Impossible Milestones

pigflipper

The way that milestones are now set up for the folding team, I will see the lowest rank in about 3.5 years. It seems that all the praise and accolades are reserved for the top tier of the team leaving the rest of us with only our good intentions as a reward.

Most recent milestones can be found here: http://icrontic.com/discussion/42605/offically-recognized-milestones#Item_0

Not very rewarding for the small guys, but extra rewarding and fulfilling for the big guys...so its just like the political debate today: the 1% of power users vs the 99% of everyday, not running F@H 24/7 users.

If this milestone list is no longer valid, let me know, but it is the most recent that I can find.

Garg

I suggest we add 100k and 500k back to the milestone list.

_k

Currently there is no active milestone list. That is one I created when I was actively leading the team so it would be easier for me to manage milestones, you can see more stuff along these lines with how I restructured the team in regards to rewards to the general team. I am not actively working on milestone threads because I got tired of trying to keep it all update and as real time as possible.

This is after thinking about who is active, asleep, doesn't care any more, as well as how much the community responded back to me after personal communications to half a dozen members. Effectively the community isn't interested in managing the team or being involved in any aspect besides asking for help, approx. 5 people help trouble shoot questions within the team.

I told Tushon that he can do anything with the team if he wants to but unless he directly ask me for complete control to run the team I am still allowed to direct the team as I want. We have roughly 50 active folders and roughly 5 of those people on the forums. I want to slap you in the face with a flank of Alaskan Rainbow Trout for using a 99% reference.

You just came off of an almost one year hiatus and it looks like you are only folding with an ATi, pointing out about running hardware that does not produce well. You could be using a SMP client and get more points with less power and heat. You would make a million points starting from today with your current average in 1.786 years.

You are more than welcome to post up your own thread about reaching a milestone you made. That section was not locked to admins before and people posted their own some times.

Tushon

My experience with the team has largely been similar to k's. I enjoy helping people get started or troubleshooting, but that is typically all that happens. Milestones are nice, but rarely even got commented on besides the author (usually k) and me or one other, and almost never by the person in question (that could change with the tag introduction, but it still shows how looked over the folding sub-forum was). I'm finishing up my folding on linux guide today and will be doing something similar for v7 on Windows, though the Pande guides are already pretty good. Waiting for v7 to go gold may be the best bet there.

Anyways, if people are wanting milestones, I would be happy to be responsible for making those posts, but I just didn't see the point, as k mentioned.

quake101

I just started folding yesterday for the team.

I have a question, could the "milestones" be Badges on the forums? Also, couldn't this process be automated?

Tushon

I'm not aware of the backend of the badge system, but automating it would involve querying the team list and I'm not sure if the backend can do that, or if there is an API call for the milestones in particular (if there wasn't, we'd suddenly have to be maintaining a historical database and making calls against that).

Glad to have you folding and make sure you use a passkey if you weren't already.

primesuspect

Now that we have a way to easily create and award new badges, I'll talk to K and Tushon about how to help get some new ways to create motivation and reward in the team.

quake101

If needed, I could create a PHP parser for user stats. Also, a quick google search shows http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/?nav=XML as a resource as well. Just let me know if you guys want help.

Garg

@primesuspect & @lincolnwebs - I imagine that this would be the first step towards tighter integration, anyway, but could we include Folding usernames in the IC user profiles? I checked for pigflipper's username there first before just trying "pigflipper" on the stats page (which of course worked).

Another idea would be to make the Icrontic points system incorporate the degree of Folding participation, perhaps through number of milestones or PPD levels. I'm sure you guys have more ideas re: the points system than you've had time to implement thus far, but a display of "how Icrontian are you" with something like a sparkline to indicate how much of your Icrontiness™ comes from Folding, event participation, etc. would be rad.

Linc

I've put Folding Name back in profiles.

quake101

Any progress with the badges idea?

Tushon

If needed, I could create a PHP parser for user stats. Also, a quick google search shows http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/?nav=XML as a resource as well. Just let me know if you guys want help.

So the problem I see, from the IC server side, is that unless there is something that I'm not aware of, we still have the original problem of how to compare changes/award badges.

I see the steps as follows:
Query the XML page for the current user points total
Add this to a database on IC side
Check if the new value exceeds the threshold for an award
If not, do nothing
If yes, award a badge

Right? Maybe this could only be run once a week during off hours to negate load. I don't do web-dev, so feel free to correct or chime in.

quake101

Yes, that's the basic idea. The "load" from this shouldn't be much at all.

_k

My guess would run a script to suck up the XML feed and process that into a SQL table. You could have it overwrite all entries in the table each time if all that is wanted is to check for badges. It will keep the table really small and zero load when stuff runs.

Read_Save XML to local sql table
SELECT user_folding_name from folding_table
while(folding_badge_list != last) {user_f@h_total >= folding_badge && has_folding_badge = FALSE}
Give folding_badge

Linc

Unless you are storing historical data, there is no reason to put the stats in a database.

_k

I like storing things -_- Looking to the future you might want to save them, I would at least write them locally initially to make sure the read works correctly. This would also leave a trail if you wanted to be business like and be able to reconcile what you are getting from the feed to what the users are getting.

Running it once a week wouldn't grow the table very quickly and would allow you to hand out badges for people who had been folding with the team for long periods of time, assuming a non-destructive update.

Tushon

I think the easiest db to maintain would be
Username
Current Milestone Achieved

So you only have to check their current total from the query against the next milestone (something like "milestone.next()" return the next threshold.

Linc

I'm going to give this some attention. Thanks for raising the idea, @pigflipper.

Straight_Man

Straight_Man will achieve million-point milestone in one-two days depending on WUs given (started folding as Straight_Man Feb 4). Rank 75 ATM and pigflipper is ahead of me by 6 places. So much for not rising to get milestones, even the limited ones k had in place.

QCH

That million mark is still a awesome milestone to surpass. Good work!