Questions tagged [policy]
This tag indicates that your question is about site policies. Usually, new proposals for policies or questions about existing ones will have this tag
238
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Should we systematically treat code that crashes compilers/interpreters as malicious? [duplicate]
Despite having What qualifies as malicious code?, the consensus seems really unclear on that point, because this question seems to be valid, and that one isn’t.
In the current case, please note the ...
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2
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Is Brainfuck considered a serious contender
Brainf*** is far from a terse language. A (partially) golfed solution may be 1000's of bytes long. Similar to JSF***, these submissions are often autogenerated and will require significant work to ...
- 2,646
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Is "Most Elegant" objective [duplicate]
This comes up in popularity contests all the time. Most elegant as a scoring criteria (or similar). Is a popularity contest objective in and of itself by saying that most votes wins? It is very ...
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How should Community Wikis be used?
Community Wikis (CWs) seem to be an often misunderstood feature on Stack Exchange in general. For instance, I'm often seeing them used to avoid gaining reputation when the author feels they don't ...
- 196k
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1
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Keep your golfing in your code, not in inputs and outputs
I am becoming more and more annoyed at the ever-increasing number of rules about what is deemed acceptable as inputs and outputs to programs
Here is a compilation of such rules that I found:
...
- 38.4k
2
votes
1
answer
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Should administrative content hosted on external sites ever be binding?
Should PPCG rules or guidelines or other administrative content be considered "official" when it is not hosted on meta or main?
(Note that "PPCG" refers to the entirety of the Programming Puzzles &...
- 89.3k
7
votes
1
answer
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Null Bytes disqualifying submissons
If a program prints out null bytes and those null bytes are not part of the specification, does this disqualify the program although these bytes are unreadable?
- 2,646
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When can APL characters be counted as 1 byte each?
Prompted by this.
The question of APL's encoding often comes up, and many times a helpful soul links to Wikipedia's article on the APL EBCDIC codepage. However, each implementation of APL has its own ...
- 29.9k
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1
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Is it OK for an answer to not work from time to time if the language it's written in is probabilistic? [duplicate]
If an answer is written in a language that deliberately prevents the programs written with it from doing the same output/calculations/etc. every time by introducing randomness, should it be deleted ...
- 1,382
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3
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PopCons and Graphical Output
Previously:
How do we close questions without an objective validity criterion?
Guidelines for posting and closing popularity contests
Would "render the Mona Lisa in 1000 bytes" be on topic ...
- 43.3k
3
votes
1
answer
358
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Adding multiple answers to "Tips for golfing in [Language]" questions
I've been lurking in this community for quite a while and finally want to start participating and golfing. I'm mostly an iOS developer so I expect to golf in Swift and Objective-C. I recently added ...
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2
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Is a language with an extension a valid golfing language?
In a current challenge, Falsify brief truths, @Lynn proposed an edit to my Haskell answer that requires the ...
- 2,401
2
votes
2
answers
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Answer validility after edits
We all agree that using language features implemented after the question was asked makes the answer non-competing. But what about after an edit to the question?
Say Bob posts a question challenge. I ...
- 28.5k
22
votes
12
answers
3k
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Default acceptable image I/O methods for image related challenges
I do not feel that the default general acceptable I/O methods sufficiently cover image-processing and graphical-output challenges. So I would like to poll.
What are the default acceptable I/O methods ...
- 39k
4
votes
1
answer
139
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Behaviour on different computers
Whilst answering questions, is it Ok to use functions/bits of code where the output will be different for some computers?
For example I was thinking about adding a new time type to PYKE where the ...
- 28.5k
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votes
3
answers
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Should Booleans be allowed where a number is required?
This is a rather common inquiry in contests that require computing elements of a sequence.
For example, consider the following recursive implementation of the factorial function (Python):
...
- 210k
14
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4
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How should we handle answers that predate standard loopholes?
There was a time—a dark, dark time—in which there were no standard loopholes. Since we began classifying certain things as loopholes and banning their use, the overall quality of the content on this ...
- 24.6k
4
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2
answers
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Does drag+paste count as a valid form of input in Excel?
I recently answered in Excel, where my input was based on the user copying a cell's contents via drag and past over multiple cells, where the input n was the final ...
- 11.2k
13
votes
4
answers
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What qualifies as malicious code?
We've decided by community consensus that challenges asking for malicious code are off topic. But the question remains: At what point do we consider code to be malicious? Most of the time it's ...
- 24.6k
4
votes
1
answer
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Choosing outputs for challenges
When the program you write for a challenge writes/outputs to multiple of the default outputs, are you, the answerer allowed to state which one is counted for the purposes for the challenge?
For ...
- 28.5k
14
votes
3
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Should language-specific code golf challenges be explicitly disallowed?
In light of a recent code golf challenge in which the specification restricts participation to JavaScript, I think it's time we revisited making a hard rule about language-specific golfs. We may ...
- 24.6k
9
votes
1
answer
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Scoring Java lambdas with imports [duplicate]
In this answer, I used a java.util.List as a parameter to an anonymous function (lambda) answer. So, my question is,
Should this import be counted to the byte ...
- 1,337
11
votes
7
answers
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The state of chat
I was recently alerted to our increasing noise-to-signal ratio we have in chat, something I can definitely see looking back.
While discussing it in chat, people mentioned that they still enjoy the ...
- 14.4k
15
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2
answers
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Clarifying "serious contender" in the help center
The help center says:
All solutions to challenges should:
Correctly implement the required specification.
Be a serious contender for the winning criteria in use. For example, an entry to ...
- 144k
11
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4
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What even is a "function" by our standards?
On a recent question, the following was brought up by @Sp3000:
In fact, I'm almost starting to wonder what a "function" is, since it seems like every language with goto could define a "function" ...
- 11.2k
2
votes
1
answer
86
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How to date languages
Some challenges refer to the year a language was released. If a release is dated on 31 December or 1 January, it may depend on locale.
Should Github date be used as the official date (whatever locale ...
- 29.9k
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3
answers
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When can challenges be reused?
I have noticed that some new sandbox posts are being shutdown as duplicates of other much older posts. There is nothing wrong with that.
But I think there should be a time limit after which ...
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2
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What do we consider an "unfair advantage"?
In this standard loophole, we forbid gaining an unfair advantage by creating new language features or implementing a new language specifically to be competitive for a particular challenge that's ...
- 24.6k
12
votes
2
answers
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Does using SMBF count as a cheating quine?
There has been some debate about whether or not using Self-Modifying Brainfuck counts as a "cheating quine":
Write a Metaquine
Golf you a quine for great good!
About SMBF:
The program's source ...
user45941
4
votes
3
answers
222
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Do I need to count the newline for Vitsy methods?
Background: Methods in Vitsy are defined by specific indices of lines of code. For example, if I wanted to call the second line of a program, I would call 1m to ...
- 11.2k
24
votes
3
answers
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Is this an acceptable way to shave a byte in ES6?
Say there's a challenge with two inputs. Can we submit a function signature like this?
a=>b=>...
Instead of
...
- 2,727
16
votes
3
answers
649
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Is the empty string an acceptable decimal representation of 0?
In a recent question for which the correct output for 1 is zero, an answer output ; i.e, nothing. Is this an acceptable base-10 ...
- 21.4k
6
votes
1
answer
209
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Should we require that programming languages be able to run locally?
In a recent meta thread the issue of "running locally" was brought up. The main issue is, as best I can put it, "Should we allow submissions in a language that cannot be run locally?"
To be more ...
- 29k
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1
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"Good" Questions that are Incomplete
Edit I was mistaken about the links being bad in the mp3 challenge. It wasn't playing well with Centos but seems to be fine on Windows. As such, there are no grounds for closing that challenge. The ...
- 3,205
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We Built a Programming Language... right?
Recently, Mego, quartata, CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ and I (VoteToClose) (building upon the work of ProgramFOX et al.) built a chat bot named Data that can run code for several different esoteric languages (and ...
- 11.2k
7
votes
1
answer
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Duplicates with different restrictions or no restrictions
Long ago, this challenge was posted, with the restriction that no numbers may be used in the source code.
Recently, another challenge was posted, this time without any restrictions on the source code....
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votes
3
answers
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Accepting numeric inputs in mixed decimal and unary bases
There seems to be agreement that numeric input is by default accepted in either decimal or unary bases.
The linked meta-question doesn't address the issue of whether separate inputs of the same ...
- 104k
11
votes
1
answer
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Guidelines for integrating unrelated code written by others?
Are there any guidelines on using code written by others for other challenges as a part of an answer to a completely different challenge? It's a bit of a special case, but I'll explain.
I'm currently ...
- 3,574
12
votes
2
answers
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On downvoting questions of users not in the know
Recently, I encountered this question where a user had posted a challenge to make an ArrayList and manipulate it in certain ways, very basically.
This poster obviously did not understand the site, ...
- 11.2k
18
votes
5
answers
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Guidelines for posting and closing popularity contests
In light of the controversy sparked by this question, I think we need to create a general "rule of thumb" policy on how objective a popularity-contest needs to be in order to be on-topic.
The main ...
- 11.2k
102
votes
49
answers
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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 ...
14
votes
3
answers
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Should we standardise how percentage bonuses combine?
Some questions have a number of bonuses stated as percentages. For code golf (where the majority of these bonuses are seen) these will be percentage reductions of the score.
If an answer achieves ...
3
votes
2
answers
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Should we consider the starting mechanism for Minecraft programs?
Time to add to the list of Minecraft Meta Questions!
So, my question is fairly basic. When we run programs in other langs through the command line, we don't count anything but their flags. For ...
- 11.2k
32
votes
5
answers
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Definitive policy about answers not meeting the challenge specification
This question has been asked so often, I have no idea what our actual policy is:
Almost-correct answers
Should answers that break the rules be deleted?
Should we flag and delete Not an Answer posts?
...
- 196k
30
votes
5
answers
2k
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What constitutes a "free" language for cops and robbers?
Recently Isaac proposed that using non-free, i.e. pay-to-use, languages for cops and robbers challenges should be considered a standard loophole. As Dennis stated in a comment, there is some ambiguity ...
- 24.6k
19
votes
5
answers
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When should rule changes count?
Related: When is it allowable to change the rules?
As noted in the linked meta post above, it's typically particularly frowned upon to significantly change the rules of a challenge after posting it. ...
- 71.4k
9
votes
2
answers
329
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Is a single Zalgo character considered a single character?
I saw this question recently, and I was wondering the title of my question. Essentially is stuff like this:
H̠̹͖
A single character in reference to questions that ...
- 11.2k
6
votes
1
answer
243
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How strict is our list of admissible languages?
If a challenge gives a set of languages to choose from, how freely can I choose a version?
Concrete example: I found a solution for a challenge in JavaScript. The challenge just lists a number of ...
- 1,703
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votes
2
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On the subject of testing code
Somewhat related
In my Bernoulli Numbers challenge, I've been seeing a lot of invalid answers that fail to compute certain values to the required accuracy/precision, or that take substantially longer ...
user45941
14
votes
2
answers
746
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String input with or without ""?
When challenges require to read a string via STDIN/Console I have seen people interpreting that in mainly two ways. The first one was that you actually just have to type the string as
...
- 43.7k