At 10:01 PM 1/26/03 +0000, Gordon Spence wrote:
4. Get it into perspective. The number of times this actually happens is miniscule. Out of the millions we have checked what are the "poached" items? Dozens, a few hundred??Given that nobody poaches factoring assignments and the vast majority of those were weeded out before entering public testing, I will exclude factoring assignments. There have been 214,935 first time LL's and 184,754 doublechecks completed. That's nowhere near "millions". I don't know the history of every exponent, but there are patterns that definitely indicate poaching (i.e when you look at exponents just below a milestone and observe an exponent returned six times). There have been at least several thousand exponents poached. One poacher I looked at had between half and two-thirds of exponents he completed as triple checks. This was a "blind do the leading edge without checking" poacher. Even when no milestone is looming, I estimate there is an average of at least one poach every day, and these are not "inadvertent poaches" where a previous assignee ends up completing an exponent. These are known poaches by known poachers. The only time poaching activity drops to "miniscule" is when the spotlight is thrown on poaching by this list.
5. It has correctly been pointed out that life doesn't end if a milestone slips. Well guess what? That is a double-edged sword - life doesn't end if an exponent gets poached either.The fact that life doesn't end is not an excuse to poach. Poaching hurts the project because it drives away participants. It is not harmless. I don't know why people keep defending it.
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