Suggested Changes to F@h Website

[Jonazz]

Not really an error, but the diseases page hasn't been updated in over a year. It would be nice to know what progress has been made!

[Jesse_V]

Not really an error, but the diseases page hasn't been updated in over a year. It would be nice to know what progress has been made!

Second that. Although you can find a lot of information on the Result section of the website. I've tried to summarize some of them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F@H#Biomed ... gnificance but yes it's important to make sure that page stays updated.

[Jonazz]

Not really an error, but the diseases page hasn't been updated in over a year. It would be nice to know what progress has been made!

Second that. Although you can find a lot of information on the Result section of the website. I've tried to summarize some of them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F@H#Biomed ... gnificance but yes it's important to make sure that page stays updated.

Couldn't agree more my friend. It's nice to see small updates specifically for certain diseases, it's why 95% of us fold anyway.

[GreyWhiskers]

I look at theServer Stats page fairly often - I like the new format, especially being able to filter on the various columns.

The page could be made more user friendly, though, if the header rows were locked, and the detail rows scrollable.

This suggestion goes even more for the detail page you get by clicking through from one of the Server Stats rows. This page really needs a fixed header/scrollable detail because:
- the list is huge - a row every 10 minutes
- there is no header at all to identify the columns
- the columns are not the same as the summary Server Stats page.

I like to copy the detail rows from a given server into an Excel spreadsheet (see one of my posts: 171.67.108.54 (Fermi GPU P6802/3/4 series) Observations), and find it helpful to know what the columns are!!

Thanks.

GW.

[GreyWhiskers]

Broken image links in All Folding@home projects. After the Stanford network came back up this afternoon, I was looking at this for the first time in a while, and a very large number of the images links are broken, especially for the older projects. Some current projects (e.g., 6900) don't seem to be there, and there seem to be a lot of old projects no longer in service.

This page could use some TLC.

GW

[brainvision]

If someone care about it (and I'm sure someone does), I would like to report my actual and past experiences here at folding@home site and forum: my opinion, in few words, is that all is too much confusing! I don't want to critic somebody or demolish the work of a lot of people that every day do this for nothing, but I think that various aspects of folding experience could be better organized: it would be more easy for the end user to choose and find the right client for himself, so, IMO: 1. all downloads must point to a unique place; 2. no needs to have a forum place for download the clients (for every client!) and one from the mean site; 3. so, the forum must be used only for asking help or for how-to, not for download, reducing confusion; 4. the downloads section could be divided into Windows / Linux / Mac sections, with all various UNI / SMP / GPU options for each section..
and so on.. IMO, as you could understand, the meaning trouble with folding@ site and forum is the confusion about all the client available.. A new user is completely lost between them!, I can assure you - and you could see that even from all the forum's questions like "Which client for my PC?"..

all that, naturally, IMHO..

[Hisuichan]

I quite second this, as it took me a while to find out about the v7 beta before making my move a few months ago. I too think that nowadays it would make sense to group the classic, smp and v7 downloads for Windows together in one page (another page for Mac/Linux/etc), respectively the different gpu clients so people can make up their minds faster without having to rummage through a second beta page first with its many options, then the forums, to find out the best client for them. Layout of the download pages could be improved as well. Though I kind of suspect this will happen with the rc/full release of v7 in January anyway, PG may already have something up their sleeves.

[Jesse_V]

If someone care about it (and I'm sure someone does), I would like to report my actual and past experiences here at folding@home site and forum: my opinion, in few words, is that all is too much confusing! I don't want to critic somebody or demolish the work of a lot of people that every day do this for nothing, but I think that various aspects of folding experience could be better organized: it would be more easy for the end user to choose and find the right client for himself, so, IMO: 1. all downloads must point to a unique place; 2. no needs to have a forum place for download the clients (for every client!) and one from the mean site; 3. so, the forum must be used only for asking help or for how-to, not for download, reducing confusion; 4. the downloads section could be divided into Windows / Linux / Mac sections, with all various UNI / SMP / GPU options for each section..
and so on.. IMO, as you could understand, the meaning trouble with folding@ site and forum is the confusion about all the client available.. A new user is completely lost between them!, I can assure you - and you could see that even from all the forum's questions like "Which client for my PC?"..

all that, naturally, IMHO..

Yes I agree as well. Folding@home client fragmentation occurred most likely because they kept adding another platform, and then another platform, and then never bothered to reorganize their webpage. Even for Windows users getting to the SMP/GPU is a little bit tricky. However, all of this will go away in a few months when v7 will be come stable enough to be released. See this release post of an older v7 version: viewtopic.php?f=67&t=19648#p195686 So it looks like v7 will then do all the decisions all by itself, so all you basically need to do is choose your OS and v7 takes care of the rest. There's still a bit of discussion over the default slot configuration, and right now SMP+GPU are installed, which try to maximize performance. I proposed something slightly different here: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=20070 I do agree that newcomers could be confused/overwhelmed. V7 is trying to take care of all this, and I believe it will make huge strides in this direction.

I quite second this, as it took me a while to find out about the v7 beta before making my move a few months ago. I too think that nowadays it would make sense to group the classic, smp and v7 downloads for Windows together in one page (another page for Mac/Linux/etc), respectively the different gpu clients so people can make up their minds faster without having to rummage through a second beta page first with its many options, then the forums, to find out the best client for them. Layout of the download pages could be improved as well. Though I kind of suspect this will happen with the rc/full release of v7 in January anyway, PG may already have something up their sleeves.

I always Google "Folding@home v7" and either Google provides me with a direct link to where I eventually want to go, or I'm only one or two clicks away. Again, v7 will take over the older v6 clients, and solve many of their bugs while simultaneously providing more features, both to the user and scientifically. This will make the older clients pretty obsolete. Please also see the links I provided above. Mr. Coffland did indeed mention v7 will be put on the website like that after it is fully released, but there's too many bugs in it which would be detrimental to anyone who didn't realize they were beta testing software.

[PantherX]

...and so on.. IMO, as you could understand, the meaning trouble with folding@ site and forum is the confusion about all the client available.. A new user is completely lost between them!, I can assure you - and you could see that even from all the forum's questions like "Which client for my PC?"...

For new users, we have a separate Sub-Forum and there are stickied threads for deciding the Clients and explanation of some aspects. Some donors read it while others may not.

[RLHay]

Speaking as a newbie to F@H (just over a week), there is a HEAP of information available - and that is a big part of the problem. It's all there somewhere, but to get at it you need some patience and a desire to hunt around. Frankly that is an awful way to pitch the project to those who might be inclined to loan a machine, but have limited time (or desire to spend personal/work time) on doing so.

I would love to see a well laid out welcome page that clearly and simply pitches what the science is about (in layman's terms), what the benefit to humanity will be and how you as an individual can make a difference. From THAT page there should be a link to the downloads page, which should be unified and give very clear guidance (I appreciate that the eventual release of v7 will help this).

I stumbled on F@H quite by accident and now have my home and work machines running v7 beta as background tasks, but from first finding F@H to figuring out what to download and having a mental picture of the project, clients, configuration, forum and points etc was a good 2-3 days of persistence [I'm sure my company appreciates the effort ]. I wouldn't even consider pitching running F@H to other shareholders at the moment because the sales job would be too tough and the overhead of installing and supporting F@H client wouldn't be worth my time distraction. That's 60 reasonable spec multi-core machines going begging 24/7/360....

I appreciate the work done by all to get to this point - fantastic stuff - but to take it to the next level requires a major web redesign and focus on making the project accessible to a wider audience. Focus on "selling" the concept in 2-5minutes and having someone folding in 10 minutes, knowing what they are doing and why. Structure the rest of the info so it can be found by digging, but not quite so much digging!

Cheers

[Zagen30]

Speaking as a newbie to F@H (just over a week), there is a HEAP of information available - and that is a big part of the problem. It's all there somewhere, but to get at it you need some patience and a desire to hunt around. Frankly that is an awful way to pitch the project to those who might be inclined to loan a machine, but have limited time (or desire to spend personal/work time) on doing so.

I would love to see a well laid out welcome page that clearly and simply pitches what the science is about (in layman's terms), what the benefit to humanity will be and how you as an individual can make a difference. From THAT page there should be a link to the downloads page, which should be unified and give very clear guidance (I appreciate that the eventual release of v7 will help this).

I stumbled on F@H quite by accident and now have my home and work machines running v7 beta as background tasks, but from first finding F@H to figuring out what to download and having a mental picture of the project, clients, configuration, forum and points etc was a good 2-3 days of persistence [I'm sure my company appreciates the effort ]. I wouldn't even consider pitching running F@H to other shareholders at the moment because the sales job would be too tough and the overhead of installing and supporting F@H client wouldn't be worth my time distraction. That's 60 reasonable spec multi-core machines going begging 24/7/360....

I appreciate the work done by all to get to this point - fantastic stuff - but to take it to the next level requires a major web redesign and focus on making the project accessible to a wider audience. Focus on "selling" the concept in 2-5minutes and having someone folding in 10 minutes, knowing what they are doing and why. Structure the rest of the info so it can be found by digging, but not quite so much digging!

Cheers

Thank you for giving your feedback as a newcomer. It's very true that the more you know about something, the more you overlook things that aren't obvious to those who don't know about it.

I would have thought that the main page does a reasonably good job of the "sell" you talked about and works reasonably well as a welcome page. What do you feel is missing from it?

Mostly unrelated to RLHay's post, I noticed that on the main page, under "Want to Learn More?", it says "Click on the links on the left for downloads or more information." Both the download link and most of the additional information links are on the top of the page.

[Jesse_V]

Speaking as a newbie to F@H (just over a week), there is a HEAP of information available - and that is a big part of the problem. It's all there somewhere, but to get at it you need some patience and a desire to hunt around. Frankly that is an awful way to pitch the project to those who might be inclined to loan a machine, but have limited time (or desire to spend personal/work time) on doing so.

I would love to see a well laid out welcome page that clearly and simply pitches what the science is about (in layman's terms), what the benefit to humanity will be and how you as an individual can make a difference. From THAT page there should be a link to the downloads page, which should be unified and give very clear guidance (I appreciate that the eventual release of v7 will help this).

I stumbled on F@H quite by accident and now have my home and work machines running v7 beta as background tasks, but from first finding F@H to figuring out what to download and having a mental picture of the project, clients, configuration, forum and points etc was a good 2-3 days of persistence [I'm sure my company appreciates the effort ]. I wouldn't even consider pitching running F@H to other shareholders at the moment because the sales job would be too tough and the overhead of installing and supporting F@H client wouldn't be worth my time distraction. That's 60 reasonable spec multi-core machines going begging 24/7/360....

I appreciate the work done by all to get to this point - fantastic stuff - but to take it to the next level requires a major web redesign and focus on making the project accessible to a wider audience. Focus on "selling" the concept in 2-5minutes and having someone folding in 10 minutes, knowing what they are doing and why. Structure the rest of the info so it can be found by digging, but not quite so much digging!

Cheers

I for one am aware of the changes that need to be made to the F@h website. As soon as the v7 goes public, I plan on pushing for some sort of overhaul or something, but perhaps that will already be made. Dr. Pande indicated that there would be some website changes along with the official full release of v7, so we'll see how that goes. Until this occurs, my project over the last month has been to significantly expand the F@h article on Wikipedia. I truly feel that that page is a popular for newcomers and veterans alike; indeed, over 500 people a day from all over the world read the page. I'm striving to make it as informative and encyclopedic as possible, and achieve Good Article quality status by the release of v7. At the moment, I have some scientific publications and whatnot open in another browser tab, as I'm about to complete some cleanup, expansion, and organization of the Biomedical Significance section, but your welcome to view what I've done so far: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F@H I understand your issues, and while the Wikipedia article isn't meant to be an installation guide or how-to, I personally feel that it is more informative and organized than folding.stanford.edu. I've traced some of the text on folding.stanford.edu to years like 2005 or 2006, so clearly things were added here and there over time, and I believe it is time for some big improvements. Obviously that will take a lot of time and effort, but like this project perhaps we can all collaborate and make something really nice for everyone. I for one am quite willing to help with that project.

[RLHay]

Jesse_V - the Wiki page is great work. Sadly it's not linked from the Stanford pages (that I could see anyway). So, I only know about it from your posts. I have to confess that Wikipedia is seldom my first stop for info due to the highly variable nature of information curating on the site. It will be interesting to see what the revamped F@H site looks like, but I would have thought your Wiki page would be a great source of content.

Zagen30 - fair comment and questions. As a main page there are two distinct classes of problem:
1. Layout
2. Pitching to the target audience

The layout is terribly web1.0 (a bit harsh perhaps, but...). Menus and links are small and cramped off to the top and sides. Although main headings are large and visible the text layout is dense and unappealing.

Buried in one of the FAQ's (another point - why so many FAQ lists?) was a mention of the computing power going to waste in the vast number of business machines sitting idle much of the day. If you want lay people (especially at work) to be considering running F@H the concept, need, value, process and costs must be clearly explained and presented within that 2-5 minute window. You want minutes 5-10 to be taken up with downloading configuring and initiating the first run!

There is nothing "wrong" with the front page, I just think it misses the potentially huge "target market". My science training is geochemistry, I have worked in acoustics for a number of years. I have a broad enough science grounding to understand the terms, concepts and mechanisms at a simplistic level. I have a very basic grasp of the computing issues involved and the various hardware/software distinctions, but I still found the sites pitch dull, unattractive and frustratingly fragmented. It looks and feels like a site that has grown and been updated over a long period without having a good dung out.

the current pitch actually speaks to scientists about the science. While I find that all interesting and understand its value, The site should really be speaking direct to the "joe public". So, rather than saying "Our goal: to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases" you could say "Our Goal: To find cures and treatments for diseases such as...." or words to that effect. follow this with a 2-3 sentence pitch about the personal and social impact of the diseases. Follow that with the 2-3 line pitch on how the reader can help - that should be where the first mention of "Folding" and the need for distributed computing should occur IMO.

Other than links and menus there really shouldn't be anything else on the main page. After that it's just a matter of providing structure to the rest of the site with unified sources of info (F@H site, forum and wiki). If it sounds like I'm suggesting the site be dummed down I guess that is true., But it should be like an onion with all the critical stuff up front pitched to the widest possible audience and progressively more detail in the deeper layers for those who really care or need to know.

I hope these comments don't leave anyone feeling aggrieved, the whole project is a fantastic and exciting exercise, but it can do better.

[Jonazz]

Projects 7100-7158 don't have a decent project description (only the points, deadlines, server info etc.). I did some searching and appearantly dr. Kasson is managing these WU's so I'm guessing they are related to the flu/viral diseases.

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/fah ... ned?p=7100
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/fah ... ned?p=7158

[GreyWhiskers]

re: project 7019 description page: This is a nit, but the picture overlaps the text (Internet Explorer 9 browser).

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/fah ... ned?p=7019