04.03.2023, 10:23
Thank you for clarifying it directly, uvo. I dont know why this person does what they do, but if the website has no rules against what they do, they are free to do whatever they wish to do so. It is my bad as I thought the written rules implied as such.
Regarding @Joe, I linked the two subjects together in my initial post since they are intertwined in how this user affects some members of the community. It is not a "moral high ground" to question the old users "integrity" by any means, I dont think what you meant with the word is the same as the meaning I know of the word. About your questioning of how we know the solver's solve times, its not that we personally track this user, the website has the option to send you an email whenever a puzzle gets solved, and it does become surprising and noticeable if a relatively hard puzzle you publish gets a solve extremely quickly, and this becomes a theme. Maybe the email option should hide the solver name. Otherwise, I doubt anyone is refreshing their profile page every 5 minutes to check solves.
P.S. What I wish would stop is the argument "If you dont like it, create your own puzzle website and leave." I cannot believe how many times I read this throughout the forums. Even though I haven't been around for too long of a time here, I have read enough to know some very basic things, like how the portal was very different 3.5+ years ago, it was a lot more "puzzle" oriented than Sudoku, and then Cracking the Cryptic happened, and the user / puzzle(well, sudoku) count skyrocketed significantly. But this change also prompted the veteran users to stop posting puzzles onto the portal. I do not know if these people just set and publish somewhere else. But it seems a big shame to me that the two groups couldn't coexist together. Especially starting from mid 2022 onwards, there is a bigger interest among setters that have found their puzzling home here to set pencil puzzles or puzzle hybrids, myself included. I really wish most of the veteran puzzle setters / solvers were still active (I say most since some of them still are) so that we could learn from them and their feedback, as they are usually a lot more knowledgeable in these areas than the new setters are. (Of course I do not know their absence reason, it might not be related to the portal changing at all). And I wish that the old vs new mindset was more compatible/compromisable, so that any small disagreement doesnt lead to "if you dont like it, then leave."
Peace.
Regarding @Joe, I linked the two subjects together in my initial post since they are intertwined in how this user affects some members of the community. It is not a "moral high ground" to question the old users "integrity" by any means, I dont think what you meant with the word is the same as the meaning I know of the word. About your questioning of how we know the solver's solve times, its not that we personally track this user, the website has the option to send you an email whenever a puzzle gets solved, and it does become surprising and noticeable if a relatively hard puzzle you publish gets a solve extremely quickly, and this becomes a theme. Maybe the email option should hide the solver name. Otherwise, I doubt anyone is refreshing their profile page every 5 minutes to check solves.
P.S. What I wish would stop is the argument "If you dont like it, create your own puzzle website and leave." I cannot believe how many times I read this throughout the forums. Even though I haven't been around for too long of a time here, I have read enough to know some very basic things, like how the portal was very different 3.5+ years ago, it was a lot more "puzzle" oriented than Sudoku, and then Cracking the Cryptic happened, and the user / puzzle(well, sudoku) count skyrocketed significantly. But this change also prompted the veteran users to stop posting puzzles onto the portal. I do not know if these people just set and publish somewhere else. But it seems a big shame to me that the two groups couldn't coexist together. Especially starting from mid 2022 onwards, there is a bigger interest among setters that have found their puzzling home here to set pencil puzzles or puzzle hybrids, myself included. I really wish most of the veteran puzzle setters / solvers were still active (I say most since some of them still are) so that we could learn from them and their feedback, as they are usually a lot more knowledgeable in these areas than the new setters are. (Of course I do not know their absence reason, it might not be related to the portal changing at all). And I wish that the old vs new mindset was more compatible/compromisable, so that any small disagreement doesnt lead to "if you dont like it, then leave."
Peace.