Folding Forum

7im also used to be a site moderator before you arrived, and while I don't know the reasoning behind moving back to being a regular forum user, it certainly wasn't for a) lack of knowledge or b) lack of direct involvement. Admittedly as the change happened before you joined you wouldn't know that, but still, he knows his stuff and every word he has said thus far is fact (except the sarcasm obv).

Then here's another random question:

why doesn't it say that he's an FAQ contributing author under his name?

It's a unfortunate trend I saw lately to have people throwing a fit when a regular member give a answer to a question even if the answer is perfectly valid...

Even if I'm a normal member, would you challenge my knowledge ?

A tip: I'm a beta tester, author of the installation guides (Look under Stephane Renaud) and a long time folder. I'm tossing that merely to point out that some long time folders will be as knowledgeable as the PG (sometime right when the PG got wrong)

I agree with codysluder and preface your question with "this is for the PG" if you want only the answers from the PG. Without that, anyone is free to answer questions and you should learn to stop challenging everyone,

Xilikon wrote:It's a unfortunate trend I saw lately to have people throwing a fit when a regular member give a answer to a question even if the answer is perfectly valid...

Even if I'm a normal member, would you challenge my knowledge ?

A tip: I'm a beta tester, author of the installation guides (Look under Stephane Renaud) and a long time folder. I'm tossing that merely to point out that some long time folders will be as knowledgeable as the PG (sometime right when the PG got wrong)

I agree with codysluder and preface your question with "this is for the PG" if you want only the answers from the PG. Without that, anyone is free to answer questions and you should learn to stop challenging everyone,

"It is not only our right, but it is our responsibility to question our leadership."

It depends. Initially, probably yea, you bet I would. Pretty much in my world, the only way people get out of it is if they are able to present a well formulate, thoroughly researched response. If all of the citations are there, and are from credible sources, I can just go and read it myself and probably also end up learning something from it anyways. And I've also questioned citations and sources too. Examples would be, anything pertaining to Intel should probably come from the Intel tech pubs collection. Anything AMD, should come from AMD's engineering division (if, and where applicable/possible). News articles and such should only be interpreted as intermediaries between you and the source. They should be used to find out what the source actually is so that you could be able properly cite the source rather than the article. (Although I've recently started to cite HOW I found the source, especially when through a particular news article.)

Writing a properly presented, well researched argument is something that people should have learned in high school. 3500 hand written words in 76 minutes was pretty much the standard that my high school had (for exams). I think the longest report was in my junior year at 36 pages. I forget how many references I used back then, but our bare minimum was 3-5 I think, although the standard was 10. And my high school also developed it's own school-board wide publication, referencing, and citation standard that we were required to use as well. That was just the norm for us. And it was a publically funded school too.

I think that people who don't like being asked questions really shouldn't be administrators (or educators). It'd be a different story if you were blackmailed into giving a lecture though. (Because if someone can present their argument in such a manner, they shouldn't be afraid of being question. In fact, they should welcome it in my opinion. And those that don't, I think, has got something to hide. Don't ask, don't tell right?

Besides, as a researcher, it's my job to ask questions.

For the administrators of this forum, I would expect them to have at least a intermediate understanding of molecular dynamics, the GROMACS core, and at least biochemistry. Just basic enough to understand what's going on, but not so basic that everything they've learned is from the F@H website (and ONLY from the F@H website).

(cuz then you'd be able to teach the basic "classes" and pass that knowledge on down.) I've done some research into GROMACS, haven't look at the source (mostly cuz I'm not a programmer, which I've stated many times, and therefore; I don't understand C/C++), some biochem, and even less in MD. (Although molecular level and atomic level analysis and simulations isn't exactly new to me).

I really don't think that those expectations are unreasonable because I mean...if you're going to be an administrator here, you probably at least LIKED the project enough and got interested enough to want it. So, that ought to have been sufficient to motivate you to learn more about it (if you didn't already do so), that by now, I'd think that you would have been able to reach the level of expertise that I'd expect. I also think that it's very important that leaders are technically competent in the areas that they are leading. Otherwise, I might just hand you the "Hector Ruiz" award.

I'm sorry to poke holes in your argument but I think it's unrealistic to ask people to have knowledge of biochemistry and molecular dynamics. It's not mandatory to understand biochemistry and molecular dynamics to provide help and support about the F@H software. This is precisely the goal of the current forum to provide help with the installation and usage of the software along with the technical support if issues arise during the use of the software.

Remember that if you want to ask questions about biochemisty and/or molecular dynamics, we have a "Science questions/answers" (viewforum.php?f=17) forum for that purpose. However, it's not a place where scientists come to discuss about that and this is why most of us will tell you to preface the question if you intent it to be answered by the Stanford people only.

Moderators/administrators requiring to know about this stuff have no bearing with the ability to run the forum and moderate. This is precisely why we have a special group called Pande Group (with the name in bold blue) to answer the more scientific questions and the internal stuff that the general public doesn't have access. Their duty is to make sure rules is followed and to answer questions at their best of their capabilities. If they cannot answer them, they should be able to either guide you toward a better resource or to contact the right people to answer the question.

Xilikon wrote:I'm sorry to poke holes in your argument but I think it's unrealistic to ask people to have knowledge of biochemistry and molecular dynamics. It's not mandatory to understand biochemistry and molecular dynamics to provide help and support about the F@H software. This is precisely the goal of the current forum to provide help with the installation and usage of the software along with the technical support if issues arise during the use of the software.

Remember that if you want to ask questions about biochemisty and/or molecular dynamics, we have a "Science questions/answers" (viewforum.php?f=17) forum for that purpose. However, it's not a place where scientists come to discuss about that and this is why most of us will tell you to preface the question if you intent it to be answered by the Stanford people only.

Moderators/administrators requiring to know about this stuff have no bearing with the ability to run the forum and moderate. This is precisely why we have a special group called Pande Group (with the name in bold blue) to answer the more scientific questions and the internal stuff that the general public doesn't have access. Their duty is to make sure rules is followed and to answer questions at their best of their capabilities. If they cannot answer them, they should be able to either guide you toward a better resource or to contact the right people to answer the question.

Ok.

Then by that theory, why would people try to attempt to answer something that may or may not know the answer to or about (in relation to subject area)?

Besides, you don't have to be EXPERTS in the field. But knowing SOMETHING about it beyond what the website tells us would probably be quite beneficial.

If someone asked ME about the MD core, I wouldn't answer it or I would answer with one that states "I do not know the answer to your question." (because I am not qualified to answer that question).

If someone asks me why RNA hairpin folds, I wouldn't have the slightest clue (from a biochem perspective). It wouldn't stop me from trying to look it up in various medical and scientific journal publications, (like Elsevier), read it, and then try and best describe or re-explain what I just read. If I can't find anything, I'd say that. If I found something but have no idea what they're talking about (e.g. the GROMACS source code), I'd say that.

Why would you purposely set yourself up for that? There are some posts, (many of them actually) that I just don't respond to at all. Whether it's because I've got nothing to add, don't have an answer to or for, or because it's outside of my area (main area) of competence or expertise. So, why would I want to step out of my bounds if I'm not ready and ill prepared to be able to full support it and defend it? That's a really really silly move.

You can support the software all you want, but I think that you should have SOME idea as to what's going on, and more than just the papers and FAQs from Stanford's website.

Even with my work, although I've never seen the actual source code, I'm expected to know SOMETHING about the underlying physics and mathematics so that when I am in a technical presentation with the military, I WILL, have, and often say that I've never actually seen the source code itself, but based on the publications that we have written and presented, this is how I THINK it works and use logic to reason it out.

It might not be perfect, and might not even be a 100% accurate explanation, but as long as you get the point across; you're usually at least..."ok". And with such presentations, you can never really "prepare" for what you might be asked, and so, you do the best that you can to prepare for what you THINK is going to be asked, and we usually only present 1/3rd of the actual work that is done at a time. If there are questions about the other 2/3rds, we'd presented it as on-going study with no official results yet, but the preliminary results are...blah.

Same thing here.

You can be the most competent of F@H client user as you can ever be. From day 1 of development. That's your 1/3rd. But knowing SOMETHING about how it all works underneath and around it...that's your 2/3rds (which often remains largely unspoken of or about). But if, once in a blue moon, you get asked, at least then you'd have sufficient background to be able to answer it, even if it more-than-website generic terms. And if you've been folding for that long, that REALLY shouldn't come as a surprise, especially once you've reached admin status.

So, no I disagree -- I don't think that it's an unrealistic or unreasonable expectation at all.

(Besides, if you KNEW what was going on underneath and problems do pop up with the client, you'd probably be able to start reasonably GUESSING at the root cause). You might not know the exact wording or terminology or the actual line or function or call within the code that's causing it; but at least you wouldn't be totally clueless either. And by then, you've probably just about seen all of the possible problems that can arise, and probably would already have solution procedures cheat sheet in hand on how to deal with those issues. Even with new problems, you'd be able to draw on your collective relevant experience and education to be a more effective solutions provider/helper/teacher/administrator.

(Correct me if I'm wrong BTW.)

So, how would any of that be bad? Or unrealistic? (And if you've been on a project for so long and you learn absolutely nothing about it, wow. I don't think that I even have words to express or describe that.)

You are so focused on your own tree that you forgot there is a forest behind your tree...

Those "once in a blue moon" questions can be answered by the Pande Group with Professor Vijay Pande as the director. This is what I'm refering to as the PG in my posts... They are scientists in the various fields of biochemistry, biophysics, computer engineering, network engineering and anything you can get out of university staff. They will be able to answer those questions in the desired technical level I never claimed I know all. I just merely say that I know very well how clients work together, how it interact with the network and how they process work units as a programmer/analyst by trade. I know jack shit about the molecular stuff and I don't bother trying to understand everything (I have a good understanding about how things work in general and what they look, not in detail).

The Folding Forum is not the right place if all you look is to have answer to your "scientific" questions since you will never ever be happy with what we can give as answers...

This will be my last reply to you since I don't want to waste arguing with a stubborn guy...

Xilikon wrote:You are so focused on your own tree that you forgot there is a forest behind your tree...

Those "once in a blue moon" questions can be answered by the Pande Group with Professor Vijay Pande as the director. This is what I'm refering to as the PG in my posts... They are scientists in the various fields of biochemistry, biophysics, computer engineering, network engineering and anything you can get out of university staff. They will be able to answer those questions in the desired technical level I never claimed I know all. I just merely say that I know very well how clients work together, how it interact with the network and how they process work units as a programmer/analyst by trade. I know jack shit about the molecular stuff and I don't bother trying to understand everything (I have a good understanding about how things work in general and what they look, not in detail).

The Folding Forum is not the right place if all you look is to have answer to your "scientific" questions since you will never ever be happy with what we can give as answers...

This will be my last reply to you since I don't want to waste arguing with a stubborn guy...

Yes, I know what PG means.

But see, if the administrators can answer those questions (the more scientific ones as well), then we don't have to both Dr. Pande (or anyone else from PG) unless the question is SOOO difficult or sooo technical that the frontline administrative staff can't answer.

My assumption at that point would be that you didn't find out about the Pande Group and their work from F@H.

But getting back to the question that was asked to me -- in terms of why I would ask or question the admins and/or mods, or why they should post their credentials on the forum -- like I said: posts should be well presented and thoroughly researched. Mods and admins should have an even greater understand of the the client and the at least an intermediary level of understanding of the underlying science.

If you don't have any related publications (in relations to F@H), then how would I be able to tell if a reply is based solely on conjecture or if there's something that can actually support those claims? If there's merit to it, then it should be really really easy to provide it and you shouldn't feel bad about being asked for it. It's standard practice.

If you don't want questions, or questions to answers to questions; then declare or disclaimer it as such.

Course, if you know your stuff (and I"m not saying that you don't, since you've already mentioned what areas you do and don't know), you should be more than gleefully happy and to be provide the citations for your work/knowledge.

I don't claim to know it all either. Far from it! But when people ask me questions about my responses, I try to provide citations (straight from the sources as much as possible), to answer those questions. (BTW...hyperlinking SUCKS for annotated responses).

I've never once ever stated that I know more than the mods/admins. And yet, I don't think that I've ever gotten a response from the mods/admins to a question that I've had (which really aren't all that complex or scientific in nature thus far), such that the contents of the response was "I don't know." (Wait...that's not true. I've been deferred to a few times to ask some of the questions directly to Dr. Pande.)

(Which I didn't, because I didn't think that it would be worth wasting Dr. Pande's time, and felt that it ought to have been something that mods/admins should have been able to handle.)

Especially since the mods/admins claim that they've been on the projects here for so long (which is fine), so I'd expect them to have done their research into what they're moderating for/administering.

It's the whole..."I've been here forever, so why do you question me?" bit. Well..if you've been here since the dawn of time (or the project, or the forum), then I would expect a moderate level of technical and scientific competency. Like I said before, you don't have to be experts (like PG), but you really should ought to know SOMETHING beyond what the website tells us. Otherwise you're just really...a techie. Nothing special. (And neither am I. But it definitely doesn't look like that I'm going to be learning much about F@H from the people that run the F@H forum. lol. how interesting/ironic is that?)

Congratulations on your Hector Ruiz award. Or would you rather the Robert S. "Steve" Miller award?

BTW. Apparently, my first unit was April 4, 2006. UserID (?) 180575?. So quite possibly, had I actually cared, when this forum started, I could have been one of the first few to join as well (based on join date of 7im. Just a random tidbit for those that were trying to validate their position using that (kind of) data.

Before your opinion of the Administrative staff falls too low:

This forum is actually the second incarnation of the Folding@home support forum, so the start date is largely irrelevant. The original forum (which suffered a catastrophic failure in 2007) was running since ~ 2001, and most of the "old timers" and Administrative staff here were also longstanding members of that original forum.

The purpose of this forum is primarily one of support for the client software, and not having a scientific background does not automatically preclude you from knowing what you are talking about. To coin a wikipedia precept, "Assume good faith."

Most forum members (or indeed donors to the project) have no intention of learning about the science/technical processes involved, they are just content "knowing" they are helping do groundbreaking research.

A number of the Administrative staff (excluding Pande Group) are scientists/engineers themselves, albeit not in the same field of research as PG.

uncle_fungus wrote:Before your opinion of the Administrative staff falls too low:

This forum is actually the second incarnation of the Folding@home support forum, so the start date is largely irrelevant. The original forum (which suffered a catastrophic failure in 2007) was running since ~ 2001, and most of the "old timers" and Administrative staff here were also longstanding members of that original forum.

The purpose of this forum is primarily one of support for the client software, and not having a scientific background does not automatically preclude you from knowing what you are talking about. To coin a wikipedia precept, "Assume good faith."

Most forum members (or indeed donors to the project) have no intention of learning about the science/technical processes involved, they are just content "knowing" they are helping do groundbreaking research.

A number of the Administrative staff (excluding Pande Group) are scientists/engineers themselves, albeit not in the same field of research as PG.

In my experience, people's assumption about answers isn't always correct. What perception tells us and what reality tells us can sometimes be quite dramatically different.

I'm not entirely sure how much science background you'd actually need to understand F@H at an intermediary level. Granted, that expectation that I have is only really for site admins and mods, but I don't know. I wouldn't suppose it would be THAT difficult.

Knowing something never hurts anyone. Ergo, having that knowledge certainly can't hurt.

I did not know that the forum crashed and burned. I just thought that for some strange reason, the forum started really really late.

I only really started to get heavy back into F@H and the science of it when I was prepping for the deposition in preparation for the benchmarking that I was doing.

I think that the current proposed plan is to stop folding in approximately 40 days.

alpha754293 wrote:I'm not entirely sure how much science background you'd actually need to understand F@H at an intermediary level. Granted, that expectation that I have is only really for site admins and mods, but I don't know. I wouldn't suppose it would be THAT difficult.

I'm a biochemist/computational biologist by training and I understand at a technical level only some of the science that is going on.

uncle_fungus wrote:

alpha754293 wrote:I'm not entirely sure how much science background you'd actually need to understand F@H at an intermediary level. Granted, that expectation that I have is only really for site admins and mods, but I don't know. I wouldn't suppose it would be THAT difficult.

I'm a biochemist/computational biologist by training and I understand at a technical level only some of the science that is going on.

Well..you're like....three up me at least.

I never really understood how computational biology or computational chemistry worked though.

I mean, when you think of bio or biochem, you don't really think about computations much. I suppose that maybe for like molecular energy minimizations and also for like (electron) cloud probability stuff. Certainly intriguing though. Something that I'd definitely not likely to be majoring in in my lifetime. But absolutely fascinated that in terms of a computer, it can handle the really BIG all the way to the really small, real and imaginary/purely theorectical.

I don't think that I'd get over this awe and wonder of it all.

OK guys, Alpha's acting as a troll to bait you. You all have the knowledge and experiance to recognize and deal with people like that.

Alpha, if you ever wish to be taken seriously here, you really need to stop this type of behavior immediately. You are alienating the very people that you may need someday. So don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Don't worry, I'm not going to get stuck here replying to anything here. I know what to do and am executing troll defenses immediately. So, there's no need to reply to this message (I won't be back).

wow. even when you have a geniune response, people still assume you're a troll. Nice.

I was originally going to apply to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario to pursue a dual degree in Medical Science and Astrophysics. That got dropped when I found out that they privatized their programs (so instead of like...about $5k CAD a year, it become $20k a year.) Then I went to community college for mechanical engineering technology with a speciality in automotive. And now I'm doing a bachelor's/master's degree in mechanical engineering, focusing on computational simluations (largely CFD and FEA). (Also automotive speciality).

And I work as a graduate research assistant on a military project.

http://www.kettering.edu/research/AwardLuncheon.jsp (I'm on the top right)
http://www.kettering.edu/visitors/story ... rynum=2755

I'm also registered as a student member in the Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE), National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), Michigan Society of Professional Engineers (MSPE), and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

I've also studied the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) and also Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) programmes, and plan on studying at the Royal College of Music (RCM), and the Paris Conservatory (Le Conservatorie National Supérieur du Musique et de Danse de Paris, or CNSMDP for short), as well as the Chaikovskii Conservatory in St. Petersburg, Russia. And if I have time, or get bored (whichever comes first), I'll likely complete certificate program as a pastry chef at Le Cordon Bleu while I'm in Paris.

*edit*
One of my dreams right now would be to actually convert the old, and very broken and worn down Michigan Central Station (or at least that's what it USED to be) in Downtown Detroit into a high tech computational and simulation facility. There, the center will process data in a multitude of industries including, but not limited to: aerodynamics, aerospace and astronautics, computational biology, computational chemistry, alternative energy research, financial modelling, materials, solid mechanics, computational fluid dynamics.

http://brnation.d2sector.net/detroit/ue ... tation.htm