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I think that we should have a new type of "challenge": showcase questions. These questions aren't questions where answers compete for the lowest bytecount, or the best score, they are answers to a specific question that demonstrate interesting or unique features of languages.

A showcase question, in order to avoid being too broad, would be given a certain problem, such as find all primes below a given input, and would aim to show off interesting features that the language has, that wouldn't be useful in a as they use too many bytes to be worthwhile.

These types of questions can be done, and have. In fact, that question is the second highest upvoted question on the site. SO clearly they can be done well, if not with difficulty.

I'm going to cover some of the reasons why and why not I see with this type of challenge, but if you see any others, feel free to include them in your answer, or a comment.

Why?

  • This site is getting further and further away from "only the shortest solution counts" (which is a good thing) and I think that questions that don't have a winning criteria that aren't closed would be the tipping point to becoming a site that is completely like this.
  • It would allow for people to see some of the more interesting features of a language, without losing out in competitions.

Why not?

  • It goes against the whole point of , so much so that we have a close reason that stops challenges like this.
  • It could create very broad and under specified questions, such as this
  • As they are essentially a form of , which are notoriously difficult to make, this could lead to the same problem.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you thing we should allow new questions of this type?

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    \$\begingroup\$ This seems like the worst kind of popcon: "do something cool" \$\endgroup\$
    – user45941
    Jul 26, 2017 at 22:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ The showcase question did well because it was pop-con, not because it was showcase, AFAIK. \$\endgroup\$
    – Stephen
    Jul 27, 2017 at 0:40
  • \$\begingroup\$ Why do people down-vote this question? I think it is a very good question. Even if everyone here would vote against showcases (which I don't believe), shouldn't the voting be done in answers, not in the question? \$\endgroup\$
    – fergusq
    Aug 3, 2017 at 17:03

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Yes, we should allow showcases

I see no problem with showcase questions. We already have the showcase of languages and this meta question and they certainly have been well-received. However, their scope is very broad (maybe too broad), and having specific showcases for different kind of problems could be a good improvement.

The showcase questions would in no way harm the site. On the contrary, they provide information that interests our audience. I think that we should develop to be something more than "just a code-golf site", and showcases could be one step.

There are already sites like Rosetta Code which serve a similar purpose, but it doesn't mean that we couldn't also have showcases. There are also golfing sites other than PPCG, and that doesn't mean that we should disallow golfing.

Frankly, I cannot come up with any argument against showcase questions, except that they are somehow "off-topic", but that is not really an argument. We can decide what is on-topic and off-topic here, that's the whole point of this discussion. Saying that they are off-topic because they are off-topic is certainly absurd.

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