perhaps these awards are an incentive to spamming feedback
| Case number: | 845818-992674 |
| Topic: | Game: Social |
| Opened by: | spmm |
| Status: | Closed |
| Assigned: | Seth Cooper |
| Priority: | 3 |
| Type: | Suggestion |
| Opened on: | Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - 12:39 |
| Last modified: | Thursday, May 24, 2012 - 17:22 |
Junior Consultant
Provided 1 feature/suggestion feedback that was implemented by the Foldit team
Veteran Consultant
Provided 3 feature/suggestion feedbacks that were implemented by the Foldit team
Master Consultant
Provided 8 feature/suggestion feedbacks that were implemented by the Foldit team
At the very least they should mention that the suggestion needs to be ORIGINAL
| Assigned: Anonymous » Seth Cooper |
Maybe we should require new users to read Rav's Feedback FAQ before posting a new feedback?
I read it. I also sorted my topics as Rav suggested and used priority 3 as he suggested. Be glad I didn't post camtasia files with each suggestion! Weren't you all new to this game at some point?
Yes.
I have never felt a need to spam the feedback page.
Instead, I learnt the game and read the feedback section, the blog and the wiki.
I then found that I didn't need to instigate 20 or so feedbacks, as my questions and thoughts were answered.
yes jeff I was new to the game quite recently which is why I try to spend some of my precious time checking and answering feedback, helping players in global and improving the information on the wiki in a way which I hope is as impartial and informed as I can manage - given that many players also do not have English as a first language - you appear to be straying into the realms of 'look at me ám I not special' with this reply, which I find unappealing.
Feedback list cleaned a bit...
There is BIG nice SEARCH box...
Yes, limit to 2 new feedbacks per day by one user should be enough for everyone.
Here are my thoughts on the issue:
1. Personally, I don't think the consultant achievements are a major incentive. After all, few people actually notice them. Plus, they have to be recorded manually. Take myself for example: I happen to be officially credited with only 1 feature/suggestion. However, if I really wanted to, I could theoretically link the cut point feature and the 2-point evolution to old posts from 2009 and associate the "tracks" feature with my detailed description in http://fold.it/portal/node/989662 ).
2. While I do agree that jeff101 definitely made too many feedback posts, they at least look like the kind of posts that an enthusiastic new player would make. If anything, that fact that those posts exist shows that he actually cared enough about the project to talk about how things could be improved. In other words: it's the classic case of "F for the result, but A for the effort."
3. I don't think limiting the number of suggestion/feature posts that one could post in a day would help much. After all, someone who really wants to spam could simply use another tag. An option to consider would be applying such a rule only to players who have recorded fewer than an arbitrary number of moves (say 10000), though. Alternatively, the up-votes and down-votes associated with a user's posts could be directly linked to the account in such a way that the restriction would only apply to those who have a sufficiently negative balance.
4. Yet another idea is to have feedback posts hide automatically when they reach the -10 mark.
I find myself in nearly complete agreement with infjamc
Perhaps another idea might be to place a text blurb ( a codesil, qualifier, etc.) in feedback that asks contributors to consolidate multiple requests to singular posts when possible, to minimize what you call "spam".
Coded properly, it could display upon opening a new post or upon selection of one of the posting criteria (bug, idea, etc.) to minimize it's footprint in the main feedback page. The required code is relatively inconsequential, so it's not like it would be a difficult piece of webwork. a snippet of html and a snippet of javascript is all that's needed.
I'm not aware of how many the person cited above posted or didn't, but arbitrarily limiting people to two posts seems to be a case of shooting oneself in the foot, as it may dissuade otherwise friendly people from participating. Some folks are, as infjamc said...enthusiastic. it's a symptom of a certain personality type, and if I were you, if they have authentic sensibility to their posts and posits, I wouldn't do anything to dissuade them.
Here is where I diverge. I've said it before in the way way back, and I'll say it again. Science is not democratic. Sound scientific ideas should not be subject to the whims of political gamesmanship, but voting is. I would judge as suggestion based on its merits to forward the program's stability, speed, tooling, Adult UI, etc, not on what often in social communities falls back to a political vote.
Anyway, that's my two unrequested cents, like it or leave it. ciao
You can see how many feedbacks they created here:
http://fold.it/portal/feedback/filter/all/author%3A421719%20assigned%3A421719
or you can always just view all the feedbacks here: http://fold.it/portal/feedback/all
Oh heck Beta, I'm not personally concerned with the sheer number. (Btw from a quick glance, wtf is the problem? less than two dozen. whoopie!) Unless they reached into the hundreds, it is of no consequence to your database...a mere triviality. The website I govern and develop for generates thousands of database entries each day, and it is not funded by the the federal government, the University of Washington, Microsoft, and adobe.
The "nuisance" comes about as a result of a minority group of players that seem to govern the social environment at foldit (and who in my opinion and experience tends to drive this game to a statistically low participation rate when averaged over time with their attitudes). Voting on ideas for improvement? jeez....how very unscientific. In my opinion, almost all voting should be solely internal to the developers and management, since a clique can essentially kill a sensible idea otherwise.
Anyway. this is all trivial. seriously. Aren't there more important issues to address than playing politics with how many suggestions >>> a person gives you for free?
I downloaded the most recent version to do a quick evaluation of changes since the last time I did so, and it's still fraught with problems evident since day one, like the overuse of CPU when idle, the lack of a rotate (you still call it tweak for some unknown reason) command that doesn't require manually watching it rotate from angle a to b, rebuild still working much as tweak, etc.
best wishes.
You should submit a feedback about those issues!
While 19 cases isn't a huge number, it's large enough that the posts are taking up an entire page... which means that some clutter is added in the short term. Of course, a better long-term fix would be adding extra code to the feedback system so that duplicate requests would be automatically converted to an up-vote for the original submission. But that's probably too much AI design when an easier solution is available (translation: manually cleaning up the posts is still practical as long as what we have is the "enthusiastic newbie" case rather than the "real spam" case).
I understand infjamc and in part I agree, hence my former post. No doubt, true spam has to be accounted for, most likely via manual means with a possible followup blocker for the origination IP if it's true spam, but with the poor overall retention of players over the past four years, it's not (again, I M O) wise to marginalize enthusiastic newer players. And it's why I suggested that perhaps a simple codesil could be employed to encourage posters to collate their suggestions. As I noted, it's not anything close to rocket science to add such a codesil to the opener for new posts. A div, span, or similar for the content "if you're going to post many suggestions, we'd appreciate it if you intend on posting multiple suggestions using a single post, thank you!" or whatever, and an attachment to the JavaScript, HTML5 or other code that opens the editor in the first place. For that matter, if the content span/div/etc is placed within the div in which the editor window occurs, it will be opened by default using the existing code.
For the intent of reducing the effective "spamming by those who are enthusiastic, I think that such a codesil would go at least some way to encouraging a more compact manner in their efforts.
As to the voting, I've already posted what I think of that. I don't like it and never really did. I think it's contrary to the purposes of the research and to science in general and it helps to maintain a very dangerous precedent.
Interesting... you have not played in a year and a half, but have identified "a minority group of players that seem to govern the social environment at foldit" in the few days since you've returned and played 2 puzzles? And your opinion and experience lead you to conclude that these people are driving "this game to a statistically low participation rate when averaged over time with their attitudes"?
You must be referring to the "minority of players" who actually volunteer much of their time by helping and teaching in global - writing scripts - and following and answering feedbacks.
The ones who do these things get exasperated at the fact that some new players do not use search before making suggestions, or think to ask a simple question in global chat first. When someone fills the entire front page - and then reopens after someone has closed their feedback as a duplicate or has answered the feedback - then yes, the "small minority" get a bit testy that they need to go to the second page to follow the conversations about current bugs and issues (i.e. "more important issues" as you refer to).
Yes! Everyone here is always happy when a new player shows enthusiasm for the game - that's how we all started. But there have been a few recent new players to flood feedback with suggestions, and one of the others made it clear that they were indeed seeking the Consultant badges. Had you been around for the past year and a half, you may have been aware of this.
It is a shame that when a new player does this type of feedback flooding, inevitably they are subjected to a lot of negatives. There may have been an idea or two that had some merit. By presenting suggestions at a slower pace, my suspicion is that the suggestions would be evaluated by the community with the individual attention they might deserve.
There are many "more important issues to address". Perhaps if you stuck around, you might become aware of what they are and how the community and the devs are working to address those issues, rather than fluffing everything off as "playing politics".
Relearn the game - become a contributing member. Quite frankly, your "opinion and experience" may lead to doing something positive rather than a hit and run at the devs and the players who do contribute.
Yes, please look at my Feedbacks, especially if you will be working on the next overhaul of the Foldit game or website. I think they are all good ideas. Maybe you will too!
As beta said earlier, my Feedbacks are all listed at:
http://fold.it/portal/feedback/filter/all/author%3A421719%20assigned%3A421719
I think the web page needs right next to the Submit Feedback link, a big blurb that says "Search Here First! ->" and also a smaller blurb saying Ipads, 3D, Kinect, and Recipe Pausing have already been suggested.
So basically what we need is a FAQ section including common suggestions (and why they're not implemented)...
The simplest and easiest way to resolve the "issue" is to remove the reward.
While that's true, I don't think we want the opposite extreme of suppressing innovation either. Personally, I wouldn't mind even if 99% of the ideas posted here are bad because there is still something to be gained from the remaining 1%...
I completely agree... it's just an issue of being to find that 1%
If it wasn't for all of you cleaning up the feedbacks for us, we wouldn't be able to catch the super-important ones (or we'd catch them years later: such as the pi-helix fix).
It is unlikely it would suppress it at all..it would however result in less double up, triple ups, or "spamming just to get a reward".
People with great ideas tend to share them, regardless of virtual pats on the back.
I'd want to post suggestions anyway, whether there's a reward or not. Foldit is an interesting experiment. I like the idea of a web site, basically an online massive multiplayer game, that lets just about anyone contribute to science. I think it would be more appealing if it were more user-friendly, easier to use, and welcoming of new players and ideas. I have heard that it has improved a lot, even in the past year, so that is a good sign.
I hope Foldit succeeds. I have found it very stimulating and educational so far. I have learned more about protein folding because of it. I bet many of the other users have done so too. With our ever-increasing population and limited global resources, I think having more people interested in science is a good thing. I also think the game builds an appreciation for nature which, after all, folds proteins very quickly and effectively.
ENOUGH CHILDREN!
OOPS! sorry didn't mean to squeak - this is what the forum is designed for - robust discussion - but we can't search the forum and it currently doesn't work like a 'normal' discussion board, especially in display terms, so we get caught up, and some people are keen to drag up ancient history rather than stay with the question.
Perhaps providing a ''standard'' (whatever that is) searchable discussion forum may be what is needed, then people can post away, nothing is lost, and feedback can be used for, what to me is its primary purpose - letting ''the devs'' know about things immediately like bugs etc, and hopefully consensus opinions from the players, with the obvious proviso that anyone can post to feedback any time if they wish to.
apologies again for my previous comment - I don't have a cat but perhaps a random wallaby? :)
Another issue in all of this, which I though may have emerged, is the Nature/Slashdot factor - one or two enthusiastic newbies is tedious, but managing that, ie actually reading and attempting to, in a civilised way action, ignore or reply to the post rather than just voting it up or down, in the context of a huge spike.
with feedback full of: - why doesn't it work on Vista, Linux, FreshBread etc, and attempting to get the necessary meaningful input from players for sorting out the fact that, some things may be a tad under stress etc.
The only thing I could think of (although not necessarily the best option here)is to somehow moderate the posts before they come through. There would be too many issues with that I believe, but correct me if I'm actually on to something...
| Status: Open » Closed |
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With all due respect, Rav3n_pl...
The SEARCH box doesn't HELP. What if I want to find out whether "adjusting the yaw on the camera view" has been implemented? Maybe someone's already suggested "spinning the viewscreen", but that's not what I'm searching for. I searched for "adjusting the yaw on the camera view". Have you programmed your SQL database to search for synonyms? Or maybe I searched for "sinning the viewsceen". Have you programmed your SQL database to search for typos?
Your happy fun little feedback/suggestion area REALLY needs some better categorization, and/or a better way to tell what has already been suggested.
That is all.
Also? If you don't have anything nice to say, say it to my face. Don't say it in a downvote. Or I'll track your IP address and have the FBI come arrest your pansy Occupy Wall Street ass.
![](http://128.95.1.228:8000/tracking_pixel.gif?events=scAdd&f=1111&wdata={"x":12, "y":11}){kind=tracking}
And perhaps they need to be limited to a certain number per day (only features/suggestions, not bugs etc). There is no reason to enable someone to fill up the entire front page of feedback with "suggestions".