Practicly it would be for the best but finally its the administartors role to deduct the final judgment on wheather to or not to .

thx. i think the idea with beat tester is better

Hi

I agree with you that something like a voting by the users would be useful. Generally, I'm not very happy with the development of the site/the challenges. I mean there are tons of them, and every day I get more (I still have dozens of challs from iloveallison to load up). But when I personally look at the challenge page I get "shocked" so to speak; as a new user I could image I would leave forever because it should make fun and if you have so many challenges, this is difficult. Especially, when you look at the challenges. I mean you look at one char-sequence after the other, work on strange pixel heaps and whatever. I think I miss some kind of motivation, or story with the challenges. In my opinion there should be challenges which guide you through themselves; with hints, information, story - I don't know exactly. But something that makes fun, creates interest, gives you the feeling of making progress (one more green "done" between almost 200 red "not done"s is not doing this) - not just looking at a string, maybe with two words of "introduction" and then there's already the "end".
I'm sorry that I myself don't know exactly what I want, but I can't explain it exactly simply because I do not know it yet. Maybe there should be someting beside the challenges too, like real tutorials, maybe new forum sections about different topics (programming, sports, music, hobbies; what the hell I don't know).
If you have any ideas it would be great if you could post them; any kinds of changes/improvements/whatsoever...

Back to the challenge-voting: I could code something like this, I just need to know how exactly it should work. I don't know if there is a real beta-section neccessary. Maybe it would be enough to put them up, marking new ones with "this is beta" and then asking each user who solved it for a comment/opinion. If there are reasons to remove it, then this could be done. Otherwise, the state of "beta" could simply be removed to make it an "ordinary" challenge.

bye, Erik

you mean you want to make it more fun for users instead of just like an all work no play enviroment right? so why dont we put together a section of 10 problems or so and have people donate money...and the first to solve these challenges before a certain time period wins a certain amount of money or something...i dunno if this would work out but its worth a shot isnt it? we could make the challenges damn near impossible but still solvable and see what happens.

erik: I think it could be a very good idea, sometimes it's really desperating view lots of char strings, and no more... But this is something that the ppl who make challenges have to do. By now, i'm going to write up some lines about my challenge. i'll send you later

Another good idea could be discharge you (tbs and erik) from some of the admin works... More admins to upload challenges through a web interface or something... or a mix of the 'beta-idea' and the admins: everyone can submit a challenge but it has to be revised by admins...

my ideas:

-let the user vote what of what type of challenges they want more
-filter the challenges already uploaded (remove the silly ones which make no sense or also the ones that are almost the same)
-just accept really creative new challenges
-write some good tutorials about hacking (websites, ...),
-people with webspace can host real homepages(with some bugs which have to be hacked). chnge the index page to "hacked by ..."

that are just some ideas to make it more fun to come to this site.

Hi
I think every one has a different reason why he spend a lot of time to solve this challenges.
For me it is mostly a mix of enjoy the succes to solve a riddle and to learn something.
And this challs I could learn something are the really good ones.
So challs where I have to analyse a File format eg. midi or bmp. Or this things how to use a Password cracker
The programming Challs are also very good because of the learn effect.
This huge size of crypto challs is more and more frustrating. And in this area there are many People they just swap solutions.
So if you try to solve by your own it becomes more and more difficult.
Strange cryptos are OK if i can see any connex to reallity.
In real Software live is often a strange crypto used for serials eg.
And if a Crypto chall can show this then it is good or it can teach you how weak a homemade cipher could be.
Bye

In the beginning I liked this site, nice challenges and such...
There was a known crypto and I was able to solve it on my own, just because I found (and knew) what crypto it was.
Though you needed a key for it wich you didn't get .
But now I only take a look at a new challenge and see if I can solve something and then I just quit :|.

P.s.: I like the idea about beta stage...

Outstanding idea tBS i think it would be the first step .

Full ACK to DigitalAcid
Maybe it will help if ther would be a short description from the developer of the Chall.
For example:
"Last night I was so drunken, my girlfriend kicked me out and now i want to give you all my headache with a totally stupid crypto. I even don't know to solve by myself ". ))

I think we should not forget this is mainly a hacking site.
What i miss are challs and tuts they are more realistic.
Example: how to write a buffer-overflow exploit like some of the last worms.

The Challs from Caesar are not easy to solve but they give you a good experience.
and you can Learn something.

The Beta stage is imho not necessary if there is a good reason why we should try to solve this Challange.

Bye