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So, it was recently asked when a community consensus is reached. Additionally I have observed a lot of users having no overview at all of the current rules, so for the last few days I have been considering making a list of the current puzzling.SE-specific rules that exist so that one is able to read through them in a couple of minutes.

Either way, I went through all questions on meta that fell within the aforementioned category and determined whether they contained an actual rule/policy proposal (a lot of posts simply commented on the situation without providing solutions and are thus not included).

Current state of affairs:

Riddles (46 votes)

Per the highest voted answer riddles have to be brief and fall in either the calculation or interpretation category as defined by Travis Kindred, assumption riddles are not welcome. This is in line with the requirement that a limited number of answers must be provably correct.

Read more here.

Copyright & Plagarism (17-36 votes)

If copy pasting, make sure to quote and attribute it correctly. A significant set of users however is against any form of copy pasting, even if attributed correctly.

Read more here.

Specific logic puzzles or brainteasers as questions (26 votes)

As long as there was no problem posting logic puzzles and brainteasers was allowed. Note: A lot of users currently believe that there is a problem, thus making this consensus out of date.

Read more here.

Presence of meta information in titles (19 votes)

Things like "[very hard], [difficult], and (easy)" are not welcome in question titles

Read more here.

Questions that fit a large number of possible answers (13 votes)

Questions must have a limited number of answers that can objectively be proven to be correct. Do note that this outlaws a large number of current questions.

Read more here. This is further reinforced here (16 votes).

Requirement for explanations (12 votes)

It was proposed that any and all answers that do not provide explanations should be deleted. And now there is a consensus that the answerer needs to add the explanation with the final answer.

Read more here and here.

Needs voting due to controversial nature

Outlaw puzzle-only questions (12 votes)

In this proposal it was suggested to solve the quality problem by requiring questions to be either about the puzzle making process or the puzzle solving process. Simply dumping puzzles without a question would not be allowed.

Read more here (or here).

Requirement for spoilers (9 votes)

There is a debate over whether or not spoilers are required, forbidden, etc.

Read more here and here.

Please feel more than free to edit this post. It's not meant as a canonical post, nor am I expecting to keep it updated, however short term it could be a valuable page in the process of determining the direction of this site and reinforcing the choices that have already been made.

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    $\begingroup$ It's worth noting that, ultimately, what determines community rules is much less voting and much more consensus. For instance, if a proposal gets 10 upvotes, no downvotes, and receives no negative feedback, it's probably safe to act on, depending. $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Commented Nov 29, 2014 at 8:32
  • $\begingroup$ There is the recreational mathematics question too.. $\endgroup$
    – Simd
    Commented Nov 29, 2014 at 8:55
  • $\begingroup$ @Emrakul: Yeah I agree mostly, have to confess I can't see downvotes here, but it was why I put the last two items in their own category. (Mostly because in the end a compromise should become highest voted if such a compromise exists, if it does not however than whatever has most support will need to be enacted). Btw, if you think I categorized stuff incorrectly, do edit/say so ;-) . $\endgroup$
    – David Mulder
    Commented Nov 29, 2014 at 9:10
  • $\begingroup$ @Lembik: It didn't fit the criteria that I was applying (at least 10 votes on the question or answer), had to cut it off at some point and this was the arbitrary line that I drew. $\endgroup$
    – David Mulder
    Commented Nov 29, 2014 at 9:13
  • $\begingroup$ That's because you didn't sum the votes for the many very similar questions on this topic :) $\endgroup$
    – Simd
    Commented Nov 29, 2014 at 9:19
  • $\begingroup$ @Lembik: Summing would be ridiculous... if the same n people vote on all these questions it's still n people. $\endgroup$
    – David Mulder
    Commented Nov 29, 2014 at 9:36
  • $\begingroup$ It was a joke mostly. I think one of the questions has 9 votes. $\endgroup$
    – Simd
    Commented Nov 29, 2014 at 9:57
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    $\begingroup$ @Lembik: Ah, my bad then, reading through all those discussions after each other can make a man quite serious O:) $\endgroup$
    – David Mulder
    Commented Nov 29, 2014 at 11:37
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    $\begingroup$ This would probably work better if you removed the quote boxes from the question and posted each individually as an answer. Also, I can convert this to CW if you want. $\endgroup$
    – Doorknob
    Commented Nov 29, 2014 at 19:09
  • $\begingroup$ Regarding the separate answers idea~ Not against it, but I was trying to keep the descriptions short, so I would argue that that might not work all that well. @MichaelT: Wow! Didn't know that. That's actually a pretty big deal... not sure what I think of it, but good to know :) $\endgroup$
    – David Mulder
    Commented Nov 30, 2014 at 16:36
  • $\begingroup$ I will note that there already exists an entire content section specifically meant to handle this, and it still has the boilerplate autofill text from the SE creation. $\endgroup$
    – chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic-
    Commented Oct 25, 2020 at 6:30

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