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leibold
MVM
join:2002-07-09
Sunnyvale, CA
Netgear CG3000DCR
ZyXEL P-663HN-51

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leibold to rusdi

MVM

to rusdi

Re: [F@H] Let's talk about milestone interval revision

A bunch of thoughts on the topic, not necessarily connected or in any particular order:

I would like to suggest to keep the discussion focused on what team members would like to see with regards to milestone recognition and not worry too much on how difficult it may be to implement. There are obviously some challenges with making the milestone intervals dynamic, but most of those can be overcome by keeping more historical data to determine things like 'average daily production over the last 30 days' or whatever data we may need. Starfish See Profile's program already keeps the data for 3 days (if I remember correctly) and it would be easy enough to extend that to a longer period if needed.

Dynamic milestone steps can be perceived as unfair by a member that has a higher daily production and therefore doesn't get recognized for the same intermediate milestones that a slower team member would be recognized for. How do the members of the team feel about that ?

The suggestion from Den4 See Profile to base the milestone interval on daily production is a very interesting one. Given that peoples ability to contribute changes over time (computers get replaced with more powerful models, new computers are being added or old computers are retired and so on) I would suggest that lifetime daily production (total points/days since first workunit) is not a good metric to use.
However given that some workunits take a very long time to compute (I remember some that took me two weeks each) daily production cannot be based on the last 24 hours either or the milestone interval is going from one extreme to the other depending on whether the previous day was one without results or one with the large result for a multiday workunit with high point score. If we want to use daily production as the factor to determine the milestone interval we need to decide over what period (number of days) we average the daily production.

Dynamic milestone intervals will effect users who contribute seasonally (e.g.: turn off computers when it gets too hot in summer). When the folding is started again their recent daily production is none/low and they will get a number of quick milestones until their daily production number is at the correct level again. Is this an issue ? It will do the same for a member returning to folding after some absence and perhaps it is actually a nice side-effect to welcome them back with more frequent milestones initially.

Dynamic milestone intervals can be based on other factors as well, it doesn't have to be the daily production. If the goal is to try to recognize members not too frequently and not too rarely the factor to base the milestone interval on could be the number of days since the last recognized milestone (starting with the highest step value the day after a recognized milestone and then gradually dropping the step value).

Dynamic milestone intervals can cause a big milestone (such as 1.000.000) to be skipped! A user with 990.000 points and low daily production would have his next milestone at 995.000 (based on earlier suggested 5000/10000/100000 steps). If that user then increases production to get their big one million milestone quicker (e.g. asks a friend to help) it may push them to 10000 point steps putting the next milestone at 1.005.000. This is assuming the steps are the number of points gained since the last recognized milestone. I would find that undesirable.

Sunny
Runs from Clowns

join:2001-08-19

Sunny

said by leibold:

Dynamic milestone steps can be perceived as unfair by a member that has a higher daily production and therefore doesn't get recognized for the same intermediate milestones that a slower team member would be recognized for. How do the members of the team feel about that ?

Personally, I have no problem with that.

As for everything else you mentioned, I hope everyone who wants to see daily team milestones will voice opinions. I'm fine with whatever the majority of my team mates would like to see.

rusdi
American V
MVM
join:2001-04-28
Flippin, AR

1 edit

rusdi to leibold

MVM

to leibold
said by leibold:

Starfish See Profile's program already keeps the data for 3 days (if I remember correctly) and it would be easy enough to extend that to a longer period if needed.

Not sure about that. You see, I delete, (clean out) the site where the posts, and folding records are kept. I usually clean 'em out every two weeks or so, but I always leave the last three days of both posts, and folding, otherwise there would be an enormous number of files, on NZs site.

I think when you first viewed that, you may not have realized that what was there, was what I left from recently deleting.

I don't think I told you that, when we spoke before.

Anyway, if it becomes necessary to leave those files, for whatever method of point milestone is chosen, I suppose they could stay. They are only txt. and not very large, there would just be MANY of them.

EDIT: I guess to be clearer, I upload those data files to that site daily from my computer. I don't think, (I could be wrong) the script "keeps" anything. It merely generates the reports, then I upload 'em to nozero See Profiles site, and post them here in the Daily Milestone post.

Starfish
Per Ardua Ad Astra

join:2000-12-28
Netherlands

2 recommendations

Starfish

said by rusdi:

said by leibold:

Starfish See Profile's program already keeps the data for 3 days (if I remember correctly) and it would be easy enough to extend that to a longer period if needed.

Not sure about that. You see, I delete, (clean out) the site where the posts, and folding records are kept. I usually clean 'em out every two weeks or so, but I always leave the last three days of both posts, and folding, otherwise there would be an enormous number of files, on NZs site.

I think when you first viewed that, you may not have realized that what was there, was what I left from recently deleting.

I don't think I told you that, when we spoke before.

Anyway, if it becomes necessary to leave those files, for whatever method of point milestone is chosen, I suppose they could stay. They are only txt. and not very large, there would just be MANY of them.

EDIT: I guess to be clearer, I upload those data files to that site daily from my computer. I don't think, (I could be wrong) the script "keeps" anything. It merely generates the reports, then I upload 'em to nozero See Profiles site, and post them here in the Daily Milestone post.

Hi, reading somewhat from the sideline and pondering.

My program downloads the team data of a particular day and stores it in a parsed and somewhat compressed format in the 'folding' directory.

It never deletes any of this automatically.

Posts are generated based on the files in this 'folding' directory.

These are never deleted automatically either.

So regarding the keeping of data for 3 days: yes and no

And Den, nice post regarding the way of keeping member daily output data and keep a flat file approach. Today (under the shower :P), I had thoughts along a similar line: Using a separate file with users names as index of an array with the last e.g. 20 days of outputs. Something like a stack, push a new item on top of the list, pop one from the bottom, divide by number of days and one has indeed a moving average..

I had not though it out to the point of your 'word of warning' yet, so many thanks for those remarks!

Now I move a bit back to 'lurking' mode again, to see this discussion about the thoughts about the 'wishes and desires' surrounding the milestone levels / application carry on specifically regarding this topic and not as much connected to what my code can or cannot do.

Not sure how to express this at the moment, but I mean, agreeing with Rusdi: these thoughts should be voiced, no matter if they match or do not match what it currently used, who's going to do what etc..

First get the wishes lined up, then we can move to the ideas about the actual realization.