Assignment Problems

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by Prime95

I've just emailed the user explaining what happened. The fairest thing is to let the user reclaim as many of his exponents as possible. The fact that they are "milestone exponents" is irrelevant.

But, unfortunately, all of the candidates which this user is complaining about are "milestone blocking". And while I don't personally care about such things, many do. And, thus, these were all manually assigned to G72 users to work.

Is it fair for these workers to be asked to stop the work they're doing?

[Dubslow]

chalsall, consider this reinterpretation of the quote:

Originally Posted by Prime95

The fairest thing is to let the user reclaim as many of his exponents as possible.

Yes, it is the fairest thing to let the user reclaim these exponents; no, the user isn't being particularly nice to the milestone limit, but yes, he followed all of PrimeNet's rules well enough to not lose the expos (regardless of what the rules were supposed to be). George is not shooting this down, but he is giving the user the chance to keep the exponents, the possibility of which I allowed for in my previous post.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

Yes, it is the fairest thing to let the user reclaim these exponents; no, the user isn't being particularly nice to the milestone limit, but yes, he followed all of PrimeNet's rules well enough to not lose the expos (regardless of what the rules were supposed to be). George is not shooting this down, but he is giving the user the chance to keep the exponents, the possibility of which I allowed for in my previous post.

I, again, really don't care about milestones.

However, I think PrimeNet users enter into a bit of a contract with the GIMPS community when they sign up.

And, thus, when we're told that candidates may (and I undestand the various meanings of that word) be expired after a year, that it is not unreasaonable if that happens.

With regards to the over two hundred candidates this user had "scooped" by Spidy, those which have not been assigned for LL work will be escrowed.

For those which have been, I consider that it is up to those who have been given them to make the decision as to continue or stop.

And, to be explicit and for the record, George and I have communicated about the methodology used, and it won't be used again except for agreed upon cases.

[flashjh]

I stopped the two I have. They're both 'queued on networked CPU', so I'll just forget about tracking them for DC.

[bcp19]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

This is perhaps a bold proposition, but it is based on chalsall's observation that this user only completes two LLs per month. From the initial post here, it seems about half of the expos are not yet running. Seeing as these are milestone exponents, and we (you) are able to communicate with said user, would he be willing to not run those which aren't already going, and instead pass them out to forum goers here so that all those low expos can be run "in parallel" and completed as soon as possible? The user can easily reserve more (higher?) exponents from PrimeNet. I make this suggestion because the expo I got on the initial list in this thread would be done roughly tomorrow if I hadn't paused it. (I will finish the DC when this user finishes his first run.) Of course, if the user wants to keep the low exponents and do them himself (or herself) then that's obviously fine.

(Implementation wise, this user would keep the assignment ID from PrimeNet, but others here run the tests.)

There is another way to look at this that no one has yet brought up. What happened 3+ years ago that prompted this person to hoard several hundred candidates? These could be termed 'prime candidates' and it appears the user in question hoarded as many as possible in the hopes one of them would be. I could swear that hoarding was one of the thing discussed during one of the recent talks about poaching.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by chalsall

However, I think PrimeNet users enter into a bit of a contract with the GIMPS community when they sign up.

Oh? Just what is in that "bit of a contract"? Is it written anywhere?

Surely you'd agree that a PrimeNet user who has not been informed of the existence of a contract (much less given assent to it) has no obligation to conform to that contract.

Do you mean, perhaps, "However, I wish all PrimeNet users had the same attitude toward PrimeNet assignments as I do. I'll express this as asserting the supposed existence of 'a bit of a contract' in order to pretend that there is a justification for impositions on those users whose behavior doesn't conform with my desires." ?

- - -

BTW, it's all right with me if you honestly express a desire to make impositions on users whose behavior you don't like. (That's not to say that I'd agree with actually making those impositions.) But I don't like pretending that there exists some imaginary "bit of a contract" in order to avoid taking personal responsibility for proposing those impositions.

[Dubslow]

That's a rather insulting post. While your point is more-or-less valid (in that there is not literally a contract) putting (hardly flattering) words in his mouth isn't the best way to express the point. (Example: You accused him of trying to avoid taking responsibility for something.)

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

That's a rather insulting post.

No, it's a correcting post that refuses to play along with an attempt to put up a false front.

It was the false front, the attempt to pretend that an imaginary "bit of a contract" exists, that was actually the insult to readers of chalsall's post.

(BTW, the length of my discussion of this point should not be taken as a measure of the severity of the transgression. chalsall's false front was a minor thing. It's just taking me a lot of words to make myself clear about it and about your response, Dubslow.)

When I was younger, as I entered into discussions on the Web I tried most of the rhetorical devices I see some folks trying in this forum. Some veterans deflated my pretensions, obfuscations, evasions and attempts to disguise my intentions.

Now I'm taking my turn at providing this service, for the purpose of encouraging more honest and straightforward discussions.

While your point is more-or-less valid

So, you concede that.

putting (hardly flattering) words in his mouth isn't the best way to express the point.

I put no words in anyone's mouth.

If you'll reread my post carefully, you may note that I asked whether an alternative wording might better express the poster's meaning. chalsall is quite free to specify a more accurate wording if he wishes. (and I will be free to call him on it if he attempts to post another false front.)

You accused him of trying to avoid taking responsibility for something.

... which is what he was doing.

I recognize such things because I tried them myself when I was younger.

(Again, the length of my discussion of this point should not be taken as a measure of the severity of the transgression. chalsall's false front was a minor thing, and several others have tried something similar in forum discussions about milestones.)

[garo]

Guys why don't you drink yourself a tall glass of STFU?

[davieddy]

Originally Posted by garo

Guys why don't you drink yourself a tall glass of STFU?

I knew all along we spoke the same language

[bcp19]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

BTW, it's all right with me if you honestly express a desire to make impositions on users whose behavior you don't like. (That's not to say that I'd agree with actually making those impositions.) But I don't like pretending that there exists some imaginary "bit of a contract" in order to avoid taking personal responsibility for proposing those impositions.

While you are correct in stating that there is no 'contract' in place, there is a warning posted in P95 if the est. time remaining > 1 year that the exponent MAY be unreserved. In addition, some sort of policy has been discussed many times. In a post from 2003 Xyzzy made a comment about being able to reserve 10,000 exponents if he so desired(http://www.mersenneforum.org/showpos...94&postcount=4). Which of course would be highly frowned upon

In more recent posts, George talked about adding to the server a method to unreserve candidates over a certain amount of days which had little or no work done on them, and in another post asked about the fairness of having several years worth of exponents. (http://www.mersenneforum.org/showpos...&postcount=443
http://www.mersenneforum.org/showpos...&postcount=459
)

Each time this subject comes up, it creates a lot of discussion. Right now, from earlier posts, it appears we have a person who averages 2 completions a month who had over 200 exponents taken by the GPU72 system and complained about being 'scooped'. That's over 8 years worth of exponents, many that are over 3 years old with no progress noted. With the capability that I have atm, using this as an example, I could reserve 600-1000 and if anyone complained, show that precedent has already been established.