Wie sollen Portalrätsel aussehen?

[Dandelo]

Um die Fog-Rätsel offline lösbar zu machen, müssten sich Autor und Löser schon sehr verrenken. Und das würde dann niemand so nutzen. Die passen einfach nicht zur Grundidee des Portals.
Wir können die Regeln ändern, aber die Reihenfolge ist m.E. falsch. Erst werden Tatsachen geschaffen und dann wird über die Regeln nachgedacht.

[Hausigel]

Zu den "interaktiven" Rätseln hier kurz meine Gedanken (im moderationsinternen Bereich hatte ich zuerst auf diese Thematik hingewiesen):

* Es handelt sich in meinen Augen klar um das, was wir unter "Logischen Rätseln" verstehen. Eine generelle Abneigung gegenüber diesem Rätseltyp fände ich daher verfehlt.

* Qualitativ bin ich nicht sicher, wie ich zu diesem Rätseltyp stehe. Zumindest bei den Exemplaren, die ich bisher in Augenschein genommen habe, handelt es sich inhaltlich um "normale" Sudokus (gemessen an dem, was man derzeit im Portal so findet). Die Neuerung besteht darin, dass der Autor durch die Sichteinschränkung stärker den Lösungsweg kontrollieren kann, das ist alles. Vermutlich gibt dieses Konzept noch mehr her, aber im Moment hält sich meine Begeisterung in Grenzen.

* Das "Portalrätsel" selbst ist nicht (eindeutig) lösbar; im Grunde genommen ist das, was ins Portal hochgeladen wird, nur ein Teaser. Das ist mein eigentliches Problem mit derartigen Rätseln - das Portal wird durch den Umstand, dass das Rätsel nur in einer fremden App gelöst werden kann, zu einer Linksammlung degradiert. Und das ist auch der Grund, warum ich der Meinung bin, dass wir hier gegensteuern sollten.

Bei den restlichen Punkten stimme ich uvo im wesentlichen zu, allerdings sehe ich das entspannter. Wir können Sprachen nicht gut erzwingen (es gibt halt Portaluser, die nicht gut deutsch und/oder englisch können, solche möchte ich aber nicht ausgrenzen). Wann Rätsel "interagieren", ist mitunter eine Grauzone. Und was den Umfang der Rätseltexte und -stories angeht, sind wir - der Verein - auch nicht immer auf einer einheitlichen Linie (Stichworte "Wichtel" oder "Rätseldesignwettbewerb"), da müssten wir uns zuerst an die eigene Nase fassen.

Mit Links in den Rätseln sollten wir leben können, denke ich (sofern das nicht missbraucht wird, z.B. bei Verweisen auf kommerzielle Seiten, oder wenn das Rätsel so plump gestaltet ist, dass der Link offensichtlich der einzige Veröffentlichungszweck ist). Vielleicht nimmt das in Zukunft nochmal massiv zu, dann können wir uns da neu positionieren; im Moment sehe ich diesbezüglich jedenfalls keinen Handlungsbedarf.

[Dandelo]

In BUO ist genau das passiert. Ein sehr schönes Rätsel, aber mit Link auf eine kommerzielle Seite (Steam), auf ein Logik-Spiel, das der Autor verkaufen will.

[Crispy16]

I don't speak German, so most of my reading of this thread has been done via Google Translate. I apologize for any misunderstanding that might have caused me.

Frankly, I think the idea of banning Fog of War puzzles to be silly beyond measure. Whatever your personal opinions might be about this type of puzzle, the fact remains that it is innovative and lots of people have found it highly entertaining. If this particular innovation has any longevity to it remains to be seen, but either it won't last long so this conversation is rather pointless or it will last long and you risk banning a very popular type of puzzle.

But my biggest issue is that the distinction you are trying to draw is in practice arbitrary. There are plenty of puzzles on the site that are incredibly complex and very hard to solve even with an online tool. The idea that anyone would actually use pen and paper to keep track of multiple layers of lettering and/or coloring and solve these puzzles is impractical and ridiculous. If your proposed requirement is that all puzzles are theoretically solvable on paper, but ignore the practicality of that option then it is meaningless.

Chris/Crispy16

[uvo]

We have solved puzzles, incredibly complex ones, long before there were any online tools. In fact, in my personal opinion some complex puzzles (not all, I guess) are easier to solve on paper because there are no limitations on your notation.

What makes you think that repeated use of words like "silly" and "ridiculous" improves your argument?

[Dandelo]

If this is not clear: The discussion is not about FOW. The question is:
Do we allow puzzles, which can only be solved with an external website or applet?

The rules clearly say "No". It is silly and ridiculous to say, we're thinking about banning FOW. It's the opposite, we're thinking about allowing FOW and change the rules for that.

And for all people who think our rules to be silly and ridiculous: You aren't forced to use the Rätselportal. Use another site or create your own with your rules.

[Hausigel]

The idea that anyone would actually use pen and paper to keep track of multiple layers of lettering and/or coloring and solve these puzzles is impractical and ridiculous.

Wenn bei Usern die Erwartungshaltung darin besteht, Logische Rätsel nicht mit den Mitteln zu lösen, die 10 Jahre lang für uns die Norm waren, sondern mit technischen Hilfsmitteln, welche die logische Herangehensweise praktisch ersetzen ("Klicki-Bunti" würde ein Kollege von mir sagen), dann ist das ein Zeichen, dass hier eine völlig falsche Zielstellung vorliegt.

Man stelle sich vor, ein breitensport-orientiertes Unternehmen verleiht Fahrräder, und irgendwann bietet es mal probeweise E-Scooter an, um zu sehen, wie diese bei den Kunden ankommen. Und nach einem Jahr kommt ein Kunde ins Geschäft und verlangt, dass die Fahrräder aus dem Sortiment genommen werden, weil es doch lachhaft wäre, dass Menschen aus eigener Kraft radeln wollen...

[DylanD]

What it seems to me is that there are two issues here. Whether or not puzzles should be printable is the first, which seems more of a philosophical conundrum, and I won't address this, as I believe there are many more qualified to debate this than me. The second aspect (if I'm understanding the thread above so far) is how to mitigate spam/ads/paywalls, broken links etc, which seems to me like a technological issue.

So far, LMD's policy to hold the puzzle itself on it's own servers, has evidently worked to solve this issue.

One thought I had on the matter was this: What if a General Puzzle Protocol was developed, which outlined how the data of a puzzle was stored. My understanding is the current online tools for opening puzzles simply just use XML data organized in whatever way the tool's creator saw fit. If this was standardized, then the possibility for saving, transferring, importing, and hosting the actual puzzle data would be platform agnostic, and would allow anyone to load that puzzle into their favourite puzzle tool, effectively removing the need for external links of any kind, except for convenience.

This idea is not mine, I'm basing it entirely off of the General Midi Protocol, which made synthesizers from all manufacturers able to 'play' with each other, and has lasted decades past the technology of it's time being replaced.

I'm also not suggesting that LMD needs to necessarily develop this. I am just thinking it might be one solution, to the one half of the problem. If it was considered a viable solution, I believe the technical hurdles of standardizing a protocol are well within the ability of many community members. And I imagine hosting a puzzle data file wouldn't be much more of a headache than hosting the puzzle image file.

With that all said, I do understand that LMD may decide to go either way on both these issues, and fully expect I will keep enjoying the resource in whatever form it takes.

[Realshaggy]

One of the main differences of the puzzle portal compared to other sites was always, that there were basically no boundaries for the creativity of the authors. All other sites I know (there might be some I don't know) are restricted to a fixed set of applets and clue notations you have to use. But in our portal, there are all type of innovative rules, irregular grids and also puzzles not based on grids at all. You might see more of them, if you only look at the content from 2019 backwards before the "Sudoku flood". I don't see how you can define a general protocol for puzzles that supports something like the Infinite Slitherlink (https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/R...?id=0001A8), unless it's basically text+pictures and is not very puzzle-specific.

[DylanD]

That is a fair point. I don't think a protocol would necessarily replace photographs of puzzles, just allow for an alternative when a puzzle cannot be described with a photograph. As well I could not imagine the task of converting the puzzle library to anything but what it is now strictly from a scope of work perspective, so wouldn't suggest any necessary changes to existing puzzles.

With that said, the depiction of that puzzle digitally in a playable form would be more up to whoever decided to make a tool for playing such puzzles. Which, to your point I believe would be an interesting task.

To standardize the storage of data, all that would need to happen is to make it broad enough to encompass anything that can be drawn (Which you touched on). That puzzle is still just points, lines, and characters, and I imagine the data would be very similar to a vector graphic simply depicting what goes where in space (even if part of a theoretically infinite set).

I do admit however, (and this is a big however) that a universal way to order puzzle data in a file is made less universal by the need to define which tools are capable of parsing each type of puzzle. It sort of defeats the point in theory, but functionally may not be so much of an issue, I'm not sure.

I guess my thoughts are these: Allowing pictures only restricts the creativity of puzzles that can only be expressed on a computer. Allowing computer puzzles only would restrict (At least functionally) the creativity of puzzles like the example you posted. Whether or not to hybridize in in some form is just a cost benefit analysis, coupled with the same philosophical discussion I promised not to get tangled in earlier. 

And I will also not weigh in on cost or benefit, in part because the benefit (although subjective) seems well enough defined, the cost is more intangible unless there are further ideas for solutions.

TL,DR: My suggestion was not perfect, and may not be worth considering further.