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Strange site. The heading implies that they are attempting to design things that help science, but if you drill in to the pages for "new to fold.it" and FAQ, it
by natch 7y ago
Strange site. The heading implies that they are attempting to design things that help science, but if you drill in to the pages for "new to fold.it" and FAQ, it never actually says that any of the results are used by anyone. Instead it says that it's all a game and the only science goal is to prove that humans are capable (just like computers) of doing this.
I wonder if this is really all it is, or if the writers of the FAQ are just myopic about the fact that newcomers don't have the big picture, so they just forget to mention whether the results are ever used or not, or even potentially used, or even potentially looked at by anyone who might use them.
Reminds me of how a lot of open source packages, when you go to their about page, just have a list of recent updates in highly technical language that assumes the reader is already familiar with the goals of the project.
Sites should not assume that the reader already knows what is going on. In this case, the "new to fold.it" page is just a bunch of steps for getting started, with absolutely no overview that makes clear how any of it is all used. Under "goals" the stated science goal is just to prove that humans can solve this kind of puzzles. Really odd that teams would give time to this if it's not having any real effect though, so I suspect I'm missing something?
- astroalex 7y agoI happened to work in the lab at the University of Washington that helped maintain the game as an undergrad. Here's a published scientific article about the use of Foldit for science: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09304 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09304 (I'm not disagreeing that the website is badly designed.)
- natch 7y agoThanks. I’d quibble about the design word... the design is ok; it’s the wording that is lacking. Or some clear thinking. I mean for all the effort they are spending on this, it would take like one paragraph or less to clear things up. It could be fixed with five minutes of effort.
- goldenchrome 7y agoDesign encompasses everything that people interact with, so words are part of design. In fact there's a whole discipline called "User Experience Writing".
- natch 7y agoSure, no argument there, although you’re being a bit over picky about semantics (even more than I was!). But my point stands that this could be fixed with a single paragraph of text.
- dang 7y agoDiscussed in 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815917
- hillz 7y agoIt sounds like they don't really use it. Their about page says: We’re collecting data to find out if humans' pattern- recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more efficient than existing computer programs at pattern- folding tasks. If this turns out to be true, we can then teach human strategies to computers and fold proteins faster than ever! Indicating that at some point they may use it, though judging from recent trends in reinforcement learning, they probably won't.