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 Michael Goetz Volunteer moderator
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For two weeks next month, From May 5th until May 19th, the annual BOINC Pentathlon will be happening. In the past PrimeGrid has been fortunate to be chosen as one of the disciplines, and we're once again in the running for this year's Pentathlon.
It has come to our attention that our manual credit system has been used in the past to try and game the Pentathlon's scoring system. We've also noticed several people who seem to be planning on doing that this year.
We don't like cheaters. Neither do most of you. We believe in providing a level playing field. In order to both prevent cheating and to discourage people from even trying, we will be turning off the manual credit system during the Pentathlon. You'll still be able to earn manual credit during the Pentathlon, but it won't be applied until after the 19th.
All this is predicated on PG being part of the Pentathlon. If not, it doesn't matter. But for the purposes of argument we're assuming we will be.
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My lucky number is 75898524288+1 |
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What is manual credit? |
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Michael GoetzVolunteer moderator
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What is manual credit?
PSA, i.e. manual sieving and PRPNet.
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My lucky number is 75898524288+1 |
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Good decision by our Admins. |
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If we do not like what we are giving them with our free PCs, it is unfortunate their sayings! |
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If we do not like what we are giving them with our free PCs, it is unfortunate their sayings!
I'm sure PrimeGrid and the math community really like that you are giving freely of your PCs time and computing power. You can continue to do so, and will keep getting points and recognition for you work. If you participate in the PSA manual sieving, or PRPNet work your points you turn in during May 5th to May 19th have the chance of being delayed if PrimeGrid gets chosen as a project for the BOINC Pentathlon. You will still get all points. |
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What does 'manual sieving and PRPNet' mean?
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RafaelVolunteer tester
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What does 'manual sieving and PRPNet' mean?
In a nutshell, Manual Sieving is a way to quickly remove composite candidates so that we don't have to spend time testing them. Due to various reasons, we run the apps manually rather than have them be an automated process like the other subprojects, so users have to manually reserve a range of work, download the appropriate app, run it and then upload the results back to the server.
PRPNet is another client that has to be set up manually and is used to run subprojects that for whatever reason aren't ran through the BOINC client. |
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Michael GoetzVolunteer moderator
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What does 'manual sieving and PRPNet' mean?
Manual Sieving: http://www.primegrid.com/forum_forum.php?id=22
PRPNet: http://www.primegrid.com/forum_forum.php?id=24
The most important thing to know is that if you don't know what manual credit is, this isn't going to affect you.
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My lucky number is 75898524288+1 |
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Lost me in the title! "Manual" :( |
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dukebgVolunteer tester
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There is non-BOINC work that can be done, the credit for which will be applied to your BOINC RAC (in the PSA = Project Stage Area "subproject"). That's manual credit. The links to where you can learn more about that work were in Mike's message and I'm quoting them again:
Manual Sieving: http://www.primegrid.com/forum_forum.php?id=22
PRPNet: http://www.primegrid.com/forum_forum.php?id=24
The most important thing to know is that if you don't know what manual credit is, this isn't going to affect you.
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What does 'manual sieving and PRPNet' mean?
It's the PSA badge that alot of us don't have yet.
If you've never done it click on one of the badges under Your Account and it will bring up a chart showing your current badges and how far it is to your next badge, and at the very bottom the list of badges you don't have yet. |
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Lost me in the title! "Manual" :(
Most of the credit you get here on PrimeGrid, is awarded automatically when the server sees that you did work that was valid (i.e. another used did the same workunit and his result agrees with yours). No person needs to do anything to make sure you get the right credit.
Manual credit is different. Here, a person has to check how much work you did, and award the corresponding credit to you "by hand". Since this has to wait for a real person, it takes more time. This happens only for work you do outside of BOINC. In some cases, the work is not checked immediately. So you may get the credit even if it has not yet been determined if your result was correct. They trust you.
/JeppeSN |
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Thanks for the update. I agree this was a good decision to make. |
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dthononVolunteer tester
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I agree, as a contributor to manual credits: this is a good decision. Manual credits, even without cheating, depend too much on individual choices on the way to manage these tasks, including getting and returning tasks by large batches.
I guess you will be smoothing pushing the manual credits to PG, to avoid a huge credit surge on May 20th.
Thanks for your time and effort in making PG an open and fair project. |
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Michael GoetzVolunteer moderator
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I guess you will be smoothing pushing the manual credits to PG, to avoid a huge credit surge on May 20th.
It already does that automatically; there's no need for us to do anything special.
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My lucky number is 75898524288+1 |
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Simply put, in the Pentathlon, bunkering is in no way cheating. This is why a project is announced 5 days in advance. Bunkering does not break any rules. It is allowed, encouraged and expected.
This is not true for every competition, but for the Pentathlon, it is. |
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Michael GoetzVolunteer moderator
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Simply put, in the Pentathlon, bunkering is in no way cheating. This is why a project is announced 5 days in advance. Bunkering does not break any rules. It is allowed, encouraged and expected.
This is not true for every competition, but for the Pentathlon, it is.
Perhaps, but the extent to which it could be done with our manual credit projects is sufficient that not only were people doing it, but it was disruptive to us regardless of its impact on the competition.
Even if we didn't consider it to be unfair, we'd still be taking these steps to prohibit it.
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My lucky number is 75898524288+1 |
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That's an unpleasant surprise but probably right decision.
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mackerelVolunteer tester
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PrimeGrid has been chosen for the cross-country event running - Start: 13 May 2018 00:00 UTC
End: 18 May 2018 00:00 UTC
This is also my first time participating in the pentathlon (team on other site) so will be interesting to see how much works gets done by it. |
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Michael GoetzVolunteer moderator
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For those of you wishing to "bunker" more tasks in advance of the PrimeGrid portion of the Pentathlon, I have increased the number of tasks each computer can receive ten-fold, from 100 tasks per GPU to 1000 tasks per GPU. Have fun!
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Michael GoetzVolunteer moderator
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Our portion of the Pentathlon is now complete. Granting of manual credit is turned back on.
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My lucky number is 75898524288+1 |
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