Folding Forum

I recommend the following changes:
1. Remove the link to Game Console. Even after clicking that link, there is no mention that the PS3 program has been suspended!
2. There is a direct link to the V7 windows client, but the installation instructions are hidden under "Start Folding Now", which doesn't imply installation instructions.
3. The website contains the following: "Once installed the Folding@home software runs behind the scenes using otherwise unused computing time. Mostly likely you will hardly even notice it." Given the new V7 client and its non-resource sharing GPU folding, perhaps this should be rephrased a little bit to mention that it might use the GPU.

Other parts of the website have some significantly outdated information, such as: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-highperformance
I know when I first started only this year, upon reaching that page, I was under the impression I had installed the 'low performance' client and was missing out!

If someone is at the Folding@home homepage we want it to be as easy as possible to get started! Thank you for your time!

Thank you! The out-dated link on the homepage was already removed!

Specific recommendations for "Start Folding Now" problem mentioned above:
1. Change the "Installation Guide" pictures on the "Other Versions" popup to text links. When I opened this popup, I did not see them until I looked a third time. The operating system images are great but they make it hard to see the installation guide images.
2. Add text for Installation Instructions under "Get Help". (probably another bullet) Possible Text: "If you are having problems with installation, see the "Installation Guide". Leave the text under "Start Folding Now". Non-windows users should be able to find their installation guides on the "Other Versions" popup.

There are misleading PS3 references around the entire website if someone wanted to go to some of the pages and just search for PS3 that's probably the best way to make some fast and important updates. Examples include:
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Guide
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download2011
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-Press

Overall, there is way too much text on the website for an average user. I'd be happy to work with someone on this.

There are references to V7 being Beta, such as at the bottom of: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download2011
And a reference to V7 being Open (Open Beta or Open Release? Probably just remove the word Open) on http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Guide

Thanks!

The link to PS3 client on the home page was removed. Please note that there was already a notice at the top of the PS3 FAQ.
There's now text similar to your suggestion in the "Get Help" popup with a link to the Installation Guides, but the "Start Folding Now" popup remains the same.
There's been rumors about a screensaver, so I think it might be a good idea to leave that text for now, though I agree that currently it's not entirely true strictly speaking.

Do you think it would help if "Guide:" was added right before the blue books in the "Other Versions" popup? Would that make it more obvious that they are actually links to a respective Installation Guides?
I removed a good number of PS3 references. If you go to Google and type "PS3 site:folding.stanford.edu" it'll show where that text is displayed, at least where it was the last time Google crawled the site. Anyway, most of the obvious ones should have gone, except for in the High Performance FAQ, which I'm working on now.

There are many (old) pages on the website that have a notice at the top that the information contained on that page is obsolete. I'm not sure if this is an intentional way to keep some archived information or not. When some part of FAH reaches EOL, there's an announcement that XXX will be ending but it isn't actually shut down immediately. Many "old" features still work.

Using the PS3 as an example, as long as there were still work units to be completed by the PS3, and as long as Sony did not force an upgrade to the PS3 OS which eliminated the FAH Client, people continued to fold. The actual "end" was ambiguous and completely in the hands of Sony's OS updating process. (There still may be a few folks who have been able to resist updating.)

I think that adding "Guide:" in front of the blue books would work about as well as what I suggested.

Overall, I would give the following suggestions. If we agree on these as an approach we can work from there.
1. V7 of the client contains virtually all of the benefits of the previous releases and should be emphasized and given the most priority with amount of information and page location. V7 is no longer in Beta for all platforms and users should not be given confusing "Beta" or "Open Beta Release" warnings for the V7 that is found on the homepage. Any other client should be de-emphasized, perhaps with text explaining in what rare cases they may be better.
2. There is too much text on the website for an average user. Text should be made less technical where possible and less wordy. Text should be reordered based on current importance.
3. Out-dated information can be kept for reference, but shouldn't add to the problem of 2.
4. The website should be designed for the average Windows user with the information for older clients, historic information, other platforms, and beta clients kept separate but accessible. Hopefully we can get it to the point where an average Windows user should need only 1 location to learn the basic technical information, because they won't tend look at all the pages.

Thanks for your work, let me know how I can help!

Regarding the "too much text" problem, there's a lot to talk about, and different people go to the site looking for different bits of information. What specific information do you suggest removing or reorganizing?

I do remember all the beta warnings for the v6 SMP client back in 2010, and how that threw me off for three months! The Windows V7 client is no longer in beta, the beta status for V7 in Linux is debatable, and it's beta for OS-X, at least right now.

Jesse_V wrote:Regarding the "too much text" problem, there's a lot to talk about, and different people go to the site looking for different bits of information. What specific information do you suggest removing or reorganizing?

There is a lot of great information on the website, but I'm worried that too much information or too much technical information per page could overwhelm visitors. That's a lot to talk about, though, of course. So, I've been combing through the website and let me list various things I have noticed:
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ - This page contains a large number of FAQs! When I started folding earlier this year, I know I had gone here to try and figure out what type of client I needed to install. Unfortunately, I was left confused between GPU2, GPU1, Beta Clients, High performance clients, console clients, cores, screen savers and SMP. I think you have been working on this and been making improvements such as adding "Retired" next to some links but I think these FAQs need some more revising. I'm happy to help. Here are some examples of things that could be revised on this page:
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-Policies - Needs to contain information on GPU usage. (probably best to disclose) It also contains a section Is it safe to run Folding@home ? where there is a grammar error in the last sentence. It should probably mention that laptops are especially prone to overheating. Furthermore, it wouldn't immediately be obvious to go here for this FAQ, although it doesn't hurt to have it here for liability.
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-highperformance - You are revising this, but this is a particularly confusing FAQ, given recent updates. This one really confused me I remember. Who doesn't want a high performance client?
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-Uninstall - Contains the question: What is Folding@home?, which probably could belong elsewhere. Was this meant to be here in case someone discovers Folding@home on their computer and wonders what it is before uninstalling it? Some other of the questions don't seem to fit here.
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-passkey - This page was not written in light of the V7 client, and could be heavily revised.
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-Points - Again, not revised for V7. This FAQ might confuse someone with the technical references more than it answers questions. http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-Configure says that bigadv is x1.2 not x1.5 as written on this page. I also stumbled on this linked page: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-PointsNew
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-OpenSource - This one doesn't seem to answer the central question of Open Source vs not, am I installing some sort of spy program or trojan on my computer or something?

I would say that all the FAQs under "FAH Platforms" and "FAH Calculation Cores (FahCores)" might add to confusion except for advanced users (except maybe for the first three once revised some). Maybe a note saying they are more advanced or something? These articles also add to the feeling that there are still multiple clients. Your Wikipedia article is great, can it find a place higher on the page?

Perhaps you could promote some of the best FAQs from the forums and wiki to the website, such as: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1164

Additionally:
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/About - The list of icons here is different than on the homepage and one of the images is broken.
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/createteam.pl - Includes instructions to not include spaces in team names but this doesn't appear to still be a requirement?
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/changeteam.pl - I would recommend a line of text that explains that changing a team name does not affect that teams points. Also, what happens if they try to change a team name to one that already exists?

I know I've thrown a lot at you here but I'm not sure of any other way of doing this. Let me know how I can help further.

Jesse_V wrote:I do remember all the beta warnings for the v6 SMP client back in 2010, and how that threw me off for three months! The Windows V7 client is no longer in beta, the beta status for V7 in Linux is debatable, and it's beta for OS-X, at least right now.

I'm glad you experienced some of what I'm talking about in my comments! If the OS-X is in fact still in beta there is no indication on the homepage popup if a "beta warning" is important.

I would not say the OSX release is any more beta than for the other platforms.
That's why 7.2.9 was moved to the home page.
V7 is pretty much the only choice now if you have a Core 2 Duo or better and OSX 10.6 or later.
Last I heard, OSX Intel v6 clients were not getting any work.

I hope I didn't offend anyone with my last post, I'm trying to figure out ways to make the website more user-friendly, etc.. Please let me now how I can help! I've only folded around 1 million points but I think I can help here.

@Kornflake. I think you are right on. I've posted myself that the obsolete info in the FAQs that don't match up with either the most recent v6, and certainly not with the v7 configurations, can be a big frustration to novices. I appreciate your helpful suggestions to improve the FAQs.

Yes, there are a lot of "catch-up" edits to be done in light of the V7 client, and Kornflake has provided a lot of great feedback (thanks). Some of which were already in the planning stages.

I've done a lot of work to get the FAQs and Guides where we are today (along with a lot of new assistance from Jesse), but it's time for another big effort in updating the FAQs in the new year. Unfortunately, K's suggestions came at a time when I have traditionally stepped back from fah each year (month of December) to chill and focus on other priorities, this year especially so.

Look for big changes coming in 2013.

7im has indeed put a lot of time and effort into the F@h documentation. There's a lot of pages and a lot of information, so it's a non-trivial task to do serious work on them. I appreciate the work he and other volunteers have put into it thus far.

I've made the following changes:
1) Merged the petaFLOP FAQ with the High Performance FAQ as they both talk about the same thing.
2) Rewrote, updated, and reorganized the High Performance FAQ. Thanks so much Kornflake for helping me with this, especially for figuring out the ordering of the information.
3) Removed the link to the petaFLOP FAQ from the main index page. The High Performance FAQ contains all the relevent information and the concept of the petaFLOP Initiative is five or six years out of date; we are now steadily in the six petaFLOP range.
4) Clarified and reorganized some of the links under the "FAH Platforms" and "Specific Topics" sections of the FAQ Index page.

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-highperformance

I believe that all of these changes do their part to make F@h documentation much easier to read, but there's more work to be done. The suggestions are much appreciated.

Thank you very much for your work Jesse_V! I'm glad progress is being made!

SMP FAQ has been updated and better organized based on V7. http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-SMP
Again, thank you Kornflake for your help.

You can compare the current text to an archive I made several months ago: http://www.webcitation.org/6AqqzeD9x.

I will be the first to say that the SMP FAQ is much, much improved! Thanks!