Question To Be Or Not To Be involved in FB sprints

[Orange Kid]

Ok, so I guess I am the one to blame for dragging us down the FB sprint rabbit hole..........

So I have put up a pole to see if we would like to continue playing or not. It has a 7 day time limit.

There are other challenges out there to participate in. WCG has challenges from time to time as well as PG and the Pentathalon. I am sure more can be found if we look.

Votes and thoughts are welcome.

 

[lane42]

Sometimes.

I guess if there's no rule about it it's not cheating. It just
sucks playing 2 against 1 every sprint.

 

[lane42]

Well, I can inform you guys that XS is now officially done with FB.

That just means more guy's for TSBT. They won't have to jump around
anymore

 

[Icecold]

Megacruncher didn't resign without comment or defense. He explained all to the sprint committee before he resigned and said all seemed ok about it. Ask Fardingle.

What would you expect them to do, say "no, please don't resign, please stay?" What happened had already happened, what possible thing could there have been to gain by the committee arguing with Megacruncher about his intentions?

What I am genuinely curious of, though, is who on the committee voted for ODLK and what their thought process was. That's not an accusation or anything, I genuinely would like to know. Based on what happened in October it seems unlikely that any member of the committee was not aware of the limited tasks, low performance server, etc. Assuming Megacruncher had voted for it, did he ever say why? I'm pretty sure I asked that in the FB thread of all the committee members, but if there ever was a response to it I did not see it.

In a hypothetical world where nobody wanted an unfair advantage on a project, why vote for ODLK, a project that maxes out at a low number of tasks and would in no way ever be capable of supplying all the teams with tasks?

 

[scole]

What would you expect them to do, say "no, please don't resign, please stay?" What happened had already happened, what possible thing could there have been to gain by the committee arguing with Megacruncher about his intentions?

What I am genuinely curious of, though, is who on the committee voted for ODLK and what their thought process was. That's not an accusation or anything, I genuinely would like to know. Based on what happened in October it seems unlikely that any member of the committee was not aware of the limited tasks, low performance server, etc. Assuming Megacruncher had voted for it, did he ever say why? I'm pretty sure I asked that in the FB thread of all the committee members, but if there ever was a response to it I did not see it.

In a hypothetical world where nobody wanted an unfair advantage on a project, why vote for ODLK, a project that maxes out at a low number of tasks and would in no way ever be capable of supplying all the teams with tasks?

Actually, I think they did ask him not to resign. Ask Fardingle about that and who voted for ODLK. I don't know.

 

[scole]

I guess if there's no rule about it it's not cheating. It just
sucks playing 2 against 1 every sprint.

Taat, OcUK and HardOCP all do the same thing and switch teams but you call it cheating if TSBT and XS do it? Really?

 

[Icecold]

Taat, OcUK and HardOCP all do the same thing and switch teams but you call it cheating if TSBT and XS do it? Really?

LOL man, maybe we should look at getting you a hooked on phonics membership. His post said "I guess if there's no rule about it, it's not cheating"

 

[Icecold]

On the subject, though, in an alternate universe where all of this didn't go to shit, this could have been a good Formula BOINC year with XS and P3D battling it out for the number one spot, us and you guys(TSBT) battling it out for 3 and 4, OCUK doing their own thing and fighting BOINC Italy at the top of league 2, and everybody crunching on their own teams because it was competitive at every position.

 

[scole]

LOL man, maybe we should look at getting you a hooked on phonics membership. His post said "I guess if there's no rule about it, it's not cheating"

I read it just fine. He was being passive-aggressive about calling it cheating. He apparently thinks it's cheating anyway. What about you?

 

[Icecold]

The dual team/2 teams operating as effectively one team stuff is infuriating to deal with as an opposing team during a competition, but it seems like it's considered fair play by a lot or most people. I'm also not sure I understand the appeal, because you don't really know how your team actually did if it's being propped up by a bunch of people from another team.

There are probably a lot of "grey area" things that may not be "cheating", and there's basically no written rules on, but would be considered by most to be unfair, or unethical, or bad sportsmanship(I'm not talking about you guys switching between XS and TSBT). When we all got into it last time about ODLK in October, that was the point I was trying to get across unsuccessfully was that there are lots of teams that know how to spin up extra BOINC instances and change their CPU counts, and do all the "advanced bunkering" and that just because we all know how to do it doesn't give us all a license to be irresponsible about it. I posted this earlier in this thread -

If you were one of 3 guys crunching on a league 2 team and you can't get any tasks you're not thinking "oh man ___ team is great they really stuck it to ____ team" you're thinking "man this competition sucks".

 

[Fardringle]

I've already explained what happened with Megacruncher and davidBAM and I've proven other members were able to get plenty of work loading up the project was announced. Megacruncher didn't resign without comment or defense. He explained all to the sprint committee before he resigned and said all seemed ok about it. Ask Fardingle.

You have explained what you want to believe. The simple fact that Megacruncher knew for absolute certain that ODLK had been selected as the sprint project, and then chose to download a large number of tasks two days before the sprint was announced, and didn't return a single one of those tasks on MANY computers until after the sprint started, makes it pretty obvious that he fully intended to cheat and bunker ahead of time. It is possible that DavidBAM simply saw what Megacruncher was doing (making it OBVIOUS that the next sprint would be ODLK) and decided to join in. There's no proof that he had any shared info which is why we stopped accusing him of cheating, and only pointed out that if he could tell that Megacruncher was cheating, it's pretty hard for anyone else to claim that he wasn't. Unless you just refuse to accept it.

Megacruncher didn't "explain" anything directly to the other committee members. I don't recall the exact wording and the FB site is broken so I can't log in to get an exact quote, but he basically said that he was leaving the committee because he was tired of the accusations. Systemviper said he should stay and try to work it out, I told him that whether it was intentional or not it did look bad for him to bunker before the sprint, and I don't remember if Timbo said anything or not. As for me, yes I was "ok about it" when he decided to leave because the attempt at cheating was perfectly clear by that time and very inappropriate for a committee member.

 

[scole]

You have explained what you want to believe. The simple fact that Megacruncher knew for absolute certain that ODLK had been selected as the sprint project, and then chose to download a large number of tasks two days before the sprint was announced, and didn't return a single one of those tasks on MANY computers until after the sprint started, makes it pretty obvious that he fully intended to cheat and bunker ahead of time. It is possible that DavidBAM simply saw what Megacruncher was doing (making it OBVIOUS that the next sprint would be ODLK) and decided to join in. There's no proof that he had any shared info which is why we stopped accusing him of cheating, and only pointed out that if he could tell that Megacruncher was cheating, it's pretty hard for anyone else to claim that he wasn't. Unless you just refuse to accept it.

Megacruncher didn't "explain" anything directly to the other committee members. I don't recall the exact wording and the FB site is broken so I can't log in to get an exact quote, but he basically said that he was leaving the committee because he was tired of the accusations. Systemviper said he should stay and try to work it out, I told him that whether it was intentional or not it did look bad for him to bunker before the sprint, and I don't remember if Timbo said anything or not. As for me, yes I was "ok about it" when he decided to leave because the attempt at cheating was perfectly clear by that time and very inappropriate for a committee member.

How did ODLK get voted for?

 

[Fardringle]

How did ODLK get voted for?

We have been using a poll with all available projects listed. Each committee member can vote for up to 10 projects. The project with the most total votes is selected. A second vote would be taken if there is a tie, but there hasn't been a tie yet. I was not able to see other member votes and I only saw the totals, so I don't know who voted for what project, except that three of five committee members (Sebastien was included in the voting but I don't know if he actually voted or not) picked ODLK as one of their choices.


No idea what will happen with the next sprint, if anything, since nobody can log in to the FB site right now...

 

[crashtech]

Once upon a time, I thought DC was great in part because it was relatively free of fighting, drama, and hard feelings. Those were the days!

 

[pututu]

Taat, OcUK and HardOCP all do the same thing and switch teams but you call it cheating if TSBT and XS do it? Really?

This thread is about participation in the FB Sprint. I'm writing this based on my personal experiences/opinions/observations as a [H] participant during the FB sprint challenges. The most important point in this issue is that the FB sprint trust and integrity as a challenge event has been severely damaged and there is no more proper gentlemen's agreement. Let's look at what has happened.

Remember that FB sprint is a 3+1 day event. Short and sweet but the end result can be easily manipulated by all the tactics that have already been discussed, so let me summarize.

1. The perception that someone has "insider" information ahead of other participants. Whether it happened or not, is not my main discussion point here but to maintain the trust and integrity of the overall FB sprint, we should all act like a true gentlemen. A good example is in stock market trading. Let say I'm a CEO of a public company and I have a good feeling that my company performance in this ending quarter is going to be bad, so I secretly tell my family, relatives or even some very close friends about it. Is this fair? I think this is what is happening here. Granted there is no direct money involved here but some folks do spend lots of electricity and hardware.

2. Switching teams during sprint. Since this is a very short event, such tactic can impact the teams outcome in sprint. Ok I'm guilty of that but let's us remember who started this tactic first in the FB sprint. My team didn't initiate this tactic in FB sprint and I think we know who the teams are. I wouldn't bring a baseball bat or a knife to a fight if I know someone else is bringing a gun, right? This started off a bad behavior in my opinion for the FB sprint, though there is no rules against but it will do harm to the integrity of the FB sprint event. Same goes with using a weak account to hide something and there are many other tactics but these are the two most common tactics.

3. [H] started off in League 3 and we did well in sprint and overall FB standing in 2017 without any help from other teams. We reached a total FB credit of 1252 which still stand today as a record in terms of total points. Ok it is league 3 but it is what it is. [H] moved on to League 2 in 2018 and we took a top spot again with XS in second spot. This is where we started noticing this switching team behavior becoming prominent during the sprint. In my opinion this was jeopardizing the integrity of the sprint event. In 2019, I think this is where all of us are doing the team switching regularly during the sprint (SUSA, XS, [H], TAAT). We know which teams do more switching (one can go to the Free-dc stats and do the count during the sprint period) but damage has already been done. Then somewhere in fall 2019, [H] decided not to seriously participate in the FB sprint because the integrity of the FB sprint event has been completely lost. We didn't put any effort in the last five sprints of the year and we got zero points. Since then [H] is not active in FB (just a handful of crunchers) and late last year we discussed about pulling out from FB competition all together but decided to give this year another try. Yes, I personally did contact Sebastian about us pulling [H] out of FB late last year. This is how bad it had become. I'm not surprise that TAAT is taking a hard look again at FB sprint participation.

So really, we are doing damage to the FB sprint event. I guess some people couldn't care less because there is no such rules and the rules if exist cannot be easily enforced. I think we should all stop and look in the mirror. Where are all the gentlemen's agreements?

 

[StefanR5R]

The dual team/2 teams operating as effectively one team stuff is infuriating to deal with as an opposing team during a competition, but it seems like it's considered fair play by a lot or most people.

No.
First of all, there are not many people who switch teams during a contest to begin with.
And of these, there are few who publicly defend it as a somehow legitimate practice.
And their primary defense seems to be that others are doing it too.

 

[SystemVipers]

Fardringle said:

You have explained what you want to believe. The simple fact that Megacruncher knew for absolute certain that ODLK had been selected as the sprint project, and then chose to download a large number of tasks two days before the sprint was announced, and didn't return a single one of those tasks on MANY computers until after the sprint started, makes it pretty obvious that he fully intended to cheat and bunker ahead of time. It is possible that DavidBAM simply saw what Megacruncher was doing (making it OBVIOUS that the next sprint would be ODLK) and decided to join in. There's no proof that he had any shared info which is why we stopped accusing him of cheating, and only pointed out that if he could tell that Megacruncher was cheating, it's pretty hard for anyone else to claim that he wasn't. Unless you just refuse to accept it.

Megacruncher didn't "explain" anything directly to the other committee members. I don't recall the exact wording and the FB site is broken so I can't log in to get an exact quote, but he basically said that he was leaving the committee because he was tired of the accusations. Systemviper said he should stay and try to work it out, I told him that whether it was intentional or not it did look bad for him to bunker before the sprint, and I don't remember if Timbo said anything or not. As for me, yes I was "ok about it" when he decided to leave because the attempt at cheating was perfectly clear by that time and very inappropriate for a committee member.

@scole You better stop posting Bull*&^%*&% or I'll blow this whole thing up but I don't want to sink the FB
I agree with @Fardringle 100%

- Mega Cheated, Then "Ran Away" He had a chance to "Man Up", save some of his credibility, but chose to run away...
Do you think I was asking about ODLK or running it early that I wouldn't think my teammates
wouldn't pick up on it. Everyone here is very smart, Plus we had a code of conduct and he violated it!

- Dave did what he did because he wanted to win like most of us. I don't really think he is part of the conversation.

there is more scole but that isn't for public consumption, so stop spreading the "Big Lie"

First (my POV) no one else's!
1. Sorry Taat for posting here but it's the only open conversation.
2. F is 100% spot on!
3. the real issue is Mega Cheated.
4 But the bigger issue for some of us including me is will FB survive. I WANT t o keep the sprints going.
5 XS quit, I have my opinion on that but out of respect for my team, I only gave it to them.
6 I will keep doing sprints if they keep on going... But not for XS since they have dropped out, plus i WILL NOT join TSBT out or personal reasons.
7 If TaaT is dropping out that sucks too, seems with XS out now you guys can Rock but again my opinion.
8 Massive Bunkering and Team Switching is the real reason FB is dying, A SC member cheating just pushed it over the edge.
9 Has anyone even been able to log on to FB, it might be dead already?

I have lots more to say but I think this is enough. I might read this change something but this was another key clicking, button mashing, hothead post

respect
steve

 

[Icecold]

No.
First of all, there are not many people who switch teams during a contest to begin with.
And of these, there are few who publicly defend it as a somehow legitimate practice.
And their primary defense seems to be that others are doing it too.

Now that I've thought about that more I think you're right. I was viewing that with a bias based on the response I received on the FB Forum when I suggested as part of a gentleman's agreement us all agreeing to not do that. It makes sense, though, that I would not receive a positive response to that proposal when the people I was discussing it with use that tactic frequently. If all members of all teams were asked that question, the vast majority would probably say it is not fair play, and is bad sportsmanship.

 

[Skillz]

Taat, OcUK and HardOCP all do the same thing and switch teams but you call it cheating if TSBT and XS do it? Really?

As it's been said before. There is a specific group that started doing this and everyone else who began doing it afterwards did as a reaction to the first group.

 

[Icecold]

https://forums.anandtech.com/goto/post?id=40475571
9 Has anyone even been able to log on to FB, it might be dead already?

I haven't been able to login to the FB forum for 2-3 days, and any time I look there are 0 registered users logged in so I think it's affecting everybody. I've seen that same error 'The submitted form was invalid. Try submitting again.' before on another PHPBB forum, so hopefully it means there's a service or something Sebastien needs to restart.

 

[crashtech]

@SystemVipers , thanks for your post. You have my respect.

 

[SystemVipers]

As it's been said before. There is a specific group that started doing this and everyone else who began doing it afterwards did as a reaction to the first group.

I agree Skillz, But we have to deal with the present, not how we got here and just look forward.
I think that is part of the problem, look at League #3 that is our future if we don't' come together as a group.
Crunching 1st, FB, Team, Individual, dunno that just flowed out

 

[scole]

https://forums.anandtech.com/goto/post?id=40475571

@scole You better stop posting Bull*&^%*&% or I'll blow this whole thing up but I don't want to sink the FB
I agree with @Fardringle 100%

- Mega Cheated, Then "Ran Away" He had a chance to "Man Up", save some of his credibility, but chose to run away...
Do you think I was asking about ODLK or running it early that I wouldn't think my teammates
wouldn't pick up on it. Everyone here is very smart, Plus we had a code of conduct and he violated it!

- Dave did what he did because he wanted to win like most of us. I don't really think he is part of the conversation.

there is more scole but that isn't for public consumption, so stop spreading the "Big Lie"

First (my POV) no one else's!
1. Sorry Taat for posting here but it's the only open conversation.
2. F is 100% spot on!
3. the real issue is Mega Cheated.
4 But the bigger issue for some of us including me is will FB survive. I WANT t o keep the sprints going.
5 XS quit, I have my opinion on that but out of respect for my team, I only gave it to them.
6 I will keep doing sprints if they keep on going... But not for XS since they have dropped out, plus i WILL NOT join TSBT out or personal reasons.
7 If TaaT is dropping out that sucks too, seems with XS out now you guys can Rock but again my opinion.
8 Massive Bunkering and Team Switching is the real reason FB is dying, A SC member cheating just pushed it over the edge.
9 Has anyone even been able to log on to FB, it might be dead already?

I have lots more to say but I think this is enough. I might read this change something but this was another key clicking, button mashing, hothead post

respect
steve

Everything I've posted is the truth. I don't think Megacruncher meant to cheat and I don't believe he told Dave anything. It's all unfortunate but it happened and I stand by my teammates.

 

[Skillz]

I agree Skillz, But we have to deal with the present, not how we got here and just look forward.
I think that is part of the problem, look at League #3 that is our future if we don't' come together as a group.
Crunching 1st, FB, Team, Individual, dunno that just flowed out

You are right, but if we are to improve the future we need not forget the mistakes of the past.

 

[SystemVipers]

Everything I've posted is the truth. I don't think Megacruncher meant to cheat and I don't believe he told Dave anything. It's all unfortunate but it happened and I stand by my teammates.

Ok well here is the Straight Up (My POV)

1.

Actually, I think they did ask him not to resign. Ask Fardingle about that and who voted for ODLK. I don't know.

Your wrong, confirmed by 2 SC members, so nuff said!

2.

Taat, OcUK and HardOCP all do the same thing and switch teams but you call it cheating if TSBT and XS do it? Really?

Stop bringing up your past POV, if we keep looking back the we have no future, let's all look forward to what it should be.

3.

I've already explained what happened with Megacruncher and davidBAM, Megacruncher feels terrible for his decision to crunch ODLK but he had no idea anyone would assume ODLK was going to be the sprint project. He was running open so anyone who saw him running ODLK could have made the same guess

Mega Cheated plain and simple then "ran away", No explanation to the SC. I don't think Dave is part of this conversation but...
Bottom line is a Member of the Sprint Committee Cheated. Plai nand simple, We have our own "Code of Ethics" that is violated.
Did he stay around and man up for his so called mistake, that he is so sorry for, no he blew up the FB instead.
Everyone on the SC would have gave him a second chance had he stayed and took the heat. We would have changed some things like we are
doing now, but we weren't even given that courtesy. No excuse for what he did or how he handled it.

4. Hmmmm ???

Again, I think we need to look forward not back, I want to save the FB if it isn't dead already. No more excuses or defending the undefendable.
Let's work together to move forward.

That is the only reason i am still posting..
Steve

 

[SystemVipers]

To me Massive bunkering, Team Switching was killing the FB, Mega's cheating just blew it up.
Brass tacks.
Steve