FAH Beta Testers, read it before it's deleted...

T

Tobit

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - March 2010/May 2011
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If you are a registered beta tester, please reply. Even if you don't agree. reply. There are issues and little is getting addressed.

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=22545

I have no clue if it will be deleted or locked but some FF mods have been on my ass since I returned to folding and have not liked my critical, yet polite, comments to developers.

I really do not want to be so controversial but I am not going to be harassed by PM's of administrators saying things such as:

"You need to manage your own hostility. If you don't, you're going to find that the Mods/Admins are going to start sanctioning you in one way or another. Like I said earlier, let it go."

I am not being hostile. I am being controversial, yes. I have always tried to be respectful in the public forums.
 
Man, beta testing SHOULD NOT BE FREE RANGED! I like folding, I live my life in a wheelchair, yet I do not think I'm nearly competent to be a beta guy, even with my 5yrs at it.

I'm an engineer, and know the value of proper data and the crap that can happen by incorrect data, so i'm 100% on your side.
 
I've had an encounter with Admin's over there too. Not very polite, to where I almost stopped folding because of his attitude. In the end, cooler tempers prevailed, and he apologized.

Still not a good track record.
 
Tobit said:
If you are a registered beta tester, please reply. Even if you don't agree. reply. There are issues and little is getting addressed.

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=22545

I have no clue if it will be deleted or locked but some FF mods have been on my ass since I returned to folding and have not liked my critical, yet polite, comments to developers.

I really do not want to be so controversial but I am not going to be harassed by PM's of administrators saying things such as:

"You need to manage your own hostility. If you don't, you're going to find that the Mods/Admins are going to start sanctioning you in one way or another. Like I said earlier, let it go."

I am not being hostile. I am being controversial, yes. I have always tried to be respectful in the public forums.
Click to expand...

Can you post what you said here? I don't feel like registering for an account to read it.
 
I made a post and I hope this sparkle a good constructive discussion about it.
 
I hope you don't mind a thought from a member of an other team in this thread. A few things come to mind after I read the entire thread over in the Beta Forum.

  1. One of my chief concerns with PG has been the poor 2-way communications with their Folding donor base. We have the DAB, but from my perspective that has been a failed method of providing any 2-way communications. DAB reps don't appear to be in an easy (or effective) position to share info back to their teams and it doesn't work very well. On top of that, maybe they just don't hear that much either. As a donor, we don't really know much about the issues that PG faces or what is being done without someone communicating it to us. Additionally, some DAB representatives just don't appear to be "active" and not all teams get to have a DAB rep.

    So my point here, is that the Beta Forum has been my only way of trying to follow progress/updates on various things (like Kepler, etc). Take that away and as a standard FAH donor I'm back in the mushroom pile. I don't say this though to argue whether it was right/wrong to open up the Beta Forum, just to say it has been useful for me.

  2. If opening up the Beta Forum (to all) has stifled open communications because Developers are afraid they will cause undue reaction in the general FAH public, then that has to be corrected. I would agree that the Beta Testers and Developers need to have a place to freely talk about things without fear of creating unnecessary FAH donor reaction.

  3. However, if closing up the Beta Forum means the rest of us standard FAH donors get to go back to knowing next to nothing, that is a poor practice IMO. So, my recommendation would be to have that private Beta tester/Developer capability, but also make sure that the average FAH Joe isn't left out in the dark so much. Maybe a summary of progress (occasionally) could be shared.


    Off my soap-box, thanks for listening and sharing this topic with the average Joe.
 
texinga, I totally agree with your observations and opinions. I already proposed a solution for point 2/3 but yours is good as well as long as the Pande Group are willing to write periodical summaries of developments. However, Vijay's blog already cover this for a bit (dunno if it is still relevant today as I haven't checked in a long time).

As for the poor 2-way communication, it's a very long standing issue I have with them and I tried a lot to push them to open up a bit and listen/give feedback about past/current/future issues with the FAH project. However, keep in mind that the primary task of the Pande Group is to push WU, collect data and do analysis on them. The PR side is a bit low in the list of priorities and I could understand this.
 
I honestly don't think the problem is the openness of the Beta forum...

Yes there was a bit more discussion in the beta forums... but they didn't listen to the beta testers anymore...
Lately however a few wu's have skipped beta testing... 8102 (a few days, I never received one ), 6105(straight to public) ...
It is a logical step to do since they are ignoring suggestions anyways.

The primary problem is they view us as donors rather than part of the project.
We are not just giving compute cycles blindly though it seems they would rather that.

Because we have to maintain the systems... we ask questions... and all they want is the data from our systems that the client gets back.
Unless something breaks.
 
Last edited:
sbinh said:
So it is the reason why this happens:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1719177
Click to expand...

And their repeated behavior resulting in this is:

They Don't Care.
-They Don't care to listen,
-They don't care how it affects doners.

Their "folding forum" is a completely different topic, as I am certain, PG and the others rarely really pay attention to it. (as indicated by above behavior). In the forums, some mds have a tendency to go over the top, even seeming to crush negative feedback. Heck one of my least favorite of their moderators keeps wandering into our forums defending the folding forum. I don't read what he says there.... I don't read what he says here. At least here, he cannot ban me. I don't post in the FF due to jerks like him.
 
I am going to be devils advocate for just a second... please don't take it personal I agree with most of what you said.

jfb9301 said:
Their repeated behavior resulting in this is:

  • They Don't Care.
  • They Don't care to listen,
  • They don't care how it affects donors.
Click to expand...

The groups are fairly segregated... the technical aspect vs the professor running the specific wu project vs the project as a whole.

I am fairly certain the communication between those units is not incredibly high...
Think of a large corporation and imagine communication between divisions.

No they really don't care how it effects donors... because its not their job.
Its someone else's who they don't tell the problem exists to ...

jfb9301 said:
Their "folding forum" is a completely different topic, as I am certain, PG and the others rarely really pay attention to it. (as indicated by above behavior). In the forums, some mods have a tendency to go over the top, even seeming to crush negative feedback.
Heck one of my least favorite of their moderators keeps wandering into our forums defending the folding forum. I don't read what he says there.... I don't read what he says here. At least here, he cannot ban me.
I don't post in the FF due to jerks like him.
Click to expand...

7im is a troll ... well established... stripped of his modship sort of... still has power just not publicly listed though known. (I don't see what he says either :D)

The forum policies are vagueish and easy to twist to squish whatever you want to.
It is time for some fresh blood in leadership over there...
The mods and admins are often attacked because of the poorly run nature of the project.
And they like lashing back.


-Summery-
Communication, it sucks and until they fix it these problems will not go away.
 
Patriot said:
7im is a troll ... well established... stripped of his modship sort of... still has power just not publicly listed though known. (I don't see what he says either :D)
Click to expand...

I wasn't going to name names, but yes, he is the major offender. And he has the gall to come to our forums, despite how he is viewed here, and start sh!t in our forums.
 
As far as the DAB goes.

There isn't activity unless there is a hot button issue going about. Normaly points adjustments or the like.

The DAB is kinda a 2 way mirror. Information goes in, but unless info has been made public, we cannot talk about. So info doesn't leave untill everyone knows about it. We provide detail to the event.

I would rather have our points made than not. But a bit more back and forth would be good.
 
To Kendrak, as a DAB rep, you are one of the several reasons that I read this forum just about every day. If there is something that can be shared with the FAH donors, even it it is on the edge of whether you should say it or not, I have the best chance of hearing about it from you. Just wanted you to know that I appreciate what you are doing in the DAB.

Loved that analogy to the "2-way mirror" and that's pretty well the way it feels too. I've long known that my expectations/desires for 2-way communications from PG don't exactly line up with the way it works. But I can still hope...:D
 
Thanks tex.

I think the best way to think of the DAB, in the current form is just to shape overall policy.

There have been times when I have asked questions for members on smaller issues, but from what I can tell, you get a similar responce as the main FF.

Sadly there is (what I think) a fair bit of politics that get thrown about. One team trying to shape policy as to help it have an advantage over others. Normaly after the first page or two often topic degrade into what is "fair" and not "what is best for F@H". How you view either of those obviosly will have bias of the individual and the team.

/shrug

Just my opinion, nothing more nothing less.
 
A few moments ago, Vjay Pande himself was reading this Thread in the FoldingForum.
I hope he takes some impressions and opinions!
 
I don't disagree, but like Patriot I'm going to throw a little food for thought out there and play some devil's advocate. Disclaimer: I do not fold for [H], but have been a long time contributor to the project

PG is a research group, run by a bunch of professors, post-docs and PhD candidates. I don't know how many of you have come through or are currently in a hard-science research setting, but from my experience, none of this surprises me. These guys are worried about getting their research done so they can publish and get grant money, not PR, and certainly not "points", which are completely meaningless to them. If they're not being transparent, its probably because they're busy writing new WU's or analyzing data, which is the real value of the project to begin with. If they send out a few borked WU's that decrease your efficiency for a few days, they'll just tweak the program and send it out again. What seems like a big deal to individual contributors is probably trivial to the project overall, hence the disconnect.

It actually makes me wonder if theres not some sort of missed opportunity for PG to collaborate with the Stanford psychology department to allow them to study the community dynamics of the Folding project.

But yea, some of the mods over at FF are definitely jerks who could stand to be replaced...
 
Activate: AMD said:
I don't disagree, but like Patriot I'm going to throw a little food for thought out there and play some devil's advocate. Disclaimer: I do not fold for [H], but have been a long time contributor to the project

PG is a research group, run by a bunch of professors, post-docs and PhD candidates. I don't know how many of you have come through or are currently in a hard-science research setting, but from my experience, none of this surprises me. These guys are worried about getting their research done so they can publish and get grant money, not PR, and certainly not "points", which are completely meaningless to them. If they're not being transparent, its probably because they're busy writing new WU's or analyzing data, which is the real value of the project to begin with. If they send out a few borked WU's that decrease your efficiency for a few days, they'll just tweak the program and send it out again. What seems like a big deal to individual contributors is probably trivial to the project overall, hence the disconnect.

It actually makes me wonder if theres not some sort of missed opportunity for PG to collaborate with the Stanford psychology department to allow them to study the community dynamics of the Folding project.

But yea, some of the mods over at FF are definitely jerks who could stand to be replaced...
Click to expand...

+1

great post. You have presented a good insight on what really goes on at the Panda. The Stanford Psych Department is world famous. That is a great idea (that will probably not be acted upon).
 
Thomas R said:
If you have a problem, create a bigger problem and nobody looks at the problem bevor
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1719949
Click to expand...

Since last week, the time the server-errors appeared, nobody is talking about this topic.
Are you shocked about it, or are you scared that the same could happen again if you continue talk about it?
If I said: You have a problem? Create a bigger problem, and nobody looks at the problem bevor! :mad:
 
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