include non-students as a separate group in the competition?

each university will have their own group. if we had non-students involved as a separate group, the competition would be dominated by non-student veterans of the game who would surely win. the idea of this competition is to primarily draw greater student involvement in foldit.

i think students like myself would be excited this. given that there's an award for the winning university group, is there a size limit for each of the university groups?

Why not two different competitions with the same protein at the same time? One for university groups fighting for monetary prizes and one for non-students playing for love.

Because they could use the solutions from the non-student puzzle that all the "veterans" are working on to gain an advantage on the student puzzle?

I think what we could do is post it as a normal puzzle once the contest is completely over.

http://pressroom.medimmune.com/foldit/
http://foldit-dev.cs.washington.edu/uchallenge/officialrules-2010-10-22.html

That's really $*!@& !!!!

I thought foldit wanted to be international? What does medimmune win when there are no other universities involved? I hope someone can explain me why.

I'm really disappointed.

yes, unfortunately this is true. Of course Foldit team wanted world-wide competition, but because Medimmune actually distributes the awards, and because these are foreign payments with tax implications and who knows what else the official rules need to be explicitly spelled out and approved in order to be legally valid for each country. Medimmune hired a firm to explicitly formulate the terms of the competition, and they could only get the legal process completed in US and UK. We definitely don't like this aspect of it, but it's our first try at something like this. If it goes well and is generally well received we'll make sure that subsequent competition are open to both the world and non-students.

there would be many opportunities for collusion between the two competitions. however, we will have an open competition for all those who could not participate, and report on the comparative performance.

One potential problem I see with this competition is that Foldit veterans who happen to be current students are also eligible (all it takes is creating another account, perhaps using their .edu address). While this is not necessarily unfair or "wrong," this does mean that there's a good chance that all three prizes could be easily earned by Foldit veterans (since they'll be facing "easier" competition). Should this be the case, my concern is that people who are attracted to Foldit by the competition could be too discouraged to keep playing afterward... which would somewhat detract from the purpose of the competition.

==> So, do you have any thoughts on how to minimize this possibility (other than discouraging current Foldit players from participating)? After all, there is no way for any participant of the competition to prove that they have never played Foldit before.
.

[***Full disclosure: I happen to be a current graduate student in the US. Being currently in the Top 25 Soloist ranking, I will voluntarily sit out of this competition due to conflict of interest concerns.]

Perhaps all the veteran student Foldit players could join the same team for this contest? That way there would be no chance that all 3 prizes went to veterans.

I would like to offer my services to any University/Team wishing to win or rank Highly in the above competition.

I also have a team of avid Protein Folders whom are prepared to assist in some way, if possible; to give you and your team the advantage in designs and techniques to quickly get you/r team into the tops positions to compete with any or most professional opposition.

Serious Offers or Contenders/Team Managers/Teams or Universities can contact me directly via mathewinnes@hotmail.com

Respectfully,

Renton Innes
Protein Folder - Anthropic Dreams
www.fold.it

it probably goes without saying but just to make it clear, this kind of contracting arrangement is a cause for disqualification from the university competition. This will be clearer as we post the official rules (hopefully today). Each university team captain is responsible for each of the team member's eligibility according to the competition rules.

Just making sure everyone knows that we folders have integrity and respect the universities drive for excellence and will be available for free of charge for consulting. although a small koha would be great should you need us to travel to your country and support your Teams work. - Sharing is Caring. We give everyone equal rights to access to our work for the better of all mankind. - Anthropic Dreams.

I thought we were folding for the good of humanity, rather than for a patentable shape so a company can make more profit. Do not fold for profit, instead publicize the results, make them non-patentable through prior art. What the people come up with should benefit the people, not some corporation.

Shame on you Renton/Aotearoa/Mathew

You used to recruit, applaud and celebrate Foldit as a means to defeat disease, fight cancers, and further the path of humanity. You recruited AD in this way, brother, and the group you belonged to before, and the group you belonged to before that as well.

But now you're offering to fold for money.

It places every one of your future comments in global, feedback or forum into a very mercenary context. And that makes me sad.

As a folderer, not a Contender - just be careful what you wish for :)
CFC

Point taken. Still, the main problem with this idea is that it relies entirely on the honor system, which doesn't work unless followed perfectly by everyone. After all, it only takes is 3 profit-maximizing Foldit veterans playing as teams of one to break the system.

==> See... this is exactly why paying people to fold proteins could open such a can of worms. If anything, there is ample potential for collusion (e.g. "Give us your username and password so that we can win the competition for you; all we ask is X% of the prize money as 'commission'")... which is a real concern given the size of the prize. (This is not to mention that fraud can be difficult to prove without intrusive tracking.)

Believe me, we thought of all these contingencies as distinct possibilities when we were thinking about trying this. But to really know the right way to approach it we need to try it and see what happens. That's the way Foldit project was started as well. Afterwards we will determine what did and what did not work, and move on from there. if we conclude that money is bad that idea will be shelved unless a viable alternative is proposed. Of course, if everyone was allowed to participate some of these issues might not be there. We are primarily interested in hearing everyone's feedback at the end, as well as measuring the effect of substantial prizes (good or bad) on the process of gameplay: we will have the same puzzle open to all as soon as the university competition finishes and then we will analyze the differences.

Using someone else's userid can be detected. we know IP addresses for each login to Foldit. if someone from University of Kansas ends up logging in from New Zealand, we will immediately contact the captain of that team, and figure out if there was userid sharing.

There are possibly other ways to cheat that we may not be able to detect, but that probably goes with every competitive situation in life, and in the end a personal moral compass is the ultimate deterrent for most. This game is about doing science for the good of humanity. we as developers as well as thousands of Foldit players are not in it for money.

As i mentioned in the original post, we picked the protein for this puzzle, and the outcome of this puzzle will not benefit any corporation as all foldit outcomes are in public domain.

The question at hand is whether using monetary incentive is beneficial for public-domain folding and if so in what form? We don't know the answer to that.

Talk about cheeky. haha, i'm more than likely the or one of the poorest researchers protein folding in the world! I've been offering my services the same way for, years here, I only say it cause it sounds cool.

want me to send your cash back?!

We don't want to scare the folding industry just yet, so perhaps we should leave out the dry humour from our own little virtual realities till we can get these universities fired up.

Perhaps I get Auckland University into the competition too >?!<

You know I Love you guys heaps and of course can't wait to see how this new competition goes... even now some technical stuff is coming out which relates to tracking of our proteins within the groups/players evo and solo. I have never seen these and would be interested to see the cross overs. *between players/groups*

All jokes aside, I don't wish to be sponsored solely, I would like my whole team to be appreciated for all their hard work and effort in making this Scientific Area what it is and has become. All you guys are responsible for that. (If I didn't stirr up everyone on such topics like this one, everyone would be blind to the issues on the great scale for Now and into the future.)

If someone would like to cover my expenses, of course i'de be honoured and would do my best to get their team in order and working as efficiently as possible to take out the comp. "it's in my blood"

Kia Kaha CFC.

There's a difference between me sending you money to buy a mouse, so you can fold, and you hawking your team to the highest bidder.

On the one hand, a few community members reached out to help.
On the other, as I said - be careful what you wish for.

Charlie

Maybe you can get people to pay you to stay away from their teams.

Just a thought ...

Would it not be a great idea to have 2 puzzles for the university challenge game, one puzzle with a cash prize and one without - both puzzles having similar sized residue counts.

This way you will have a test standard to measure performance against. It may well be that University biology students naturally score higher than we (the average foldit player) does, and without a means of measuring this, the project's results will be difficult to analyse.

By having another contest right after this one ends (but without any prizes) we can learn two things:

1) Are these US & UK students only motivated by cash prizes

2) If not, do those who participate in the second contest fold differently than our 'regular' Foldit players.

We can test that easily by re-posting a recent puzzle (that you all have already played and are sick of... maybe CASP9 Puzzle 40 if the native is still not released yet) and comparing their Foldit solutions to yours!

".and yet remains a member with full access to group strategies and group scripts."

Why all the secrecy? What are you hiding?

If you're developing new super folding "strategies", wouldn't it be the best thing for science to share those with everyone instead of selfishly hiding them in a closet for only a few to see? Not really the "Sharing is Caring" attitude, is it?

This wouldn't be an issue if all scripts and forums and group chat channels were public.

but firstly, Brick, You don't personally offer anything more or less to anyone or team other than yourself. the cheek of it. stop taking away the importance of this competition with your pessimism about unrelated issues from game play bravado. were talking Science here.

We Offer everyone the chance to work with us to use everything we have acquired as a team, in skills and intuition into amino acid positions/ shapes etc etc. not to forgot thousands of hours of our time developing strategies that assist in protein folding technique which is backed up with our team ranking in the fold.it world.

Any university that would like to share this with us, is welcome to approach us for support, as long as we can cater to the greater needs of the end result which would be, Equal Rights with regards to funding and prizes for improving our our team equipment and supporting resources. (inc. our internet bandwidth cost)

But if you or other companies in the real world are profiting from our support and research it would be nice to share that in some way or another or have it put towards creating a open market, not restricted to universities in limited locations internationally.

my personal thoughts anyway.

Renton.

It still sounds like you will share your amazing developments with any university team as long as they share the prize money with you. Is there any other way to interpret this?

"We Offer everyone the chance to work with us to use everything we have acquired as a team, in skills and intuition into amino acid positions/ shapes etc etc. not to forgot thousands of hours of our time developing strategies that assist in protein folding technique which is backed up with our team ranking in the fold.it world.

Any university that would like to share this with us, is welcome to approach us for support, as long as we can cater to the greater needs of the end result which would be, Equal Rights with regards to funding and prizes for improving our our team equipment and supporting resources. (inc. our internet bandwidth cost)"

i'm not sure if some of this acrimony existed prior to this prize competition (probably yes), but the competition is surely bringing it out on the surface.

You have to remember that AD was set up as a cross-group platform specifically for CASP9 - I wasnt the only one of the top ten to open an alternate account, because the ethos was laudable. But it wasnt exactly rocket science to discover that post-CASP, AD turned out to be a longer-term venture. I kept the shadow account going, as a means of communication to the goat, when the sniping became a little more than just 'gameplay bravado'.

It's always interesting to see how FoldClub evolves and changes. Group play creates challenges and shifting sands, as talent comes and goes. But, to underline the original point, playing for money is not a healthy $tep forward. Maybe it is just a difference of opinion and culture, but openly touting a group for hire, is a $tep too far.

Charlie

As much I have to agree to disagree regarding Renton's views, I wonder if his expressed desire to commercialize Foldit is simply his own view (and thus, not representative of the rest of AD).

Dear Fold.it

Would it be possible to arrange an official meeting to communicate the concept of personal contracts and/or team contracts with fold.it?

This of course is with regard to protein design/s and for possible future funding on that topic, rather than previous protein structure prediction.

We will be able to provide all the legal documentation to cater for any such project/s and requirements you may require by law, internationally.

Respectfully,

Renton Innes
Team Leader / Protein Folder
Anthropic Dreams.
www.anthropicdreams.com

Since AD is an "open" group, and supposedly all about SHARING, why are you so bothered by my presence?

I'm curious to see what grand things you have to market to the university teams in such a mercenary manner.

So far, the only method I see AD using is posting up a solution (probably Undone to a xxxxx.99x score) so all the little ones can wiggle it up a few hundreths of a point and fill up the Evolver scoreboard. Lots of good science there.

....

I guess I feel obliged to comment on this now. As founder of Anthropic Dreams, I will say that there is no official voice for our team. Members are free to express themselves as they wish, and their desires and goals are theirs to pursue as they see fit.

I had never intended the group to be for CASP9 only, though it was promoted that way to some members. I have never intended sharing or communal support to be it's driving motives, though that's the opinion some have of it. Our mission is to form a common bond and to find the best solution possible given our abilities as a whole. It is a pursuit solely for the purpose of bringing out the best within each of us, and learning from each other to raise that standard between those with common goals.

There is no censorship of ideas, beliefs, or goals on this team, and all are free to think for themselves and express themselves in any way which they choose. We are all individuals, and the character of an individual can only be judged by their words and their actions. No individual represents a group as a whole, just no group can truly represent the convictions of it's individual members in all topics.

If certain individuals are found to be disrupting the group from within, then I will remove them and set moderators to accept or reject new members.

Those that have contributed in the past, such as CFC are still welcome in chat at any time, and will not be asked to remove themselves. They have helped to make this team what it is today, and though their loyalty may lie elsewhere, they are still friends and will be treated as such unless/until their words or actions prove otherwise.

Trying to stay on topic, can anyone else see how this competition may help foldit ?

A cash prize is going to attract a lot of Biology students to this game, that's for sure. Many of them will continue to play long after the Uni competition has finished, and will no doubt want to join some of the established groups.

Anyone who has played this game for any length of time will have noticed how "Boots" often scores really well in the more technical puzzles, and is the only one of us to so far have had one of his/her creations made in the wet labs. What has Boots got that we don't ? A background in biology and protein theory !

I for one would welcome anyone onto my team with this type of theoretical knowledge as it is bound to help considerably.

As far as I am concerned, throwing someone else's money at biology students sounds like an idea worth trying at least once. If it works as I suspect it may, can we have first pick of the new theoretical folders for our group please.

I can't help but feel that this will all be to the detriment of Foldit. Was there no other way to highligh proteins and protein folding without introducing a monetary incentive to win? A few of the comments on here show what will hapen when the Foldit's reward system is corrupted by the possibility of financial gains. Calling it sponsorship changes nothing. It is a Foldit competition to win money. How exactly does that help this field of study?

On the other hand:

I can see that a monetary incentive may attract students to play a puzzle for the first time and may indeed introduce some of them to the role of proteins, protein folding and their possible future application. However, I would have been much happier if there were a proviso attached to the 'prize', that it only be used to sponsor a student or students who undertake certain graduate or undergraduate courses or study. This would have at least helped distance Foldit from the monetary aspect of the competition and guaranteed that the prize would benefit this field of study. It would also stop people here from trying to manipulate Foldit to financially benefit their own agendas.

As it stands, it looks like a purely financial competition sponsored by a large pharmaceutical company ("free to enter! - win large cash prizes!"). Not something I would have ever envisaged Foldit becomming associated with.

As for playing that puzzle when the competition is over, it is unlikely I will be taking part, although I'm reserving judgement for now to see what the final approach will be. The last thing I need, or anyone else here needs, is to know that they could have won $000's if they had been playing for money. I would rather not go down that road.

I may be wrong in some of my asumptions and hope I am. This is just how it appears to me. Please correct me if I am wrong.

These are my views and mine alone.

Regards

Mark

So who is it exactly open to anyway, only new players, or anyone who is a student? I am in college, does that mean I can form a school team and compete ?

You may well be right that all effects of this sponsored competition may be harmful. If so, the conclusion will be obvious and we will not do it again, at least until we figure out a more effective thing to try. I will guarantee you that we will not pursue any path that shows indications of being harmful to the long term objectives of Foldit.

One thing I'd like to point out is that Foldit has matured from its toddler stage, in many ways is on the radar of many scientific efforts, many disease foundations, efforts to involve more people into science. We have a number of non-profit foundations offering different kinds of ways to contribute to Foldit. We even have parents with children who suffer from rare protein-related diseases asking about how to donate money so that we can focus on the specific scientific problem. We now have more scientists with their own research funding wanting to get involved. I'm still not sure what we should do with these opportunities? Should we turn everything down? Is there a way to effectively use such funding to make Foldit bigger and better scientific discovery framework. I'd like to think so, but it will take us a while to figure it out, just as Foldit took 2 years to be effective, and we know that it can be drastically more effective still. One thing that is clear to me is that we need to involve the Foldit community in figuring out this process. I will organize a virtual brainstorming conference with all interested Foldit players with the goal to devise guidelines for this process.

regarding the provision that money be used for education only: i actually inserted that provision as the rules were drafted and i thought that it was important. In the end there was no way to effectively enforce that such money be spent on education only, and we had to remove that clause. Personally I would have preferred a choice of a charity to donate to, but that required a lot of time, and many additional things to work out. I think in the future we will stay away from direct monetary prizes.

It is certainly up to you whether you want to participate in the all-Foldit-player version of that puzzle that will follow the University competition. We would like to see how different the results would be across many metrics when comopared to the university challenge. But certainly abstaining from the competition would be equally important part of that information.

yes, all fully enrolled students can participate according to the rules.

Yes, as the university competition completes, we will have a virtual conference to figure what, if anything, was effective or harmful with this competition. We will use this conference to brainstorm about the reasonable guidelines under which we can accept and channel donations and third-party funding for protein design and other problems. Again, i want to stress that we will never take money that will in any way restrict the use of foldit-produced results. We will mainly focus on determining if there is any way to use donations effectively towards greater involvement and discoveries through Foldit.

Zoran,
What might be the determination for a player such as myself, who is not a veteran but recently emerged from beginner group (based on points). I've created a new team (Oxford BioEthics) and considered that if I win, I'd apply to next term's tuition or the Department or donate to NanoMission or ReMission (non-profit NanoScience gaming developers). Is this allowable? Are you amenable to any of these as solutions?
LaVerne

Never mind, Zoran. Rules call for full-timers only. That cancels out my participation.

As a recent (3 months) player I have realised that the veterans and certain groups 'drown' the top 30 positions even on the so called 'beginner' puzzles (not the <15 or <150); making it very difficult to score player points.
I haven't done the maths but it would seem to be impossible to catch up so will be interested to see what the 'newbies'come up with without the veterans and the scripts created over such a long period.

Also be interested if point are the only things that matter as there are some somewhat vague references to that as well.
thanks

I look forward to working with the others on something that can be our new focus for our future. How exciting !!!

Renton.

Can middle school atleast compete? I mean im willingly to participate. It seems only fair, or have age limts from teen to up?