@MartinBüttner I was looking at that one the other day (browsing high voted) and it looks good but still isn't defined fully

Maybe someone could suggest an improvement to nudge it on?

Also maybe we could each post a comment on a sandbox post we like to provide encouragement to do the last bit of work to get it to main

A comment from one person is nice, but a comment from 10 different people might be enough to accelerate things

I'd really like the maze builders/solvers CnR to happen (and I think Geobits would too)

What does it need before it goes?

I don't recall. here is the link: meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/1586/8478

I should get some sleep... I'll see if I can get a challenge ready for Friday or early next week.

Perhaps it's time to think of some new "genres" of questions? Because... however bad code-trolling was, the data doesn't lie:

Is that because the kinds of questions we don't want are also the kinds of questions that are easier to ask?

I'm all in favour of new genres though

I created an account because of code trolling.

What do genres that we currently accept have in common?

Objective, not subjective.

(popcontest is an exception, although even those are objectively scored by vote count)

So we just need to think of something objective that is in a different direction

and has a host of potential questions

"just"

Yeah, come on, it's so simple :P

:)

I know we're called Programming Puzzles and Code Golf but I see most of our questions as Code Challenges and Code Golf

Is there any kind of programming puzzle that we'd like to see here?

honestly, i don't see programming puzzles generating that much of an increase in activity

As in, more of a riddle than a task

Riddle is the wrong word

the thing is that once it's solved, it's solved

Programming puzzles are hard to do with the SE format. Since all answers are immediately public, you're basically forced to do "first correct answer wins."

yeah, what xnor said

Tell that to Puzzling >_>

Yeah I guess it's a similar problem on puzzling

also, they are likely to be language specific, which limits the audience

@Geobits beat me to it...

There was "make x == x + 2 true"

Heh, yeah, Puzzling is... a completely different beast... >_<

It's hard to find a genre that is simultaneously wildly popular and not subjective/not going to hurt the site in the long run.

However... I don't see that kind of thing working here. Well, except as what we currently call [code-challenge], as in optimizing stuff.

I think PPCG fits the SE format much better than puzzling

despite what we're saying, Puzzling seems to have no shortage of puzzles

We've only had two programming-puzzle questions asked this year, apparently.

I think Puzzling could have had the potential to be something different. The community just wanted to steer it in a different direction.

@Geobits 33 currently. :)

Puzzling makes me appreciate how miraculous it is that PPCG worked out well

If puzzling had been as strict as us about what counts as a question I doubt they'd have so many questions - I'd rather be in our position with fewer questions

Yes, quality is absolutely much more important than quantity.

But at the same time, a steady flow of new content is also important.

the thing about SE is it doesn't have good content filtering

votes are largely based on popularity, not quality

@Doorknob I don't see the current rate as a problem (even with our "dramatic" decrease), really.

a ratings system would have done better, but it's a Q&A site

@Geobits Yes, the decrease was not in fact all too dramatic.

on another platform, i could see quantity being better leveraged into quality but filtering good things up

but as is, it's important to avoid bad challenges

And ~5 questions per day is plenty enough for now, especially considering a.) being in beta and b.) being a "special" kind of site, where questions are much harder to write

I'm not worried about a threat to the site (especially since the mother meta announcement about not killing beta sites), but I am worried about the threat to the community. The fewer questions we have the more likely each member is to drift away

That is my main concern as well.

Do we have a rough idea of the ratio of askers to pure answerers?

I'd probably drift away faster if I couldn't keep up with the content coming in, tbh. As it is, I can look at every new challenge, and vote and/or participate as I see fit.

Trivia: Over the last 3 months, our 7-day-average of questions per day stat has ranged from a high of 9.29 on May 10th to a low of 3.57 on June 19th.

are there other golfing sites we can compare to?

Sounds like we need an upper and a lower limit then... Aim to keep the number of questions between X and Y

i'd like to put the numbers in some context

Between 1 and 100? :P

@Geobits I think we manage that pretty well :P

Is there a stat for number of answers submitted in the past 3 months?

Mission accomplished!

I'm not allowed to share the specifics of the analytics data in public, but here's where I got that other fancy graph.

@BrainSteel 3,183.

Am I reading the graph right? Code Trolling brought in a flood of new users, a fair proportion of whom stayed after the tag was phased out?

Yes.

So maybe we need to think of another bad idea, get new users in, and then ban it

:D

haha

Better yet, recycle the same bad idea for one month every couple of years

What interests to most of us have in common?

Even better, have a good idea.

we post obvious code trolling questions, but the goal is to write serious answers to frustrate the poster

@BrainSteel That's inspired...

@BrainSteel Brilliant!

I delegate @BrainSteel as our ideaman. Quick, think of a good idea!

Hey hey hey, I just supervise around here.

Weekly challenge theme idea: Super-broad popcons with HNQ-bait titles :P

just do whatever Puzzling is doing

I thought of one of those but thought it wouldn't be well received...

I'm pretty sure our goal shouldn't be too hurt the quality of our site for more activity. Something about that seems wrong, but I can't put my finger on it. :P

@xnor Besides pissing off rand? ;)

yes, we need drama!

It's like putting sleeves on a blanket just so you can make billions of dollars.

everyone knows that people love gossip

Really? Who told you that??

I wanna know!

@BrainSteel Or hot dogs and chips on a burger?

Hot dogs in a pizza crust

Oh yea. That one looks terrible.

@Geobits Also, the ramen burger. Darn clever people.

Nachos pizza works

@BrainSteel I would at least think about trying that one :)

Next bad idea: Programming/Cooking fusion challenges!

:D

Man, the stars are flowing tonight.

@Doorknob Better than the Minecraft server room. They went from talking about a trade to ravaging tits earlier.

Maybe we should share recipes so we can stay well fed and stay on topic?

Aww, my star!

You people are cruel sometimes.

watches starboard curiously

Hypnotic, isn't it?

It's aliiiiiive

twitch

Is it playing out a cellular automaton?

OH DEAR GOD MAKE IT STOP

The game of stars?

A lone star perseveres through the storm, and shines out from beneath the rubble...

So apart from star trolling, what interests do most of us have in common? Is there a clue there to how challenges could branch out?

It's pretty clear that we all like stars.

One obvious common interest is programming puzzles and/or code golf. So that's something we can build on.

371 831 This is my favourite star trick

You forgot the comma, man.

I like that trick even better when people refuse to star it :D

I guess that would be hilarious, but I've not found people able to resist so far...

@trichoplax change it to 371 831 to make it look like spaces are the separator. :P

I like shiny numbers. Sue me.

I think that trick resulted in my all-time highest starred message.

@Doorknob Done. I kept the same number as I assumed that was significant :)

(@Geobits)

18 stars: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/240?m=20968510#20968510

Aww, I think this one's my highest at 16: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/240?m=22136291#22136291

Anywho, things we all like and can write challenges about...

Despite my epic failure in thinking an optimal solution would be difficult to find, would anyone have an interest in something like nerd sniping if I could find a scoring that had no achievable optimal solution?

We all like PPCG, so a meta-challenge seems in order.

Or would that be seen as a duplicate?

@trichoplax I thought that challenge was really cool!

A few things that I've noticed people in here talk about more than once (in no particular order): minecraft, pokemon, dominos, go, xkcd. Of course all of those things have had at least one challenge done on them.

I can imagine a series, following on the first one, "Prime", with "Fibonacci", "Factorial"...

@BrainSteel Thanks! Do you think the series would be duplicates, or worth looking into?

I wouldn't VTC if they were different enough, for sure.

Maybe we need to consider division of labour: Instead of one person thinking up a good idea, writing a clear spec, implementing example code and thinking up good test cases, perhaps we could have somewhere like a "pre-sandbox" for people to just post snippets of ideas. Or maybe just allow/encourage these in the existing sandbox

We get a lot more graphical-output challenges than we do audio challenges. Audio has the potential to be both wildly popular and good for the site (just as the really good graphical output challenges are).

I guess the only obstacle to audio is most people do most of their golfing and browsing in work (or have I misinterpreted that?)

Don't we already allow idea fragments in the sandbox?

For a Minecraft challenge, I think there is a possibility of basing one on the same idea as Minecraft 4k, which is to write a small implementation of a Minecraft-like game.

Perhaps we just need to encourage that more then

Open question: Is our goal to increase the amount of challenges, or increase the amount of new / active users?

@PhiNotPi Maybe that could be cut down into smaller chunks and posted as a series of challenges?

(I'm going to be popping in and out of chat because I'm multitasking with studying math as well right now :P)

@Doorknob I want to see more high-quality challenges. I feel like we already have a vibrant and active community.

@Doorknob I was thinking more challenges to gain and keep new users, so that's a good point - the challenges aren't the root problem. Does anyone actually feel short of challenges for themselves to answer?

We got a new java golfer today, so that's something... ;)

From what I see, the community are already very welcoming and inclusive of new users

@Geobits That poor soul.

Is gaining or keeping new users the bigger problem?

Do we have stats on user retention?

@BrainSteel That means a lot, especially coming from a C golfer :P

Since there are a lot of stats available, should we agree on what stats would be useful to be able to see on a regular basis, and work on making that straightforward for people to access?

@Geobits At least my definition of main is only 8 bytes in all completeness :P

@trichoplax Keep in mind that stats aren't everything.

True

Which stats would actually cause us to act differently?

@BrainSteel I was very happy the day that functions became a default valid answer and I could get rid of public static void main(String[]a), that's for sure.

Well, apparently the questions/day stat is rather alarming.

I disagree.

(no relation)

^ clearly a sock

(Also, I just like variety in challenges)

No, he's my sock. I use that account when I want to reveal my aptitude for math. As Geobits, I'm astoundingly bad at higher math.

Did you make that comment shorter so that it would fit on the starboard? ;)

I made it longer, then made it shorter so it would fit better :D

On that note, さようなら

I starred that mainly so people would see it out of context.

Perhaps @Geobits is my sock for when I want to reveal my aptitude for Japanese.