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The original proposal is for "Code Golf and Programming Puzzles". I think this suggests that discussion of questions from programming contests should indeed be on-topic---as long as they're not discussed until the conclusion of the contest, of course.

This question serves as a placeholder for official policy in this area, as well as what kind of timeframes we should enforce on such questions (e.g., discussion of active contest questions should probably be disallowed).

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  • \$\begingroup\$ As a related topic, my feeling is that things like Facebook Puzzles probably should not be discussed in depth, since these questions generally do not expire. We should also have some policies in this area. \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 20:56
  • \$\begingroup\$ What about problems from SPOJ, UVa, Project Euler and the like? Those questions also do not expire, should they too be not allowed here? That would make this place a lot less interesting IMHO. I agree we shouldn't just post solutions, but discussion would be good. \$\endgroup\$
    – MAK
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 21:04
  • \$\begingroup\$ @MAK: I agree. We should create policies that draw a line between what is or isn't acceptable. \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 21:05
  • \$\begingroup\$ Related question: meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/5/… @Chris Can you open the related topic as a separate question? It's worth discussing in the likely event that we widen scope. \$\endgroup\$
    – moinudin
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 21:44
  • \$\begingroup\$ @marcog: Will do. :-) \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 21:54
  • \$\begingroup\$ @marcog: Posted: meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/16/… \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 21:59
  • \$\begingroup\$ Oops, already answered here ) \$\endgroup\$
    – Nakilon
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 22:05
  • \$\begingroup\$ I don't think an otherwise on-topic and well-defined puzzle/challenge should be closed or discouraged just because it may be part of a contest. We're not the morality police, nor are we responsible for enforcing the terms of every contest that exists. \$\endgroup\$
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Aug 4, 2011 at 19:42

2 Answers 2

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Answer on this question is rather obvious for me.
We may not to ask (and may close) questions which can be used for contests:

  1. Unexpiring: Yesterday I registered on this contest site, today searched all this stackexchange and tomorrow I will be at the top of scoreboard! Yeay!!1
  2. Expiring: Hey I want to win this contest! I have two days to the end! Help me!

But! If it is unexpiring contest (such as ProjectEuler), we can discuss solution in way of pseudocode and textual algorithm describing, diagrams etc. instead of code posting. It's just to make man to be able to discuss, research and write on his own, not just copy-pate-F9.

And if contest is already over and doesn't have any working scoreboard (like ICFPC, but don't sure about 2010, because they promised to keep it online), we may discuss it on 100% with code and anything else.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Re answer being "rather obvious": Most of my policy-related questions are Socratic in nature---they're probably obvious to most people here too, but having a discussion keeps everyone on the same page. :-) \$\endgroup\$
    – C. K. Young
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 22:07
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Chris Jester-Young, agree with you at 100%, the obviousness here wasn't the main idea of my answer ) \$\endgroup\$
    – Nakilon
    Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 22:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ I don't think an otherwise on-topic and well-defined puzzle/challenge should be closed or discouraged just because it may be part of a contest. We're not the morality police, nor are we responsible for enforcing the terms of every contest that exists. \$\endgroup\$
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Aug 4, 2011 at 19:41
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TopCoder and possibly CodeJam problems are probably excluded because I expect their terms of use would disallow reproduction without explicitly granted permission.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ You might be right about TopCoder, but I'd like someone to confirm this. For those, we just include a link to the question. CodeJam has no statement about this, so this doesn't hold true. \$\endgroup\$
    – moinudin
    Commented Feb 5, 2011 at 8:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ Problem statements and test sets are protected by copyright. However, ideas are not. So rephrasing a problem statement and providing new input sets would not be a violation. See, for example, stackoverflow.com/questions/2892126/… \$\endgroup\$
    – KirarinSnow
    Commented Feb 6, 2011 at 3:19

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