I think 17 is the number at which the string outputted will be longer than the program.

depends whether or not we keep up a pattern

@Calvin'sHobbies No, I mean how do I find what the earliest acceptable year is (in the answers, i.e, if the earliest year was 2010, my answer would be 2009)?

I think you just look

@Runer112 The reason I ask is there's about 50 answers by now.

Yes. Look at the current answers, or run the stack snippet

there are 10

@Calvin'sHobbies Thanks.

ah, didn't see that

I should've expected that you made something like that

@PhiNotPi I think it may stop around 25, taking a 'print' into account. But we've still got GolfScript and CJam...

with the most recent update, the ppu train is dead. :(

@Sp3000 joke ><> answer to the ruby question, uses the input characters as mirrors to build a logic-less maze leading to the output number: pastebin.com/ChKtQExA

ppuppPq, bleh

Well, there's not going to be any trains happening any time soon.

No trains shall pass!

eww lisp

ppuppPq(

We will probably need to have the same character at least 4 times in a row to actually get a use out of it.

Oh, why, just why?

Wait until someone uses Perl or Java and puts ; at the beginning.

I could do that.

But I probably won't.

it's not really hard to print a semicolon, it's just probably going to break any patterns or simple encodings

@Runer112 But wasn't the simple encoding broken already by Lisp's (?

yes, that was pretty bad

Does Lisp even need that ( there?

well-formed lisp surely does

It does on ideone at least. I did try without it lol.

Somebody downvoted Element. Maybe the gimmick was too much for them.

@PhiNotPi I don't see why that deserves a downvote, it's clever.

I don't really think this warrants a downvote, but you did use an obscure language with no reference to the spec or an interpreter

You might consider adding a link to interpreter to new Element answers. It seems the usual thing for new and/or obscure languages.

dammit

It's not really that impressive. The ` character just prints the top thing on the stack. All the other words are ignored.

I'm not sure any of them are really impressive yet.

@MartinBüttner Sorryyyyyyyy >_<

@Geobits Everything on that Quagmire post is pretty much factual. I really don't know how well the game plays, since my 8th grader brain at the time was just playing around. You have my permission to do absolutely anything you want with that game, though perhaps a reference to the challenge page or something would be nice :)

@Geobits Yeah, wait until we hit ~40. That's where people will use CJam.

@JoeZ. ;)

and no, I made it through the whole list before you sent that message :S

I think 3 at a time is a good rule of thumb

okay

@Geobits And if you're developing an app, I may even help if you like.

I didn't convert the NAND gate problems yet, so I'll try to go through those more slowly

@BrainSteel Cool. I'll let you know if I have spare time to actually do it :)

I was just excited that the feature was there after so long :<

@Martin It's like rationing candy on Halloween :(

lol

Did nobody think to migrate this question to PPCG meta instead of just closing it? codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/48543/18487

@Geobits I'm not very fond of either candy or Halloween, so that analogy is probably lost on me :P

it's true, though, that giant post-editing spree was like a bag of Halloween candy to me :P

Part of the idea behind golfing Quagmire was to see if it was a worthy game anyway.

have any of you tried the minimal Sudoku thing yet?

@MartinBüttner Does the diamond eat at your soul that quickly, or have you always been a monster?

I realized that the way I designed it, the scores would be roughly the same scale as the Flood Paint question

@JoeZ. I was considering it.

I added a link to the Element post.

@Geobits :D ... I guess I've always been a monster :P

and I want to make more challenges with those approximately-2-million scores

@Geobits: why is your avatar a downvote button?

@BrainSteel I was thinking of putting together a bare-bones version to test gameplay first, we'll see.

@JoeZ. And it's closed.

?

I meant the one I posted

is that one closed too?

Could you link me? I searched 'minimal sudoku' and yours wasn't there.

well, I used "minimum" instead of "minimal", but whatever

OK, thanks. I clicked on the wrong one

@JoeZ. ^

ah, I see, you're one of the few people who votes down more often than he votes up

generally my ratio is like 10 up to 1 down, I think

on puzzling it's 3:1

@Geobits How did you find that?

I'm not sure of mine on puzzling... let's see :)

two more downvotes and my up-to-down ratio will be PI:1

@Rainbolt It should be on your profile summary.

well, very close to it anyway

My ratio at puzzling leans more heavily to downvotes, but there's a lot more junk answers there IMO.

yeah

I'm scared to look at lifehacks.

although personally I barely ever downvote answers because, well, -1 rep :<

usually I'll like

save them in a queue, and do a massive downvoting spree when I'm about to reach 200 rep in one day

Nice.

so that my reputation is unaffected :>

but yeah, both our ratios are lower on puzzling

because bad quality :(

I'm a bit under 1/3 of the way toward Electorate

It sucks, because there's a lot of good stuff there. There's just also a lot of junk, and not everyone agrees which ones are the junk.

On PPCG, I've only cast 3 downvotes.

oh, wow

on Math.SE, I've cast 276 up votes and 12 downvotes

@Geobits They've been singing that song for months now.

that's 23:1

@Rainbolt Oh I know. Hopefully it'll smooth out after some more time, but who knows.

I'm close to 100:1

Nvm, Phi is way nicer than me

yep

and way nicer than me, even though I'm way nicer than you :P

so he's way way nicer than you :>

Mine on SO is 2.8:1, but I go there to actually solve problems, so that makes some sense to me.

the vast majority of my participation on Stack Exchange has been in the two SE's where people post challenge problems :P

usually the answers to my own questions are googlable :P

The vast majority of my participation on Stack Exchange is procrastination :)

I have a ratio of 16.64:1 on here.

Yea, but when I google them the answers come from SE.

yeah

but I mean, I don't need to ask them myself

Oh, yea. I've only asked a handful of non-challenge questions anywhere.

I have a really long tail of accounts, lol

there are my top 4, then Area 51

then like 50 accounts that I never use

with less than 400 reputation each

What's the site you have the least reputation on?

I have like 15 of them with the base 101

at some point a few of them went to 99 or 97, but then I deleted the question that caused it

Yea, 101 is the most common for me :)

I do have 19 with >101, and 28 with 101.

oh wow, your tail is shorter than mine

except for the 101's

I have 93 on meta.

I have like another 15 accounts with between 102 and 201 reputation

haha, lol, I think I had 95 on meta once, and now I have 171

my "question record" is probably negative on meta

the one that's used to determine eligibility for the curious/etc. badges

I'm so close to 3k on meta I can taste it.

like, negative as in less than zero

while 0.5 is required for the badge

I want to be the first person to earn 3 gold badges on Puzzling :>

right now nobody has more than 2

and neither of the 2 I have are Fanatic or Electorate :P

Oh, I didn't even realize I got Populist there :)

I just hit 200 rep, and then suddenly (because of the bonus 100 rep) I had 300. Is this a mistake?

no

the 200 rep gave you an association bonus

Oh, on all accounts, including the one you hit 200 on?

if you have 200 rep on at least one site, you get a bonus of 100 rep everywhere, including... yes

I only have one answer on puzzling.se. I got 226 reputation off of it.

when I first hit 200 on Math.SE, this happened too

I'm sure there are people who are willing to take your rep if you don't want it.

I wonder when a question will overtake the 2014 one as the most upvoted one :3

never

yeah, my 2015 one didn't do nearly as well

still, you never know

@PhiNotPi Maybe. I want to be able to review, but I might give a bounty.

maybe it will change in 3014

if humanity is still around by then

also, most of the winning answers involved &#2014; in that question

@TheBestOne My highest voted answer on SE is on Puzzling, and it was just a joke.

@JoeZ. Some day. I only hope that it's also a good challenge and not some lucky shot pop-con. :D

you only what?

hope

ah

(for future transcript context: mb edited a "hope" in where it wasn't before)

that's what you want people to believe

lol, okay

(people can actually view the edit history of chat messages ;))

I know

but in case people don't, you know :P

bleh, this is disappointing

the code to decompress range-compressed strings in CJam is like 13 bytes

hmm, was the 2014 one a good challenge? it wasn't a lucky shot pop-con, to be sure, but it was pretty simple and easy

never going to be worth it in the chaining question

@JoeZ. Sure, but don't be disappointed when it loses its novelty extremely quickly.

what? I'm surprised it was even novel in the first place

I sorta expected it to just be a jokey, 20-vote thingy for the new year

@JoeZ. Simple and easy isn't bad. ;) And I guess at the time, simple source restrictions weren't as boring as they are considered today.

I see

but now everybody and their dad does it, so it gets worn out

just like code-trolling and Goomy Clicker, I guess...

I'm always the second one to the trend

And I also you think you were lucky to get that one amazing Python answer by dansalmo. I'm pretty sure a lot of people shared the question because of that.

and the harbinger of the downfall of the category

I see

yeah, that answer is also the most upvoted answer on the site

I think I'm gonna start actually working on another KotH

and it's getting pretty close to 1000

most likely it'll be the first post on the site to do so

a historic moment :D

Does anyone else get the message,"You haven't voted on questions for a while. You need to vote on questions too."?

Yes.

not me, I vote on questions a lot ;-)

My rep is 298 on the main but only 177 on meta. Is this a delay or a bug?

@TheBestOne only when something like Unscramble the Source Code happens

@ASCIIThenANSI delay

@MartinBüttner OK, thanks. It's always happened and it's kinda weird.

everything on SE is cached, so stuff like this happens all the time. but more important things are refreshed much more frequently of course (and less important things less frequently)

Makes sense, the site has overloaded before

wheee, got my first 2-digit starred github repo

I think the highest number of stars I've gotten is 1, and that's from myself.

:(

somebody posted a question from my puzzle site to get help, a week after I decided to post the exact same question myself as a challenge

god dammit

I wanted 25

I actually had a novel solution

I'm surprised it escalated this quickly.

well, it didn't really escalate

just everyone appending a character onto a string

@JoeZ. I don't remember how far I got in the temple. I know I got to the star map, but I don't think I figured that one out.

Yeah, but down from 100 to 25 bytes in 2 hours.

and now we're done

with only one novel answer along the way

@Runer112 With?

Oh nvm.

@Geobits: yeah, I posted the starmap question too

unless there's a langauge specially designed for kolmogorov complexity, we can't go any further

you even commented on it, saying "that's as far as I got, I got stuck here months ago"

I forgot I commented on that :)

now that you know the answer, though, you can move on :P

If I can remember the URL to get that far. I definitely don't want to start over :P

ah

Nope. Someone used Clip, breaking the limit of 20. Wait for something like BF.

BF cannot possibly do this in 15 bytes

Well, there's got to be at least one.

CJam?

It's hard to print over 15 arbitrarily chosen bytes in 15 bytes.

yeah

Hmmm. "No standard loopholes. Unless you want to take all the fun out of the challenge."

in summary, that was a disappointing question design

man, I really wish we could PM here

PM? Sorry, I'm rather new.

just sit there with a 20-byte answer pre-prepared and post the answer as fast as you can once you see 25

private message

OK.

post modernist

then I could tell Geobits the URL without spoiling it for everyone else

a modernist with posts?

Isn't there a way to make private chatrooms?

basically, free points for pressing a button at the right time

NTIKO

me either

@JoeZ. Post a crypto-puzzle on puzzling with the answer as the URL (ending). I'll either crack it or someone else will, and I'll know the answer. Oh, and everyone else forget you heard that.

lol

Heard what?

Exactly

nah, it's alright, I need to remake the puzzle layout as it is anyway

it's too hard to understand the instructions for modifying the URLs

I need to use a HTTP GET scheme instead

like: joezeng.com/quetzalcoatl/3?answer=How to Answer

...?

wtf happened with that url?

Does anyone know who this guy is? He seems like a very not-new new user...

magic links!

I suppose, yeah

@Geobits No clue, but he has 5 answers on my post.

what's the string at 15 char program would need to output? Is it ppuppPq([#fwSmd[

I could have sworn there was a meta post on challenges that "end". Can't seem to find it

How do you manually award bounty on a question?

@PhiNotPi yes

wait

missing a char

you're missing... yeah

ppuppPq([#fwSmdP[

@ASCIIThenANSI Why don't you look it up on Meta?

@ASCIIThenANSI when you offer a bounty, 100 rep say, there's a blue +100 button beneath the voting buttons on each answer.

@ASCIIThenANSI just to be clear, he's referring to "mother meta": meta.stackexchange.com

> To award the bounty manually, click on the +50 (or whatever bounty amount was allocated) button on the left side of the answer you want to award:

17 chars in 15 bytes... impossible without some sort of kolmogorov complexity language

@Rainbolt @MartinBüttner OK. Turns out I have to wait 2 more days, really figured we wouldn't already be this far.

@Runer112 Well, they do exist.

I can't actually seem to find any

imagine if there were a site with a zero-sum voting policy

like, in terms of upvotes and downvotes

probably because they wouldn't be very interesting, as they only encode text

As in it costs the same to cast votes as the reward?

no, like

for each upvote, you must also give a downvote

or that upvotes and downvotes must be within a certain margin of each other

like &pm;5

and, imagine that that applied globally, not per user

say, the global margin is 200

I think that maybe it would only encourage people to leave junk on the site (to have DV targets) instead of cleaning it up.

I'm not saying it would work, but try imagining how that might

yeah

@JoeZ. Maybe not so well. This means for every good answer, there's an equally bad junk answer.

I'd have to change my avatar again.

well, the ostensible point would be that downvotes are given to answers that aren't good enough, not just answers that are complete garbage

and that would create some sort of "higher standard" for questions

again, I'm not saying this would work

it's just a thought experiment

I think the problem is that you can't ever get to that "higher standard". Once you do, more good stuff is coming in than "not good enough", but there's no reward for it.

and I'm not proposing it either; I wouldn't participate in a site that enforced balance like that

But what happens when all the answers are good enough and we have to raise the bar?

yep

and thus, the problem with stack ranking :P

hiring managers figured this out 10 years ago

Jack Welch only used it when he realized there was too much junk

forced competition helps nobody, basically

It helps to a point. Like you said, if there's too much junk...

It's diminishing returns though.

yeah, and I don't think even Puzzling.SE has reached the point where upvotes need to equal downvotes

globally, I mean

that's a pretty low place to be

Go check out parenting or lifehacks ;)

What if, in this experiment, people post fake bad answers to downvote just so they have more upvotes?

Would that even work?

Sure it would, if there was a ring of them (or just multiples). You just can't vote on your own.

But it would be terrible for the site.

yeah

I mean, that's usually what ends up happening with stack ranking as it is

Would people be blocked, or would everyone be OK with this?

the middle manager would hire one wildcard guy just to have a shitty candidate to fire when the quarterly report came around

@ASCIIThenANSI I'd just quit the site. There's no getting around shady stuff like that. Even SE has problems with voting irregularities without the forcing mechanism.

And would the privilege to downvote still be at 125 rep?

I'm not exactly sure what the proposal is after reading the last two pages of chat messages. By default, I disagree.

Yea, when you're forced to hire/fire on a quota (or as a scapegoat), that sucks.

Wait, disagree with who?

That was even less clear than usual ;)

uhhh

basically we were thinking about a hypothesis where a upvote/downvote site forced upvotes to equal downvotes globally

Take over, Rainbolt, I'm out :)

so every upvote in one place had to be compensated by a downvote elsewhere

I'm out too, I've got work to do

@Geobits Quick, tell me what your stance was so I can take over.

take over for both of us :)

@Rainbolt Terrible idea

we were all talking about how it wouldn't work

Crap. I need both of your stances.

I'll argue both sides

we were all on the same side

bye now! :D

This conflicts with my inner me. I must take the opposite side while representing both of you.

hmm, I might have to try to stretch the definition of a language

They are really getting into it over on Arqade chat.

where do I have to start reading?

from the launch of super mario bros

lurks in incognito

@MartinBüttner Don't bother. Frank thinks MinecraftCrash questions are crap. Everyone else think he is being MinecraftCrash-ist.

that pinned screenshot is beautiful

@Rainbolt Some of those messages look like they should be flagged.

@MartinBüttner The Dilbert one?

no, the screenshot of the star wall

Oh, nvm. The pinned one. Like you said.

Star wall, also known as a "transcript" in some regions.

of SE

So, I am getting a blue notification constantly with just a 0 count

@Rainbolt sounds much more boring to me. (also I always thought the transcript is the full history... but I guess that's called the history.)

@Optimizer someone's quick at handling the flag

I think this ^ is the transcript and that > is the star wall.

@MartinBüttner then simply don't alert me, no ? :P

I mean, the number is appearing as 0

well it shows up for me as 1 but turns into a 0 before I can click it

Hover over the star button. I guess the wording is a little ambiguous.

not 1 going down to 0

@Rainbolt I see

I marked it invalid.

Definitely wasn't spam. I didn't find it offensive.

@Rainbolt "interesting for the transcript" still signifies that ^ is the transcript and > is the area where that interesting thing will appear