Suggestion: a complete change of the social structure of Foldit

Started by Ignacio

Hanto Lv 1

I think everyone will realize that I did not purposely change the priority and as Auntie suggested, I would only do that with an extreme bug. Sorry for your mis-understanding B2.

smilingone Lv 1

A reply button doesn't show up for Ignacio's post, so, I shall reply to this one.

Ignacio,

A change in the group system may or may not be warranted. I really don't want to debate that. But, you NEVER participated as a group member, so, I find it odd for you to comment on the group experience.

I was in Go Science for nine months and never saw you utter one word. I use an external irc client and would have seen anything you said. It was only in the last month or two did I see you ever share a solution. How many did you share? A handful perhaps? With no notes to let us know what you had done. You don't seem to know how to be a team player and that is why you don't see the value of groups.

Also, if you had fully participated you would have realized most of us didn't use those old recipes from AD that you speak of. I tried one out once. Most of us use publicly shared recipes and those written by Paul Dunn.

I'm not still in GS. I left 10 days ago for my own reasons.

However, I learned a lot from my fellow team members. The group experience was a good one and I would have stayed except for a major issue with another member.

auntdeen Lv 1

Ummm…

Nah.

I refuse to get into old history here.

Moving along, it took almost a year after that "transference" for GS to become competitive, and I suspect that it had more to do with the soloists who were able to become top folders (and the efforts of one good scriptwriter) who collaborated within the GS team. The recipes themselves didn't magically make anyone a top folder. The reason they were so effective within our team situation was because they are only tools - it takes the collaboration to make them work to their best. What you do in handbuilding first, last and always is the key, recipes are automated ways of doing something that you simply don't have the time to do. When you run a recipe - and what it works on - after what you have done by hand is the important part. That goes for any recipe!

How exactly would you encourage people to self-organize without a team structure?

We have a very unique community here. People are free to choose whether they wish a collaborative experience (by joining a group) or an isolated one. People are free beyond that to decide whether they wish to be social in either a group or in global. Every person crafts their own experience.

Competition is why it's a "game". Removing a part of the game (groups and group competition) would take much of the fun out for many.

If not as much fun - then why bother? We need to find more ways to encourage people to stay, rather than remove one of the components that does keep them here. Imho, more and stronger teams would be a better solution to the problems that you see - enough teams with enough diversity among them to encourage and teach any and all folders that wish to participate.

Hanto Lv 1

I'm afraid that I will be in trouble because of an honest response, but I feel this needs to be said. Ignacio, in the American legal system there is a right that in most cases is downright mandated for a defendant to respond to an accusation. I have not and neither has Smiling attacked you, we both however are responding to your comments in honesty in open discussion. If anyone has been attacked it is me, and I offered my response which apparently fell on deaf ears/blind eyes. While it's true I deserve some of that attack, as Auntie said, it is truly very old news. While I was in the Navy prior to 1993, I spent some of my best times in the Med on Spanish soil. The people were agreeable and not hard to talk to in many cases, I had two years of Spanish in H/S at that time, although I had by the time of my retirement forgotten an extremely large part of it. If you felt so badly about using those ' stolen ' recipes, why did you? I know for example in my case I was not helped by a single one of them, it was my ignorance of how lau recipes were constructed that often pushed me into the lower 1/3 of scores. The best recipes were always public anyway, part of my boredom with AD and other factors, that I believe neither Auntie nor myself want to get into in a public discussion. My recent better puzzle scores are entirely due to a better understanding of how recipes are constructed, my modifications there-of, and Paul's extremely good reprogramming of my suggestions and the purchase of a computer that allows me to use 8 clients at a time commonly. Auntie is correct, it only through direct and considerable competition between groups/individuals that progress is made. Similar to the theory of Evolution, which most of us believe in even if we do happen to go to church on Sunday.
Now I apologize ahead of time for what will most likely be a double bounce of mouse switches and I hope everyone notices that I changed the priority to 5 which is pretty much exactly what this thread deserves.
I consider my responses gentlemenly and without any attack on anyone. I personally am quite happy that #GoScience has started to do much better then in those early days, when most of the truly high scores came from you. However you seem to be less then happy that #GoScience is doing so well. What you have done tho is to remove the your group's ability to use my scores and that is real shame for both the group you should be loving, and for me to share with MY group.
No accusations, just fact…

Ignacio Lv 1

I think you don't get it. This is not about you or what happened in the past. I just suggested some ways that I think can improve Foldit play. Please stick to the topic. Thanks.

Hanto Lv 1

I think it is you that doesn't get it. I am almost 100% certain that you kicked me out of group, I know Paul didn't and even tho B2 sometimes disagrees with me, I don't think he did either. I think the admins can come to a resolution regarding this issue, it shouldn't be hard for them to find the actual ID that kicked me from group. You have strongly affected your group, which should have been my group also. I hope you get it now. Your entire commentary about what you wish could happen to groups in general is really nothing but a sham for your actions regarding me. I know the admins don't want to see it that way, but I doubt it takes much research to figure it out…
Again I apologize for double bouncing switches.

Hanto Lv 1

I think it is you that doesn't get it. I am almost 100% certain that you kicked me out of group, I know Paul didn't and even tho B2 sometimes disagrees with me, I don't think he did either. I think the admins can come to a resolution regarding this issue, it shouldn't be hard for them to find the actual ID that kicked me from group. You have strongly affected your group, which should have been my group also. I hope you get it now. Your entire commentary about what you wish could happen to groups in general is really nothing but a sham for your actions regarding me. I know the admins don't want to see it that way, but I doubt it takes much research to figure it out…
Again I apologize for double bouncing switches.

Ignacio Lv 1

I think these can be easily answered:

1) Recipes are required for the top players to be competitive. I have been surprised by how good are some of the new recipes generated in this year, since I last played. Of course, no way I can compete just with my old ones. This means that having a few additional top recipes is critical for success. Tongue in cheek: If you don't think so, why don't you ask AD to put everything into the open repository, e. g. today?. That could set an example for the rest of groups. Also we would see in real practice if your results are the same (your expectation) or go significantly down (my expectation). But, actually the latter already happened in the past… I understood that people in AD was not very happy for that, although I think it was a positive affair for Foldit as a whole.

2) Teams do not mean competition among teams or team-specific recipes, the two things I am criticizing. If people find interesting to self-organize into teams to learn, improve, share experiences about the puzzles or simply chat, it would do so. Teams could be organized around top players or simply players of the same level that want to share experiences, etc.

3) You may bother to play Foldit because it is not only fun, but also scientifically significant. The idea that our minds may (still) outperform computers by finding shorcuts in complex problems is the ONLY reason why Foldit exists. The social aspect of the game may be significant, I understand it is significant for the players, but we should not forget the fact that this is also a truly scientific endeavour, and that our results may have practical significance. Thus, how to improve the top scores is what we should be thinking of, as a community. Hence my post.

Actually, if our results are very bad in CASP this year, then, why bother at all??. Foldit should close as a failed experiment, no matter how well we feel playing with our friends. That is why I am here, to help out, one among many others, and see what happens.