Apologies for answering your comment so late. The last three days were hectic. I was split between a professional trip and family, as said as a reply to your other comment. I am now back to routine, and am slowly catching up ^^
First I note you in for the project. Then we will see what can be achieved with the time you have. I plan to move on slowly in the beginning, to make sure we will lose no one.
I was actually already thinking about the issue of setting up a communication channel for the project. Initially, I wanted to create a discord group, but the more I think about it, the more I believe this is not the best idea ever. The reason is that I would like people to be able to follow the work from the outside, and possibly join at a later stage. Moreover, the questions of some participant may always trigger questions of others, making the whole process more interactive.
For that reason, I think that we should use the chain. Also, many questions/issues will be common. Therefore, having a proper documentation is good. Such a documentation will be built from the questions and answers of everyone, dynamically throughout the course of the project.
For now, I would consider using the tag #citizenscience (that exists but that is sleepy for months), so that participants could write their report within the STEMsocial community but also within this additional tag (so that they are all collected in the same place). This will allow not only me but anyone to follow progresses in details, and the different posts could be taken as perfect extra places for questions. Regularly, a big summary session may possibly be needed so that anyone external could in a short amount of time catch up.
This being said, nothing is frozen in stone so far, and I am still evaluating what could be the best. The advantage of the option above is that it gives the chain a special role. What do you think?
Finally:
Is it enough for members without a physics background to help with computation time and stuff like that?
This is precisely the idea. Not only the computation time, but also doing the physics analysis in the second phase of the project :)
Yeah, the idea of using the blockchain to communicate and post some of the project artifacts is interesting. I've heard some people argue that using Discord "kills" the interaction on the chain. Just bear in mind that everything is transparent here. The peakd chat could be useful as well. It's not encrypted though and sometimes it glitches.
I have never used the peakd chat. The problem I see on my side is that this would consist of an extra chat platform, while I try to keep their total amount as small as possible ;)