'Would anyone even be interested in a website that 1) offers all the basic classical cryptography/cryptanalysis tools you already know from sites like rumkin 2) adds new custom cipher tools and articles concerning P.SE questions once they are solved (ofc only if the cipher isn't complete crap or just a series of known ciphers)' - Lukas Rotter, on The Sphinx's Lair
IMO, it would be good to have such a website. However, it would be hard to bring together.
So look over onto StackOverflow, where they have a wonderful thing called documentation.
'Steady there,' you say, 'StackOverflow is a lot bigger site than ours!'
That's true. And I'm not seriously proposing the full force of it, or even for anything to happen (for a while, at least).
What I am wondering, is if there could be some way to make a toned-down version of the Documentation feature that would allow all our users to contribute and those who've reached a certain rep level to approve.
Having most users being able to contribute would be amazing in terms of what could be achieved. And the framework is already there, we would only have to adapt it a bit if we went ahead, maybe even in a few years' time.
But there's no point postulating without a clear view of what we want:
What does the community think about having something similar to this?
To clarify, the sorts of things that I have in mind include:
- Tools to help solve puzzles (note that we also have a post for this), not only general tools but tools specialised for this site as well (e.g. ciphers that people on this site have invented)
- Author's notes on puzzles (this could also be another home for wrap-up posts)
- Handy hints on how to solve certain types of puzzles
- Types-of-puzzles guides (like Deusovi's cryptic clue guide)
- And more... (What can you think of that would be useful?)