Goodbye

Started by tristanlbailey

tristanlbailey Lv 1

I will not be involved with Foldit any longer, due to the following reasons:

There are considerable inconsistencies in the processes and rules that involve moderators and developers, in governing the Foldit community in general. These inconsistencies, predominently of the "double-standard" variety, have lead to a deterioration of communication on a number of fronts, including in-game chat, and the Foldit Wiki. They effectively undermine the integrity of the Foldit community, preventing it from flourishing.

Negativity has reached a point where people are unnecessarily criticized with conceiving ideas, aimed for the improvement of the Foldit project in some way (game, documentation, etc). These ideas may be seen negatively by others as confusing, dubious, having a personal agenda, etc. Whatever the case, rarely are alternative recommendations made to such ideas that have had considerable thought put into them, when the ideas are not agreed with by others. Just as rarely are ideas given any credit. Even some of the most harmless comments, such as questions about fixing problems, or comments that something is being worked on, are viewed negatively in some cases.

http://fold.it/portal/node/991489
http://fold.it/portal/node/990193#comment-13031
http://fold.it/portal/node/991511#comment-15222

There is evidently little incentive towards the submission of feedback. Achievements are just not cutting it in this regard. If there is just one more suggestion that could be taken from me, it would be to scrap the entire voting system, both in the Foldit forums, and the Feedback section. Everyone should be held accountable for the digital content they provide, votes included. Anonymity becomes one less thing to worry about - progress is supported by constructive criticism only where necessary, and NOT by faceless individuals.

Some recent personal ones:

I witnessed some heated personal arguments on the in-game chat, and even intervened on one occasion. Another appeared recently on the Foldit forum; quite possibly the first. Debates are one thing; personal arguments are something else. If this is supposed to be considered a form of learning environment, it is vagely treated as such.

http://fold.it/portal/node/991502

After trying to set up a new Puzzle Type category on the Foldit Wiki with good intentions, I was first questioned by a moderator about my recent edits, and then berated by her about how I should be following the rules on editing, and discuss my intentions first. Not sure where these rules are, but they SHOULD be on the home page of the Foldit Wiki. Since nobody told me about rules when I first requested to edit, as far as I was concerned, when I started editing the Foldit Wiki, I was to just use common sense.

A fellow editor of mine was apparently berated by the same moderator, for a similar reason.

The "rules" of Wikipedia</i> (the founding concept site for all "Wikis"/"Wiki" sites) are not really rules at all, but guidelines. Apart from using proper references, using a neutral point of view, etc., you can basically go all out, and edit articles in whichever way you want, provided you use common sense, as pointed out by the "be bold" guideline. Of course, if anyone puts anything stupid in, articles can almost always be reverted to previous versions, by other editors and moderators. If any article already exists, the articles themselves should be edited in such a way as to not upset the current style of editing, on those articles. I learned this before and during editing the Foldit article on Wikipedia. The same principles should apply to the Foldit Wiki.

After seeing a Feedback item developing Foldit in 3D, I decided it would be a good idea to develop an anaglyphic (3D) image or two, so that people could see how the game might look like in 3D (and, to an extent, how this type of 3D looks). Since I did not know how to create anaglyphic images, I spent a few hours learning how to properly construct them, before completing a couple of images, and uploaded them to the relevant feedback item. The post was promptly given a negative mark by someone, followed by feedback that remarked there was another feedback item that already existed in regards to 3D. Fantastic.

http://fold.it/portal/node/172538#comment-15237

There were quite a number of other instances that left me wondering if I was making a difference, or being appreciated, but I'm not going to waste any more time explaining those. What I have provided will be sufficient for those that can be bothered reading this.

If there are any kind souls out there into making recipes, I was in the middle of constructing a V2 rebuild recipe, which I will no longer be working on for obvious reasons. Again, I had some good ideas, which I'm sure you can derive from the dialog box details, and the code I have done (albeit incomplete). You can do whatever you want with it.

Build It Up v0.1 http://fold.it/portal/recipe/37054

  • Tristan

infjamc Lv 1

I'll offer my thoughts as someone who has been participating in the foldit project since 2009:

  1. My first impression is that the examples mentioned above are the exception rather than the rule. I know that it's just my opinion, but my experience over the last ~3 years is that the Foldit community and the developers are generally receptive to open discussions. While it is true that not all proposed changes would be implemented, feedback trackers would be taken seriously as a rule.
    .

  2. Part of the challenge is that the Foldit development team is rather small. As a result, there is a strong need to prioritize, and therefore it is possible that a suggestion that some players value strongly could still fall through the cracks. From my observation, it's not because the developers don't care, but rather that they either don't have the resources or that they don't feel that the issue in question is quite as important as the ones that they're currently working on.
    .

  3. I would also like to point out that a handful of foldit players have a long history of being very controversial. I won't list specific names here, but the typical case would be someone who consistently annoys a significant portion of the foldit community through their behavior in chat or forum/feedback posts. Often, the foldit community would get frustrated with them over time because it is very difficult to try to reason with them. This is exactly why these players are such a "hot potato" issue: on one hand, the community can't stand their behavior (which might be driving away newcomers, as some would argue). But at the same time, we don't want to appear to have a double standard either (or worse, appear be persecuting a vocal minority via majority mob rule). And to add to the irony, these players tend to be above-average foldit players as well.
    .

  4. Personally, I do agree with with tristanbailey's concerns in principle. Here are my thoughts on the specific issues:

  • Foldit Wiki: Obviously, it's not Wikipedia, so the rules would be different. But I do agree that the instructions for editing should be made clearer in order to encourage more participation. (In my opinion, the Wiki is a good resource in theory, but it's currently underused. Ideally, I would like to see further integration between the game interface and specific articles so that new players can more easily find the help they need.)

  • The feedback system: Requiring a comment to be posted along with the upvote/downvote could be a good place to start, if only to separate personal attacks from constructive criticism. In addition, it might be a good idea to allow users to upvote/downvote on the cases' priority as well, as there isn't enough separation when most cases are left at the default priority of "3." Finally, there needs to be a systematic way to categorize requests. For example, it would be nice if admins could have an easy way of moving a post from Thread A to Thread B and manually increment the upvote of an old case by one in the case that someone "reinvents the wheel" (i.e. when an old idea is raised again). The ability to add extra category tags to feedback cases might also be useful for the purpose of grouping related issues together (the "topic" selection is a good start, but it's not fine-grained enough when you really think about it).

  • On moderating: Maybe the foldit community could benefit from a mediation/arbitration system. This can provide more transparency in the event that booting someone from chat or deleting forum posts is necessary because of potentially offensive words/actions (which could be interpreted as a violation of freedom of speech by some).

tealight Lv 1

someone who states that they have left foldit, why are you doing so many changes etc and designing of the foldit wiki? causing the admins so much work in fixing it again?

infjamc Lv 1

This is EXACTLY why I said that a mediation/arbitration system would be helpful. I could be wrong, but the impression I'm getting out of Tristanbailey's edits in the Wiki is that they're an attempt to reorganize and improve upon the current system rather than vandalism. Of course, people can disagree on the format of presenting the information regarding puzzle types, etc. But when it turns into an edit war, a formal process for settling disputes would be helpful.

tealight Lv 1

There already is a system being put into place, which when it is able to be finished will be an improvement on the current system.
Of course that is solely reliant on the people doing that, to actually be able to and not have to redo what they have done nor put people( who wont listen) efforts back to where it should be.

There doesnt need to be an arbitration system at all..just one or two people need to actually respect and take notice of what is already being done, instead of strutting around trying to reinvent the wheel, at the same time that someone else is fitting tyres to that wheel.

Infjamc, from what I have read on the wiki, some people have been advised of what is trying to be achieved and where to put stuff and what and how to edit (more than once), they just decide that they will ignore it.
One only has to read a talk page or two to see where the real problem lies.

Since the last influx when the wikis shortcomings were highlighted in neon, a tremendous amount of work has been done to the wiki, it is a lot better than it was.

What foldit doesnt need is someone to come along think they know more than anyone else and undo all that has been done. New players are now relying on the wiki more than they ever have. and all this "im going to get my own way so there)is not going to help them at all.

Instead of blatantly going and changing stuff when an admin of the wiki has requested you dont( more than once), a wise and intelligent person would have a dialogue with the admins of the wiki and come to a acceptable solution, or take notice of the admins and do things the way they have asked them to be done, threatening them is so childish.

marie_s Lv 1

where do you see a war?

  • the list of categories are in the page "about" on the wiki for many months. The categories are organized in a tree as an alernative way to navigate in the wiki. To be effective, the list has to be short. So I put back one time the category "tool" I first put on the page "symmetry puzzle" so that players can find it. It was not perfect but the way I find to insert this page in the wiki. Tristan put again "puzzle type". This page cannot be found in the tree of categories.

  • when there is no a clear mistake on a page, the main contributor can roll back if he or she doesnt agree with the "improvement" made. The page "puzzle results" was made by Thom and I made many contributions, we choose the order of puzzle type. I dont think alphabetical order is good on this page. I dont think symmetry puzzle is a good chapter in the page. If this feature is used in many puzzles, we will have de novo symmetry puzzle, multi template symmetry puzzle … qttn symmetry puzzle.

B_2 Lv 1

Looking at the wiki, which I seldom do, as a newcomer it would be a very confusing and dis-organized place.

There is nowhere, that I could find, anything about who the admins are, how the organization and structure are intended to work, or even the "About" page with the Category tree that Marie references above.

The front page is one long scrolling index-type thing - much too complex for people landing there for the first time.

I did stumble on the puzzle results page from peeking at recent edits. This page seems to be organized very strangely. If I want to see the results for "Puzzle 402" I would have to search through every grouping to try to find it. Shouldn't these be in Puzzle number order?

Overall, it seems there are some anonymous admins of the wiki that have some ideas about how it "should" work, but none of that information is clear or anywhere accessible. I have seen some comments about "ask first" - but who do you ask?

I don't see how you can call someone to task for not following the "rules" when there are NO "rules".

infjamc Lv 1

For the record, I would not categorize your disagreement with tristanlbailey regarding the "Puzzle Types" case as an edit war, as I personally would prefer to reserve the term for the more extreme cases (say, those that would trigger the three revert rule had it happened on Wikipedia).
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That being said… here's my take on the issue. As I edit articles at Sensei's Library (a wiki on the board game of Go) from time to time, I've also seen many cases of strong disagreement on format issues on that wiki. Usually, one party would be an admin or established editor, while the other party is typically either of the following:

  1. An expert on a specialized, often obscure topic.
  2. A relatively new editor who intended to help.

From my observation, disputes involving #1 typically hinge on the balance between technical accuracy and comprehensibility to a general audience. On the other hand, #2 tends to occur when one side believes that the existing structure should be adhered to (for the sake of consistency or other legitimate reasons) while the other party thinks that there's a void in the current system that needs to be filled (but perhaps went to far in the reorganization attempt due to enthusiasm, etc.)
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==> I could be wrong, but the impression I'm getting is that this is a case of #2. On one hand, I can see the value in the information provided by the "Symmetry Puzzles" and "Electron Density Puzzles" even though they're organized in a manner that differs from most other pages– so, I'll assume that Tristan acted in good faith here. But I also agree with the two of you that a page is only useful only if people can find it and that there should be some kind of consistency among the various pages of the same type.

To me, this example highlights why a formal process for discussion and for settling disputes could sometimes be useful. After all, if the point of the wiki is to help Foldit players find the information they need, then I think it would be wise to ask for the community's input from time to time. To use the "Symmetry Puzzles" example, a possible choice would be asking people to vote on the following:

a) Whether they would want to see the creation of individual pages on each puzzle type;
b) If so, what constitutes a puzzle type, and what kind of information should be included.

Whatever the final decision would be, holding a formal discussion would at least be useful for the purpose of formulating official guidelines.