41
Allow duplicate answers
I think we shouldn't take action against duplicate submissions, even when the code is identical. We should assume good faith: the second submitter almost surely came up with the code on their own. We see on anarchy golf that identical submissions are common among experienced golfers when code is hidden.
We have enough of a FGITW ...
34
Revive it, with a different task
I would enjoy a Programming Language Quiz Mark II. To keep things interesting, the task should be different.
I suggest a task involving simple integer math, which will 1) allow languages to compete that don't have good string support, and 2) prevent another flood of unintended Foo cracks.
In my opinion, it would be best to ...
16
TL;DR: They are duplicates. Close the old one.
First, I'd like to clarify that I do think the questions are duplicates. I agree with Peter that a difference in the output format counts as a "minor modification" to existing answers, unless the output formatting is the core of the challenge (which arguably it isn't in this case). So the criterion you're ...
16
Yes, under specific circumstances:
I think that DJMcMayhem made some really good points as to why we don't like duplicates. I'll address the two he felt were still relevant to answer-chaining:
A challenge becomes less interesting when it's been done before. Even challenges around a theme become boring after being repeated too many times. (For example, flag ...
15
Yes, but the reposting of a challenge must be voted on
Instead of having a set time limit and max number of reposts, we could have a thread similar to the sandbox where there could be "repost requests", and in order for a challenge to get the thumbs up for reposting, it must reach a certain ratio of upvotes to downvotes. A request might look like this:
# [...
15
To respond specifically to your example: according to your profile, you joined the site about six weeks ago. This is probably only the first or second dupe of that question you've seen. I've seen dozens. I've lost count of the number of times I've explained that there's nothing interesting in getting reposts of old answers with the constants changed. I've ...
15
The only reason pop-con even exists is because some people couldn't think of a good winning criterion for some of their questions. If a challenge works as a code-golf, it shouldn't be posted as a pop-con.
15
Let it be. Codegolf questions on SO get deleted apparently at random, so there's no telling how long that one will be there. However, it might be a good idea to link to it from your question and to state that if people want to copy answers then they should credit the original poster, make their answers community wiki, and be prepared to delete them if the ...
15
Challenges should never be reused.
If a challenge has been posted in the past and you think it would be fun to participate in it, participate in the existing challenge. Don't repost an old challenge because
It isn't your own work
It doesn't provide new content for the site
By the very definition of the term, it's a duplicate.
14
I don't think either one should be closed.
The other one includes a ton of bonuses. While I don't think they are a great idea, they significantly change the challenge. Also, without the bonuses, the other challenge is only about handling a single type of bracket.
Your challenge adds priorities to the bracket types. It's not only about correct balancing but ...
12
Is the question a dupe?
Yes, it is
Our standard for whether one question duplicates another is: can answers from one question be copied with minor modifications and be competitive?
I'm not going to work through all 174 answers to the older question, but to take the first page by votes:
Perl: yes
Brainfuck: yes
Haskell: yes
C#: yes
GolfScript: yes
><>: ...
11
The generally accepted rule is:
Can answers from one question be copied over to the other with little or no modification and still be competitive?
If you are unsure, post your revised challenge in the Sandbox and ask if others think it is a duplicate.
11
A straight duplicate seems unnecessary, but a near-duplicate wouldn't necessarily be terrible. Do an old one with a new twist, or a more complicated scoring-system. Or more expanded, or more limited.
A priori, I think such a thing is possible to make work.
11
No, leave both challenges open
As Luis Mendo requested in the comment, here is a copy of my statement for voting.
I believe it is not a dupe because the solutions to the existing challenge are not likely to be competitive here, and solutions to this one are not likely to be valid on the other.
Using Mego's post as the guideline, in my opinion:
Is the &...
9
I'd like to advocate a more flexible policy for closing duplicates. As is, duplicate and near-duplicate questions seem to be closed as a hard rule. Of course, we don't want the same question repeated over and over. But if the new question is much better than the old one, closing it is a needless loss in quality for the site. I'd like for the duplicate policy ...
9
Regarding a general policy
I don't think a general rule on restricted challenges would work very well. It depends a lot on the challenge and the restriction whether it makes a sufficient difference. Print "Hello, World!" without any numbers in your code is practically the same as Print "Hello, World!" (except for some esolangs where that restriction will ...
9
tl;dr: Don't worry about it.
For off-topic posts such as general programming questions, there's no reason to waste your time and delete votes on posts that will already get Roomba'd automatically. This goes for any post that's closed and downvoted, indicating it's a poor fit for the site.
The idea of typically avoiding deletion of duplicate questions is so ...
7
Close only if they would have the same answers
For the question https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7887/25180, the answers are supposed to be:
Yes, they are drowning us. (But we may want to be drowned anyway, or we may want to find a way live with it without changing the rules.)
No, they are not. (But we may want to ban golfing languages for other ...
7
I think this is a special case of a more general question which has come up in the past week in a different guise. I will therefore address the more general question:
What should I do with a question which is a dupe (or maybe only a borderline dupe) of an old question which has problems?
The answer (which I thought was already a well established ...
7
Maybe!
The title of this question is general, so I'll provide a general answer. It applies to the specific challenges mentioned in the question too.
Ask yourself this:
Does it bring something new to the table?
If it does, then it's not a duplicate. If it doesn't, then it's a duplicate.
In general, taking away (or imposing new) restrictions might lead ...
6
It Depends
In general, we handle reposting of challenges on a case by case basis. For this particular instance, I would argue that this KOTH challenge is OK to re-run, provided that someone can't just take the existing winner and re-submit it as a serious contender. In other words, there needs to be enough tweaking to the ruleset to make it a "new-enough" ...
6
Yes, it's too similar
The standard metric we use here for "Is challenge A a duplicate of challenge B?" is "Can answers from B be trivially ported to answer A?". Most of the answers to the challenge use some form of regex. To adapt them to the new challenge would involve something along the lines of adding h? to the S/s matches. There may ...
answered Sep 15 '21 at 19:10
caird coinheringaahing
46.2k1 gold badge46 silver badges82 bronze badges
5
No, it's not a duplicate.
In my opinion, we should think of duplicates as challenges which are sufficiently similar to past challenges that very little or nothing is added to the site by having the challenge, and something is lost, because the repetitious challenges crowd out innovative challenges.
I do not think this challenge has that problem. This is a ...
5
This should not be allowed, but we could lower the threshold for these challenges to be considered a "duplicate".
The reason that we don't allow reposts is because the same answers will be copied from the first challenge and the original can still be answered.
That's certainly not the only reason. There are four reasons I can think of to not ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible