36
votes
Accepted
Should asking for malicious code be on topic?
I don't think this is a frequent enough issue to warrant using one of the custom close reason slots. But I do think it's a big enough issue to warrant not only a downvote and a close vote but also a ...
- 42.8k
35
votes
Proposal to lock the Language Showcase as historically significant
Problems I see with locking the Showcase
We have practically nowhere else to post what we can post on the showcase. You can always put them in the language's readme on GitHub, but I prefer the ...
- 49.3k
27
votes
Accepted
The state of the popularity contest tag
Keep It, but...
...we should definitely update e.g. the tag info. The recent discussions have not been unproductive, and I think we have better guidelines than ever before but at the moment they are ...
- 43k
27
votes
What changes should we make to the showcase before and after unlocking and reopening it?
Automate the catalog
We should replace the manually curated answer list with a Stack Snippet.
I hope nobody will actually object to this, but this should at the very least serve as a to-do list.
25
votes
Accepted
Making an exception for the "Showcase of Languages"
Let's make an exception
This seems to be what the community as a whole wants. I don't think this is an optimal solution (and would personally to prefer to leave it as it is), but since the showcase ...
- 206k
23
votes
Accepted
Should "Showcase your language one vote at a time" be unlocked and reopened?
Yes, Unlock and Reopen
At least until we arrive at a more clear concensus on what to do with it, if anything.
- 87.9k
22
votes
Accepted
Should multi-part challenges be allowed?
As I said in the question, I think we need to distinguish several cases here. (This post got a bit long. There's a summary at the bottom, but if you disagree with it, I'd appreciate if you took the ...
- 193k
22
votes
Proposal to lock the Language Showcase as historically significant
The showcase is part of a unique category of pop-cons that should be on topic.
Before I explain this, consider for a second why we banished code-trolling, underhanded and now are considering ...
- 11.1k
21
votes
Accepted
Is editor golf on-topic?
Yes, I think "editor golf" is perfectly on-topic here, assuming solutions are submitted entirely in keystrokes and not, for example, with mouse clicks or menu buttons.
Vim, Emacs, and most other text-...
- 70.5k
19
votes
What changes should we make to the showcase before and after unlocking and reopening it?
Make it a non-challenge question
We do allow these, and the showcase is by far more similar to tips questions than to our usual programming contests. This should encompass unaccepting the answer with ...
- 206k
19
votes
Accepted
The broken window of "Produce the number 2014 without any numbers in your source code"
Add a disclaimer:
Note: New straightforward "Do X without Y" questions are not considered novel anymore and may be closed as duplicates of this question.
But I think it should be worded better.
...
- 35.8k
16
votes
The state of the popularity contest tag
Should the tag be split?
I think it's clear that the majority want to see popularity contests continue, but also the majority find problems with most challenges that are posted with this tag.
Is ...
- 10.7k
16
votes
Unspoken challenge rules
We need an honest intro for new askers
We need a frank explanation of what makes a good challenge. Not something that lists all rules and possibilities, but advice like you'd give a friend who is new ...
- 137k
15
votes
Objective computational challenges without "code"
We should allow computational challenges of all sorts
tl;dr: This site is about puzzles based on programming, not puzzles whose solutions are programs. This challenge qualifies.
We currently accept ...
- 41.3k
15
votes
Answer-dependent questions
I would really like to make this challenge type work. (Full disclosure: partly because I seem to have come up with with a fairly popular challenge idea based on it. Mostly, though, because I genuinely ...
- 193k
15
votes
Proposal to lock the Language Showcase as historically significant
Closing this challenge is pointless even if out-of-scope
This challenge is still opened and…
…it still receives interesting answers showcasing new languages. I still receive upvotes semi-often on that ...
- 35.2k
15
votes
What changes should we make to the showcase before and after unlocking and reopening it?
Use Stack Snippets to fold answers
Everything except the language name and a factoid could be folding by wrapping it into a stack snippet. That would condense each page into 30 stubs, which can be ...
14
votes
Are pure programming puzzles on topic?
This is, perhaps, a comment prompted by Alex A.'s post, but too long to be one.
Why exactly do we need challenges to have a clear winner?
To accept an answer, maybe? But only 62% of questions have ...
- 137k
14
votes
The state of the popularity contest tag
Keep it
There's nothing wrong specifically with popularity-contest (indeed it is a good scoring criteria for several popular kinds of challenges, such as image-processing). The main issue is that ...
- 11.1k
13
votes
Should asking for malicious code be on topic?
As I said in the question, I'm not a fan of these, and would prefer if they were simply off-topic.
That being said, I think they violate 3(e) of Stack Exchange's Terms of Service. But even if you ...
- 193k
12
votes
Code kata should be added to Programming Puzzles & Code Golf
Code Katas are a great idea in general, but I don't see how they fit into this community. The main requirement for every challenge posted here is that it has to have an objective winning criterion. ...
- 193k
12
votes
Making an exception for the "Showcase of Languages"
Make a new category
If the site benefits from this challenge, it should benefit from others like it. What if someone posts another showcase challenge that would be just as popular and well received, ...
- 137k
11
votes
Are pure programming puzzles on topic?
Yes, they are on topic
To address some common reasons why people think they shouldn't be on topic:
They don't have a winning criterion. By default, the winning criterion is first posted. Even if ...
- 14.2k
11
votes
Proposal to lock the Language Showcase as historically significant
No, don't close it, don't lock it
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Unless there are severe quality issues, don't let bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo get in the way of a challenge that many people are clearly ...
- 87.9k
11
votes
What changes should we make to the showcase before and after unlocking and reopening it?
Make it a community wiki
This is a perfect fit.
Questions should be manually converted to community wiki when they are marginal fits or 'list of X' questions that contain enough value to avoid ...
- 206k
11
votes
What changes should we make to the showcase before and after unlocking and reopening it?
Keep searching for better alternatives
As before, I still believe that the showcase deserves to be a proper wiki, quite possibly outside PPCG, free from restrictions on character count, size, ...
11
votes
What changes should we make to the showcase before and after unlocking and reopening it?
Remove the one vote at a time rule
Additional snippets could be added at will and would not be restricted to one snippet per character count. I don't think character count should be a limiting factor ...
11
votes
What's the PPCG policy on originality of content?
There are various scenarios, and I don't think the answer is necessarily the same for all of them.
I assume for all of these scenarios that the content is explicitly licensed in a way which makes it ...
- 42.8k
10
votes
What changes should we make to the showcase before and after unlocking and reopening it?
Combine answers in the same language (whenever possible)
Ideally, we would have one page per language, but there's no way to make that happen using PPCG's Q&A format.
Consolidating multiple ...
- 206k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible