Metadata for answers?

Question

It would be great to have an option in answers to add metadata. (This would be most useful for questions tagged code-golf, but maybe also other tags?) You would be able to put in the language, the golfed code, current byte count, and old byte counts. Then the data could be used to sort answers by "best score", or even to make graphs of language usage and score. Those graphs could tell us surprising things (and not-so-surprising things, like that Java would be in a certain corner and J in the other.)

Here is some HTML for it (put this after the <h2 class="space">Your Answer</h2>):

<div id="metadata">
    <label>Language: <input id="metadata-byte-count" list = "langs"></label>
<datalist id="langs">
<option value="JavaScript">
<option value="JavaScript (ES6)">
<option value="Java">
<option value="C">
<option value="C++">
<option value="C#">
<option value="J">
<option value="GolfScript">
<option value="Japt">
<option value="F# ">
<option value="Batch">
<option value="Python">
<option value="05AB1E">
<option value="Ruby">
<option value="V">
<option value="MATL">
<option value="PHP">
<option value="PowerShell">
<option value="Swift">
<option value="Convex">
<option value="05AB1E">
<option value="Mathematica">
<option value="Excel">
<option value="R">
<option value="Jelly">
</datalist>
<label style="
    display: block;
">Golfed code: 
  <textarea style="
    padding: 2px;
    display: block;
    width: 300px;
"></textarea></label>
  <label>Current byte count: <input type="number" id="metadata-byte-count" style="
    font-size: 13px;
    padding: 2px;
">
bytes</label>
<a href="https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10145/how-to-count-bytes-faq" style="
    display: block;
">Need help counting bytes?</a>
  <h3 style="
    font-size: larger;
    display: inline-block;
    padding-right: 20px;
" class="space">Old byte counts</h3>
  <input type="button" id="metadata-add-old-byte-count" value="Add old byte count">
  <div id="metadata-old-byte-counts">
  <label><input value = "x" type = "button" style="
    padding: 0.14em 0.5em;
    font-size: smaller;
    margin-right: 2px;
"><input type="number" class="old-byte-count" style="
    padding: 0;
  "> bytes</label>
  </div>
  </div>

Wanna try it out?

body,html{/*Fix a SE style issue that causes lots of vertical scroll*/min-width: 100% !important;}h2{font-weight: 400; }

<link href=https://cdn.sstatic.net/Sites/codegolf/all.css rel=stylesheet><h2 class=space>Your answer here</h2><div id="metadata"> <label>Language: <input id="metadata-byte-count" list="langs"></label> <datalist id="langs"> <option value="JavaScript"> <option value="JavaScript (ES6)"> <option value="Java"> <option value="C"> <option value="C++"> <option value="C#"> <option value="J"> <option value="GolfScript"> <option value="Japt"> <option value="F# "> <option value="Batch"> <option value="Python"> <option value="05AB1E"> <option value="JS "> <option value="Ruby"> <option value="V"> <option value="MATL"> <option value="PHP"> <option value="PowerShell">  <option value="Swift"> <option value="Convex"> <option value="05AB1E"> <option value="Mathematica"> <option value="Excel"> <option value="R"> <option value="Jelly"> </datalist> <label style=" display: block; ">Golfed code: <textarea style=" padding: 2px; display: block; width: 300px; "></textarea></label> <label>Current byte count: <input type="number" id="metadata-byte-count" style=" font-size: 13px; padding: 2px; "> bytes</label> <a href="https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10145/how-to-count-bytes-faq" style=" display: block; ">Need help counting bytes?</a> <h3 style=" font-size: larger; display: inline-block; padding-right: 20px; " class="space">Old byte counts</h3> <input type="button" id="metadata-add-old-byte-count" value="Add old byte count"> <div id="metadata-old-byte-counts"> <label><input value="x" type="button" style=" padding: 0.14em 0.5em; font-size: smaller; margin-right: 2px; "><input type="number" class="old-byte-count" style=" padding: 0; "> bytes</label> </div></div>

Of course, this data would be available via the API and maybe even under /tools (>=2k rep only).

Maybe a UTF-8 byte counter embedded in? Or better yet, a byte counter that recognizes the language specified and picks it from there?

Note that this contains a dropdown / input that prevents us from getting 'dirty' language data (eg. "JS", "Javascript", "Java Script", "JavaScript", etc.) but still allow for obscure languages.

Any questions, ideas, comments, or waffles? Comment or answer below!

Answer 1

Interesting idea, but not worth inclusion

For starters, as-is, this would be adding something like 2KiB of stuff to each answer. Not only does that cause less room for the meat of the answer (which is already limited to 30,000 characters), it also causes additional download for users on mobile or other data-limited plans.

Second, and more important, answering a challenge here is already hard enough for new users to get right. This is something that has been complained about time and time again (Martin has a good summary of links at the top of this post specifically regarding golfing languages, in addition to the literally dozens of other Meta posts by new users). Adding an additional hurdle beyond all the already-existing FAQs, header styling, byte counting, etc., is just going to lead to additional frustration for new users, the exact opposite of what we want.

---

(NB - If this is something that could be implemented at the site level automatically, sure, it could be an interesting addition. However, given our beta-not-a-beta graduated-but-not-quite-fully status, and that the parent site is kind as to allow us to exist even though we don't really fit their model for the rest of their sites, I don't see SE developer resources being allocated to this.)

Answer 2

I may be missing something, but it seems to me that the snippet adds a little form to the answer but doesn't store the data anywhere. Does it really add metadata to the answer?

A better way of adding language metadata would be to use the prettify tags <!-- language: lang-java --> etc. The problem there is that support is lacking for most languages used on this site. But trying to add support for those languages might be the most practical way of pushing this issue forward, if you feel strongly enough about it to invest the considerable amounts of time that would be required.

Answer 3

Might make things easier for us, not harder.

Problems (current and future):

Hard for new users to understand formatting

Instead of having special code formatting, the # Language, bytes <s>old bytes</s> header, etc. this could be an opportunity to make things easier for new users. Basically, you enter code in the code box, your language in the language box, and the explanation where they currently put the whole post.

Results in answers that take up more storage space

To the argument of this taking up more storage space, it could be encoded like this:

{
  "lang": "yourlanguage",
  "bytes": 4,
  "oldbytes": [444, 44],
  "postBody": "Blah blah explination"
}

_{Crossed out 44 is still 44}

Minifyed and using small property keys:

{"l":"yourlanguage","b":4,"o":[44,444],"p":"Blah blah explanation"}

Compared to a standard answer:

# yourlanguage, 4 <s>44</s> <s>444</s> bytes
Blah blah explanation

Byte count: 66 to 67. We could use a terser data format than JSON and come out ahead. I think 7 bytes longer answers shouldn't impact our answer limit too much.

Hard for new users to understand golfing

When the code box gets full or has a lot of whitespace, we could show a message telling the user to remove whitespace and otherwise lower their byte count (with lots of links to meta posts.) The current explanation is confusing; at least one user thought they were supposed to optimize their code to make it run faster. When the code entered in the box matches the regex [\s\S]{300,}|([^\t]+\t){5,}|([^ ]+ ){10,}, we can show them a warning:

Note that the tips link goes to tips.

The code box could show a (UTF-8) byte counter for a set of languages known to use UTF-8, like JS, Java, C/++/#, Python, and not show it for others.

We don't get the current formatting / this will break the leaderboard snippet!

The generated Markdown from the metadata and the explanation would be what is currently suggested for answers. It might look like this:

# yourlanguage, 4 <s>44</s> <s>444</s> bytes

    Your code here

Blah blah explanation

Same thing. Just with a better user experience, and metadata on the backend that we could use to get cool graphs of how bad Java does, popular language submissions, average scores per tag, average scores per user, and how often people outgolf Dennis.

Answer 4

For new answers

It might be possible to recommend having a header at the top of an answer something like this, maybe with a UI like the one @programmer500 suggested:

<!-- CG{"lang":"Kotlin", "size":[100,99,98]} -->

The idea of it being that it is JSON, so parsing it in the dump should be easy, and if more metadata wants to be added it can be while keeping backwards compatibility, the CG tag should make it easy to reduce the number of false positives being found.

For old answers

It would seem that headers at the moment are quite mixed, based on analysis of the current dump data the breakdown of first tags in code-golf looks like this:

• h1=67904
• h2=20315
• p=3144
• h3=983
• pre=68
• blockquote=15
• ol=13
• ul=11
• hr=4
• strike=1

This may prevent all of the answers being automatically changed over, but as most of the answers follow a standard format it should mean that the rest can be dealt with manually.

Using a version of the leaderboard regex that allows a few more separators I am working on finding all the posts with no header, the gist I will update is here.