Hello community,

People are submitting more and more challenges. For some of us it's very hard to upload them, because we have no idea if some challenges are original (or educational).
Yes of course you can say something is original if you submit for example a crypto challenge which uses an encryption method that isn't used in any other challenge on tbs, but that doesn't mean is good.

Therefore I ask you when you submit a challenge, that you describe what you think is educational and original about your challenge, and why you think it should be uploaded, because we really don't have time to thoroughly check each challenge that is submitted. Sometimes we're even unable to solve one in the first place (yes that happens too). Also before you upload a challenge, make sure the description and everything is clear and in proper English. Ask people to help you if necessary. Sometimes we get challenges that are so vaguely described that we have no idea what the point of the challenge is.

I also think a lot of challenges need to be reviewed. At first the voting system was intended to be used to determine whether a challenge should stay or not, bus as some people just enter a grade randomly without thinking about it, this becomes a bit obsolete. At least I can say something about the challenges I have solved (are they original, what is the educational value), but I can't do that for every challenge on this site. So I'll have a talk with theblacksheep and Erik about this, and maybe some challenges will be removed, or not. I don't know. This is just my opinion .

Greets,

Inferno

I agree!

About the voting: Why not make it mandatory?

Maybe introducing something that you have to vote on 1 challenge that you have solved but not voted yet on each login. This way the votinggap will be filled, but it comes with a price. Ppl might just fill in garbage...

Also adding a discription to the votingpage might help to clarify it a bit.
A couple of days ago Phas layed out an excellent thinkingpattern of how to vote.


, This one doesn't need that much of explaining.

Also he mentioned an additional voting token: Fun-factor

BaRa

I think perhaps each challenge should be submitted with a solution tutorial ready for Discussion Afterwards. That way the admins have a ready made guide to evaluate how the challenge should be solved and to see if it is solveable with the rest of the information given.

On the downside, it will mean that the admins get less enjoyment out of solving, since they will have read the solution anyway. Maybe it could be a job for some of our retired members - Challenge Evaluator!

(Its the only way some of the retired members can solve challenges anymore - now they are getting old )

Just a thought - what does everyone else think?

bb
EDIT : Multiple typos

I agree with bb's idea We have some old-and-retired members already (Phas, relee, personkey, RogerFanMorvill, and Caesum soon )
Edited: Added personkey

Hmm, AFAIK retired members are very busy playing cards and having sunbaths... thay can't do that, but the ideas of BaRa and bb inspired me a new idea...

What about reseting the votes and only allowing to vote a few members? (called Challenge Evaluators) They will be volunteers, aproved by the other Challenge Evaluators, and they will vote when they solve the challenge, so everybody can play (admins included) and the votes will be more reallistic and if they rate a challenge as bad it can be deleted.

There can be even different Challenge Evaluators for each section

Here's my 2 cents


This is a very good idea and I agree totally. This will definitely improve the quality of challenges on tbs. However, this does require the people approving and uploading the challenges to abstain from "competing". This is the correct ethical and political thing to do. If you must be compete then modify the ranking script :- SELECT * FROM [RANK] WHERE NOT STATUS='ADMIN'.


I have a done a fair bit of these challenges and you probably need to remove like 100 of them. On this note, there are 3 challz down for the longest time. These should be removed as enough time has been afforded already to getting it online.


Excellent idea BB and this should be a requirement.


If a challenge solver has this, then they can see how the challenge was meant to be solved. Compare to their methods and help them learn. It also has the added benefit of helping them make an informed vote.
.

I like the following ideas:

1. Every user who submits a challenge has to add a file for the discussion afterwards forum (this also help the admins).
2. Not everyone is allowed to vote on the challenge. Just a Team of 15 or 20 active people (I guess high ranked ones and not so high ranked ones).
3. Vote on: Creativity (Presentation), Education, Difficulty, Fun
4. Challenges that get bad rankings are going to be deleted.
->Challenges should be marked wheather they have been ranked already (therefore they are not going to be deleted) or not

tbs

How about this?
Every challenges should be submitted in a Zip file with the following content:
- challenge/: Implementation of the challenge goes here
- readme.txt: Information about how the challenge should appear on the challenge page and the challenge solution
- howto.txt: The idea behind the challenge and how it should be solved

There should be an automatic script that posts the content of howto.txt on the discussion afterwards forum when the challenge is uploaded (to make sure that this is the first post in the forum in case someone has solved it before the challenge creator can post )

I sent a new challenge yesterday, but without a file for the discussion afterwards forum. I will send it this weekend. I also like the idea that this should be a requirement for sending a new challenge, because now I sometimes missed such a forumpost after solving a challenge. I think it's nice that there is at least the post of the challenge creator where he (or she) explains how it should have been solved.

I think you need both high ranked and low ranked users as Challenge Evaluators, because both groups may have other ideas/skills/interest about/in the challenges. Furthermore, I think it should be active users.

I have really no idea how many challenges are submitted, but if it are too many to handle, then why not find Challenge Checkers? So people who like to check new challenges, and are also capable of doing that. Maybe more Challenge Checkers are needed, let's say 2 per category.

And finally, something like quangntenemy already proposed: Make a page where it's explained how challenges should be submitted. And put a warning there too: Challenges should be submitted like blabla....when your challenge lacks files or is different from the requirements, then it doesn't get uploaded.