Disturbing Statistics -

[DanC]

Anyone ever go look at the individual member overall stats for TA and for DPC?

You'll see something interesting. On every one of our stats pages for TA overall - there are lots and lots of "0 Blocks" produced... from people who really used to crank em out.

DPC has FAR FEWER that fit into that category. Proof again, - they contact and manage their membership... and we don't. :|

There have been 2,650 TA members, but only 655 submitting blocks yesterday. This leaves 1,995 who could be brought back into the fold, if we could only communicate with them.
Very sad situation for TA. With only 1/3 of them back, we'd be kicking some patoot.

 

[Skaven]

hehe.. I guess I'm guilty as charged..

I was at 0 blocks for a few months! But I'm back on the map now. Quickly ramping up to 5K+ blocks a day!

I'm hoping to double that next week.. MUAHAHAH


-Skaven

 

[nickdakick]

Do I smell scolloped trout in here, Dan ?

 

[Robor]

What's the reason the idle members aren't being contacted? Unable or against Anandtech policy? If it's the latter I would say that a single recruitment message wouldn't hurt or be considered spamming.

Rob

 

[Drakkhen]

It is more of a Distributed.Net type thing. They consider sending a message to e-mail addresses that are collected by virtue of their project to be spam. It is their project, so I guess they can make that decree.

 

[Joe O]

We have a lot of members who dump only weekly. There are also some that dump only monthly. This is especially true of those members for whom phone calls are expensive. I think that we should see how many have not submitted for over a month.

 

[DanC]

So - How do the Dutch do it?
They contact their members and dnet doesn't seem to get it's panties in a bunch.
Just doesn't wash with me, and never will.

 

[Russ]

Actually, the reason the DPC's percentage of active versus overall is higher is more of a function of late in the game momentum than anything else. Team AnandTech has been a player for much longer. It was only recently that the DPC's really got on the recruiting ball.

Thus, they seem to have retained more membership, because, on-balance, that membership is newer. In the earlier days of our team it was the same. Compared to the overall project, our retention is much higher than average.

This is not to say that we should not be seeking ways to communicate with the inactives, only that the numbers alone don't tell the whole story.

Russ, NCNE

 

[DanC]

<< &quot;spamming&quot; either on behalf of your personal team or for distributed.net in general is expressly forbidden. Mass-posting distributed.net advertisements to unrelated newsgroups is a very bad thing. Emailing people who have not expressed a prior interest in distributed.net is a very bad thing. >>



This is the official word of dnet. I would maintain that contacting our inactives DOES NOT fit the category of &quot;spam&quot; because:

A. We are not recruiting - these are listed members of the team
B. We are not mass-posting advertisements in newsgroups
C. Team members obviously have expressed a prior interest, or they would never have
submitted blocks.

 

[Russ]

Dan,

Dnet already specifically ruled on the issue of us contacting our previous membership. Their answer was an unequivocal no. I happen to believe, as you do, that it should NOT be a problem. I find it very frustrating that we cannot tap the resource. But, it is their contest.

This issue will be much easier to deal with once the team web site is up and has the option available for eMail notifications and updates. Dnet cannot argue against that.

Russ, NCNE

 

[divide by zero]

Sounds good to me, DanC. Set everything up first so there's a link in the message taking them to a page about what's going on now with TA and prominently displaying an opt-OUT feature. Do it once, do it right. It would probably get some folks back.

 

[divide by zero]

Just saw Russ's reply. RATS!

(Hmmm, just came up with RATS = Really And Truly Sucks, hehehe)

 

[dennilfloss]

&quot;Emailing people who have not expressed a prior interest in distributed.net is a very bad thing.&quot;

Err, if private messages are verboten too, how the hell was I supposed to introduce people like GirlFriday, Isla and unxpurg8d to the project? How are we supposed to recruit new Borgs? By going to the nudie bar wearing a T-Shirt that says &quot;Nice crack!&quot; or &quot;Nice rack&quot; I suppose?

 

[divide by zero]

Do any of the active members *know* any of the inactive members?
If so, I don't see why they couldn't e-mail the several inactive memebers that they know.

 

[Russ]

Denis,

I don't think that type of individual contact is a problem at all. If Dnet thinks it is, then they can stick it as far as I'm concerned.

Russ, NCNE

 

[Keldon]

I think our active membership is mainly due to the fact that the stats (DPC top30) are posted daily on www.tweakers.net. Frontpage news, everyday. This is what gets people interested (the same happened to me, I switched from SETI to RC5).

I never see anything on Anandtech.com besides the permanent TA banner and a link to RC5. Was it ever mentioned on the frontpage when you reached 100 million blocks or other milestones? I've been following Anandtech since geocities.com but I can't remember seeing that. If you take the number one spot from /. later this year, will it be mentioned on the front page? Will it be mentioned on /. ?

I'm not trying to put Anandtech down in anyway because it's one of the heavy hitters and a great source of information. But don't underestimate Tweakers.net, it's not a small site. My guess would be it's one of the top 5 sites in our country. Maybe still small compared to Anandtech.com but still large enough to create good competition for you guys.

Disclaimer:
Not a flame, not a troll, no trout were harmed in the making of this post. Just my honest opinion of why the DPC membership is 'alive'

 

[BiggieN]

i think its only a problem if someone complains about hte spam they are getting. just word your email so it shows concern and not asking them to be an active participant. ask them how they are and what are they up to and WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOUR WORK UNITS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!but nicely......

 

[nickdakick]

<< no trout were harmed in the making of this post >>


That's a classic. LOL
But anyway your hints may be helpful. Thanks.

 

[PcDealer]

Could it be that the non flushing members are participating in another project, say OGR-25?

 

[DanC]

PC,
That's entirely possible - but will always be speculation unless we make some contact no?
Perhaps we could run a list of our inactives against a list of actives in the other contests - now that would be fairly intelligent.

 

[MGallik]

How about a completely new site, a real one, perhaps an affiliate of Anandtech
that is totally Distributed Computing. With our own advertising, etc.. the entire
sites theme and BBS only dedicated to DC and the teams.

 

[DanC]

I do believe Mr. Train - is working on that. Haven't seen him around lately though...

 

[Moose]

Please see the last time this topic came up

Please read all of my responses, I think I explained distributed.net's posistion on this issue clearly.

I would hate to see action taken against Team AnandTech.

Thanks,
moose

 

[Fingers]

well, some of us have switched over to other projects, such as seti