Riddle Sandbox

4:55 AM

Not everybody can wait his/her riddle approved from sandbox for a long time, if he/her do not provide the answer, the consequences is nobody know what the asker answer.

Ankoganit

5:09 AM

Hello, what if some riddle is a part of a multi-layered puzzle (like you solve a cipher, figure out a code, then get a imgur link, which leads to a riddle or something like that)? Should that riddle be sandboxed?

Deusovi

5:40 AM

@Ankoganit Anything that would warrant a [riddle] tag should be sandboxed.

@JamalSenjaya What's wrong with waiting? And yes, it's possible that people will not know the answer. If the riddle is good enough, then you might not need to know the answer to know that it's good.

Avigrail

@Deusovi but that is risky :P

As for @Ankoganit I'd say you wouldn't need to sandbox if your riddle was only a minor part of your whole puzzle

But you should, in any case, make sure it's gud!

f''

@Ankoganit sandbox only the riddle portion, I guess

assuming it isn't too tightly connected to the rest of the puzzle

Mithrandir

7:29 AM

Can we add a feed with new riddle questions?

Feeds

7:43 AM

Emrakul has made a change to the feeds posted into this room

user61230

There we go. Now we get both the riddle tag and the riddle sandbox in here.

Mithrandir

@Emrakul Thanks.

user61230

@Mithrandir No problem!

user61230

9 messages deleted

user61230

(I hate how Feeds spams chat when feeds are added.)

Stack Exchange

9:18 AM

-1

Q: We are two words in every book

We are two words in every book, which everybody knows, Even children know us, when books must come to close. We let you know, your time has come and passed. Who are we?

riddle

0

A: The Riddle Sandbox

Okay, here is my riddle: What am I? They put pictures on me then take pictures of me to share with the world But the pictures disappear as my end draws near and anxious heartbeats stilled I am sought after very wide especially after every night when things are put in motion And after a...

Marius

9:33 AM

Just my 0.02$ about this sandbox idea. I'm against it. It defeats the purpose of getting your riddles out there. The SE network already has many ways of taking destructive measures against bad posts. Downvotes, close votes, flags and for some people there is a delete button available. There is no need to approve a post before going on the main website.

Also, the users with 1 rep point cannot participate in the meta section. TO summarize...the idea is not totally wrong, but the implementation can be discussed a bit.

Ankoganit

11:06 AM

@Deusovi @f'' @Avigrail thanks for your responses. I'm not planning on any such puzzle though... :D

@Marius Talking about measures against bad posts, we have seen these measures have not been sufficient since bad riddles continue to pour in. Downvotes are not very effective IMHO, there was a recent very-short and lacking-much-effort riddle which got a LOT of upvotes.

But the point that new users can't post is worth noting... maybe they should post in this chat and ask some1 with high rep to post for them?

Beastly Gerbil

11:34 AM

Okay my riddle now has 10 upvotes. Its the first one to do so so should I delete it or leave it there as an example

Marius

@Ankoganit if the posts get upvotes maybe they are not bad posts. Your opinion and taste in riddles are not the only that are important. But if you really think it's a low quality, simply flag it.

As for new users that cannot post...are you serious? Asking someone else to post for you? really? Oh...and by the way, if a user does not have access to meta he/she does not have access to the chat either....SE rules.

Mithrandir

Chat = 20 rep. Meta = 5 rep.

Marius

this looks to me like a "not thought through governmental restriction": "Ok...2 fat kids choked on the toy inside a chocolate egg. what should we do about it? What, this should not happen. Let's ban all foods with toys inside them."...."and give guns to everyone on every corner".

sorry for the exaggeration. You can see it as a "Name that government" puzzle

Ankoganit

@Marius Oops you are right...sorry...

Stack Exchange

11:50 AM

0

Q: My Incredible Bite

Size of my fist or size of dust Color of night, rainbow or white If I check health, I'm unhealthy myself I can be hot, Or eyes will water At my incredible bite What am I? NOTE This has got 10 up-votes in the sandbox so is allowed on the main site

riddle rhyme

ABcDexter

Hi, to Knights of the Sandbox...

Mithrandir

@ABcDexter Allo.

ABcDexter

Ca va bien ?

why the 10 upvote threshold at sandbox??

Mithrandir

No idea. I yhink it's too high.

Marius

Why was this decision taken without consulting the community first? And why was there a special account created to post this on meta?

Mithrandir

12:07 PM

@Marius So that nobody would be flooded ith notifications.

Marius

hmmm...but someone should be flooded with notifications. So he/she can answer the questions, provide feedback...

Ankoganit

@Marius Actually there was a pre-sandbox meta post.

And it stands +27/-0 as of now...

Mithrandir

@Marius The community should be watching the sandbox. No one person should be - everyone should be.

Marius

@Ankoganit. Ah Sorry. I missed it. Anyway...shouldn't we get a week or so, to read and vote?

Ankoganit

True...looks like that was done quite in a hurry.

Marius

12:13 PM

by the way is +27/-1 now.

Ankoganit

@Marius Looks somewhat fairer.

Marius

Just to explain myself, I'm all aboard with improving the quality of the posts on the website, but this measure should be thought through a bit more. I see that everyone is enthusiastic about the approach. well...I'll be your devil's advocate in this case, maybe someone sees the bad parts of this and changes them.

what one think may look low quality for someone it may be fun for someone else to answer or at least try to answer.

Stack Exchange

0

A: The Riddle Sandbox

My First Riddle, written after seeing this meta post. Every One love me, but only lucky one can have me. I'm indestructible but only with my own family. Few says I can be found in the serpent but its a myth. Few says I leave underground. Who am I and where do I leave?

Stack Exchange

12:45 PM

0

A: The Riddle Sandbox

This is not a riddle but a puzzle containing a series of clues: I am five, but which one am I? 1: The next generation knows me. I am two parts as a whole, a piece of the seventh act of adding herbs. 2: 63 to 67, i am knowledge from above, created by the settlers. I am an alternative for Corona...

GentlePurpleRain

1:41 PM

@Marius Part of the reason for this sandbox policy is because riddles weren't fun to answer. People were posting poorly-thought-out riddles that basically required people to guess via trial and error what the OP was thinking of. I understand your objections, and I am aware that this is not the perfect solution, but it is considerably better than where we were at before.

4

Marius

@GentlePurpleRain I get your point, but please promise me that this is not the final form of the sandbox

Deusovi

2:11 PM

@Marius Well, of course. We'll modify it based on how it seems to work. Right now, it's far better than just letting anyone post riddles immediately, since many were low quality questions that let the poster easily gain rep.

Mithrandir

Now the question is, why didn't the 20 rep come back after the answer was undeleted...?

There we go.

Deusovi

Huh, really? It should've.

Oh.

Mithrandir

It took like 5 minutes, though.

Deusovi

Huh. Weird.

Marius

It's not weird...it's standard behavior for SE websites.

deleteing and restoring requires an additional aggregation script to run. this one runs as a cron every X minutes.

I saw this a while ago on meta.stackexchange, but I cannot find the link anymore

Stack Exchange

2:31 PM

0

A: The Riddle Sandbox

Five Historical Features This puzzle has a number of features. It is, in fairness, at least partly a riddle so here you see it. I am hoping to get a list of the five features gnarled below as an answer. A type of boat, a font, a trek, a multi-country palace, A brand of car that used to b...

Sid

Maybe we should exempt new users(rep-1-10) from posting riddles in the sandbox.. if their questions get stuck, they would lose interest in the site. Number of users may dwindle..

Mithrandir

@Sid Those new users are one of the reasons the sandbox was made - they're likely to post low-quality riddles.

Sid

Their first riddle maybe exempted. But once, they go past the 10-rep mark, they would have to post in the sandbox. They could be notified of that on the first post itself.

Deusovi

2:55 PM

@Sid No, that would defeat the purpose. The entire point of the sandbox is to prevent low quality posts. First-time users posting riddles are nearly always low quality.

(Also, people could just keep making new accounts to post riddles.)

Sid

@Deusovi Well yes, but new users can't post on meta. They won't even know about it. So, when they post a riddle for the first time on the main site, they should just get a notification to post it on the sandbox rather than closing it for "off-topic".

Deusovi

But the entire point of the ban is that you can't post riddles without them being sandboxed. I don't see any reason to make an exception for new users.

Hey Emrakul!

user61230

Hello!

user61230

@Sid Getting the four rep necessary to post on meta is a low bar to clear, but there is usefulness in there being a bar to clear.

user61230

(I did it in ten minutes for Sandbox.)

user61230

3:06 PM

(To be fair, I'm familiar with how the site works, but asking for a little familiarity before jumping in and posting riddles definitely can't hurt.)

Sid

Ahh... I agree with that. I just feel that this makes things a bit more tedious for new users. I am only saying that we need to ask them to post on the sandbox but not hold up their first question.

user61230

That's fair. I can see that.

user61230

I think, though, that people's first riddles really are a prime candidate for sandboxing, because people are so new and the feedback could potentially be more valuable to them.

GentlePurpleRain

4:17 PM

@Sid Also note that new users can post any other type of question to Main without sandboxing it; it's only riddles that are affected.

Sid

Yeah... right but new users usually tend to post riddles or those famous logic puzzles directly from the internet..

GentlePurpleRain

4:48 PM

@Sid ...which don't usually contribute much to the quality of this site.

While we want to welcome new users who are interested in contributing to the site in positive ways, I'm not interested in bending over backward to make sure that every new user is mollycoddled. If people want to come and post crap, then I'm not interested in having them here.

3

Stack Exchange

5:46 PM

0

A: The Riddle Sandbox

Here's my riddle: With nudity all around me, I help with inventory. With my superhero garb, I'm popular with tourists. A part of me covers your nether regions. In action, I interpreted unreadable text. I'm the reason you're no longer with us. With my childhood sweetheart, I am an an...

Avigrail

6:20 PM

@GentlePurpleRain Quite a unique formatting

Beastly Gerbil

Interesting wording too

Avigrail

Wait, you are not GentlePurpleRain :O

Beastly Gerbil

What no, I was just commenting on it @Avigrail :P

Avigrail

Why didn't you post a comment then ? :P

GentlePurpleRain

@BeastlyGerbil The wording is important.

wythagoras

8:30 PM

I'd just like to leave a few notes here that I can't work out to an answer.

First, did anyone actually investigate how large the AVG(upvotes) and AVG(downvotes) are for questions with the riddle tag? I lack SQL skills to get this done using the Data Explorer.

Also, maybe include the close rate, delete rate, etc.

Second, if we actually do this, we should probably get post on Meta down to 1 rep. PPCG already has this.

GentlePurpleRain

9:01 PM

Here is a query with some very basic statistics. Deletion rates aren't available here, because deleted questions aren't visible to the average user (i.e. data.stackexchange user). So the total here is posts that haven't been deleted.

Stats from this query: 1841 total questions, 140 closed, average score +7 (upvotes - downvotes)

Interestingly, the average score over all (undeleted) posts on the site is +6.

user61230

9:38 PM

It's worth noting, though, that this partly stemmed from a common sentiment that bad riddles were upvoted, which means it would be unsurprising if the average score were higher than expected.

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