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Let's face it: our Fibonacci challenge is not great.

To quote a recent effort of mine to improve on the situation:

...the challenge is old and outdated; is severely under-specified; allows for two types of solutions; has answers that don't have easy ways to try online; and in general, is lacking of answers. Essentially, in my opinion, it doesn't serve as a good "catalogue" of solutions.

But what can we do about it? Here are a few solutions I thought of:

  • Make an "almost Fibonacci challenge" Nope, didn't go down well.
  • Make a new, canonical question
    • What should we do with the answers to the old question?
    • Can we merge the two questions?
  • "Bump" the old question fitted to our current standards
    • How can we attract more activity?
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    \$\begingroup\$ Our current consensus is to allow newer languages to compete, however, I feel we should update this challenge in particular to be a catalogue. \$\endgroup\$
    – ATaco
    Commented Jul 9, 2017 at 23:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ATaco I agree that the fact that newer languages can now compete is beneficial, however I still think the challenge will still not receive any activity. \$\endgroup\$
    – totallyhuman
    Commented Jul 9, 2017 at 23:38
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    \$\begingroup\$ "How can we attract more activity?" Do we really need more activity? I don't see any reason to encourage users to answer a question that already has 173 answers. I don't see any reason to discourage users either. \$\endgroup\$
    – Wheat Wizard Mod
    Commented Jul 10, 2017 at 0:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ATaco, what do you mean by "update ... to be a catalogue"? Is that just adding a stack snippet to summarise the answers or something more? \$\endgroup\$
    – Peter Taylor
    Commented Jul 10, 2017 at 5:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ I actually wrote up a new spec two years ago. \$\endgroup\$
    – Martin Ender Mod
    Commented Jul 10, 2017 at 5:56

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I don't see anything wrong with the current challenge. I updated it to flexible IO a little while ago and added an actual specification. The entire body of the question is actually pretty modern. I even asked around if people thought it was clear and received only positive feedback. That doesn't mean its perfect but I would not say that the question body is old or outdated, and I am perfectly willing to take responsibility for any land all problems present in the writeup of the question.

I think that your complaint that it is "in general lacking answers" is simply false, as I mentioned in my comment it has 173 answers, which is a lot of answers. If this is a lack of answers I don't think anything can be done. Fibonacci is probably not interesting to the majority of users at this point and I don't see everyone rushing to add hundreds more answers anytime soon. If you want more answers you can post an answer yourself or bounty the question. Reposting the question is a surefire way to get less answers than there already are.

I also think that it is not "severely lacking" in specification (A little bit biased because I wrote the current specification, so if I thought it was incomplete I would have added to it). Any holes in the specification could be fixed with edits.

I don't think allowing for two types of solutions is a bad thing, flexible IO is in general good for challenges even though one is less conventional I think it adds to the challenge. The only reason I could see to not allow a method of output is to prevent abuse. I don't think there is anyway to abuse the current method and I think answers that use it are no less valid than answers that use a traditional method.

I don't understand your comment about try it online, so I wont touch that.

Overall I think the question is fine. Minor edits can be made, but I don't think we need to do anything drastic, like make a new question or overhaul the existing challenge.

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