LHC@home

I am not impressed with the quality of BOINC web pages, so I started working on making the pages XHTML 1.0 strict compatible. I made a nice progress, and sent my changes to David Anderson, the main developer of BOINC system so that the changes would be checked into CVS and made public.

But sadly, David responded:

Thanks for the diff,
but XHTML conformance is not a goal - I like being able to use <p> as a separator.

I got no response to continued attempt to persuade him that XHTML was good. I even suggested using <p /> as a separator if he wanted - it would still be a valid code and work as intended. No response.

Seeing that there is no other option to persuade David (and make use of my work), I ask you to sign a petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/bncxhtml/. Once we have enough signatures, I will send the link to David with hopes to succeed.

Sign the petition

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PrimeGrid
Administrator

You have completely failed to persuade me, for one reason: Why?

You may have some personal crusade to rid the world of <p>, but some objective description of why this should be of any interest to the rest of us would be helpful.

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Gaspode the UnDressed
http://www.littlevale.co.uk

It's nothing to do with <p>s. It's about the general style of the pages. When you program in c++, for example, you are forced to be strict with your code and errors are not allowed. In HTML errors are worked around by browsers and there happen to be differences between the handling. For example, in PG I had different bubble styles in lists when compared valid and invalid HTML, and also incorrect color coding in the standard boinc pages forced the color to be displayed as black (talking about result pages).

While most of you would not be affected by the changes, it would help to improve the quality of the pages and improve BOINC reputation at the same time. Believe me, there are people who care about it.

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PrimeGrid
Administrator

You have my John Hancock. Best of wishes! I applaud your effort to make this community better!

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1) It's about the science. Pretty web pages won't do squat.
2) It's their sand box. You can always go play someplace else.

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most of you would not be affected by the changes

So why make a big fuss?

Believe me, there are people who care about it.

Yes - at the time of writing, 22 people care about it. (the number of signatures on your 'petition'). That's 22 amongst tens of thousands of BOINC participants. Hardly a convincing argument. I suspect I could find more people concerned that gay whales are being discrimnated against.

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Gaspode the UnDressed
http://www.littlevale.co.uk

most of you would not be affected by the changes

So why make a big fuss?

Believe me, there are people who care about it.

Yes - at the time of writing, 22 people care about it. (the number of signatures on your 'petition'). That's 22 amongst tens of thousands of BOINC participants. Hardly a convincing argument. I suspect I could find more people concerned that gay whales are being discrimnated against.

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Rytis is trying to make this community better. If he feels he should spend his talents this way, then so be it. He is doing SOMETHING and I feel he will make everything look great.

Mike, Petitions are usually not that effective whether one has 10 or 10,000 signatures. Anyways, just because he only has 22 signatures, does not mean he does not have a convincing arguement.

I would also have to say that your calculations are a bit off. You should not count everyone in the BOINC community. You should only count those that visit the forums. From the people that visit the forums, you need to see how many DIFFERENT people visited this thread. Then, how many people were actually motivated enough to go to the website and "sign" the petition.

From what I see, Rytis is not making a big fuss. He simply posted his side of the story and responded to criticism in a polite manner. You have taken this arguement way out of context with your "gay whale analogy."

All factors considered, that aint bad! At least someone is standing up for what they believe in!

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Mike, Petitions are usually not that effective whether one has 10 or 10,000 signatures. Anyways, just because he only has 22 signatures, does not mean he does not have a convincing arguement.
...

Seems to me the point of a petition is not to present an argument that is convincing on logical grounds: the point is to add democratic weight to a hopefully / allegedly already convincing argument.

Mike is right if he means that 22 sigs is not a convincing democratic pressure - it is not, not even within this forum.

You are right that however democratic (or not) has no bearing on how logically convincuing the argument is.

But even if you are both right that is no reason not to vote for it in the event that you do find it logically convincing. It is barely more than a click, hardly any effort at all.

If you disagree, don't sign. If you don't think the issue matters, don't sign (that is why I haven't signed up).

But those who do agree with Rytis then please sign up. It is better to speak up and be refused or ignored than to stay silent for fear of being refused or ignored.

edit- add:

At least someone is standing up for what they believe in!

agree totally - that is precisely what petitions are good for. I commend Rytis and everyone who signs up because they believe in the issue.

River~~

Mike, Petitions are usually not that effective whether one has 10 or 10,000 signatures. Anyways, just because he only has 22 signatures, does not mean he does not have a convincing arguement.

I would also have to say that your calculations are a bit off. You should not count everyone in the BOINC community. You should only count those that visit the forums. From the people that visit the forums, you need to see how many DIFFERENT people visited this thread. Then, how many people were actually motivated enough to go to the website and "sign" the petition.

The argument is obviously not convincing. Only 24 people (as I write this) feel sufficiently motivated to sign, and David Anderson has already said he's not interested.

As to my calculations, it is appropriate to count all BOINC participants. Everyone has the opportunity to do what Rytis has done. So far, only one has done so, and only 23 others think it's a good idea.

I'd say the community as a whole isn't interested. Rytis should perhaps spend his time doing something more appropriate on Primegrid.

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Gaspode the UnDressed
http://www.littlevale.co.uk

The argument is obviously not convincing. Only 24 people (as I write this) feel sufficiently motivated to sign, and David Anderson has already said he's not interested.

As to my calculations, it is appropriate to count all BOINC participants. Everyone has the opportunity to do what Rytis has done. So far, only one has done so, and only 23 others think it's a good idea.

I'd say the community as a whole isn't interested. Rytis should perhaps spend his time doing something more appropriate on Primegrid.

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I would have to agree with you that this petition will not increase the pressure on David Anderson to do anything. Perhaps Rytis, more than anyone else, realizes this due to the poor response rate. Due to the low response, it probably doesn't matter how the numbers are crunched (pun intended).

However, to say Rytis should do something on Primegrid probably is not the best attitude to have. I applaud his effort both with the Wiki and the petition. Oh well........Whatever.

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1) It's about the science. Pretty web pages won't do squat.
2) It's their sand box. You can always go play someplace else.

1) Incorrect! DC has three scientific components: each project's individual work, the general computer science of DC, and the necessary social science of DC. Whether "pretty web pages" do squat is an empirical question that no person (you and Rytis included) can answer at the moment!

2) Only to a degree. Anderson has lost the right to claim exclusive domain over BOINC by obtaining public funding for the software development and by deploying it freely without restricitve license to other projects. Telling people to "go play someplace else" is also counterproductive to the goals of DC.

I have signed Rytis' petition because I believe that there may be some value to the implemetation (Rytis has described more details on the PG message boards), he has done all of the work already, and Anderson needs badly to be reminded about the "people" side of DC.

I sing..

always standars...I'm not the only one with problems with not standar web pages. Ask for XHTML, Ask also for WAI

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Besides if scientific comunity hasn't learnd the value of standards than how can we expect the rest to do it?
As a scientific project BOINC should leed by example.

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Help me understand the process.

Does this David Anderson "own" BOINC or the web pages it uses?

Are these pages used in each project or only at BOINC central or where?

How does the fact that they are not XHTML impact your personal goals?


Could you build a "betterBOINC" to front-end the BOINC pages and deliver them in XHTML?

If you could, would they be "so much better" that the world would beat a path to your portal to BOINC?

It seems a more effective technique of pesuasion would be to build your own better frontend.
If it really is "better", people will want to use your pages...
You could even sell ad space...

Or, if "it's really only about the science and not the pages," then natural selection will cause your pages to die out...

Finally, regarding standards.
They are a "good thing(tm)."

But, if they are missing widely desired function (such as <p>) then perhaps they are poorly or prematurely standardized....

Please help me understand better.
thanks
Phil

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Help me understand the process.

Does this David Anderson "own" BOINC or the web pages it uses?

Are these pages used in each project or only at BOINC central or where?

How does the fact that they are not XHTML impact your personal goals?


Could you build a "betterBOINC" to front-end the BOINC pages and deliver them in XHTML?

If you could, would they be "so much better" that the world would beat a path to your portal to BOINC?

It seems a more effective technique of pesuasion would be to build your own better frontend.
If it really is "better", people will want to use your pages...
You could even sell ad space...

Or, if "it's really only about the science and not the pages," then natural selection will cause your pages to die out...

Finally, regarding standards.
They are a "good thing(tm)."

But, if they are missing widely desired function (such as <p>) then perhaps they are poorly or prematurely standardized....

Please help me understand better.
thanks
Phil

In a way, David Anderson is the owner of BOINC, in that he's the project architect.
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/contact.php

From the Boinc website : "BOINC is a software platform for distributed computing using volunteered computer resources..."
So, Boinc's only job is to be a distributed computing platform.

Items like 'GUI's are just eye candy, you can remove the graphical part and have a perfectly good distributed computing project.
Theoretically, they could just leave boinc as a command line executable and fulfil the distributed computing requirements.

To streamline things, we would remove graphics and have text based web pages for forums and stats.
Once it's text based, they could just have users telnet in, instead of using HTTP protocol and it's overhead with headers and tags and whatnot.

The forums, which are a drain of server resources, could be replaced by newsgroups on usenet. such as NEWS://comp.distributed

</humor>

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I'm not the LHC Alex. Just a number cruncher like everyone else here.

Help me understand the process.

Does this David Anderson "own" BOINC or the web pages it uses?

Are these pages used in each project or only at BOINC central or where?

How does the fact that they are not XHTML impact your personal goals?


Could you build a "betterBOINC" to front-end the BOINC pages and deliver them in XHTML?

If you could, would they be "so much better" that the world would beat a path to your portal to BOINC?

It seems a more effective technique of pesuasion would be to build your own better frontend.
If it really is "better", people will want to use your pages...
You could even sell ad space...

Or, if "it's really only about the science and not the pages," then natural selection will cause your pages to die out...

Finally, regarding standards.
They are a "good thing(tm)."

But, if they are missing widely desired function (such as <p>) then perhaps they are poorly or prematurely standardized....

Please help me understand better.
thanks
Phil

In a way, David Anderson is the owner of BOINC, in that he's the project architect.
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/contact.php

From the Boinc website : "BOINC is a software platform for distributed computing using volunteered computer resources..."
So, Boinc's only job is to be a distributed computing platform.

Items like 'GUI's are just eye candy, you can remove the graphical part and have a perfectly good distributed computing project.
Theoretically, they could just leave boinc as a command line executable and fulfil the distributed computing requirements.

To streamline things, we would remove graphics and have text based web pages for forums and stats.
Once it's text based, they could just have users telnet in, instead of using HTTP protocol and it's overhead with headers and tags and whatnot.

The forums, which are a drain of server resources, could be replaced by newsgroups on usenet. such as NEWS://comp.distributed

</humor>

thank you.
THat helps set the context a bit.

Is it possible for RYTIS to front-end the BOINC pages and make his own easier to use web site that fulfills his desire for XHTML?

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thank you.
THat helps set the context a bit.

Is it possible for RYTIS to front-end the BOINC pages and make his own easier to use web site that fulfills his desire for XHTML?

The BOINC pages are project specific. That is, each project hosts its own pages based on the original BOINC template. Rytis couldn't host the pages for each project, and in any case, it wouldn't be appropriate. It still wouldn't address his desire for XHTML since the underlying templates wouldn't be XHTML-compliant anyway.

This change would need to be done by David Anderson's team, if it needs to be done at all.

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Gaspode the UnDressed
http://www.littlevale.co.uk

Rytis couldn't host the pages for each project, and in any case, it wouldn't be appropriate.

What do you mean by "not appropriate?"
Can you be more specific?

Further,
I wasn't suggesting that he host the pages, but rather that he provide a "universal BOINC portal" that read the project pages as they are (with the non-standard code (such as "<p>") and output them in his beloved XHTML.

This would provide the world with the standard output that he desires and would provide a "test bed" to see how important the standard XHTML really was with empirical data based on usage and demand rather than "democratic" opinion.

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I wasn't suggesting that he host the pages, but rather that he provide a "universal BOINC portal" that read the project pages as they are (with the non-standard code (such as "<p>") and output them in his beloved XHTML.

What on earth would be the point of this? As a participant I don't care if the pages are compliant with W3C, XHTML or ancient greek provided my browser renders them correctly. I'll continue to use the project web site rather than any 'portal', so pages that I see will remain as they are. I suspect most participants will do likewise. If Rytis wants to do this as a technical exercise for his own interest that's fine, but it'll serve no useful purpose.

...and that's really the point. Rytis wants to update the pages to adhere to some standard that he's nominated. David Anderson disagrees, and is continuing with the standard to which he's been working.

Do I care? Not one bit.

If we ever see a day when browsers will only render XHTML-compliant documents then the argument will be different, but no browser writer is going to produce such a beast when the vast majority of the web does not (and probably won't ever) comply with that standard.

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Gaspode the UnDressed
http://www.littlevale.co.uk

I wasn't suggesting that he host the pages, but rather that he provide a "universal BOINC portal" that read the project pages as they are (with the non-standard code (such as "<p>") and output them in his beloved XHTML.

What on earth would be the point of this? ...
<gratuitous rant snipped>...

As I indicated in an earlier post, the point would be to determine based on actual evidence of usage, whether or not it really mattered if the the pages were available in XHTML.

I suspect, as you ranted, that it REALLY DOESN'T MAKE any substantive difference if they are XHTML or not.

But, rather than wasting David Andersons time on some XHTML "grail quest", RYTIS could develop DATA, rather than opinion, to support his view.

In the meantime, he would be making the beloved XHTML availble to all 100 people worldwide who cared.


I would by the way support (and sign) a petition along the lines of "Dear David, we really appreciate all that you do and all that you've done. Don't waste your even reading let alone responding to cosmetic suggestions. Science first."


Mike, I hope that we actually agree that XHTML is a waste of time -

My point was that if any time is to be wasted, it should be that of the requestor and not that of the person who actually developed much of BOINC.

On the other hand, I'm humble enough to recognize that I might be wrong, and so if RYTIS were to build the BOINC XHTML Universal Portal, then he could show its true value with data.


Finally, what did you mean by the phrase "...not appropriate."
I still don't understand that part of your earlier post.

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