Cloned accounts folding competitively

[CharlieFortsConscience]

Since this will be the next subject to generate healthy debate on global, I thought I would introduce it now

Cloned folding, where one player opens multiple accounts, then folds competitively with them, is nothing new, but has occurred in the past by such a tiny minority of players, it's never caused any real harm. Those who do it, are generally known about, and are probably on the periphery of the community, so it's never been an issue. It would seem that this is probably about to change, sadly.

The reasons for competitively folding with more than one account are perhaps unfathomable, with little obvious concrete benefit - it is, after all easier to run more than one instance of foldit, especially now that personal hardware can cope quite easily with 6, 7, 8 or more foldits open simultaneously. The consequences, however, are much clearer. Crowding out both evo and solo ranks on the scoreboard are going to strike at the fundamental core of this community, and will inevitably drive away players. Seeing 50 folders above you on the scoreboard whets the appetite, and drives you to try harder. When players are named and shamed in public, and they undoubtedly will be, and you discover that maybe 10 or more of those scoreboard ranks are merely one player, the reaction is more likely to be 'what's the point of playing?'

With some players moving group to group recently, it's always unfortunate when acrimony clouds judgement. It would appear that some are turning to cloning in order to specifically irritate others. I would hope better sense, or perhaps better team management will prevail. Or maybe FoldCentral should step in now, and find a way to restrict participation, based on ip address, whereby once you have a scoreboard rank on a puzzle, only that account can use that particular ip on that specific puzzle.

I would welcome any thoughts.
CFC

[itskimo]

I would like to say one player per ip address, but two would be the max if playing can be restricted to only one of those clones and if the other clone is used only for irc sign in and never played.

[B_2]

That would effectively eliminate groups of players such a school class all folding for a class assignment. They would all appear to be coming from the school district external IP address.

You have no idea looking at an IP if it's one machine or the external presence of an intranet with 6000 PCs.

And then there are anonymous proxies …

[CharlieFortsConscience]

Yes, I thought it was clear I was describing competitive folding. I should declare I have CFC which is my IRC account, I fold only with CharlieFortsConscience, and I also have FoldPrefect, which I use to dip into the intro levels and <15/<150 puzzles to help other players. They're all within group. And only CharlieFortsConscience works the game.

There always used to be a 'rule of thumb' or a 'gentleman's agreement' that the obvious futility of COMPETITIVELY foldering with more than one account was enough to prevent it becoming an issue. It may be that FoldCentral does indeed need to find a way of protecting 'open' groups from infiltration.

It's very easy to identify over-eager folderers, who perhaps over-engage in the competitive element, perhaps believing that mythical points are 'just there to be found' regardless of how. That's an indication of just how resourceful pesky hoomans can be, to circumvent the rules given to them. I seem to keep coming back to this point over and over again - this game is not ultimately based on the points you can acquire, but what you can learn about how it works, and then bring your own insight. The best solution, that provides real, useful and workable data to the Baker Lab may not necessarily be the best scoring.

The longer you stay, the more you will realise that the scientists behind this endeavour arent interested so much in the score you can achieve, they're analysing the moves you make; or choose to make, or why you chose to make them.

Having 8 accounts, based in different groups, doesnt help anybody. It just causes very public problems.

CFC

[spmm]

There seem to be a few gentlemen's agreements (which the women don't need to follow?) and other conventions in Foldit - unfortunately they are not actually obvious as far as I can see; and they have never been mentioned to me.

I recently set up another account - with a very obvious nic ie spmm2 - dead giveaway - the purpose of this was to be able to explore other solutions when I had a relatively high score. I didn't bother registering it with any group because all of the scripts I use, (98% public), were still in my cookbook, which was a nice surprise.

I am still a novice at folding, first script run in November last year.
I tend to use Ctrl +A quite a lot :-) and there is nothing worse when you are following a different path to forget and hit Ctrl +A and revert to your highest score, wasting hours of promising work because undo will NOT always take you back to where you just were.
Undo just does not work well enough for me even using 100% memory.

It would be nice if, when you reset the puzzle your high score also reset, BUT ONLY if you could also keep your Very Top Absolute Best score. This could be done by saving the top score, locally or on the server, first before resetting perhaps. This would also encourage people to try out more solutions.

I was conscious of the fact that I was ranking down other players twice, however so many people seem to use multiple accounts and scoring very highly; without even making it obvious that they are owned by the same person; that I assumed that it was acceptable 'gamers' practice.

I don't know how you would identify the same person running multiple accounts as it seems that you are only limited by the number of email accounts you can create.

[Tony Origami]

I have 3 accounts at present. One for myself and one for my son, who is currently losing interest and no doubt I will kill that account off soon. The third account was forced on me when I tried to be myself at work and found that foldit would not allow me to download recipes to my work machine but sent them to my home instead. The only solution I could see at the time was to be someone else.

We are not getting any feedback from the game designers as to whether what we are doing / have done is useful in any way. I have been at it 3 months and have not seen any comment on this aspect. My interest is in programming the scripts and so far this has not proved a very successful enterprise but has kept me interested.

I am somewhat disappointed that almost none of the suggestions/bug reports I have made have had any official comment. I realise that this is whole show is very understaffed and perhaps my comments are naive or have all been made before, however, I do feel that if this game has a problem, it is in its obvious inability to keep the newbies. I note a certain hippocracy amongst some "old hands" who use scripts themselves but feel new people should not be allowed to. If they feel that scripts are not part of the game, well don't use them. The reality is that almost nobody would be competitive without them.

My aim for myself at this stage is to see how high I can go in 4 months and then I will quit. That will free up 3 slots in the top 50 for the rest of you. One month to go!

[Tony Origami]

PS: I have resisted the temptation to use my clones to vote up or down any suggestions. And "hypocrisy" is very difficult to spell.

[TheGUmmer]

I have pretty much stopped playing evo for the same crowding out reason, not by clones but teams. When 10 people on a team can add 0.001 to the top solution and evolve it, it kind of sucks the fun out of it.

[Rav3n_pl]

Maybe change "evolving" reqs? Add at least 10pts, or 0.1% of current score? Instead of current "pump up to next point".

[anthion]

Hey spmm,

It seems like you are relying too much on the use of Undo and not using the Save Solution function.
I can't understand what the benefit of erasing your high score might be or how it would not be more complicated and error prone.

Your 'Very Top Absolute Best' score is saved in the client. Menu - Open Share Solutions and check the box for Show Auto and Quicksaves

I also don't follow the logic that leads you to creating another account to explore other solutions because your current score is high. You don't lose your high score. Your high score does not affect the work you are doing. What difference does having a high score make in your ability to explore other conformations?

The basic rules of thumb when working on a computer apply to this game. Save your work. Make the descriptions of your Saves meaningful. This game client is like any other computer program that produces documents. It can crash. But it autosaves as you go so you don't lose your best score. If you Save Solution as you go, then you will have a sort of record of your progress that you can go back to and branch off of if you wish.

I have yet to see a coherent reason for playing multiple accounts that does not include ignoring basic functions of the system for saving and undos or multiple instances.

I can't think of any good reasons for having multiple competitive accounts.

anthion