How does this sound?
The first few times, you can evolve other players' shared solutions for free, but after that, you have to share your own solutions to get access to other players' shared solutions. The better solutions you share, the better solutions shared by others that you can access to evolve.
What about (anybody creating) an open group called "Public Domain Shares", where the soloists who want can share their solutions, then leave the group in order to continue as soloist.
Other soloists can join the group if they want, evolve the shared solutions then leave.
The group would always remain open so that anybody can join and leave in a minute.
Beginners could try to evolve there and even get points as evolvers. If there is nothing to evolve, just send a PM to a player you know and ask him/she to share something. Could be useful for masters to show thinks to beginners.
The chat would not be useful, because nobody would stay there for long. Global chat is enough.
This is currently unpractical unless Foldit team creates a group themselves with these special rules.
Actually, if someone shares a solo coming from outside to a group, this solution cannot be evolved, being the property of "another group".
The only way for soloists now if they want to experiment evolving is to join any active open group, try to evolve something there, then go out.
Another solution would be someone to create a "Only Beginners" group, and invite there the new beginners, with specific rules asking the people to leave (or ban?) if there are no beginner any more? But the problem would be that no experimented players could go there and help? Or "Global Group" in line with the Global Chat ?
So long as this is only grabbing peoples older folds, a certain percentage below their present credit score, and only folds below the top 20 ranks. than this sounds like a good thing.
Obviously this league should be completely seperate to the existing soloist/evolver, the "randomist" or "explorer" board or whatnot.
I would like to suggest another Evolver alternative.
Make it possible for a player to participate in their Group evolver process without paying the Soloist penalty of getting 0 or 1 point for simply opening the puzzle to get to the evolver solutions.
Those of us with older or slower machines cannot always spend the time to work up an acceptable solo solution before switching over to Evolver mode to help the Group work up the team solution.
This would take the form of opening a puzzle in either Evolver or Soloist mode the first time a player opens the puzzle. If the puzzle is not opened in Soloist mode, it shopuld not be included in the puzzles used to determine solo rankings.
I am strongly in favor of Bruno's "public domain" share idea. I wonder if there is a way for us to set that up without waiting for devs? Also could work for the obsolete "buddies" feature. Anyone not in a group could form a group of buddies to share proteins with to evo.
No, may be I'm wrong.
Definition:a solution starts with the first design or "reset puzzle" action, and never ends.
I think that the "copyrights" of the solutions are as follows:
1-soloist always keeps the property on his/her design, as a soloist with or without group (he might go in and out of any group, he/she never looses this property). Designs are always sticked to their original author.
2-if a soloist joins a group A, all his/her solutions fall also automatically and definitively (for the live of this puzzle solution) into the property of this group. This is true even if he/she did not share his/her solution to the group. That means that it is impossible to take a solution from a group and evolve it in another group. If a soloist starts a new solution when being in a group, this solution remains the property of this group (and himself): he/her can continue as pure soloist, but this solution can never be loaded by another group.
Conclusion:</b>
The proposal is feasible without involving dev. What we need is some of us creating a clone (who might never play) in order to create the group (a member of a group cannot create a group. A soloist creating a group stays member of this group forever …).
Only soloists will be able to share a loadable solution to this "public" group. Then, any temporary member of the group will be able to evolve it, even getting points as evolver. When leaving the group, a player will keep a copy of the solution loaded, but none of its evolution would be credited. Note that shared solutions can also be used as a guide for soloist solutions.
Note: my clone created such an "empty" group for soloists here (Soloists Virtual Group</b>, but the purpose is different (no evolution are expected). Soloists and members of open groups might use this group to test the feasability of current proposal (do not evolve anything in this group please). The Public group might be created by another clone (I don't have more e-mail adress to create this) with the rules defined here.
When you say "soloist", I assume that you mean any regular folder that is not working on an evo. I think it would be better to limit these types of shares to folders who do not belong to a group. Otherwise you will have too many conflicts of interest. The number of clusters would also be reduced (a bad thing) if soloists from other groups participated in these shares. It also makes it easier to set up the "Public Evo" because the public players can just join that "group". They would just need access to Public Evo to be very easy, so that it doesn't feel like they are joining a group. The group scripts and group chat might need to be shut off too.
It would be best if devs set this up.
The players who make it into vet chat earn a new tool! Share With Public!
Wohoo, they can now download public shares to evo, and they can share there own solutions! Yay!
"The players who make it into vet chat earn a new tool! Share With Public!
Wohoo, they can now download public shares to evo, and they can share there own solutions! Yay!"
I'm quoting myself. How sad.
The trick would be keeping the share with public tool limited to non-group folders, but also out of the hands of newbs.
While the current ideas in this feedback are more sophisticated than many of the ones in the past, this still is reminiscent of the "All Hands" puzzles of long ago. The reason those were removed is that players tended to focus on only one solution and beat it to death.
To convince the devs to set up something like what is being proposed, it's necessary to counter that reality with some safeguards and possible learning experiences that might offset what had happened before.