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I posted a question in hope of starting a shortest code challenge, but it seems to attract lots of downvotes and the only answer tried to help as a programming problem. One comment on the question suggested to take help from freelancing websites.

Are there some specific themes that code golf challenges have to follow on this site? My question now fulfills both criteria given on this help page and doesn't include the prohibited topics given on this page. I missed adding the winning criteria in the original question but added it in an edit as soon as a user pointed it out.

It would be great if someone could give me some actionable advice on how to improve this question or which criteria this question fails to fulfil.

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    \$\begingroup\$ I can see why people would look at that question and think that you are just attempting to get someone else to do free work for you. The requirements feel far too specific, the output format is not plain text, and you want multiple generated outputs. If the question was invalid, it would be flagged and closed, but as it is, it's just annoying to answer and thus gets downvotes. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jo King Mod
    Nov 20 at 1:09
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    \$\begingroup\$ Thanks for your explanation @JoKing. I tried to address the problem of the question appearing to ask for free work by writing in comments "I did it myself already, so don't need anyone to freelance it for me. I posted a question here because I wanted to see some innovative and short way to implement it." Is there a limit to how many minute a user would puts in completing the challenge before it appears as free work? Are there certain topics that are generally frowned upon in this site? (writing to file, text formatting, drawing graphics, random number generation etc.) \$\endgroup\$
    – paki eng
    Nov 20 at 1:19
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    \$\begingroup\$ I think that while people can tell you features of challenges that they like and don't like, they best way to get a sense for yourself of what makes for a fun challenge is to answer some challenges on your own. That said, two useful resources are the Things to avoid as a list of common pitfalls, and the Sandbox to solicit feedback on your challenge before it goes live. \$\endgroup\$
    – xnor
    Nov 20 at 5:46
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    \$\begingroup\$ Thanks @xnor. I will go through the 49 answers to the Things to avoid and see if I can post my question in the sandbox if it can get any actionable feedback there. \$\endgroup\$
    – paki eng
    Nov 20 at 6:21

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