetic output figure or they are just too stubborn to do anything about it!!!!

Yeah lol, Predictor disappears only to have a new project released - Predictator (Name borrowed from previous thread/post). Boinc teams will be renamed "Slave camps!"

(Apologies for bringing up WW2 issues again! He he!)

DBL demokratic??

Cmon, Terve2... you are from Zimbabwe or what?? How distorted your POV must be to call DBL actions democratic?

Democracy includes the right for peacefull protest, freedom of speech and also freedom of organizing yourself. DBL managed to literally 'rape' all three of those.

In a democratic community, you are ALWAYS allowed to critize the people in charge. DBL responds to such criticizms with repressions. Would you call a government that responds in such way - democratic??

In a democratic community, you can protest against any of the government`s actions. DBL responds with more repressions, banning, deleting accounts. How would you call a country that has one answer to the uncontent public - "You dont like here, leave! There are many other countries out there." DBL said just that. And you call this - DEMOCRATIC.

In a democratic community, you can organize yourself freely. DBL responds to such tries of organizing with deleting the teams and imposing more restrictions. Though, you call him democratic....

This is a nightmare, happening in a bright day. This guy behaves just like a communist party in my country, not that long ago, back in 70-ties and 80-ties.
It so bloody similar: no freedom of discussion, you cannot criticize the leaders because you will get locked up, no freedom of organization. I know this too well not to recognize it happening right now.

Finally, you calling it democracy makes you either a mentally retarded person, or someone basically "inside" the Predictor "Government". I know such individuals all too well.

Their leader could spit right in their eyes, and they would keep saying that it it raining... I think this is your case.

If you`re so good in history, you should study it harder. You would see that all despotism and commusim rule ends up - right in the trashbin of history.

Be sure, we wont let this case die. Those DBL actions will not be forgotten!

I think you forgot to sign the petitition

Haos,


I will never talk with racistic ideology on the world wide web.

Whatever you say other words, I would never read them. You made already a mistake. You should correct it.

Haos, the reference to Zimbabwe was irrelevant, possibly racist and certainly designed to denigrate Terve.



I find this comment offensive. People who have the misfortune to suffer any sort of mental disability should not, in addition, have to suffer the indignity of their condition being used as a term of abuse.

I believe, though I am not sure, that Terve is from a far Eastern country. I assume he is a native speaker of a non-European language. How many of us could post on a Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai forum in their language and always be impeccably polite?

The basis of most crunchers' complaints about the Predictor forum is that the administrators there have been rude and have ignored and denigrated their members. We must not treat anyone that way here.

To merely enquire about a suspicious event is exactly what these forums we're designed for - communication.

For a person to voice their concerns or opinions is freedom of speech.

For a person to be silenced by an authority figure (i.e. forum posts deleted by the forum admin) is oppression

To imply such a message to others "Keep your mouth shut or you will lose your privileges" is dictatorship.

Democracy is a political system where the citizens can debate then vote or agree on decisions.
Democracy - To seek consensus among the people

Please explain where the democracy is in DBL's actions? What enquiries did he make? and what resolutions, if any, did he put forward?

If DBL's actions we're correct and our opinions are unacceptable, why are none of the other Boinc projects cutting off so many people from their forums for saying what we have already said here!

If this was the Predictor forum, everyone who posted in this forum (for or against DBL's actions) would most likely have been banned for life by now for merely discussing this topic.

I totally agree. Those statements were very much out of line.

The "democracy" and "freedom of speech" issues are not relevant here. Predictor is not a government, and those rights are not granted to the forum users.

Scripps owns the project, and has every right to ban users from using their web site. However, that is NOT the issue here.

The issue here is the way the site is administered by David Braun (alias "dlb" as he signs his posts). He has consistently been rude and dismissive of any questions from his user base that have any sort of criticism in them, if he even bothers to answer. Questions and concerns should be answered promptly and honestly.

When he does hide ("delete&quot a forum post, he does not have the Predictor BOINC forum software properly configured to send a valid notice to the user. I have received two of these moderation notices, and neither has a properly configured return email address to contact the project, nor did either one give any reason for the moderation.

Likewise, when he deleted the accounts and/or banned the users (myself included) there was no warning, no email notice, no explanation, no chance to explain the user's point of view.

For a distributed computing project to survive and thrive in the current situation where there are many more projects to choose from than when BOINC was new, or back in the good old days pre-BOINC, they need to be masters of diplomacy and salesmanship, have a well-mannered client application (BOINC or otherwise), run a clean, orderly but not oppressive forum, and above all be always available and responsive to the users.

The issue of assigning credits to those who did not earn them (his "testers" and favored users) should be stopped, and the credits removed from those accounts which have already benefited from this un-earned status. Failing that, the project should be suspended or removed from the mainstream stats sites as being out of compliance with the BOINC credit award system. David Anderson probably has no way to legally stop someone from running a rogue BOINC project since the software is openly available, but we can all make it very difficult to promote by using negative publicity and not promoting the project by listing it as a valid BOINC project worthy of community support.

As others have pointed out, the WATE incident is just another vivid example of the poor management at Predictor, and this will continue until the full weight of the BOINC community is brought to bear on them, either forcing change or drying up their resources.

Absolutely right. First of all DLB was not elected by the community. And as Willy said, those rules of the admin apply to almost every public forum/site on the Internet, because the admin is the rightful owner of the site and forum. He can do whatever he likes with his property. But does this makes him a non-democrat - absolutely not.

I also agree with Terve2 that both DLB and some of the participants overreacted. I know that most of you will disagree with this, but this is the truth. When the first banning for life occurred you should have understood that DLB does not want to be spoken about Wate and his issue and to abandon P@H (because you don't think this is right) and continue crunching for the other 20+ BOINC projects. But instead of that you continued re-register and post about it in their forums. At that moment in DLB's eyes you were no more good than a spammer and he treated you respectively as such.

As I said in the first part the admin can do whatever he likes with his site, but there is a catch - the site will suffer the consequences of the admin's action, as it is happening right now with P@h, and you can't expect any other punishment to be put to the project.
So was this re-registering and all the other things, that happened after the first DLB's statement that he won't do anything about Wate, necessary? I don't think so, because the consequences for the project would have been the same if you had just stopped crunching for Predictor after after understanding that P@H and their admin won't take any action against Wate.

I apologise, Freedom of Speech may have been a bit too strong - I do agree we are on their server and also have to abide by the regular forum rules.
The select few who just jumped at DLB with nothing more then rants or insulting posts may have done better to restrain themselves and if found themselves banned don't really have much they can complain about.

I think the main thing I was trying to put across was alot of issues seem to be ignored at Predictor, the Wate incident being a BIG issue which caused DLB to start behaving in a manor which most of the Boinc community found unacceptable as a forum admin.
But there are other incidents (before and after Wate) where genuine, regular faults or user problems have occured and were reported in all politeness and correct manors on the forums which still have gone unanswered and simply seem to have been ignored.
Some posts suggesting their may be a problem with a link or server, etc. have also resulted in a forum ban? This is the stupidity I do not understand.

It seems if you try to point out a fault in their perfect little world, your gone!!!

As you told, somehow Predictor, Tanpaku and some other have poor response. So when you write something to Microsoft or Intel, AMD and so on, will you get proper reply soon after ? You would get automatic reply, but none the else. Then why on the Predictor only ? There are lots of projects where getting reply is rather rare case. Will you going to destroy all the projects admins ? Closing all the projects ? What are you really doing ? What is accurate meaning you are doing ? I thought it would destroy whole the BOINC society. Willy would not anymore make any mistake or Willy would be kicked out by somebody BECAUSE you could do so. Is that your hope ? So you want to have fun ?


He answered that it would not be capable to touch one user's account just because someone wrote something on the board. No solid proof, that what he wanted to say. Many posters eagered dlb to delete the account, he explained. Then what happened ? Some posters screemingly ordered to delete, banned, creating accounts again and again...and banned for life. You mean this kind thing was "in all politeness" ?


What way may easier for admin. They were his properties. You no need to understand. You paint walls in pink, and I will not understand. It's yours. I don't care.

It seems if you try to point out a fault in their perfect little world, your gone!!![/quote]

I agree, Terve, Predictor isn't the only project with communication problems. In this thread on the boinc_dev forum, there was a serious complaint about a thread on Tanpaku. Some people, including me, contacted their administrators and made a few suggestions. I don't know whether Tanpaku have made many changes yet, but the big differences I saw compared with Predictor were that I received a very positive email from a Tanpaku admin, and two of their admins made positive posts on their forum. There were two very significant aspects in their posts

*At the end of the problem thread, an admin politely but firmly asked members to behave properly.
*In a new thread, another admin apologised for their previous lack of presence and response on the forum.

There were no further bad posts in the problem thread. In the new thread, Tanpaku members thanked the second admin for his positive post.

Tanpaku will probably have to do more than that in the long term. But their rapid responses showed that it is in fact easy to apologise without losing face, that members do respect this, and that firm but polite action by moderators and admins is usually successful.


There's a difference between the response we expect from Microsoft or AMD and the response we hope for from a boinc project. Microsoft and AMD sell us a product and if we don't like the product or their response when we contact them, we have to accept that or move to Linux or Intel. Market forces.

On boinc projects the situation is different. The project invites us onto their server and their forum and offers its expertise. We invite the project's workunits onto our computers, offering our electricity and expertise. I see this as a relationship between people who are equals. In any such relationship, good manners, good humour, cooperation and a recognition of the accepted social norms are essential.
Of course the project can banish us just as we can banish the the project. We all hope that such responses on boinc projects just as in real life, will only be necessary in extremis. The social norm everywhere on boinc is cooperation and communication.

If admins and such are not a responsive lot I tend not to crunch for their projects. There are many projects that interact with their participants on a regular basis.



One issue is that there was not a response. A simple "I'll look into it" would have sufficed. Yes some people likely did things to get them banned. I'm still waiting to know why I was. My main crime was to have asked for a response when none had been given. When I was banned, I was given no warning or reason why.



To ban someone for pointing out a possible problem with their program is just plain wrong. Most admins appreciate the feedback as it helps to identify bugs in their programs.

I agree that it is 'his' property, he can manage it any way he wants. I'm sure his boss(es) would probably like to know that his actions are causing people to leave the project in droves and his actions are causing a black mark for the project in the BOINC community.

I don't think his boss, Charles L. Brooks III, doesn't know about this situation, so he's silently agreeing with DLB's actions. I also believe someone has sent him an email. And if he doesn't (want to) know about it, he doesn't seem to be caring about his own project. Either way he is not capable of running a boinc project properly.

Anyway, if you want to make sure he knows, his email is brooks@scripps.edu.