I see - I just saw a lot of meta posts but not much action so I thought I'd stop following for a while and see how that would end up

Leaving quality aside, spoiler overuse is pretty interesting though.

I'd also add that given the state it was in at the end of private beta vs the state it was in at postgate, the private beta site was more interesting to read, but it also wasn't really sustainable in terms of the amount of content. I do find the direction the site is moving after postgate to be encouraging though

@Sp3000 one of the quality ideas I saw earlier was the suggestion that answers should not purely be a spoiler tag. If an answer can't stand without the contents of a spoiler, it likely isn't a good answer

I think that is probably a valid quality standard

I had the impression that some users were already commenting on spoiler-only answers they see - and yeah that's a good standard for answers

(Which reminds me I should probably fix a few of mine, like this)

@Sp3000 yeah, they are, and that's part of what I mean about it improving post-postgate

for better or worse, post-gate a) made people aware of meta and b) made people aware of the need to figure out how the site can work

rather than just having everyone go in their own direction with no discussion

Hmm I'm almost tempted to use "If I just post the answer with no explanation, would that give away everything (or would the reader still have to figure out some details for themselves)?" as a rule of thumb for quality. Unfortunately it's a bit hard to blanket all puzzle types though.

In particular it wouldn't work well for the "aha!" types which rely on a single crucial fact

yeah, and that does lend itself to wondering if those types of problems fit well or not. Granted, it may be possible to work around it by providing hints before the answer in a spoiler.

and the standard for those could be that good answer is expected to enhance the problem with hints

thus helping develop the riddle

rather than just answering it

it also would conveniently give a reason to vote more for one answer than another too

fundamentally I also don't see a post where 30 people answer the same exact thing as working well

Do you think there would be any types of questions where it's impossible to provide a hint without giving away the answer? (Also is the answer also in spoiler tags or just the hints?)

@Sp3000 I would only put the answer in the spoiler tag

hints would be visible

you don't have to read an answer before you are ready to

I'm trying to figure out why people like spoiler tags so much tbh. The only reason I can come up with is if the OP is really short so that the first answer is completely in view, and something is seen accidentally

I've been working on the slightly loose rule of using more spoiler tag for short puzzles, because if the puzzle is short enough, you can see the first answer without scrolling. If it's long enough to need a scroll (on the vast majority of screens), I don't bother as much.

Yea that.

Maybe if SE embedded Empuzzler and made it a togglable option for the OP :P (doubt that'd happen just for us though)

@Sp3000 was just gonna say, having a toggle for all of them at once would be nice

because spoilers would matter a lot less if I could turn them off globally so that I could actually read the site, or if there was just an option to have answers not show up until the user clicked something

It'd certainly replace highlighting over dozens of spoiler blocks with just a single conscious click

but I highly doubt those are realistic possibilities within the SE system. Suppose it can't hurt to ask, maybe some CSS trick could do it

they did make a POTW thing for Photography.SE, but I think that might have been after graduation

but it does mean that some basic level of customization of the platform is done on occasion

Interesting... I didn't know about that

That raises hopes a little

Hm... might make an answer for the internet topic. It's... an interesting question.

Is there a tag something like [grid-puzzle] I could use for my fillomino question? I gave a glance through tags, but didn't see anything I thought worked well. I was thinking about creating it (since there are a lot of grid/number puzzles that it could handle), just checking whether it would duplicate something already in place.

I'm pretty confident you could make a nikoli tag and get away with it :P

Hmm I can't quite put my answer into words so I think I'll discuss here: I was thinking of tagging questions after they're solved with the mechanics/themes used

Basically, like this: devjoe.appspot.com/huntindex/keywords

Then that'd provide searchable knowledge by people looking for puzzles with a certain mechanic/theme

I was thinking the same a couple days ago, but came up with two downsides. 1) You may not be able to tag until solved 2) It could give a big clue to the answer for later visitors. Not a bad idea, but I was trying to come up with ways to mitigate those before suggesting it and haven't yet.

2) is only applicable to a certain type of question where finding the mechanic is part of the puzzle, so for many it isn't an issue I guess.

If only we could add that to the togglable option :P

I don't see tagging until solved as too much of a problem if there's general tags that can be used temporarily while the puzzle is still unsolved

Not a problem for those looking for solved puzzles. You can't search for unsolved puzzles based on mechanic if the unsolved ones aren't tagged.

Oh, right. I was thinking from a puzzle-writer-looking-for-ideas-via-solved-puzzles point of view.

Ah. Yea, it would work well from that point of view ;)

Is there any reason to look for unsolved puzzles with a mechanic?

To solve them :D

Well if it's an untagged mechanic then it'd have to be a later step anyway, so you shouldn't know about it yet

Just pick something off the front page if you're bored :P

True enough. I guess at this point there aren't very many "unanswered" questions anyway, so it's not a real issue yet.

@Geobits Would you mind if I used our discussion to post an answer to the internet question?

2)'s a bit of a problem but I thought it'd be good to put it up for people to think about

The internet question? Not sure which one you mean, but go for it.

This meta post

Oh, sure. If you can turn our discussion into something helpful, go ahead :P

@pacoverflow Sure, it was poorly worded. I agree with that.

But what's done has been done.

Move on past a misunderstanding and start building a community -- together, with everyone, mods and regular users.

It's okay to have disagreement. That's expected. Just please try to stay focused on the issue that's at hand, and not what has already happened. That can't be changed. What happens to this site in the future can be.

@hichris123 unless of course we live in a deterministic reality and the future is already determined but we don't know it yet

but while puzzling, that's probably more a philosophy discussion

;)

lol

@hichris123 I agree. I was just pointing out to someone who was saying the post wasn't an edict.

@randal'thor Re "footbullet city". A "footbullet" is where one shoots oneself in the foot. "X city" is an expression meaning "a lot of X". My meaning was that you both - Oblong in particular - were seriously harming the cause which you claim you want to promote (pro-puzzles, pro-puzzles-as-challenges) with verbal abuse of other users here on chat, which just discredits the whole your pro-puzzles-as-challenges view.

@Oblongamous The reason I suggested that you 'grow up' was that you had been (over the past days) verbally abusing other users in the style of a child in the school playground. I was referring to your lack of emotional maturity in being apparently unable (or unwilling) to refrain from insulting other people and swearing at them. Height doesn't come into it.