(I'll now violate my own recommendation to reply to individual posts, not threads, because there is just too many posts where my suggestion would apply)

An idea I had while discussing credits with other people (and that some other people seem to have independently had in the "lost interest" thread @ politics): Cross-project parity is impossible. Stop trying.

OzzFan compared BOINC credits to video game points:
[quote]But I guess what I'm trying to say is that I look at credits like video game points: they're fun to collect but I wouldn't cry about them if they're gone, and I wouldn't try to turn them into a big deal that consumes so much of my time on a message board or any other aspect of my life.[/quote]
That analogy also applies in another aspect.

Games are just different. Suppose we want to make all games give the same points. What would that mean? Try to give on average the same points for 2 minutes of playing, on all games. Of course, the comparison would need to be done with the same player. But some players are better at some games than on others. Some players know better strategies at winning the game than others. So how on earth can you have an average? I don't think it's at all possible to give cross-game score parity.

BOINC projects are just different. Suppose we want to make all projects give the same credits. What would that mean? Try to give on average the same credits for 1 hour of crunching, on all projects. Of course, the comparison would need to be done with the same computer. But some processors are better at some projects than on others. Some computers run optimized apps, which are faster at crunching a workunit than stock apps. So how on earth can you have an average? I don't think it's at all possible to give cross-project credit parity.

You can't compare your 1000 points in Tetris with your 1000 points in Pacman. They give different amount of points, and there is no way to make them give "the same" amount of points. However, you can compare your 1000 points in Tetris with another player's 15000 points at Tetris (you know he's kicking your *** at it, badly). And, you can compare your #3 rank at one game with your #8 rank at another.

What do you think of this? Each project gives as many credits as they want. SETI can go back to WU counting if it wants to (with bonus points for good signals?). CPDN could count simulated years. Prime-searching projects can also do WU-counting (number of primes tested) with an "interesting" bonus for primes actually found. And users compare credits *only within the project*, or rank across projects.

Ignore for a moment the extreme complexity of changing the credit scheme, particularly migrating existing credits. And the bigger complexity of educating users on the new credit scheme. Imagine we *can* start from scratch with credits. Imagine BOINC *is* being invented from scratch. In those conditions... Does the above proposal sound like a good idea?