Folding Forum

If you go to: http://folding.stanford.edu/client/
you still can see your points.

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to let you all now that my system just pulled a fresh flat file, so we're updating properly again! Expect EOC's first update in about an hour and a half or maybe a little bit more.

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I'd say that either the people responsible for taking care of this are still on holiday or it's a pretty big deal to fix. It would be nice go get some feedback. I guess the bottom line is that it's none of our business.

Whether you fold for the points -- or not -- really doesn't matter. What matters is the primary communications mechanism between Stanford and virtually all of its donors -- the statistics server update system -- is broken and has been for days now. I won't go on-and-on like I have in the past about the basic level of respect Stanford (IT/Pande Lab, whomever) should have for donors contributing their efforts and in return expecting the results of those efforts to be reflected in a timely and accurate way, nor will I compare how any successful business would respond when its primary communications channel with the vast majority of it's audience goes completely silent. It's all been said many times before. We all know what the right answer is regarding the statistics issue and it's darn simple: 1) A better piece of hardware, and 2) Instituting a exponential improvement to the process of notifying donors within few hours of identifying the problem, combined with a sprinkle of, "sorry this happened", with a smidgen of, "we're working on it", mix in a blend of, "you won't lose points, and your systems are still contributing results for our researchers", demonstrating the issue is being taken seriously by something to the effect of, "we will report back as soon as we know more", and actually providing, a once-every-12-hour update, and then closing out with, "when we determine what went wrong, we'll rework our systems and/or processes to avoid experiencing this issue again". 99.999% of us would be super happy with that response if delivered in a timely way. I sincerely doubt anyone is expecting miracles to be performed over the weekend, or frankly at any time, to deal with a simple stats server problem. However, given its importance to the community at large as the undeniable tether between Stanford and its donors, a really simple, sincere and timely two sentence acknowledgment would go a long way to tamping down frustration and reinforcing appreciation for donor contributions.

SteveWillis wrote:I'd say that either the people responsible for taking care of this are still on holiday or it's a pretty big deal to fix. It would be nice go get some feedback. I guess the bottom line is that it's none of our business.

Other than this post on the previous page, with the link to the Blog post, what else specifically, were you wanting in regards to feedback?

viewtopic.php?p=288407#p288407

Thanks PS3EdOlkkola. Well said.

7im wrote:

SteveWillis wrote:I'd say that either the people responsible for taking care of this are still on holiday or it's a pretty big deal to fix. It would be nice go get some feedback. I guess the bottom line is that it's none of our business.

Other than this post on the previous page, with the link to the Blog post, what else specifically, were you wanting in regards to feedback?

viewtopic.php?p=288407#p288407

I missed that but going back through the posts I see it now. It wasn't really obvious but thanks for pointing it out. It probably deserved a flashing arrow. So thanks. From the other posts I'd say I wasn't the only one who missed it. So for what it's worth here is the link again: https://folding.stanford.edu/home/fah-w ... in-motion/

Stats are up - EOC updated.

It appears that the problem has been resolved.

To be fair to the team, once I brought it their attention on their Slack channel they moved swiftly to begin the process of resolving the issue and posted into this forum.

To be fair to the team, I saw this thread just after it started and could have pinged Pande Group much earlier. But stats outages are not critical infrastructure, and are often not resolved until after the Holiday weekend anyway. Not much use bothering people at their BBQ, pool party, or <insert child's activity here>. Besides, I was enjoying the last days of summer smoking a pork shoulder and marinading in cervazes. I'll jump to next time like usual (and get about the same result).

7im wrote:Other than this post on the previous page, with the link to the Blog post, what else specifically, were you wanting in regards to feedback?

viewtopic.php?p=288407#p288407

The blog was the first place I checked prior to adding my post (page one of this thread) - the blog post wasn't there then, and that was Tuesday night. There were also no posts from PG. What people are saying is, this response is too slow.
I think the 'feedback' donors would like is clear - echoed by a number of people - keep the donors in the loop as to what is going on in a more timely manner ... within hours not days.

k1wi wrote:To be fair to the team, once I brought it their attention on their Slack channel they moved swiftly to begin the process of resolving the issue and posted into this forum.

I think the issue is that the team should have been the first to know and should have been notifying the donors, not the other way around.

Their server monitoring and reliability seems to be some way behind even what many donors are running on their DIY setups - People volunteering such levels of time and effort would be further encouraged if they could see it being matched by those running the project.

Anyway, stats are back up for now and it's always nice to see 11 Million points in an update - might be a while before I see that again!

caintry_boy wrote:I am the same, I Fold because "Oldtimers" disease runs in my family along with cancer and heart disease, in fact I just had a quadruple bypass done July 5th. I use the points to gauge my output on my machines...

I started 2000 with a quad-bypass - it's a good long-term fix.

We are sorry the system went down!

I've read the thread and noted all your input regarding the communication.
We will bring it up at the next FAH staff meeting and get back to you.

Thank you,
Anton Thynell