Relevant Links

Approved poll definitions, requirements, and validation parameters

Public attempt at contact #1

Public attempt at contact #2

Critical Information (TL;DR)

[email protected] will be removed from the whitelist in 3 days (May 31st).

Summary of the Situation

Unfortunately, it seems as though the whitelisted project [email protected] has essentially stopped allowing sign-ups for new users. They have implemented an invitation code requirement, but there is no posted code anywhere. There has been much discussion on Slack about possible actions that could or should be taken because of this. Here is a brief summary of the main points brought up:

The recently approved process for whitelisting projects states that the whitelist admin can remove a whitelisted project if they break a requirement for whitelisting.

A whitelist poll is used to add or remove a project from the whitelist. The whitelist is a larger mechanism within the operation of Gridcoin. Each project considered for whitelisting must meet a set of requirements, and several actions must be taken before a poll for adding or removing a project can be considered valid. A project can be removed from the whitelist at the discretion of the whitelist admin if it ever fails to meet a requirement described below.

The same process states that a project must allow new user registration.

Project Requirements for Whitelist Consideration Project Work Availability Score is green

Number of Zero Credit Days is less than or equal to 7 out of the last 20 days

The project has a clear description of the work and the work is as described

The project allows new user registration

Project complies with the BOINC terms of service

All crunchers that comply with the terms of service of both BOINC and the project have equal access to work units

[email protected] is a legacy project and was not aware of these rules when it was whitelisted (because these rules did not exist).

Out of respect of the project tenure, an attempt to contact the project should be made before removing it.

A poll is not required because the project is breaking a cardinal-rule of whitelisting -- this is not a question of project value as was the case with Moo! Wrapper, for example.

The greylist is not a valid option as the failure of the project has nothing to do with work unit distribution. The greylist is meant to be rules-based/mathematical so it can one day be automated.

Two public attempts at contacting the project have been made. One on the [email protected] forums and one on the main BOINC forums. There has been no response from a project admin that clarifies the situation. If there was a response, it was decided that the project would probably be maintained on the network in some form so long as it worked toward a reasonable resolution of the problem.

Actions to be Taken

The first attempt at contact was on May 17th. The second was on May 21st.

Because there has been no response the whitelist admin, informed by the discussions on slack, has decided to remove [email protected] from the whitelist in 3 days (May 31st).

This is subject to change if the project clarifies the situation to the satisfaction of the whitelist admin, or if the community raises a valid argument for keeping the project on the whitelist.

Moving Forward

The tenure and legacy status of the project were major points during these discussions. Two steps that would help deal with this type of situation in the future have been proposed.