I generally don't mind people amending their puzzles to make them better or adding hints to adjust the difficulty, but lately we have had a surge of puzzles (if you want to call them such) where the OP posts and - within hours - adds additional 'hints' even if there has obviosly been no request for such so far.
To me, this strongly smells like "making it into an interactive game" rather than trying to produce a good (and lasting) puzzle.
I think there are a couple of points people are not aware of concerning hints in their puzzles.
To list a few and give a reference posting:
(Feel free to edit and add.)
- ##Hints should be spoiler-tagged
Prevent 'accidental' reading the hints by putting them in spoiler tags. If you do, ask yourself if your puzzles without reading the hint is still valid. (See point below.)
- ##Hints should be supplementary
You should be able to solve a puzzle completely without ever referring to them. If you're puzzle needs a hint to be solvable, it is not a hint but an integral part of the puzzle! Don't call it a hint. Add it to your puzzle.
Following the suggestion of Alconja/GentlePurpleRain in the comments below, I'm restructuring this question for better reference.
- ##Hints are not 'patches'
When creating a puzzle, one can easily make a mistake or realize at a later point that not enough information was given. This is okay. We are all learning here.
If your puzzles is 'broken': Edit your post and fix the problem, but don't add hints!
Always think of your puzzle-question as "repository" not as a conversation or "forum entry". People, who have never seen your puzzle before but 'discover' the post in a few years time should be able to read just the puzzle-posting as a whole and have a good "Aha-good-puzzle" experience. It doesn't matter if your puzzle is already solved or not, always edit toward this "in a two years"-audience!
If you feel that your 'correction' invalidates existing answers, add a litte extra-section at the bottom or top of your puzzle highlighting the later changes.
- ##Hints are no interactive game
Never-ever use 'hints' as a means of 'interactive game'!
If you start your puzzle with "I will give successive hints in the next few ..." then you should be spanked right away; your puzzle should be 'closed'; your account banned; and your keyboard taken from you forever.
Seriously, you have not understood what this site is. If you want to 'game' with others, visit a chat or a forum, but leave PuzzlingSE alone! Don't be surprised if you'll get downvoted or closed, regardless of how "good" your puzzle is.
- ##Hints are no means of pushing a puzzle
Don't edit in hints just to push a puzzle up the activity list. We all know that your puzzle is great and requires attention, but pushing it in our face by 'activating' a puzzle again and again is impolite, annoying and not helpful.
- ##Hints are (often) not needed
Give your puzzle time! Few things are as annoying as puzzles getting hint after hint within hours (if not minutes!) from their posting. Don't add a hint before you get some request for one by multiple users. If your puzzle is good then it will need time to be solved, and people not always post their work until it is finished. Don't ruin their fun and your puzzle by "over-hinting" it until a crash-test-dummy could solve it.
Imagine you're solving a puzzle, have spent a couple of your hours on it and feel really proud to have cracked it. Now you want to nicely summarize it as an answer post just to realize that dozens of answers are already there, because the crucial thing of the puzzle has been spelled out in red letters in a "hint". How frustrating is this?
It is possibly a good idea to wait 'at least 1 day' before adding any hint. Better still: Don't add anything until you receive several comments that the puzzle is 'too hard' and ideas would be welcome.
WORK IN PROGRESS, please ignore for the moment...
Now that I've written this off my chest I want to come to the discussion part of this posting:
#How can we improve "hinting"-practices on site?
One way is (obviously) to tell uses about proper hint-use again and again, but I wonder if we can do more.
- Should we have an official "hint" policy?
- Should we go a step further and add "bad hinting" as a close-reason?
What "hint policy" can we agree on, what needs to be in it?
