Rätselportal <-> Sudokuportal

[maria]

I strongly recommend not setting any publishing limits or installing any other kind of restrictions until the purpose of the Puzzle Portal itself and of such restrictions has been properly defined (or at least agreed upon). Any kind of restriction can only be a means to an end, and we must first clarify what that end should be. I could think of various objectives:

* to encourage new puzzle friends to solve puzzles;
* to encourage new puzzle friends to create puzzles;
* to gather feedback on existing puzzles;
* to provide puzzle material (as a pastime) for established members of the puzzle community;
* to publish puzzle series not suitable for contests;
* to publish leftovers from past events;
* to collect/exchange ideas for future events, regarding both creation and solving;
* to advertise membership in our (or any other) puzzle community.
There may be more, of course.

I daresay objectives were never actually defined when the Puzzle Portal was created, simply because there was no need. In the old days, puzzle floods were not a concern. The nature of the Puzzle Portal was self-evident; it served several of the above purposes, and at the time I don't think there were any conflicting interests.

That appears to have changed, as a - more or less natural - result of the growth of the puzzle community. Since growth was generally desired (not just for the Puzzle Portal, but for Logic Masters and its community as such), it is not a priori something to complain about. However, the increase in puzzle publication has led us to a point where the above goals can no longer coexist without conflict.

If we are about to devise restrictions of some sort to the use of the Puzzle Porital, I suggest that we prioritise its goals first. I am under the impression that the conflict mainly lies between the second and the third item on the list. And some of the contributions in this thread suggest that the priority should lie on the third item, but I am far from sure that this is a universal view.)

Settings limits quickly might chase away some aspiring authors, and as long as the goals of the Puzzle Portal are just vague ideas, it is not clear to me whether the benefits will really outweigh the drawbacks. And maybe there are other options as well, like restructuring the Puzzle Portal without imposing any actual restrictions on the users.

I totally agree with this! Thank you for clarifying so many goals of the puzzle portal that I had in my mind during discussions inside the board. 
For me, the highest goal is to encourage new (mainly Sudoku) puzzlers to discover all the standard puzzle types we have, not only Sudokus. That includes the first two goals, but also the idea to learn from each other and evolve new puzzle types.

In order to achieve our goals, I thought about achievements or badges inside the puzzle portal. For example, a user may become a badge to his user profile, if he solves ten different puzzle types. I am sure, we could define plenty of such achievements. BUT, we have a one-man webteam! So, that is absolutely not realizable in near future.

For sure, we will discuss the whole topic on our general assembly.