Talk:Foldit

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2020 Updates

Foldit is running a series of coronavirus puzzles, which has attracted a large number of new users. Some veteran Foldit players will be making updates to the page, which has become outdated.

• I will be doing some work on this page. MichaelDenisCassidy (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:08, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
• Also jumping in with a few updates to this page. LociOiling (talk) 20:45, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Suggestions

I think that the following sentence (from the Purpose section),"In 2008, the Foldit project submitted solutions to the CASP protein structure prediction contest; results were announced in early 2009":

1) What solutions were submitted to CASP? based on unknown crystal structures that Foldit players managed to solve? or based on analyzing the way the players solve known structures?

2) A short (one line) description of the CASP competition should be added.

3) What were the results of the solutions sent to CASP 2008 by the Foldit project ?

ערן78 (talk) 16:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Article Overhaul

I started playing Foldit over a week ago, after hearing about it on the news. I believe this program (or game) is a great idea. However, despite the occasional press that it gets, there is still some confusion over exactly what its goals are, and also how the game should be played. The game is now well over 3 years old, and after seeing a lack of information about the game on the Wikipedia article, I think it would be great if the article was completely rewritten, to give people a better insight on how it all works. This in turn could help raise interest in Foldit further, speeding up development in curing diseases, and creating more biological innovations to solve global problems.

Note that there is another Wikipedia-like article, known as the "official Wiki", available at http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/FoldIt_Wiki
The article is predominantly a manual that describes protein components, and guides players through the game, essentially serving a different purpose.

Unless anyone has any objections, the overhaul of this article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldit) will occur in approximately 1 week from now. The design of the article will be done properly, abiding by Wikipedia's guidelines. Any suggestions for the overhaul would be greatly appreciated. Please also remember that I am only human, and there may be the occasional comment or section that goes out of place. Tristanlbailey (talk) 08:35, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Can you give a list of what references you will be using for adding or changing information during the overhaul? Also, what type of format, in terms of the sections, are you going to be changing it to? Silverseren^C 16:03, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

The majority of references will come from the Foldit website (http://fold.it/) and "official Wiki" (http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/FoldIt_Wiki). References will also include news articles about Foldit on the Internet (such as this one), many of which can actually be found on the Foldit website's About page (http://fold.it/portal/info/science), under the "News Articles about Foldit" section. We may also make use of some of the Rosetta@home references provided in the section underneath (titled "News Articles about Rosetta"), on the same page.

I have only thought of a basic layout in terms of sections on the Foldit Wikipedia article. This may evolve rapidly as the overhaul progresses, and will of course be open to input from other Wikipedia editors.

There will likely be some gaps, which I will try to fill by requesting further information from the Foldit development and administration teams, and maybe persuade them to update their "official Wiki" article with any missing information at the same time. A few bits and pieces from the existing Wikipedia article (this one) could be re-used.

• overview (labelled Foldit)
• contents table
• History
• Goals (the aims of what the program attempts to accomplish)
• Features
• System requirements
• See also
• References
• External links
• two category banners (one for software/games, the other for molecular biology and the like)

The picture on the right could also be updated; I believe that the program may no longer be commercial (it's free to download - perhaps it never was commercial?), but will check this out with the relevant individuals. Also, I believe that the commencement of the project, and the use of the program, started in November 2007. This will also need to be verified. Tristanlbailey (talk) 02:55, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

You need to make sure to primarily use the news articles about Foldit and try to use as little primary sources (pages on the website itself) as possible. The main point of Wikipedia articles is to have information that is coverage from secondary, independent sources and not the subject themselves. I assume you mean when you say have them update their official Wiki article, you mean have them update their website and then referencing their website when adding information in here. Because having any of them edit this article with "correct" information would be a violation of our conflict of interest and original research policies, regardless of them being the ones that made the subject (it would still be original research without a reference being attached that states the info there, preferably a news reference and not the website). Silverseren^C 05:27, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I noticed I made a mistake in my previous comment. One of the "official Wiki" links provided was incorrect, and I have since corrected it. Just to clarify, the "official Wiki" is at http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/FoldIt_Wiki

The official Wiki, at Wikia, is the one that Foldit administrators encourage its users to edit themselves. I don't have any interest in updating their official Wiki, just this one at Wikipedia.

After viewing conflict of interest, despite the fact I haven't been playing the game all that long, I realise that I may have a conflict of interest. I will do my best to follow the advice taken from the policy article:

"If you do write an article on an area in which you are personally involved, be sure to write in a neutral tone and cite reliable, third-party, independent published sources, and beware of unintentional bias. Neutral point of view is one of Wikipedia's five pillars."

I will also look at using more secondary sources for the article. Before completion, I will likely request edits after inserting as much material as I can. Thank you for your input thus far. Tristanlbailey (talk) 05:05, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I recently made some minor changes to the article, including removing some irrelevant links, adding some links, and fixing up categories and the infobox somewhat. The information and sources that I need to overhaul the article have not been as forthcoming as I would like. Therefore, the overhaul will become incremental (I will address the article as the information and sources come to hand).

FunSAT is NOT related to Foldit, only the "Games with a purpose" paradigm. This external link has been relocated to the "Human-based computation game" Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_with_a_purpose

Also, I have set the size field in the infobox to the average installation package size (~43 MB), as there are 3 different packages: 24.3 MB (Windows), 46.5 MB (Mac OS X), 57.6 MB (Linux) Tristanlbailey (talk) 11:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

You may find the information on the protein folding and Folding@home pages useful. Both articles have pretty good explanations into why protein folding is so important, and the latter offers more of the computational side of process and explains why it is so difficult. Both also use peer-reviewed scientific journals, which are excellent sources. Good luck to you. Jessemv (talk) 05:56, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I am ending the overhaul of this article, due to unfortunate personal circumstances. The editing style may be retained, or changed, at the leisure of editors. Tristanlbailey (talk) 14:03, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Reversion of Passage

I recently noticed that someone removed a significant passage of text from the Foldit article. The passage was initially written by myself, and I placed considerable thought into it. Since the edit was made by someone that was not logged in, and no reason for the edit was given, I have decided to revert the edit.
If you do not like the way an article is written, do not simply remove it. Instead, discuss how you think the article should be written (or re-written) on the article's talk page (this one), before editing. Tristanlbailey (talk) 04:51, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Languages

Which 6 other languages? While the information is being summed up, why not just shorten the whole article: "The objective folding proteins and some other things and then do important things with the result. Which they did. It was preceded by Rosetta and a future versions might include non-protein chemicals" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.92.243 (talk) 05:54, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Critique

The first paragraph of the methods section seems a bit weak here, particularly the comparison between Foldit and Rosetta@Home. I feel that the statement could be broken up into two more easily citable ones, e.g. Foldit places a greater emphasis on community collaboration through its forums, where users can work together (compete?) on certain puzzles.. Furthermore, Foldit's crowdsourcing extend beyond that of Rosetta, to the user itself. DesperateWeasel (talk) 15:58, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

References