James, I like the new format of the mag but why have you decided to only display the stats of the top 10 overall/producers ? Anything that inspires people to fold a little more for the team (including seeing their name in print) surely is a good thing ? Please show the top 20 as in the past. Agree with you Christopher, an opportunity missed.
We did originally plan to have the top 20 showed as in the old design, but there simply wasn't space on the page for it and a substantial 'folder of the month interview'. In the end I decided to give the latter more space as they give one reader a really big profile/reason to fold every month and we still display people's milestones on the following page.
May i make a suggestion. For the top 10 overall could it be adjusted so that its not a copy/paste of http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_list.php?s=&t=35947 but a top 10 of folders that are active.
It is a shame that the folding section has lost a page and been moved to the back of the mag, cant you push it back onto 3 pages James? The first page showing the latest stats, new users, FOTM and a bit about what folding is etc, 2nd page showing the FOTM with the usual write-up and 3rd page with all the detailed stats? That would be cool
It's been 2 pages for quite a few years, it only went up to 2.5 pages for a few months last year as there so many milestones. However, that number has been slowly dropping; as you can see in this month's mag there weren't even enough milestones to fill the whole of p142. Moving folding to the back of the mag shouldn't be seen as we don't think folding is important. I still fold a lot of WUs . It was done so that we could create a new Community section where all the reader involvement type articles can sit together, i.e. folding, modding, competitions, heaven and hell. I'd be reluctant to start adding in more pages of tables. At it is, p142 is one of the visually least interesting pages in the mag (it's a giant table after all) - something that's important to consider for readers who aren't into folding. However, we could expand the FOTM section in the future, assuming that the people we interview (you guys) have enough interesting stuff to say, and photos for us to show.
Milestones seem a hit and miss afair James. I'm now 4mill+ but have had no mention since issue 91 when I achieved 2 million. Perhaps if you are determined to recognise only "The Top Ten" you will at least get the milestone data sorted.
Out of curiosity, roughly when in the month are the milestones noted before going to print? ie 2/3 weeks before release?
Sorry about that, I'll give Simon (who colates the stats) a virtual It's usually a bit more than that, as compared to a review or news story for example its a lot less time sentitive.
Milestones are recorded at 7am every Friday. If it's on EOC it's recorded. Let me go through all my data to work out how you've been missed.
I got 20k points and I was in recently \o/. I'm noticing a slight similarity in what is said in the FoTM over the past few months. Since these guys are celebrity, could we not be asking them some fun questions along side the more traditional fotm?
Thanks Saspro, I know the data is on EOC as I look at it regularly (sad I know) How long before your farm is up and running again ?
What actual work is done on the stats by Bit-Tech/CPC? I now fold for Hexus and spend a few hours each month calculating: How many points were done in the month Who has improved vs last period most Who has improved vs their average most As well as some figures about this time last year etc etc. When I look at what is published each month there's very little work goes into the folding part, and certainly now analysis. This is what I produce each month: http://forums.hexus.net/distributed-computing/201481-2011-folder-month-march.html It's not pretty, and it's not without it's flaws but it is a mark in the sand each month and some recognition of all the team members who are folding. The landmark system only rewards those who cross a boundary in a time frame, and makes no acknowledgement of those who might be beavering away at their next big landmark. Since I started doing this in my ever keen amateur way our folding community has grown from 15 to nearly 50 and our monthly average has more than doubled. Now I'm not claiming that I'm doing all this, but it's a contributing factor. It is a ball ache to do each month as I have no programming skills to be able to query the database, and have to compile a spreadsheet by hand, but surely for a mag that is synonymous with folding, you can do a bit more than publish some tables which appear on someone elses web site, with minimal commentary/analysis. I've flick read the magazine, so I'd not read the actual interview to see if that had changed, but now that I don't fold for CPC/Bit-Tech, there is no interst in the tables of numbers. Why not make them interesting and perform some anaysis of them? Folder of the Month is one part of this but it's not addressing anyone elses needs. It's also been the same set of questions for so long now that all the answers look the same. eg "Biggest Tip: Go to the forums....." Ask the same question, get the same answer.... If this had been handled more interactivly it may very well have kept me and several others who have jumped ship because it was no longer rewarding or involving us because we'd set ourselves a goal and reached it, and was looking for another REWARDING target. I'd also suggets actually referencing FOLDING from the main Bit-Tech site. This has a massive boost on folding numbers for us at Hexus each time the teams name hits the main site. Tattysnuc #200 Bit-Tech folder 12 months ago, now producing between 45k ppd up to 110k as my rigs come back online.
I've noticed in the past the questions each month differed slightly and had more of a personal touch, the questions were relative to the person being questioned, now they are all stock questions, and sometimes don't fit the person being questioned.
Re the comments on the interview questions made by a few posters; if you don't find the current questions interesting, what would you like to know?
I've got you at 4 million points on my spreadsheet. I'm looking through all the others for 3 million. I keep all my spreadsheets so unless in some sort of moment of madness I got you mixed up with someone else & purged that line on the sheet I should have you listed. The farm should be back soon. Just finding a new location for it.
Missing stats found & resolved. Both 3m & 4m hit in the same month (print-run wise) so 4m is in the issue. MrGumby - let me know when you hit that milestone & I'll work out what happened to yours as well
As jondi_hanluc says, the questions appear to be fairly stagnant. Questions that would be more interesting in my eyes would be read as if it was a spontaneous discussion without pre-planned questions (even if that was not the case)... What about if you officially took some questions from the B-T members each month? With the levels of camaraderie witnessed on the forum, some fun and probing questions would be submitted I'm sure? If you want to keep it between employee and folder, you would need to talk to the person and get a feel for them and their situation rather than (as may or may not be the case now) you send an email with the questions attached.... A proper interview. Everyone has a story to tell..... even the quietest and less gregarious of the B-T folding team. not every question would be relevant to every folder, but at least if there was a wider pool to choose from we could see a bit of variety each month? For example: there is a thread on the forums just now which has been quite an interesting read: "What did you do after your first build ?" [*]"Have you ever had to sneak folding hardware past your wife/gf/significant other and how did you do it? What were the repercussions when you were caught?" [*]"Do you game and if so what games do you play, and how much guilt do you have about the PPDs you could be gaining if you didn't game?" [*]"Have you ever managed to persuade any of your friends into folding?" [*]"What music do you listen to (if any) when you're working on your folding projects?" [*]"Have you ever witnessed random generosity of strangers donating folding to your nick or other unexplained phenomena with folding?" [*]"Does gardening ever get in the way of folding?" [*]"How much time do you spend on folding related activities?" [*]"What mods have you done / are you planning?" [*]"what's your wildest story from a LAN party" [*]"If you were stuck on a desert island which books would you take with you?" [*]"What is the funniest thing/story you ever saw on the B-T forum?" [*]"How do you think you would behave in a first contact situation with an alien race...." Srsly... I don't know.... these are just off the top of my head. I'm not saying that you would actually publish the answers, but if it was a bit random, I'd look forward to it each month. Just my 2 pence chucked in for consideration. tl;dnr: Questions based on random crazy stories as told by the fotm printed, profanity filtered if required and published so that no one month is (exactly) the same as the previous month.
Good questions! I'm not sure I could answer some of them, but they would liven up Folder of the Month, which has got a little repetitive. On the other hand, new readers might want the sort of questions we have at the moment.
I am also gutted the list has been cut to top 10, this means all of us guys who aspire to fold the livers out of our rigs 24/7 to get into the top 20 list in the mag have had this ripped from our grasps, we simply cannot compete with the usual suspects who will be pasted into the list every month, for what its woth I think this is a bad move and not good for moral either
