38
Increase the value of an upvote for a question.
Currently, an upvote on a question provides only half the reputation that an upvote on an answer does. (5 reputation vs. 10 reputation.)
This would see the amount of reputation provided by each upvote increased to 10 or perhaps even higher (do we value questions more than answers?).
Pros
No cost ...
36
(This is one of multiple answers I'm posting so that they can be voted on. It does not necessarily reflect my own opinion.)
Such questions should be forbidden.
In cases where the creator of the question has asked that the question not be shared, doing so is probably a violation of copyright. If they've asked for either the question or the answer not to be ...
29
Provided they don't violate the Be Nice policy, what's the problem?
Just as there's a difference between discussing politics disrespectfully and discussing politics at all, there's also a difference between offensively political puzzles and any political puzzles.
If someone posts a riddle like this:
His name sounds like a card game,
His mother came ...
26
Math puzzles are on topic, math problems are not
Let me first give some examples to illustrate the distinction I mean.
Math problems:
Solve for $x$: $2x+3=7$.
My friend gave me a riddle: She went to the store and bought some
apples. Then, she went to the store and bought an equal number more apples.
Then, she picked three more apples off her ...
25
No. I don't think the site's scope has changed, and I disagree with the closing of that question - especially the reason behind the closing. Questions about puzzles are still perfectly acceptable here. I think this problem was simply a misguided user voting to close, and other people following suit.
20
To start with the easy bit: copyright notices are red herrings. Take, as an example, the now deleted Air Crash Dilemma. A search for the key phrase:
bury the survivors?
turns up "About 94,700 results". Some of them are user contributions (blogs, forums, Facebook, etc.), but some sites have a copyright notice attached. Of course, that's ...
20
Implement "bounties" for questions that can be awarded instantaneously.
This would be a method where one user could transfer some reputation to another user to reward them for an exemplary question. Some checks and balances would need to be in place to avoid this facility being abused for the purposes of reputation sharing. (Perhaps several privileged ...
18
I propose a simpler solution: hide the image behind a link. That way unsuspecting users from this site or others will not be confronted with unwanted nudity. The problem isn't the Hot Questions list; it's surprise awaiting anyone who follows a link to the question.
See also: Does the spoiler markdown work on images?
18
Good question.
Seems to me that just so long as you include the info that you don't know what the solution is and there might not be a solution (if that's the case), there wouldn't be much for anyone to complain about. If puzzlers don't want to take on that kind of challenge then they can skip it.
So I'd say go ahead and post it but make sure to provide ...
17
This puzzle
Now that the puzzle in question has been solved, it seems to me that it really was just a gimmick without much value. As far as I can tell this puzzle could exist entirely as-is on the main question page. I think this is a poor choice because:
It doesn't add anything of value to the real puzzle.
It requires that a user understand revision ...
15
Not that I disagree with the other answer, but I wanted to chime in - I think this is one of the best kinds of questions for this site.
Finding a puzzle and being unable to solve it would lead someone to come here, show the puzzle, explain they cannot find documentation on the solution and describe what they've tried and where they've become stuck. This ...
15
As of yesterday, November 13th 2019, this is now in effect network wide:
We’re changing the reputation earned from getting a question upvote to ten points, making it equal to the reputation earned from an upvote to an answer.
15
An outline for wrap-up posts can be found at
Wrap-up posts: What should the formal part of it contain?
Please copy the outline’s header, being sure to include the words wrap-up, making and poser, so that wrap-ups are easier to find and distinguish from other kinds of posts.
Content below the header can be free-form and the outline includes many excellent ...
14
And who's supposed to judge the "difficulty rating" of a puzzle?
If it's the original poster of the question, that's almost certainly going to be subject to lots of bias. "Oh, I don't want beginners to see my question and annoy me with too-easy responses, so I'll just rate myself '5 stars.'" "I made this puzzle and I think it's really good, so I'll use 5 ...
14
Yesterday I asked What's the password, again? because it felt like a nice follow-on to the first password puzzle (I think it's the first, anyhow). It seems that some other people saw the number sequence japes and decided to join in the fun like I had, and it quickly spiralled out of control.
I actually think it's a positive sign, because people are clearly ...
14
Without commenting on any of the specific examples you've included, I don't think a simple satellite photo with "where is this place?" constitutes a puzzle.
This type of thing has much more in common with trivia questions than with puzzles (and community consensus has already found trivia questions to be off topic). That is, you either know the location or ...
13
I can agree with the policy above albeit it might be difficult to "police" this really. However, isn't posting a question from a contest already defying existing copyright policy and can be acted upon using that?
If a puzzle from a running contest is posted without providing the source it is violating policy.
If it is posted with a link and a statement ...
13
Many in the community still have a sour taste in their mouths after the recent disagreements over policy that went nuts. The community is still in disagreement over a lot of the basics and many like myself have gone from active to rare lurker.
Community building activities like this may lead to bonds, involvement, and continuity of message. Let's go for it.
12
There's nothing inherently wrong with political-themed puzzles, so they should be allowed.
Can there be bad political questions? Absolutely, just like bad riddles and ciphers. Suggesting the removal of any puzzle which might involve politics as a theme would be like banning all sports questions because you don't want to put down a specific team. If a ...
12
Okay, since it's been a day I'll post my thoughts for voting.
I think that re-asking a question with a different phrasing is good, provided that the new phrasing removes ambiguity and invalidates the unintended answer. We often have questions which are not specific enough with their initial phrasing. (Mostly [enigmatic-puzzle] and [riddle]). Usually, the OP ...
11
Believe it's called 'enthusiasm' and possibly even 'community'.
11
I propose we take Math's policy on contest questions:
Why do we have a policy?
First and foremost: we believe that the responsibility for the integrity of an exam, contest, competition, etc. ultimately falls on the shoulders of the organizers.
That said, the Mathematics Stack Exchange community is not an island unto itself: rather we exist ...
11
Implement bounties for questions that work the same as the current "exemplary answer" bounties for answers.
We would use the current bounty facilities, but when placing a bounty, you would be given both options (along with all the other existing options):
Reward existing answer
One or more of the answers is exemplary and worthy of an additional bounty.
...
11
This is an answer that would potentially be posted on my most-popular puzzle, Hearken, now, and listen close!
Meta-note (this is in response to the question above, and not part of my actual answer):
I have included spoilers in this answer, in response to point #4 in the original post above. This is mostly to demonstrate that it is ineffectual to do so. The ...
10
I don't think there's any need for a ruling on using other peoples names in your puzzle - it just adds a little twist to the puzzle and for the most part I don't see people minding.
I wouldn't be against recommending people ask, but enforcing a rule is just going to be more effort than it's worth, especially since you can't PM people on SO.
If that ...
10
No.
10
Gareth rescued the example you mentioned, but to try and answer the general case, I'd suggest*:
Check Google's cache - If the content went missing fairly recently then Google will likely have a cached copy of the page. Open Google. Paste in the URL and search. Click the little down arrow next to the URL in the result that appears. Click Cached.
Check ...
10
I would highly recommend that you don't use specific users as part of a puzzle, for two main reasons:
Preservation: One of the many goals of this site is to be an archive of high-quality puzzles that can be solved at any point in the future. That's why we have the general guideline that puzzles not rely on external resources. Users can change their display ...
10
"Too broad" as a close reason doesn't exactly apply here, in the same way it does across the rest of the network.
Some puzzles have many parts leading to a single solution: this is okay. For example, crosswords do have a single final solution (the complete grid), even though there are many small things to answer to produce it. Other types of puzzles, like ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible