Best of PPCG 2018 — Call for Categories [duplicate]

Question

Last year we voted for the best posts of 2017 and rewarded them with bounties and challenges. I think it's a great way to reward and draw attention to some of the best content the community has created throughout the year, so let's do that again. (And hopefully, this year, we'll be able to sort everything out before half a year has passed.)

First off, we'll need categories again, which you can nominate here. Each answer should contain a category for a challenge or answer to be rewarded. The top-voted categories will then receive separate nomination posts to find the actual winners. Like last year, I'm not going to state a fixed number of categories that will make it, but it's probably going to be between 5 and 15 again (last year, we went with 13 categories).

Feel free to resubmit proposals from last year regardless of whether they were among the final 13 or not.

Voting will probably last for about two weeks, but this period can be extended if needed.

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Offered Bounties

As a further note, we'll need reputation rewards again, so if you're willing to spend some of your reputation on a bounty for one of the winners, feel free to edit your name into this list or leave a comment to indicate that you're willing.

Ten 500 rep bounties offered by

• Adám

One 500 rep bounty offered by

• Mr. Xcoder
• Shaggy
• Mego
• Wheat Wizard
• Arnauld
• BMO
• Jo King

Answer 1

Best Explanation

This category is for the answer with the best explanation accompanying it. Ideally, the winner will be an answer with a very detailed explanation that is accessible to anyone, regardless of the amount of relevant knowledge already possessed.

Taken from the 2016 category nominations, initial proposer Mego.

Answer 2

Wrong tool for the job

This category is for an answers that use the worst possible language to accomplish a task, while still making an effort to optimize the score. For example, writing a non-trivial program while using an extremely minimalist language like 7, or an inconvenient language like lost, or even a normal language that's missing some crucial capability like internet connectivity or image processing.

Answers for this category should consider both the difficulty of the task and the unsuitable-ness of the language.

Answer 3

Best mathematical insight

On this site we often see answers in languages specifically designed for short code, or designed to be fast. Sometimes, a nice golfing trick or speed-up technique surprises us with its ingenuity, beyond the standard use of that language.

And occasionally an answer shows up that uses an unexpected approach to greatly simplify the problem, and makes us wonder how the author could ever think of that. This usually involves some far-from-obvious mathematical equivalence, or a particularly simple approach to the problem that was not evident at all (once revealed, other answers often follow the same approach).

This category is for the answer with the best mathematical insight or unexpected approach that led to greatly simplifying the problem, in any challenge type (code golf, fastest code, or others). The insight should have led to a significant improvement according to the challenge's metric (code length, run time, or whatever applicable).

Initially posted in 2016 by Luis Mendo.

Answer 4

Kansas City Shuffle

Too often, once someone devises a generic golfy method of solving a challenge, most people will use that method for their answers. This award goes to those answers that utilize an alternative method as a better solution than the method that the majority of other answers use (prior to the posting of the rewarded answer).

Answer 5

Rookie of the Year - Answers

For the best answer by someone who hasn't submitted an answer prior to 2018 (i.e., not necessarily a new user, but just someone who's a new answer writer).

SEDE query

Answer 6

Best Above-and-Beyond Answer

Every once in a while, an answer takes the challenge to the extreme. This prize will be awarded to an answer which went far beyond the expectations of the challenge. This could include

• a code golf answer that brute-forced/proved the shortest program in some language
• a graphical-output popcon answer of extreme size and quality
• a KOTH answer of high complexity which absolutely dominated the competition

This category was featured in both Best of 2015, Best of 2016 and Best of 2017.

Answer 7

SGITW (Slowest Gun in the West)

For the best 2018 answer in a challenge which received no answers within 48 hours of posting. The challenge itself does not need to be from 2018 and the nominated answer doesn't need to be the first answer to the challenge, but the first answer to the challenge does need to be from 2018. Tips questions are not counted for this category.

It's very easy to get drawn to the fast-rising HNQ-hitting questions with a plethora of answers, so I thought this would be a good way to bring attention to answers that really needed to earn their love.

This category originally created by Sp3000.

SEDE Query, with the delays in days

Answer 8

Rookie of the Year - Challenges

For the best challenge written by someone who has not written a challenge prior to 2018 (i.e., not necessarily a new user, just a new challenge writer).

SEDE query

Answer 9

Most elegant spec

Writing an interesting challenge is tough, not just in thinking up a good idea, but in specifying it clearly enough without taking pages of text. This category is for challenges whose specification is a pleasure to read, summing up exactly what is required succinctly and unambiguously.

Answer 10

Breaking The Mold (Most Original Challenge)

It's really easy to come up with normal code-golf and ascii-art, or sequence challenge, etc. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with these challenges. They're the meat of the challenges on our site. However, they're not the most imaginative.

This category is for a challenge that re-invents the wheel, and explores new ideas that we haven't really used on the site.

• Maybe this challenge inspired a new tag, or category of challenges?

• Maybe it's a code-challenge with a unique and very well balanced scoring formula?

Or maybe it's even a code-golf challenge about a novel task. This category is for rewarding users who came up with interesting ideas that keep the site fresh.

Answer 11

Most helpful commenter

One of the things that stands out about this community is that although it's highly competitive, there is nearly always someone on hand to offer advice both on improving challenges and improving answer scores. It's part of what made this site seem so welcoming to me.

In recognition of this, nominees should be people who have helped others improve and made them feel welcome, whether by direct comments on challenges and answers, or in comments in chat.

Answer 12

The student becomes the master

This category aims to reward an answer that fulfils the following conditions:

• It is an answer to a code-golf challenge
• The poster is not the creator of the language, and the code has byte count N.
• The creator of the language already submitted an answer, with byte count M.
• And finally N < M, but the restriction is that no language features used have been added in the meantime.

Answer 13

Best (unusual) Tool for the Job

The strong golfing languages usually supply the shortest solutions (in their domain), but occasionally someone finds a very rarely used language that excels at exactly the task at hand. This prize doesn't go as much for the effort of writing a solution (it is probably trivial), as it does for finding that obscure tool.

Answer 14

Most useful Meta answer

For answers posted on Meta that made a significant difference, bringing new clarity to the site or an important change in perspective.

Answer 15

Most useful Meta question

For questions posted on Meta that made a significant difference, bringing new clarity to the site or an important change in perspective.

Answer 16

Most Ideal Answer

For answers that are not only impressive in terms of score (whether that be low byte-count or a different scoring mechanism), but are also a useful / elegant real-world way to perform the task at hand.