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For this particular question where you asked me for feedback here, I will say that in fact we have three independent puzzles, even if they are very similar in structure, so they really should be asked in three separate questions, and the fact that you could pick just one, answer it and ignore the other two is a strong indicator of this.

Now, back to this actual meta question, but without stopping to think in that previous question:

I am not particularly against mass-reproducible puzzles nor against partial answers, this is not the problem.

The problem is when there are multiple independent questions posing as only one, so an answerer may say "I will pick only this part, screw up the rest", which is not the desired behaviour of somebody willing to have the answer accepted.

By accepting an answer which does this, you are discouraging people to try to solve everything, not just one part. At least for me, and I guess that for many people too, when I see that an answer was accepted, I consider the puzzle closed/finished/solved.

If multiple aspects of the questions are desired, they should be tangled in some form where you either answer everything and solved the puzzle completely or did not solved it at all. Partial answers should be considered as partial (!) answers, not complete answers. If something can be untangled from the question and not related to the answer, it should either be an unimportant part or a red-herring.

And if you want to entangle different questions in one, they should be done in a natural and elegant way, where the answer of one subpuzzle is either a vital part of the big picture answer or at least an important hint. Saying just "solve all those X parts" is not good either.

If we do not follow this rules I could post a single question like this:

What is the next number of the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...?

Somebody robbed a bank, blablabla..., Who killed Joe?

We have a knight, a knave and a joker, blablabla.

And it is clearly a bad idea to post these three in a single question, regardless if they are mass-reproducible or not. Still worse if I require the answerers to solve only one and accept that answer.

So in essence, I do support people posting partial answers, but I don't think that is correct to accept those partial answers (I.E. that do not solve entirely the puzzle). And I think that it is still less correct to design puzzles encouraging people to only solve them partially.

Now to answer your question:

Which of the following would be good and/or appropriate ways to request answers?

The answer that you should request is the answer that solves the puzzle completely.

And by solving I mean that gives the solution and explains how to reach it. With the exception of when the solution itself makes the explanation unneeded and obvious as in some, but not all, "name the entity" or "what I am?" puzzles and similars.

Generally, the number of clues/hints/tips used to solve should not be important. The few exceptions is when you forge some question like "giving this list of facts, provide something that answers the question using the least number of facts", and I didn't saw anything like that here yet (but this would be interesting).

For this particular question where you asked me for feedback here, I will say that in fact we have three independent puzzles, even if they are very similar in structure, so they really should be asked in three separate questions, and the fact that you could pick just one, answer it and ignore the other two is a strong indicator of this.

Now, back to this actual meta question, but without stopping to think in that previous question:

I am not particularly against mass-reproducible puzzles nor against partial answers, this is not the problem.

The problem is when there are multiple independent questions posing as only one, so an answerer may say "I will pick only this part, screw up the rest", which is not the desired behaviour of somebody willing to have the answer accepted.

By accepting an answer which does this, you are discouraging people to try to solve everything, not just one part. At least for me, and I guess that for many people too, when I see that an answer was accepted, I consider the puzzle closed/finished/solved.

If multiple aspects of the questions are desired, they should be tangled in some form where you either answer everything and solved the puzzle completely or did not solved it at all. Partial answers should be considered as partial (!) answers, not complete answers. If something can be untangled from the question and not related to the answer, it should either be an unimportant part or a red-herring.

And if you want to entangle different questions in one, they should be done in a natural and elegant way, where the answer of one subpuzzle is either a vital part of the big picture answer or at least an important hint. Saying just "solve all those X parts" is not good either.

If we do not follow this rules I could post a single question like this:

What is the next number of the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...?

Somebody robbed a bank, blablabla..., Who killed Joe?

We have a knight, a knave and a joker, blablabla.

And it is clearly a bad idea to post these three in a single question, regardless if they are mass-reproducible or not. Still worse if I require the answerers to solve only one and accept that answer.

So in essence, I do support people posting partial answers, but I don't think that is correct to accept those partial answers (I.E. that do not solve entirely the puzzle). And I think that it is still less correct to design puzzles encouraging people to only solve them partially.

Now to answer your question:

Which of the following would be good and/or appropriate ways to request answers?

The answer that you should request is the answer that solves the puzzle completely.

And by solving I mean that gives the solution and explains how to reach it. With the exception of when the solution itself makes the explanation unneeded and obvious as in some, but not all, "name the entity" or "what I am?" puzzles and similars.

Generally, the number of clues/hints/tips used to solve should not be important. The few exceptions is when you forge some question like "giving this list of facts, provide something that answers the question using the least number of facts", and I didn't saw anything like that here yet (but this would be interesting).

For this particular question where you asked me for feedback here, I will say that in fact we have three independent puzzles, even if they are very similar in structure, so they really should be asked in three separate questions, and the fact that you could pick just one, answer it and ignore the other two is a strong indicator of this.

Now, back to this actual meta question, but without stopping to think in that previous question:

I am not particularly against mass-reproducible puzzles nor against partial answers, this is not the problem.

The problem is when there are multiple independent questions posing as only one, so an answerer may say "I will pick only this part, screw up the rest", which is not the desired behaviour of somebody willing to have the answer accepted.

By accepting an answer which does this, you are discouraging people to try to solve everything, not just one part. At least for me, and I guess that for many people too, when I see that an answer was accepted, I consider the puzzle closed/finished/solved.

If multiple aspects of the questions are desired, they should be tangled in some form where you either answer everything and solved the puzzle completely or did not solved it at all. Partial answers should be considered as partial (!) answers, not complete answers. If something can be untangled from the question and not related to the answer, it should either be an unimportant part or a red-herring.

And if you want to entangle different questions in one, they should be done in a natural and elegant way, where the answer of one subpuzzle is either a vital part of the big picture answer or at least an important hint. Saying just "solve all those X parts" is not good either.

If we do not follow this rules I could post a single question like this:

What is the next number of the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...?

Somebody robbed a bank, blablabla..., Who killed Joe?

We have a knight, a knave and a joker, blablabla.

And it is clearly a bad idea to post these three in a single question, regardless if they are mass-reproducible or not. Still worse if I require the answerers to solve only one and accept that answer.

So in essence, I do support people posting partial answers, but I don't think that is correct to accept those partial answers (I.E. that do not solve entirely the puzzle). And I think that it is still less correct to design puzzles encouraging people to only solve them partially.

Now to answer your question:

Which of the following would be good and/or appropriate ways to request answers?

The answer that you should request is the answer that solves the puzzle completely.

And by solving I mean that gives the solution and explains how to reach it. With the exception of when the solution itself makes the explanation unneeded and obvious as in some, but not all, "name the entity" or "what I am?" puzzles and similars.

The number of clues/hints/tips used to solve generally should not be important. The few exceptions is when you forge some question like "giving this list of facts, provide something that answers the question using the least number of facts", and I didn't saw anything like that here yet (but this would be interesting).

For this particular question where you asked me for feedback here, I will say that in fact we have three independent puzzles, even if they are very similar in structure, so they really should be asked in three separate questions, and the fact that you could pick just one, answer it and ignore the other two is a strong indicator of this.

Now, back to this actual meta question, but without stopping to think in that previous question:

I am not particularly against mass-reproducible puzzles nor against partial answers, this is not the problem.

The problem is when there are multiple independent questions posing as only one, so an answerer may say "I will pick only this part, screw up the rest", which is not the desired behaviour of somebody willing to have the answer accepted.

By accepting an answer which does this, you are discouraging people to try to solve everything, not just one part. At least for me, and I guess that for many people too, when I see that an answer was accepted, I consider the puzzle closed/finished/solved.

If multiple aspects of the questions are desired, they should be tangled in some form where you either answer everything and solved the puzzle completely or did not solved it at all. Partial answers should be considered as partial (!) answers, not complete answers. If something can be untangled from the question and not related to the answer, it should either be an unimportant part or a red-herring.

And if you want to entangle different questions in one, they should be done in a natural and elegant way, where the answer of one subpuzzle is either a vital part of the big picture answer or at least an important hint. Saying just "solve all those X parts" is not good either.

If we do not follow this rules I could post a single question like this:

What is the next number of the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...?

Somebody robbed a bank, blablabla..., Who killed Joe?

We have a knight, a knave and a joker, blablabla.

And it is clearly a bad idea to post these three in a single question, regardless if they are mass-reproducible or not. Still worse if I require the answerers to solve only one and accept that answer.

So in essence, I do support people posting partial answers, but I don't think that is correct to accept those partial answers (I.E. that do not solve entirely the puzzle). And I think that it is still less correct to design puzzles encouraging people to only solve them partially.

Now to answer your question:

Which of the following would be good and/or appropriate ways to request answers?

The answer that you should request is the answer that solves the puzzle completely.

And by solving I mean that gives the solution and explains how to reach it. With the exception of when the solution itself makes the explanation unneeded and obvious as in some, but not all, "name the entity" or "what I am?" puzzles and similars.

Generally, the number of clues/hints/tips used to solve should not be important. The few exceptions is when you forge some question like "giving this list of facts, provide something that answers the question using the least number of facts", and I didn't saw anything like that here yet (but this would be interesting).

For this particular question where you asked me for feedback here, I will say that in fact we have three independent puzzles, even if they are very similar in structure, so they really should be asked in three separate questions, and the fact that you could pick just one, answer it and ignore the other two is a strong indicator of this.

Now, back to this actual meta question, but without stopping to think in that previous question:

I am not particularly against mass-reproducible puzzles nor against partial answers, this is not the problem.

The problem is when there are multiple independent questions posing as only one, so an answerer may say "I will pick only this part, screw up the rest", which is not the desired behaviour of somebody willing to have the answer accepted.

By accepting an answer which does this, you are discouraging people to try to solve everything, not just one part. At least for me, and I guess that for many people too, when I see that an answer was accepted, I consider the puzzle closed/finished/solved.

If multiple aspects of the questions are desired, they should be tangled in some form where you either answer everything and solved the puzzle completely or did not solved it at all. Partial answers should be considered as partial (!) answers, not complete answers. If something can be untangled from the question and not related to the answer, it should either be an unimportant part or a red-herring.

And if you want to entangle different questions in one, they should be done in a natural and elegant way, where the answer of one subpuzzle is either a vital part of the big picture answer or at least an important hint. Saying just "solve all those X parts" is not good either.

If we do not follow this rules I could post a single question like this:

What is the next number of the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...?

Somebody robbed a bank, blablabla..., Who killed Joe?

We have a knight, a knave and a joker, blablabla.

And it is clearly a bad idea to post these three in a single question, regardless if they are mass-reproducible or not. Still worse if I require the answerers to solve only one and accept that answer.

So in essence, I do support people posting partial answers, but I don't think that is correct to accept those partial answers (I.E. that do not solve entirely the puzzle). And I think that it is still less correct to design puzzles encouraging people to only solve them partially.

For this particular question where you asked me for feedback here, I will say that in fact we have three independent puzzles, even if they are very similar in structure, so they really should be asked in three separate questions, and the fact that you could pick just one, answer it and ignore the other two is a strong indicator of this.

Now, back to this actual meta question, but without stopping to think in that previous question:

I am not particularly against mass-reproducible puzzles nor against partial answers, this is not the problem.

The problem is when there are multiple independent questions posing as only one, so an answerer may say "I will pick only this part, screw up the rest", which is not the desired behaviour of somebody willing to have the answer accepted.

By accepting an answer which does this, you are discouraging people to try to solve everything, not just one part. At least for me, and I guess that for many people too, when I see that an answer was accepted, I consider the puzzle closed/finished/solved.

If multiple aspects of the questions are desired, they should be tangled in some form where you either answer everything and solved the puzzle completely or did not solved it at all. Partial answers should be considered as partial (!) answers, not complete answers. If something can be untangled from the question and not related to the answer, it should either be an unimportant part or a red-herring.

And if you want to entangle different questions in one, they should be done in a natural and elegant way, where the answer of one subpuzzle is either a vital part of the big picture answer or at least an important hint. Saying just "solve all those X parts" is not good either.

If we do not follow this rules I could post a single question like this:

What is the next number of the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...?

Somebody robbed a bank, blablabla..., Who killed Joe?

We have a knight, a knave and a joker, blablabla.

And it is clearly a bad idea to post these three in a single question, regardless if they are mass-reproducible or not. Still worse if I require the answerers to solve only one and accept that answer.

So in essence, I do support people posting partial answers, but I don't think that is correct to accept those partial answers (I.E. that do not solve entirely the puzzle). And I think that it is still less correct to design puzzles encouraging people to only solve them partially.

Now to answer your question:

Which of the following would be good and/or appropriate ways to request answers?

The answer that you should request is the answer that solves the puzzle completely.

And by solving I mean that gives the solution and explains how to reach it. With the exception of when the solution itself makes the explanation unneeded and obvious as in some, but not all, "name the entity" or "what I am?" puzzles and similars.

The number of clues/hints/tips used to solve generally should not be important. The few exceptions is when you forge some question like "giving this list of facts, provide something that answers the question using the least number of facts", and I didn't saw anything like that here yet (but this would be interesting).