spmm Lv 1
Perhaps everyone is forgetting how hard Foldit is as a newbie with zero science background? There are some really easy tutorials and then these days new starters can walk straight into a de novo and a design puzzle! If they are lucky they get a 3 stage (<15, <150, all) puzzle.
Most of my limited skills I developed from loading group solutions as guides and attempting to match them if there was no guide on the puzzle. Because even if I had ideas of what to do I didn't have the skills to enact them and I needed the practice. All people are different, some newbies like Tony O come in and score near the top in their first few puzzles but that is not very common.
These days I look at group solutions, if there are any, to see the different solutions people have developed. Even if I am stuck it is usually too hard to restructure and beat my own best score that late in the puzzle.
It would hopefully be simple enough to restrict an open evo to players with less than a certain number of global points. Yes of course old hands could re-register and attempt to copy the solution, but controlling that is another conversation.
It would also mean that new players would not be virtually forced into joining groups immediately in order to learn anything.
They would then hopefully make wiser choices.
IMHO.