Questions tagged [challenge-quality]
For questions that relate to the quality of challenges on the main site
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How can we get new users to use the sandbox properly?
The problem
Often, when we get new users, this happens:
they post their first few challenges, which receive negative feedback
they are instructed to use the sandbox, which they do
not long after (...
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Challenges with an oracle
There are many ideas of code-golf challenges out there that are abandoned because a part of them are just too hard to implement with a reasonable amount of effort. For instance, requiring to parse ...
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How can we improve the quality of new users' challenges?
All stats given here are correct at the time of writing. I can't promise that they'll stay exactly correct for a significant amount of time (and they most likely won't), but I'd be surprised if the ...
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How can I retroactively deal with rules that turned out to make a challenge uninteresting?
I created a couple challenges recently which I was hoping would be pretty interesting, but turned into something significantly less interesting due to an oversight or regrettable rule.
In De-...
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How to deal with an accidental chameleon challenge
What happened
I was about to post Does base n have any Rotate-Left-Double numbers?. Kevin Cruijssen told me in the sandbox comment that he got a proof that significantly simplifies the problem. I ...
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Challenge post-mortems
While to-be-posted challenges get feedback in the Sandbox (ideally), we don't usually reflect on challenges after they have run. And while issues and ambiguities in challenges do get pointed out, we ...
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A simple, clean and modern challenge about palindromes
Status quo
We currently have seventy-four questions tagged palindrome, but most of them contain a twist. As I see it, there are only two challenges about the basic palindrome string decision-problem.
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A challenge that comes with a judge program
EDIT: I simplified the challenge and posted it in the sandbox. Summary: python2/python3 compatible judge script that works on a solution's output (instead of fork/exec-ing the solution); users are ...
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List of Good Numeric Scoring Systems
I suggest that we should have a list of scoring functions.
When there is only one variable in the score for example:
Length of submission (code-golf)
Portion of test cases passed (test-battery)
...
- 1,161
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Should we have a new, improved matrix determinant challenge?
There is currently a challenge to compute the determinant of a matrix. However, it was written 5 years ago, before our current quality standards were established. It falls short of those standards in ...
user45941
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Should "Operations with lists" be broken up into individual challenges?
As it stands, Operations on lists is in a bit of a weird place. It could be considered a multi-part challenge with minimal interaction between the subchallenges, which aren't allowed, but is pointed ...
user45941
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Should we disallow non-observable requirements?
One of the more recent things to avoid that's coming up a lot is the use of non-observable requirements. The most common incarnations of this are things like "no hardcoding", "implement this algorithm"...
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For compression-related challenges, should we take steps to level the use of 7-bit and 8-bit character sets? [duplicate]
(Closely related in the original premise, but both the question and its answers go off in a different direction: this meta post.)
Something I've noted in many challenges which are fundamentally about ...
user62131
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The broken window of "Produce the number 2014 without any numbers in your source code"
Produce the number 2014 without any numbers in your source code is our highest-voted question. It regularly inspires newcomers to pose similar challenges, which get heavily downvoted with the poster ...
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What should we do with very low quality questions?
Sometimes, very low quality questions are asked on the site, that are nevertheless within the rules for what's acceptable on the site. I'm thinking of questions like:
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Should I always give every minimum detail and specifications about a challenge or we can rely also on intuition?
Regarding my challenge: Help me I'm lost in the ocean! I went to read: What details should always be given for a code golf task? and a question raised in my mind. I hope I can ask that here in ...
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How should challenge authors be rewarded for creating exemplary challenges?
Over on Puzzling.SE, the community there has been discussing various ways to reward puzzle authors for creating exemplary puzzles. Given that we're like Puzzling.SE in that we're not a Q&A site, ...
user45941
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Are Defaults for Code Golf implicit?
Recently, I've made some major edits to a couple of challenges, and I sort of instinctively cited the appropriate defaults here on meta, like:
Write a program or function to output the sum of ...
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Tips for King of the Hill challenges
Inspired by this question, what are some tips you guys have for creating king of the hill challenges? What are some things to keep in mind in the planning and implementing of the rules and the ...
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Should answers have to handle invalid inputs?
I'm trying to get advice on how to make my challenges better. One rule that I feel like I'm always specifying is what to do when an invalid input is given. There's really two main paradigms to take ...
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The state of the underhanded tag
I recently looked at the underhanded tag and noticed that all 3 of the newest questions are closed as "Too Broad". From our new rules for popularity contests and the code-trolling tag being off-topic ...
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The state of the popularity contest tag
Recently, there's been a strong push against popularity-contest challenges. This post sums up the general feelings of the community pretty well, in my opinion. Even when challenge authors do ...
user45941
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Things to avoid when writing challenges
If there is something that you find annoying / counterproductive / unfair / detrimental / no longer funny in challenges (question posts), describe it in an answer here, and propose a recommended ...
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Easy challenges and Hot Network Questions
I've noticed many challenges getting to the top of Hot Network Questions because they are really easy and get many answers that feed the activity-rewarding hotness formula. In turn, the visibility ...
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Are long form challenges welcome?
I've got an idea for a fun (!) challenge but it would be a little different from the ones I normally see on this site. The challenge would be to come up with an algorithm that solves the problem the ...
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Things to consider when creating a challenge
There's a lot to remember to include when writing a challenge for this site. What are some things that are easy to forget?
Return to FAQ index
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A Weekly Challenge Competition
I mentioned this in chat a bit ago, and got somewhat varied feedback. I thought I'd go ahead and ask a meta question to gauge the community's overall thoughts. As a few people have noted, our ...
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A Better Help Center
This question is somewhat in response to The one limiting stat for us still being in beta where the consensus seemed to be that question quality was the main issue. I definitely agree.
I believe that ...
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How do I target middle-level coders?
It seems as if my questions either acquire very few answers, and only from the most advanced coders on this site, or many answers from every coder on the site. This implies that my challenges are ...
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Should homework be allowed?
Recently, browsing questions of PPCG, i have found a lot of questions that are simply for the purpose of offloading their homework assignments, due to lasiness or easiness of this platform. For this ...
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What is a spec?
Our FAQ on "on-topic questions" currently states:
All questions on this site, whether a programming puzzle or a code golf, should have ...
A clear specification of what constitutes a ...
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Announcing the CodeGolf.SE Second Periodic Premier Programming Puzzle Push
Whereas
The site has suffered from low traffic for weeks
We've been in beta for 271 days and our numbers are marginal
Too many recent question have been both too easy and poorly specified
Users have ...
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Should question proposers be expected to have a coded answer before they propose?
All too often I look at questions proposed here and I think: "The proposer clearly doesn't have a running solution to this question."
Should we make it an expectation that before posting a question, ...
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Help us come up with rules who should be rewarded with an iPad2 for making the site great
dmckee has recently started the "1P5" to improve the quality of posts, the quantity of (good!) posts, and the motivation of users on this site.
We (Stack Exchange Inc.) think that this is a really ...
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Announcing the CodeGolf.SE First Periodic Premier Programming Puzzle Push
This Programming Push has ended ::sigh:: But we may do another in a few weeks or months, and your high quality contributions are always welcome.
Whereas
The site has suffered from low traffic for ...
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Why was my challenge not interesting?
In the interest of upping the quality of challenges I may post in the future, I would like to hear your opinions and comments on the challenge I posted two weeks ago:
Turn 2D boolean array into (...
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