Hi-jack team and foundership?
18 Apr 2008 1:22:18 UTC
Topic 193633
(moderation:
My family team (Richwood Timber LLC) is proud of what we accomplished in Crunching for Einstein. We amassed over 3 million points and were the 7th largest corporate team (in terms of RAC) for MONTHS on end.
Recently, (and fortunately) I got an email saying that someone had applied to take over foundership of our team. The name of that person and the team he's on escapes me at the moment. That person had joined our team but had not crunched any points for us at all. So that person didn't show up on our roster of members. Only when I went to the team admin page did that person show up.
I declined their offer and deleted them from our team. My team has mostly decided to stop crunching actively on account of electric bills. But that doesn't mean I'm not proud of what we contributed or want our team to be taken over by anyone else.
So, is it common for inactive "teams" to be "taken over" by a new member who applies to do so? What happens then? Can they merge the points with some other team?
On a separate note, even though I have over 1 million points, I was surprised that I could not post a message to these boards. So I had to start crunching again just to have an RAC so that I could post this question. Struck me as a bit odd.
So, back to my question, is "team hi-jacking" (to put it in it's most negative light :-) ) common? Thank goodness for the email notification!!!!!
Bruce Richardson
Richwood Timber LLC
When the going gets weird, the weird turn PRO. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Hi-jack team and foundership?
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It may be common for a member of a team to take over the "founder" role where the existing founder has disappeared (e.g., we all die eventually :-).). If the founder is still around, it's not possible to take over a team at all, if the founder doesn't wish that to happen. In your case, you have declined the offer so the matter ends there. You can't be forced to relinquish your role any more than you could be forced to sell your house if a stranger knocked on your door and made you an offer :-).
If you allowed someone to take over, the new founder could do whatever any founder could do - things like change the name or other details. I don't think merging is possible - you'd have to do a bit of research on that though. It's part of BOINC and not the province of any particular project. You may find something about it on the BOINC website.
It's simply a spam protection measure. It's deliberately not based on total credit (which endures) but rather on RAC, which disappears if you stop crunching. In any case you can post to any of the "help desk" boards without the need to be active so you could have posted in "Problems and Bug Reports".
I haven't heard of a single case. "Attempted team hi-jacking" may well be a totally different kettle of fish, given that human nature never really changes :-).
This is the safety net that was designed into the system and is why we can afford to be somewhat complacent about the matter. It's not quite as bad as an unscrupulous real estate agent making an offer to a little old lady who lives alone and doesn't really understand the current value of her property. How would you stop that from ever occurring?
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: Recently, (and
)
Bruce,
On thinking about this after my original message, it occurred to me that you (as the founder of your team) would have been able to see the email address of this person but he wouldn't know yours. If I'd been in your shoes, I'd probably have created myself a disposable email address for the purpose of seeing what their motive really was. For example, you could have dropped him a little note saying you were pretty bored with the whole team deal and were thinking of "putting it on the market" so to speak. You could ask him to make you an "offer" and see what his response might be :-).
I suppose it's a bit like taunting those Nigerian spammers who want to drop 20 MILLION US DOLLARS of Government funds left over from some illicit contract into your bank account if you're silly enough to give them your bank details plus a down payment on their "expenses" :-). However, if you've deleted all the details of this person, I guess it's a bit late now.
You're quite right to be proud of your achievement. I just had a look at your computers that you had registered with the project. That was quite a nice "farm" you had there. No wonder you were able to clock up the big 1M credits.
I'm sure the project really appreciates your contribution.
All the best in whatever you decide to do from here.
Cheers,
Gary.
Thanks for the replies and
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Thanks for the replies and interesting thoughts.
Yes, I could've--and probably should've--done a bit more detective work. But it's too late now. Thanks for the discussion. Your anwers seem logical and reasonable.
Thanks for the compliments. Particularly my Dad and I had the most fun with it. I like to pay attention to Science. I get Science News and some nice weekly alerts from NASA.
I'll probably be back crunching again after a break.
Bruce Richardson
Richwood Timber LLC
When the going gets weird, the weird turn PRO. -- Hunter S. Thompson