In order to speed the stats updates, we've suspended the updates for the project WU counts. This does not affect WU counts or points, just the stats pages which tells donors how many WUs they have contributed to each project.
We have polled donors in the past regarding this issue, and there was overwhelming support for this change, especially if it could significantly increase stats updates speeds. After doing some in house tests, we expect that this will greatly enhance stats updates speeds, so we have rolled this out.
Even if this is the main culprit for the slow stats updates, we may put this back in time, once we work out a better scheme for how to update this information and/or get hardware better suited for it. The main issue here is that this is a lot of information, with data going back many, many years, and it has become unwieldy.
For now, this should lead to a pretty dramatic difference in stats update times. It looks like we can now get it done in about 20 minutes, rather than the ~2 hours it was taking previously, for 3 hours worth of stats accumulated.
If this looks good, we will likely switch stats updates to occur more frequently in the future, starting with every 2 hours.
Seems like a good idea there. I've only ever briefly looked at mine in the 2 years I've been folding.
Posted by: Daniel | March 20, 2009 at 06:26 PM
Yeah, while occasionally I find it interesting to look at how many WUs I've done for a particular project, it's much more common that I get slightly annoyed because the stats are still in update mode. It's not a feature I'll miss all that much.
Posted by: Kyle | March 21, 2009 at 12:12 AM
Dr. Pande,
Something I've noticed is that there are a large number of members who are no longer contributing to the projects. How about setting a six-month delete point for failure to update to cut back on the full overhead?
Posted by: brityank | March 21, 2009 at 05:53 PM
I would much prefer to keep them. I check them daily.
I agree with previous comment that it could be removed (I'm not sure if just from stats web site or permanently deleted) for those member that have not contributed for a long time. Six months seems a reasonable period
Posted by: Trotador | March 22, 2009 at 07:08 AM
Hi all,
I hardly ever look at the WU's per project, so if it drasticly improves stat-updating.
On the above mentioning of deleting inactive users or cpu's, i disagree. It will impact the team-scores of teams that hold inactive members. Unless there is a way to make the results of those inactive users and CPU's static and therefore removing the need to process them again and again. You should never manipulate stats by deleting information.
Cheers kamaradski
Posted by: Kamaradski | March 22, 2009 at 11:33 AM
What about just running the project-specific stats update less frequently, e.g. once every month? While people check those lists less frequently, they are still interesting.
I disagree re: deleting old members. Not only would it mess up team statistics, but it is also unfair to those members, since they did at some point make a contribution. It might be possible to achieve some optimization by updating "dormant" members' statistics less frequently, however, depending on the organization of the database.
Posted by: Stephen Dewey | March 23, 2009 at 08:28 AM
I definitely am against this big time. Because I for one want to know what projects I'm working on, and how much work I've put against each project. The reason being is, if I'm really interested in helping out with Alzheimers, finding out that I am doing a lot of work relating to that, feels good.
Why don't we move it to just once a week update.
Posted by: Luke Elliott | March 25, 2009 at 09:12 PM
It's a pity that you don't update it at all anymore. I think it would be better if, like many others said here, you update these numbers once a month or something lika that.
Posted by: Johan | March 26, 2009 at 06:37 PM
Yeah, just like many others here, maybe once a day, once a week, once every other week, but no longer then once a month. I think you should do a poll before you decide on what people want. I for one would like it to occur once a week at the longest.
Posted by: Jim Smitts | March 26, 2009 at 10:43 PM
There was a poll, and majority voted for omitting the project/wu count in order to speed up the stats update.
Posted by: slls | March 27, 2009 at 07:20 AM
"If so, what's the point in telling people anything about what WU they are doing."
Knowing what WU you are working on can be very helpful for the devs/mods for debugging purposes (both their issues and your issues). It also allows you to make rough comparisons with other people as to how well you computer is folding.
I will somewhat redact my earlier comment and say that I wouldn't have a problem with the project count being updated on a less regular basis. Is it possible to keep that info stored without updating the main database, or would doing that lead to slowdowns elsewhere?
Posted by: Kyle | March 27, 2009 at 01:40 PM
how about every 15 menits update score
Posted by: nelson | March 27, 2009 at 02:58 PM