TheSCInitiative / BOINC

For supporting BOINC software, projects, and community
0 stars 0 forks source link

BOINC Census #3

Open jring-o opened 1 year ago

jring-o commented 1 year ago

Let's create a census for BOINC so we can better understand the community and how it grows and changes over time

jring-o commented 1 year ago

I like the idea of asking BOINC projects for questions they want in the census.

TheGoblinPopper commented 1 year ago

1) How long have you been BOINCing? 2) What project types do you enjoy to crunch the most? Bio, Math, Space,... 3) What country are you based in? 4) What projects would you like to support or would like to see more of? 5) Do you have a key feature of BOINC you would like to see in the near future? 6) are you aware of crypto's that utilize BOINC ecosystem? 6.a) What is your opinion of these cryptos? Favorable or no? 7) How did you originally get involved in BOINC? 8) Have you ever tried to start your own project? 9) Are you actively involved in helping support/maintain a project? 10) Other than processing power, have you ever donated to a project directly?

delta1513 commented 1 year ago
delta1513 commented 1 year ago

Questions should not ask for things that we can gain from BOINC stats (eg, computer specs). Questions should be simple enough for the user to answer without having to open up BOINC or anything else. We should have a first set of questions that never change between censuses and then a final set of open-ended or project-specific questions as Jringo mentioned above.

jring-o commented 1 year ago

What is your favorite drink?

AenBleidd commented 1 year ago

@delta1513, pardon, why do we need this info?

What gender do you identify as?

I don't think we could ever use it

delta1513 commented 1 year ago

@AenBleidd Gender is a more broad field than 'sex' so if we replace 'sex' with 'gender', we can not only gauge male vs female participation but also LGBTQ+ participation (to some extent)

The survey answers for this question would simply be 'male', 'female' and 'other'.

AenBleidd commented 1 year ago

@delta1513, I got this but for me is unclear why do we need to know 'sex' and/or 'gender' at all?

TheGoblinPopper commented 1 year ago

I see this as a consensus that we can do an annual report and share as a fun community activity.

I think gender is just another metric to share and understand the community.

If we did ask I would say that we should make sure the options are comprehensive and includes an option of "I prefer not to comment".

jring-o commented 1 year ago

For example, diverse representation in science and technology is a very big problem. Taking the yearly temperature of various representation metrics like gender, race, education background, etc. gives us data with which we can tailor future initiatives. We can then measure the results of those initiatives. Data is not the only or best way to work toward more diversity in science and technology, but it is definitely a good tool.

A better way, just as an example since this is not related to the census at all, is to fulfill our goal of growing the board to 11-15 members and making sure all new members are more diverse than what we currently have.

AenBleidd commented 1 year ago

@jring-o, got it, thanks for the explanation!

delta1513 commented 1 year ago
delta1513 commented 1 year ago
  1. Do you or have you ever used BOINC?

  2. How often do you run BOINC?

    • All the time (24/7)
    • Only when I'm not using the computer
    • Most days of the week
    • A few days in the week
    • A few hours in the week
    • I don't use BOINC anymore
  3. When did you first hear about BOINC? (year)

  4. How did you first hear about BOINC?

    • Not sure
    • Word-of-mouth/a friend told me
    • Via a search on google or other search engine
    • From social media
    • From TV/Radio
    • From a podcast or video on the internet
    • From a news article (print or digital)
    • From a journal or academic article
    • From a piece of merchandise with BOINC on it
    • From an advertisement on the web
    • From someone talking about it in an online chat group
  5. How many computers do you have that run BOINC regularly?

    • 0
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3-5
    • 5-10
    • 10+
  6. How many of the above devices are mobile devices (mobile phones and tablets)?

    • 0
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3-10
    • 10+
  7. Do you use the BOINC screensaver?

  8. Where do you seek help for problems you have with running BOINC?

    • I don't know where I can go for help
    • The BOINC website
    • The official BOINC forum/message board
    • BOINC project message boards/forums
    • Friends or colleagues that use BOINC
    • Chat groups such as Discord and Telegram
    • Google or other search engines
    • Social media such as Reddit
  9. What's your favourite field that you would like to support with BOINC?

    • Not sure
    • Other
    • Space, astronomy and astrophysics
    • Mathematics and computer science
    • Social sciences
    • Biology, microbiology, agriculture and living organisms
    • Health sciences, anatomy and the human body
    • Theoretical physics, particle physics, nuclear physics and quantum mechanics
    • Engineering, construction, urban planning and product development
    • Chemistry and other materials science
    • Meteorology/climate science
    • Geology and geophysics
  10. What are the 3 most important aspects of a BOINC project?

    • Other
    • The website looks good and explains the work that the project does
    • The work they do is important and beneficial to the world
    • There are a lot of crunchers working on the project
    • An active forum or social media
    • Open-source (both code and results)
    • Regularly publishes results and/or academic papers
    • Rewards crunchers with badges
    • Personal recognition for a discovery
    • A lot of credits are awarded per work unit
    • Not-for-profit
    • Active project staff
    • Backed by a university or college
    • Project admin has scientific qualifications
  11. Do you want to start your own BOINC project?

  12. Have you ever supported a BOINC project financially?

  13. Have you ever supported a BOINC project non-financially?

  14. Are you a student?

    • No
    • Yes, highschool student
    • Yes, Undergraduate student
    • Yes, Postgraduate student
    • Yes, PHD/research student
    • Yes, other
  15. What country are you from?

  16. What is your age?

    • 0-16
    • 17-20
    • 21-30
    • 31-40
    • 41-50
    • 50+
  17. What gender do you identify as?

    • Male
    • Female
    • Other
  18. What source do you get most of your electricity from?

    • Not sure
    • Other
    • Renewables (solar, wind, etc)
    • Hydroelectric
    • Fossil fuels (coal, gas, etc)
  19. How much of an impact do you think your crunching is having? (scale)

  20. Would you use BOINC more if you were paid to crunch projects on it?

  21. Are you aware of any organisations, projects or blockchains that reward people for crunching BOINC?

  22. What way(s) would you like projects to communicate with you?

    • I do not want projects to communicate with me
    • Other
    • Email notifications
    • Forum/message board posts
    • Social media
    • Announcements in an online group chat
    • Via a web page or dashboard
    • Via the BOINC manager
  23. If you would like us to email you to participate in the next BOINC census, please put your email here:

makeasnek commented 1 year ago

(Ask when asking BOINC projects what they want on the census) If there was a way to communicate with other BOINC project admins what would you like (listserv, slack, discord, etc)

makeasnek commented 1 year ago

As an extension to this question "How often do you run BOINC?"

"When do you run BOINC?"

"What do you do generally with your computer when you aren't using it?"

jring-o commented 1 year ago

Delta will find a platform

jring-o commented 1 year ago
makeasnek commented 1 year ago

Just sent e-mail to BOINC project admins asking for feedback

makeasnek commented 1 year ago

@makeasnek make census-only announcements list

jring-o commented 1 year ago

Distribution methods

jring-o commented 1 year ago

Loose timeline

Polished by mid october Released November Runs through December Results published early January

delta1513 commented 1 year ago

@jring-o will email the BOINC mailing list and post on the official BOINC forum

delta1513 commented 1 year ago
jring-o commented 1 year ago

@delta1513 will make a GRC poll "Have you filled out the census" Y/N

jring-o commented 1 year ago

Next steps:

Delta will visualize data and prep a presentation for the BOINC workshop

delta1513 commented 1 year ago

Jringo to read-over last draft

jring-o commented 8 months ago

2023 Census:

Distribution methods

AenBleidd commented 8 months ago

@jring-o, you can remove Leyline, they are pretty much dead

makeasnek commented 8 months ago

Added a few more to the promo list

makeasnek commented 8 months ago

It would be interesting to ask if they use their computers for other non-volunteer computing purposes such as mining crypto or jstor.

Maybe this is too controversial to include in the survey, but it seems like a relevant thing to know if BOINC is losing market share to these other hardware uses.

And among volunteer uses:

Also to add to the list of volunteer computing projects and asking if they have heard of them or use them:

For that question, and maybe there is already something like this, it would be interesting to ask:

Aside from computational power, do you currently or do you have any interest in donating any disk space to any volunteer projects? Bandwidth?