With all due respect, I disagree. A person requesting private help for a particular challenge need not use that feature to know which users have solved it if he is set on achieving help that way. A simple check on random users (especially the top few ones and the active ones) would reveal what the user would want to know. The removal of this feature is nothing but a very minor deterrence.

My two cents

I certainly understand what you are saying alt3rn4tiv3. I did not mean to imply otherwise.

It is true that it serves as only a small deterrent. Though in my humble opinion, you will get better results through the forum than via PM. I for one don't generally reply to random, unsolicited PMs for help, unless they have demonstrated that they have done some work already on the chall.

Whilst only a minor deterrent, just not knowing who solved it via a simple click deters those to whom actually doing some work is what they are trying to avoid. To have clicked through the top 20 users, checked if they have solved the chall, checked they have been active lately requires at least some work

If you get e reply (either by PM or in the forum) it indicates that someone is willing to help and will more likely be the more productive avenue of enquiry is the point I was trying to make. I believe any deterrent is better than none at all.

Regards
bb

The forums, active as they may be, do not get replies in all their threads. Many topics are left dangling with questions unanswered, leaving users to further ponder aimlessly about certain concepts pertaining to the challenges - of them, some ending with "PM me with what you've got" or something along that lines. A simple look through a few of the topics will show that many topics are left floating since 2004 or so. Even attempts to revive the topic failed. Furthermore, not all users reply to forums, no matter what their stand is on helping others when they request for help in private.

Of course, I totally agree that PMs which write "please help me and give me a hint" are unwelcomed unless they are substantiated with evidence to prove that there have been some attempt at least, to try it out. However, looking at this from another POV, assuming users who are bent on solving the challenges which few people have solved have attempted and failed many times - it'd be so much more convenient to find out who's solved a challenge and who hasn't - which I'm sure, is the main characteristics of people who want to view the users-who-have-completed-this-challenge list.


This i cannot disagree - but we all come to this site to learn, don't we? Messages from users who have not proven themselves worthy in PMs can be easily ignored. Searching for users who have solved challenges which only few have solved require a lot more work. Why not make it easier?

My two cents. Maybe three.

Thanks for your reply.

Forums are a good place to start. If you get no joy there then you can always link to that dead thread in your PM's. If they are bent on solving it, as you say, it is only a minor deterrent. Hopefully enough to stop people doing it on a whim, yet not enough to deter those who really want to try.

And if you have done work and are stuck you can just PM the challenge creator rather than having to go through the whole rigmarole of checking each of the users.

Regards

Having seen your side of the argument, I think that there are benefits both in enabling and disabling the feature.
IMHO, neither outweighs the other. However, since it's already disabled, this is not an issue big enough, nor an argument strong enough, to call for the re-enabling of the feature and thus I concur with your points

Hi,

now it should be possible to read the forums for non-registered users .
But I excluded the Challenge-Forums - I'm not to sure about that. The challenges themselves are available to registered users only, too.
Well, I recently started working on it. Might be useable in the next few days.

Cu, Erik