Save the Date: Devchat August 19

Started by inkycatz

LociOiling Lv 1

First, another vote for http://fold.it/portal/node/996831. In general, it seems counterproductive to have some functions that are only accessible through one channel. If you can change something in the user interface, you should be able to change it through a script as well.

Second, not really a wishlist item, but has something happened to auto wiggle power? Auto didn't get a good reputation at the start, but I've recently had encouraging results, including a successful solo on CASP puzzle 957, which spent a long time on auto, by mistake. (See point #1 - script control.)

Players seem to have the perception that changes have been made to wiggle power since the initial new chapter debacle. It would be nice to get a clear statement on where we are and what, if anything, has changed.

LociOiling Lv 1

The recent changes to the notifications have made them much more useful. There are still a couple of things that could be addressed.

First, even if notifications are "down", they pop up again if you change tracks or changes puzzles. This doesn't seem to be desirable, my preference would be that they stay down.

Second, puzzles are sometimes cancelled or shortened. For example, the last CASP 11 puzzle, 968, was shortened by a day to meet CASP deadlines. It's too easy for players to miss these changes.

Notifications should be added for shortened puzzles. (I believe prematurely cancelled puzzles already get notified.) Additionally, a separate pop-up should appear in clients working on cancelled or shortened puzzles. The pop-up would be similar the ones seen in cases where a client "recall" has occurred. The pop-up should allow scripts or GUI operations to continue, however.

Changes like a shortened or cancelled puzzle also warrant a timely "blog" entry on the main fold.it page. Additionally, this type of information should make its way on to other foldit pages. For example, there's "top new users" widget on most pages that doesn't seem too useful or accurate. This could be replaced by "puzzle status", similar to what appears in the notification tab in the client. Ideally, the entries would have a date/time stamp.

Better communication of puzzle status changes would help players handle the changes better.

LociOiling Lv 1

I'll be glad to open feedbacks, but that raises another point. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of feedback to those feedbacks. I raised my points via the devchat in hopes they would squeak a little louder.

Susume Lv 1

There are a few CASP natives out. Did Newchapter do a better job at picking solutions than two years ago? Can we see some of the scatter plots?

The sparse contact data from CASP included some points that were certain to be correct - is that true of contact data in general?

When will ED puzzles be back? We haven't had one since Newchapter.

What ever happened to the salmonella bacteriophage ED results (puzzle 756)? Could we have another crack at it?

Bletchley Park Lv 1

  1. Please fix the deaf client issue I reported two years ago and which is still open.

  2. Please work with me to improve the speed of the filters.

  3. Please work with me to improve the speed of the general routines.

  4. Let's work on OpenCL support to accelerate foldit using AMD and NVidia GPUs. In particular wiggle and mutate.

KarenCH Lv 1

Adding to Loci Oiling's wish list (with a huge YES YES YES to the cut-related ones and simpler yeses to the others):

For bands, I would like a better sense of what existing bands "do": some sort of GetBandEndpoints() that returns the endpoints or GetBandDirection() that gives the direction info for bands-in-space. (Maybe a contained GetBandInfo() that returns all the info in one place - length and strength) And if there's a disabled band already between two endpoints, I'd still like to be able to put one of my own there.

For distance measuring, I'd like to be able to have a GetDistance function that works on atoms, such as "endpoints" of amino acid sidechains.