=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2267/276-281-paper-52
|storemode=property
|title=The game character of collaboration in volunteer computing community
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2267/276-281-paper-52.pdf
|volume=Vol-2267
|authors=Victor Tishchenko
}}
==The game character of collaboration in volunteer computing community==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2267/276-281-paper-52.pdf
Proceedings of the VIII International Conference "Distributed Computing and Grid-technologies in Science and
Education" (GRID 2018), Dubna, Moscow region, Russia, September 10 - 14, 2018
THE GAME CHARACTER OF COLLABORATION
IN VOLUNTEER COMPUTING COMMUNITY
V. Tishchenko
Division of Community Informatics, Federal Research Center “Computer Science and Control”
of Russian Academy of Sciences, 9 prospekt 60-letya Oktyabrya, Moscow, 117312 Russia,
E-mail: vtichenko@mail.ru
The paper shows the emergence of a new form of online scientific collaboration, the collaborative
networks of volunteer computing (VC) participants. And it examines what makes a collaborative VC-
project successful and determines the formation of VC-community. We report on data from a statistic
online study of volunteers’ activities and an online survey of VC-participants on several online
forums, and discuss and analyze the emerging type of collaboration network of VC-volunteers.
The results can be significant for optimizing VC-management for solving problems that require large
computational resources.
Keywords: volunteer computing, online collaboration, virtual communities
© 2018 Victor Tishchenko
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Proceedings of the VIII International Conference "Distributed Computing and Grid-technologies in Science and
Education" (GRID 2018), Dubna, Moscow region, Russia, September 10 - 14, 2018
1. INTRODUCTION
The notion of “collaboration” is nowadays a central issue in many fields including business,
science and even everyday speech. In this paper it will be used to glean knowledge that will deepen
our understanding of an emerging type of scientific distributed computing and online communication.
One of the forms of the distributed computing is the volunteer computing (VC) in which
unskilled computer owners can donate their spare computer resources to perform a computation of one
or more large-scale research projects.
The VC paradigm is divided into three main points:
The idea of using multiple integrated computers for distributed computing in scientific tasks;
the network organization of communications; the distributed network of computers (>1,200,000)
implemented in a BOINC software/platform [1].
As a whole VC-projects is based on two pillars:
At first, it is computational VC-space. So, in order to participate in a VC project, a user must
download the project software from the VC project website and install it on their computer. Once
installed, the project software contacts the project website and is assigned a task. Upon solving the
task, the result is sent back to the project server and a new task is downloaded if the user so desires.
And the second, it is VC social structure. VC projects are by their nature decentralized and so,
volunteer’s communication through online form a communal virtual place. Participants in VC projects
can either work alone or join a team and work together on the same project. Also all VC-projects have
their own websites that are used to host the project software, disseminate information about
performing the project and host a ranking table of volunteers` activity. Also there are discussion
forums and online groups in social media where they can discuss different aspects and technical
problems of distributed computing. So, we can say that VC is a dispersed network of individuals and
teams, project and team sites, forums. And the VC organizational framework consists of projects –
typically academic-based research assignments (there are 57 projects, http://www.boincstats.com);
individuals – Internet-connected low-powered computers (just about 16,9%, survey, May, 2018); VC
teams – a long-term strategic alliance formed by volunteers (just about 83,1%, survey, May, 2018 );
Internet resources – project websites with statistics in rank tables, discussion forums, etc
The implementation of VC project directly depends on the number of participants, PC (other
machines) and time of their work. So, the main question of the project managers – Why do volunteers
decided to participates in VC-projects? Most sociological studies of the motives of volunteers'
behavior were based on the representation of the community as a set of participants and as a result, the
research focuses only on the motivation of individual participants [2-5]. The background of such view
is based on an idea that VC participants provide something for others (processing data for scientific
projects) at their own cost (time, energy, opportunity costs, use of PC resources). E.g., factors which
need for self-oriented motivations.
But we think that a motive of self-actualization is not enough to explain why millions of
common people regular (day by day) participate in scientific computation. Our research indicates that
the answer lies at the intersection of self-oriented motivation and the interactional and organizational
possibilities emerging through the Internet. We suggest: online collaboration can capture people`s
motivation better than only intrinsic motives.
2. AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY
In the study as a metric (measuring the amount of computational time and resources/efforts
donated by each volunteer/team), we use conditional points (crédits) that are charged by project
managers in the team rating tables posted on the statistical website (www.boincstats.com). The object
of the study was Russian VC-community (www.boinc.ru). The object of the study is a lot of
participants in the BOINC.RU community. Out of 107,227 teams, uniting more than 4,5 million
participants in the VC projects, there are 821 Russian teams. Of 57 active BOINC-projects using the
BOINC platform, there are 11 Russian projects.
The Data were collected in online survey, statistic analysis assembled in database; network of
Boinc.ru community was visualized with a help of “Gephi” and “Force Atlas 2”. To conduct a
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Proceedings of the VIII International Conference "Distributed Computing and Grid-technologies in Science and
Education" (GRID 2018), Dubna, Moscow region, Russia, September 10 - 14, 2018
statistical analysis of the behavior of Russian participants in the VC, we used the data obtained with
the websites www.boincstatistic.com and www.boinc.ru. Content of the database were unique
participant identifiers, participant names, unique project identifiers, project names, number of units
(crédits) of participants/teams for the last week, month, year and all the time, participants' ownership
of projects, unique team IDs, team names, team memberships.
3. THE COLLABORATIVE NETWORK`S EFFECT
As it was mentioned before participation in VC is voluntary and participants do not receive
compensation for their work. So project managers/organizers in search of a mechanism to encourage
participation in VC-projects use conditional points accrual mechanism; the number of these points
(«credits») depends on the provided capacities, the time of participation in projects, and other
characteristics of the activity of volunteers and their teams. The availability of constant statistics for all
projects, in addition to tracking various ratings, provokes various virtual competitions (“challenges”)
between participants and teams. And many of the projects create an environment for the competitors
by volume computations are done, both individually and in the team event. Thus modus operandi of
VC – is spirit of competition. If volunteers are members of a team, they are simultaneously competing
with the other teams on the project on the more immediate goal of racking up the most contributions
and coming out on top of the table of statistics documenting contributions.
As an example, we can cite the Russian project SAT@home [6], which is actively supported
by national volunteers. For the period of each of these competitions the project's productivity
increased by about 7,4 teraflops with the average value in 4,3.
Figure 1. The performance of the SAT@home project. The peaks correspond to the moments of the competition
among teams of volunteers
In order to highlight traces of collaborative networks we will allocate links between the active
volunteers in a whole Boinc.ru community. For determining an active group of participants in VC-
projects in Boinc.ru community we have used the accrued credits, assumed that a person took part in
the project if he collected at least 50,000 points in it. So it appeared – 200 volunteers, who participated
in 2176 projects.
Having constructed a connectivity table, where aij – the number of general projects for two
volunteers we construct a graph.
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Proceedings of the VIII International Conference "Distributed Computing and Grid-technologies in Science and
Education" (GRID 2018), Dubna, Moscow region, Russia, September 10 - 14, 2018
Figure 2. Visualization of links in group `active volunteers` (>50 000 credits, 2176 projects)
Increasing the participation threshold in the project to 100 000 crédits, followed by up to one
million crédits hardly changes the picture evaluation of the participation of the 200 most active
volunteers. In spite increasing the threshold the form of graphs does not change. It means that almost
all active users are connected with some projects.
Figure 3. Distribution of active participants in the projects
In spite increasing the threshold the distribution of the participants in the projects are very
similar. And as can be seen from the distribution and height of the peaks, which corresponds to the
number of participants in the projects, these active volunteers participate in almost the same projects.
The most active users are not inclined to participate in projects "on trial", they thoroughly approach
the choice of the project and actively participate in the accruals.
If we look for the communication between participants of the largest team in Russian projects,
(“Russia Team”) and construct a graph, we see the graph of the links (participation) of volunteers in 7
projects (orange cluster is dedicated to the collaborative community).
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Proceedings of the VIII International Conference "Distributed Computing and Grid-technologies in Science and
Education" (GRID 2018), Dubna, Moscow region, Russia, September 10 - 14, 2018
Figure 4. Collaborative network
The unification of volunteers into this group, without a provocation, shows that these are not
only active, but also interested community members who follow the BOINC space, analyze the
information and agree on the preference for new projects. Such behavior of the community members
testifies, very likely, about their interaction with each other on third-party network resources.
4. Acknowledgement
The work on online collaboration was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic
Research (RFBR), grant #16-29-12922 and grant #16-29-12940.
5. Conclusion
The most active and productive participants in VC are exemplify “co‐competition” [7],
collaboration within the network organization of a VC project. Our research indicates that the
motivation of participation of millions of unskilled volunteers in VC-projects lies at the intersection of
intrinsic motivation and the organizational possibilities emerging through the collaboration. In
providing the means for channeling participants' motivations to compete and cooperate, VC-projects
provide powerful insights into a new type of collaborative network. VC community model –
collaborative network
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