Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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The many-eyes effect
I want to alert puzzle writers to a potential cognitive bias I'll call the many-eyes effect. Many people try to solve your puzzle, but only those who succeed post. It's tempting to imagine the posters ...
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One Weird Trick All Spammers Hate
Puzzling.SE hasn't really seen much spam in the past, but we've had just a bit of it recently. Since it hasn't come up before, the question of what to do about it hasn't come up either.
Using This ...
user20
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Thank you, Robert Cartaino
For those who don't know, the Director of Community Development at the Stack Exchange company, Mr Robert Cartaino, is no longer employed by Stack Exchange. Tributes are already flowing in on main meta ...
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List of bounties with no deadlines
This is a list of unofficial, deadline-less (hence not searchable) bounties offered by users on various challenges on the main site.
Disclaimer: There is no guarantee that the user will award the ...
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Thank you, GentlePurpleRain
On 29 March 2022, our own GentlePurpleRain received a Deputy badge which can only be awarded to non-moderators. Without speculating on why he stepped down (unless he wants to share his reasons), let's ...
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Best puzzles of 2018 Q3 (July - September)?
This question is part of the best-puzzle award series.
What are your nominations for the best puzzles, here on Puzzling.SE, of the third quarter (July / August / September) 2018?
Suggested ...
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An appeal from a newbie - in-jokes
I've recently joined this community and discovered an interest in puzzles that I didn't know I had. The atmosphere and camaraderie are great.
The only problem for me is detecting in-jokes.
Example
...
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Enough "22+4" questions. The originality is lost
There has been a recent spate of related "22+4" questions that can all be answered by using different cyclic numbering systems. The OP's always say "use base 10," perhaps not realizing that that ...
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2019: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, ...
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Proposed policy on mathematical questions
For background, see:
Should mathematics questions really be on-topic here? (about "routine" mathematics questions)
What tricky mathematical questions are on topic here? (about "heavy" mathematics ...
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State of meta.puzzling.SE rules
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 ...
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Congratulations bobble for raising 1000 helpful flags!
If you're an active PSE user, you'll know that bobble is an active moderator (merely without a diamond). Just recently she reached 1000 helpful flags... which is quite a feat given her time on PSE (&...
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Improved interface to posts of common interest?
Q:
What do these three recently well-received Meta posts have in common?
Change “unanswered”
search to “unsolved”
Should we have a meta-sorted list ...
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2020: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network ...
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A script to add spoiler tag to the selected text
Introduction
When I write an answer I find it very time consuming to add the spoiler tag to every line so I have written a small script that do it for me.
How to use it ?
select the text
right click ...
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2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in ...
- 101
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Top (New) Users of PSE, by year
Every year, the users of Puzzling Stack Exchange can be ranked by their reputation earned in that year. Every year, someone (usually one of the established users) takes the top spot in the yearly ...
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Question about Puzzle Creation Etiquette
I have created a puzzle that includes multiple steps, that I'd like to post on the site. However, two of the steps use standard puzzles as part of making progress.
Assuming I attribute the source, ...
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How to write an answer and hide key clues and information using the >! spoiler formatting -- Oh and what is rot13 in comments
I thought it might be useful to ask a question about how to use the spoiler formatting to hopefully prompt a useful answer where someone can explain how to use spoilers when answering questions. I ...
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MathJax Usage Guidelines
It's cool that we can use MathJax to do nice stuff like:
$$\{0+ai,0-ai^\frac{2}3,0+\frac{i}a,0-\frac{i}a\}\forall a \in A \subseteq \Bbb{R}$$
(stolen from this Jonathan Allan answer)
or this:
$$\sum_{...
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We've graduated. When are the moderator elections?
I've noticed that on most SE sites that finally make a leap into the big leagues (a.k.a. graduation), the first order of business is moderator election. If I recall correctly, I have seen this precede ...
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Stack Exchange’s image hosting arrangement with Imgur is ending - how does this affect our [imgur-maze]s?
Stack Exchange’s image hosting arrangement with Imgur is ending - advance notice
Since 2010, Imgur has provided image hosting services to Stack Exchange, but that hosting contract with Imgur comes to ...
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The tag [arithmetic] should be a synonym of [calculation-puzzle], not [mathematics]
I created calculation-puzzle specifically to apply to puzzles that involved calculation as their primary form of mathematical reasoning (as mentioned in this question from the private beta).
Somehow, ...
user88
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Isn't "not detailed enough" a valid reason for answer deletion?
Each time that I see a low quality post in the review queue, and have clicked "Recommend Deletion" for an answer, I am baffled by the options I am given to explain why.
First of all, the vast ...
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What exactly is the point of lateral-thinking?
Not only does lateral-thinking bring in people who's so far out-of-the-box that they don't even know where it is, and answers that generally don't make sense. But it's just plain useless. Take a look ...
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What is the riddle tag for?
When I think of a riddle, I think of the questions between Gollum and Bilbo in The Hobbit, or the classic riddle of The Sphynx. With that in mind, I might define a riddle as "A description or set of ...
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2017 Community Moderator Election
The 2017 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks,...
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2016 Community Moderator Election
The 2016 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks, ...
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Purpose of tags which only describe how a puzzle is presented
There are several tags which do not identify an element relating to the puzzle (or its solution) itself, but rather identify how the puzzle is presented. This is most notable with tags relating to ...
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Magic-square questions: teaching them instead of feeding them
This issue arises with this question.
Theoretically, there can be an unlimited number of questions of the type-
Find the solution to a magic square with each side and diagonal adding up to X.
Of ...
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How should I respond to partial answers to multi part questions?
I have a multi part question, to which some parts of the question have been successfully answered.
Now that the question has been open a while and I'm ready to give away the rest of the answers, does ...
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Moderator Pro Tem Announcement
Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community ...
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2022: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
- 101
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0
answers
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2021: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
- 101
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answers
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Should we abolish tags that only describe the origin of a puzzle?
We have at least two tags (possibly more) which say nothing about the content of the puzzle but only describe what context it originated or was found in.
iq-test - "For puzzles that have ...
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What purpose does the header serve in certain puzzles?
This is a header in the beginning of a puzzle. It could contain valuable information.
I see that there is currently a massive retagging is going on (with all its side-effects) due to a recent ...
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Page duplication on the net - is this commonplace or something serious?
I recently came across this (good) question on puzzling.SE:
My Puzzling Girlfriend
Then I noticed it had a forum-style duplicate here:
http://www.discuzfeed.com/puzzling/lzlzr-my-puzzling-...
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New here, just wondering if there's some way I should improve my first question
I posted What could the hidden message be, involving this binary data set and string of characters?.
I'm just wondering, since I'm new to Puzzling SE, if there are any guidelines I should be adhering ...
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Close reason: No permanent value?
On of the "quality" discussion we tend to come against again and again seems to be related to a basic 'conflict' we have:
SE is a site to create permanent value (normally in form of searchable Q&...
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Duplicate questions, each with answers
This question and this question are essentially the same.
Even if you disagree with the assessment that these two example questions are not similar enough to be duplicates, imagine the case with two ...
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What could we do about [cryptography]?
The cryptography tag has a clear tag wiki excerpt:
A puzzle concerning techniques for secure communication in the presence of (hostile) third parties. Do NOT use this for simple "crack the code&...
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Should we rename [solvability]?
We have a tag solvability, with excerpt:
A question about how a puzzle can be solved.
However, "solvability" seems to imply that you'd be asking about whether a puzzle can be solved. New ...
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What to do when a duplicate is better than the original?
I thought I remembered a similar discussion to this earlier, but can't find it now. If this is a duplicate, please let me know.
The community is pretty on top of things when it comes to flagging ...
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Order of appearance of tags (and tag shown on the title bar)
Referring to the last puzzle I created (The Secret Club) I first decided to put a generic enigmatic-puzzle tag, because I didn't want to give away too much. Then I added the lateral-thinking one, just ...
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When is the tag 'steganography' too big a hint?
In Quark's recent question, part of the solution involved detecting (and decoding) some text and data hidden in the lowest bits of an image.
Originally the question was not tagged with steganography, ...
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Retract Close Vote?
I close voted a question recently and wish to take back, so an option in the "Close" menu should be "Retract vote". It would be a lot faster than flagging a mod. Is there already an option like this ...
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Do we have or need a dictionary of puzzle terms?
This question was inspired by posting "Assumption Needed when Solving Puzzle".
I was wondering if it would be worthwhile to have a collection of typical terms used for puzzling (and on site). And if ...
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Do i have to delete my wrong answers?
I tried to answer to the question Number of socks?, but I found out that my answer was not only wrong, but far away from correct one.
I don't know if it is better to leave it here as a "hint" for ...
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Where can I find puzzles of a certain type?
I would like to find more puzzles of this type. The quizzer describes some situation with minimal information, and the guesser has to find out the answer to some question (normally "why?")
...
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Collection of unique puzzles
Big part of this site is not discussions about puzzles and not questions about them, but the puzzles themselves, usually presented by people, who knows solution. This make it different from other SE-...
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