I want to ask you, everyone, what is in you opinion the greatest problem/error/nuisance in fold.it?
Is it the "a"-key in the near of "w" and "s" so that you misstype?
Is it the number of bugs?
Problems wih your Hard/Software?
The wiki?
Spam on the forum?
The lack of a manual?
Or anything else?
Say it! Describe it clear, best with a good explained why, what your biggest ARGH! is. And if you can add a possible solution, that's perfect!
(Please no discussion in this thread, I want this "database" as clear as possible for later discussions)
edit: This is in no way anything "official". This thread is also not directed to the scientists or programmers or intended to make them react in any way (but of course I would be happy to have them post their biggest problem). It is a strict community-targeted and based thread to allow an analysis of the community through the community.
Then, that is my hope, we will be able to see what has to be done, how and who and can go on organize it. (e.g. the en.wikipedia entry on foldit is out of date and nonexistent in de.wikipedia, for which I'm today started writing one)
In my eyes, a lot of potential is wasted through lack of communication (in a wide sense, including e.g. a manual or tutorial) and organisation. I wanted to write my impression later, but well…
IMHO, there is not enough feedback on screen. If I had more information, I could make better moves. For example, it seems to me that there are several things that could help increase my score all happening at the same time, e.g. angle between neighboring segments, distance between side chains. If I could see some of the information from "NOTES", while wiggling, I would know which way to push or pull. I don't think "angles" are printed in notes but that would be helpful information.
Solution:
1) Print directly next to each segment the angle to the next segment. This would allow me to see which way reduces or increases tensions, or
2) Print directly under each rubber band, it's length and strength. This would allow me to see distance to neighboring side chains.
There is something I must say, having the hotkeys close together makes the game more playable. That is not a problem in foldit. It do not want the developers to read this and get the wrong idea. Having hotkeys that you do not have to reach from one end of the keyboard to the other to use is great!
See my edit for your answers. I want foldit to be better, and I think we - meaning the people outside the lab - can improve things a lot with a little work.
But every problem solving needs the problem first. Or as Einstein said: The right question is lot harder than the result.
This is trying to get the right questions, and that aren't necessarily the ones posted in the feedback forum. I want to see if the questions I think off are the right ones - or if you have a better question. (I think the team does the same with the puzzles at the moment - trying to see if the questions they asked about human folding capabilities are right. And they also don't tell you the questions ;) Knowing the question shapes the answer.)
Back to problems please or write me an PM. But I can't say it better.
Got to agree with skyleriberg there….misstyping because the hotkeys are supposedly too close together was a most unfortunate example of "things being wrong". If that's really bugging you, I advice a typing course.
Other than that, the things that "bug" me are far inferior to the things that will be on the next update, so i won't even mention them.
And even though you asked for "no discussion", this is a forum, so I'm going to ask anyway…
why do you start this thread while the developer team just started a feedback forum for everyone to post their bugs, problems and improvement suggestions?
Other than the wiki, there's nothing you can do about it anyway.
Besides, I think they're doing a pretty good job.
The feedback tracker was started for the very purpose that you're describing here…it makes little sense to parallel that effort by attempting to generate a competitive threading here in the forum
As to your reply, you'll need to do better if you want to convince me or most others…the feedback tracker is where discussion of new features and similar topics needs to be
…it is customer service. Active communication from people responsible from the project. Both the scientific part and application development. Our poor Admin is trying to deal with most of the issues, but as he stated, he's responsible for running the website only. It is not the communication tools that need improvement, but attention from people behind the operation.
If you would please take a look, 80% of the issues in the issue tracker are still open, 50 % of then are not even assigned to anyone to resolve them. The meaning of this is that however it is centralized, it is abandoned centrally.
Just one suggestion (repeated here): It would be nice if Zoran spent an hour weekly with us in the chatroom. Please let us know when to be able to put the event in our calendar. I am sure it'd mean a lot not only to me.
Thanks,
Peter
I've forwarded your suggestion on to Zoran, DisposableHeart.
Anyway, just thought I'd let you know that I'm reading this thread. The thing about the feedback tracker is that the problems come in way faster than we can resolve them. Because of that, a majority of them will always be unresolved at any one point in time. Not only that, our highest priority tasks (and the most time-consuming ones) come from Zoran and have little to do with player-submitted tasks. I've been late on my assigned deadlines even without the assistance of the feedback tracker.
Your meaning is that you and the team have not enough time and resources to deal with most of the issues brought up by the players. Sweet…..
i think chat sessions with developers are a great idea. we'll set something up. Stay tuned.
Regarding the changes, we are certainly keeping track of all suggestions. as you can imagine there are many, and they're placed in the priority queue. eventually we'll get to all of them. keep in mind that we're also preparing a completely new set of design puzzles with has been our focus in the past months.
