Discussion/site: project description feedback

[compdewd]

Sorry, I sent you a PM before I saw your post here. A site page would provide more flexibility and that's always a plus. Having a page where a user could select a project from a list rather than having a document where they would have to manually look for it would be much better. I'm all for having a site for it.

[Jesse_V]

Sorry, I sent you a PM before I saw your post here.

Concurrent Modification Exception? Hahaha.

A site page would provide more flexibility and that's always a plus. Having a page where a user could select a project from a list rather than having a document where they would have to manually look for it would be much better. I'm all for having a site for it.

If a site is cool, we need to plan out how it's going to work, and how it would help in the long run. What do you think? Does anyone else have any ideas on what they'd like to see here? Please guys, let's brainstorm and solve this problem together.

[compdewd]

Concurrent Modification Exception? Hahaha.

What do you think?

Well, my quick idea would be have one page for the actual descriptions, one page for submissions, and a page for each project set for discussions and questions (or maybe not that many pages...). Just some quick ideas below:

The Description page:

• Defaults to showing no/all simplified project descriptions
• Gives a dropdown box for choosing only the projects that currently have simplified descriptions
  • PHP could figure (by fetching an XML file that contains all the project descriptions) how many project descriptions there are in that file and only present those projects in the dropdown box
• The client asking the server for a specific project will use the GET method for easy external linking
• The technical description could also be shown by fetching it from Stanford's site (once daily) so the technical descriptions are never (too far) out-of-date in case they ever change

The Submission page:

• Contains a dropdown box to select the project that the user wants to contribute to
  • This dropdown would be populated with the project summary projects which I already have code for from the GPU Database

[Jesse_V]

Good ideas there. Been thinking a bit more about this. Couple of ideas I have:

• I think we could include a competitive element to this. A lot of volunteer projects have this: distributed computing projects, FoldIt, semi-automated tools to revert vandalism on Wikipedia, etc. I'm not psychology major, but still I find it interesting how everyone, including myself, really pursuits points even though you can't actually do anything with the points themselves.
• With a bit of organization, I think this could all be done on one page. I want to streamline the interface, and IMO having one page will help. The downside is that the page could look busy, so I'd have to be careful about that.

I'm thinking three panes:

• Left pane: shows username, rank compared to others, and how many contributions the user behind you has, you have, and how many the person ahead of you has. Bottom of the pane: user's 10 recent contributions. This can make it easy to follow responses to your contributions, like a discussion, votes, or other alternatives.
• Center pane: project number and current description. Below that there's a place for voting on the technicality of the description, similar to the poll on this thread. Also shows average comprehension for the description. Alternative descriptions are listed below that comprehension area. Users can upvote or downvote alternatives and provide comments.
• Right pane: Recent activity. This shows the launch of new projects, recent alternative descriptions/suggestions to current projects, or recent comments. This makes it easy to help eliminate a backlog or assist with other contributions.

What do you think about this? Would this work?

[7im]

Would it be possible to get a poll option somewhat along the lines of "I never read the project descriptions." so it doesn't matter how technical or not they are. I fold what they send me. And it can be as technical as it needs to be. If I don't understand, and really want to know more, I'll ask the researcher to post more about it in simpler terms.

[compdewd]

I like the panes idea. The only problem I see is that it may be a lot to do at one time. Making the descriptions available is the primary goal and having too much extra to do could be a hinderance/delay. If it is one page, load time may increase, but my worries about that don't have much basis. However, I do think it would be cool . I think the competitive aspect could be beneficial, but I think it would be very difficult to make it fair. If all posts are seen by everyone, someone can simply rephrase someone else's post without doing any research and still get credit for it. And since it would be difficult to make it fair, I don't think a points system should be implemented. Usernames can be associated with submissions, but having a points system would be too difficult to manage and make fair IMO.

[Jesse_V]

The stuff on the right and left side are for convenience. The middle one would have the largest width.

Good call on cheating. I was going to base it on the number of the user's total number of comments and alternatives. Now that I think about cheating, how about basing it on the number of upvotes to the user's alternative descriptions? I just wanted something to measure contributions. Some people are fluent in molecular biology, and others have to spend time researching, and that's really difficult to assess.

[compdewd]

I think basing it on upvotes is a better idea because the community decides how valuable a contribution is rather than an automated system or us (which is the assumption that my previous post was based on), plus, the first post of some kind of content will presumably recieve more upvotes than a second version of the same content which would deter cheating. We can kind of base it on StackExchange's Reputation System if that's not already what you were basing it on

[Jesse_V]

Would it be possible to get a poll option somewhat along the lines of "I never read the project descriptions." so it doesn't matter how technical or not they are. I fold what they send me. And it can be as technical as it needs to be. If I don't understand, and really want to know more, I'll ask the researcher to post more about it in simpler terms.

Good idea, I didn't think about that. Adding a poll option to this thread might be too late. V7 makes the descriptions pretty obvious, but as you say there's always the possibility that they never read it. Someone doesn't have to read the descriptions to be able to help make them easier to comprehend. If they don't understand enough to offer an alternative, they could at least vote on their comprehension. My goal is to make them really intriguing, and I think that's possible by hitting the right level of technicality.

[art_l_j_PlanetAMD64]

Would it be possible to get a poll option somewhat along the lines of "I never read the project descriptions." so it doesn't matter how technical or not they are. I fold what they send me. And it can be as technical as it needs to be. If I don't understand, and really want to know more, I'll ask the researcher to post more about it in simpler terms.

Yes, that describes my situation to a tee.

[Jesse_V]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, from here and from the other poll: viewtopic.php?f=86&t=23562

I finished my initial sketch of how I plan on putting this page together, and now that I have a bit of time I started coding.
I don't have a stable release just yet, but you can follow my commits to my Github repository for the very latest: https://github.com/Jesse-V/FAH-description-feedback

[Jesse_V]

I completed a prototype, available on http://www.jessevictors.com/F@h/. It is not dynamic, the buttons do not function, and I'd like to style things like the buttons a bit more, but the basic interface is there. Please tell me what you think. Does anything need to be changed to make this a streamlined interface?

This prototype renders best in Chrome. The ratings sliders do not render properly in Firefox, but I'm working on that: https://github.com/Jesse-V/FAH-descript ... k/issues/2

Will this interface work, or do I need to change anything around?

[JoshEllie-16]

On the subject of users contributing to project descriptions, I think to encourage people to take the time and effort to contribute and to give an incentive to try and get it right, there could be a competitive edge to it all; I was thinking of awarding points to their folding profile based on how much of their contribution is used in the finalised descriptions. Would this be feasible, or too time-consuming?

[Jesse_V]

Josh, note the ranks and contribution stats in the upper left-hand corner. I don't think it's possible or feasible to tie it in with someone's folding points, so it's a seperate point system. In some of the above posts, we were discussing how we should give out the points.

[JoshEllie-16]

Josh, note the ranks and contribution stats in the upper left-hand corner. I don't think it's possible or feasible to tie it in with someone's folding points, so it's a seperate point system. In some of the above posts, we were discussing how we should give out the points.

Alright. Nevertheless, a points system, IMO, would be an excellent incentive for people to contribute.