Rätselportal <-> Sudokuportal

[Jesper]

I think it is in the interest of the portal, the authors and the solvers if there would be guidelines; and then mainly guidelines about numbers of puzzles posted. In total and per author. Although I don't exactly know what those guidelines could be; several things are possible. So far, they were not necessary, but things have obviously changed.

I would really like to read how others see this. Solvers and authors. I hope we can have a constructive discussion about this that is in the best interest of all.

I fully agree with you Richard. I have only been active in the portal for a few months, so it is not really my place to make suggestions, but I would not mind a quota system, in order to keep quality high, and get more focus on each nice puzzle. Perhaps a certain number of maximum puzzles posted per month, with additional quota if you solve (or have solved) a lot of puzzles (encourage solving). Additional quota or exemption if you are a member (encourage membership). Maybe there are also other cases in which exceptions are needed. Anyway, those are my immediate thoughts.

Regards,
Jesper

[Realshaggy]

I agree, there is a problem that is getting bigger. But it's hard to find a solution and it's hard to discuss that openly, because almost all people have no idea what a suggested solution means behind the scene regarding the software and the administration of the site. The problem is not a few people flooding the portal with puzzles, so you can't just set a quota per person. That would not reduce the number by a significant amount. A general quota would lead to more bad blood and problems than it would solve imho (and thats not even thinking about how to implement that). And if you restrict posting altogether, where do you draw the line?

One very strict solution would be to not allow posting of puzzles for all freshly created accounts for some months to stop the flood of new authors for some time. Some of the old ones will probably lose interest or reduce their postings, so hopefully the total number of puzzles will go down to a appropriate amount again. In some months we can see how to continue from there. Sure, thats not nice for new people and some real gems will not be published. Is that more important than the health of our community? I don't know, probably not.

When the portal was created, the amount of handcrafted puzzles was really limited. Nowadays there are so many sources of great puzzles, that the hard part is getting solvers and feedback. Sure, you can create it in applets like puzz.link and post it on Twitter or a blog or maybe a Facebook group, but barely anybody will recognize it. One great part of the portal also was always, that it is not limited to some standard types and variants.

Someone will have to make a decision that will inevitably hurt some people in one way or another, and I'm glad I'm not the one.

[Joe Average]

Personally, the recent flood of (mainly) sudokus and puzzles brings me mixed emotions.

Many players that seem active on the Cracking The Cryptic platform have found their way to the German portal; those new authors are posting their puzzles here and there is really interesting stuff inbetween.

So that's where are the new authors are coming from. Question: Are most of the newly added puzzles all original, or are they re-releases from something that was previously published on that platform before? If it's the later, then I'd say there should be a limit to maybe just publish a few really good ones in the portal and add a link to the author's other/similar work on that platform. 

Most of the new authors probably didn't sign up to the forum, so they might now even see this topic and realize that there''s some growing concern. Now, I don't know if the "problem" has yet reached the point where it needs to be adressed by some change of the site programming. Most of these new authors seem very excited, and I wouldn't want to disrupt that.... neither by some forced limitations, nor by nobody solving their puzzles and giving them proper feedback. 

How about we apply reason instead? A disclaimer message that appears on the front page (and maybe also on the page where one enters a new puzzle) that explains just what we have been talking about here. Something like: 
"Dear authors, 
thank you for all your contributions. As exciting as it it may be to have some of your work published, we'd like you to consider a few things before you release your puzzles: 
- Try to follow how many other new puzzles are being published and pace yourself. If you want people to give you feedback on your hard work, then make sure they have enough time to solve your (and others') newly released material. It'd be a shame if your puzzle would simply be overlooked.
- This is a mixed site for all kinds of logical puzzles, not just Sudoku. Keep it balanced and maybe hold back on your Sudoku release until something different has been published in between. 
- Take your time to check and double-check, or even ask someone to test-solve it for you. Nothing is more annoying than having to fix a broken puzzle, or having to take it down entirely."

Maybe such a message is all that's needed and the new authors (at least some of them) will slow down on their own, without "official" interference.

[glum_hippo]

Joe Average wrote: "Are most of the newly added puzzles all original, or are they re-releases from something that was previously published on that platform before? If it's the later, then I'd say there should be a limit to maybe just publish a few really good ones in the portal and add a link to the author's other/similar work on that platform."
Cracking the Cryptic is not a platform, it's a youTube channel. I think most people who are posting puzzles here are posting their own original puzzles for the first time; they watch CtC and think "I could do this too" or "I have an idea for a puzzle that I'd like to publish". Then they are drawn to LM because the hosts (Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe) keep mentioning this site, along with gmpuzzles dot com, or LM India, or various blogs. LM Germany is definitely mentioned most often.

The subtext of this discussion is that LM Germany might be transforming from a place where people come to solve really great puzzles to one where people come to post puzzles in hopes of becoming better at their craft. Though I haven't been here very long, I feel like it's always been a bit of both, but the latter is getting much more prevalent, and this is changing the character of the site. I don't have solutions to that problem. However, you have to realize that this site is a really GREAT environment for getting feedback and developing one's skills. If this change of character is a problem, then indeed the only solution is to change the tone into something a bit more admonishing or making quotas.

As for sudoku vs other puzzle types: Sudoku is incredibly popular and almost embarrassingly rich in possibilities, that's just the nature of it. So there will be more Sudoku for those reasons alone. On the other hand, I have learned about things like Hashiwakokero and Kubingorodo and all the wonderful variants as a result of coming here. I would never have thought to explore them otherwise. The sudoku 'flood' (I acknowledge that it's a bit much) might be overwhelming the other puzzle types, but it's actually also increasing the audience for them. Or not?

[CHalb]

First I bring my personal view on some aspects and afterwards I describe the position of the board of the club Logic Masters Deutschland, who is mantaining the portal website.

I like the expression „flood“ for what has been happening for some months now because like in a water flood immense force and energy is involved and we have to think about canals and dams in order to deal with it coming up to our purposes. For those, who don’t know our statistics, please have a look at https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/S...?chlang=en.

For me the main disadvantages are:
1. New puzzles and comments are much shorter visible on the portal start page and thus do get less attention.
2. I do not like Sudokus very much but prefer other puzzle types.
Against 1. two new lists have been launched containing the latest comments and (so far here not mentioned) the latest solved puzzles, that can be reached from the portal start page:
https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/R...?chlang=en
https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/R...?chlang=en
Against 2. I have set myself a bookmark in my browser as mentioned by Realshaggy. It contains a permanent link created from our advanced search page showing the latest non Sudokus:
https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/S...46=NSudoku
This is for me much more comfortable than doing something I’m totally against, namely ignoring puzzles. Of course searching for labels works only properly, if the authors set the Sudoku label when publishing their puzzles. That’s why I really support the small comments like „Please add Sudoku label.“.

I admit: It is an unusual feeling having so many active people in the portal that I don‘t know for many years or from the last two WSPCs. But that is no disadvantage, it is just unnormal to me and in general a positive trend.

I observe, that the communication in the portal in general is polite and constructive as always. And it covers all aspects like praise/critic, solving techniques, design techniques, portal handling, rating, testing and the current flood topic. I see the comments overall in favor of the authors, the puzzles  and the solvers. Maybe we should add a hint to this discussion to https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/R...?id=0003PX despite the unfriendly cause here in the beginning.

glum_hippo is absolutely correct, Sudokus have a very special position among the logical puzzles; e.g. having their own world championship. I do not like their position of domination but have to respect it. Only a very small percentage of people solving Sudokus becomes interested in solving other logical puzzles as well. This can only happen after getting to know about the wonderful broad world of logical puzzles and increasing the audience is – at least for me as a member of LM Germany – our task and chance. I am – at least for now – against a clear cut in the portal between puzzle types apart from labels and tags. By the way: Because of almost the same reasons I’m against tendencies to sort out variant ideas from the WSC, that may be – following a certain categorization – not Sudoku like enough.

But I enjoy many flood advantages:
We see
- a lot of really good puzzles
- made by new authors
- containing great new ideas (For me the most important achievement at all.)
Sometimes users have complained in the past, that portal puzzles can’t be solved online. Now the new tool Penpa-edit has been introduced to us.
We’ve got at least one new club member   .
Non rhetoric: Where have these new authors published before? Some of them do so still on their own websites, I know. The portal obviously satisfies a need for many people enriching our community.

So far my personal point of view. It represents of course only one contribution to our board discussion in the last weeks. We‘ve received a lot of important input from some portal users. As mentioned above our web“team“ (that’s actually for a long time now only one single person) has added the two new lists containing the latest comments and latests solved puzzles. Additionally one small additional passage has been added to the guidelines on https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/H...?chlang=en :
In order to promote a broad variety of puzzles in the portal we suggest to publish not more than seven puzzles per week.
I admit that this is a place not easily noted by already established authors and not read by everyone of them anyway. Mainly because of the described advantages we did not want to take heavy measures at the moment. The proposal from Joe Average is absolutely worth of special thought. E.g. Richard has asked us for something like this some time ago.

[Madmahogany]

I joined the site a couple of months ago, and I initially thought it was very overwhelming. There was just so much to try out. I did not know that the site used to average a manageable one puzzle per day. Just in the last week, because of some coursework for college, I was not able to visit the site for a week, and in that time, there were so many puzzles that I wanted to try. Although I am not the oldest patron of the site, I do think it is a good idea to moderate the flow of puzzles, maybe using a scheduling system. I personally wouldn't mind following such a system, if it reduced the information overload that is happening.

Again, this is just the opinion of an amateur puzzler who is relatively new to this site.
Regards,
Madhav

[Big Tiger]

I am one who joined recently with the "Hey, I'd like to try making a Sudoku" mentality and no idea of the more temperate pace of uploads the site used to have. I have posted ten puzzles in about 9 weeks. And last week I discovered the statistics page - there certainly HAS been a jump in profiles and published puzzles!

One random thought that comes to mind: Is there any site or such that caters to ... I don't know, "previewing" puzzles? Throwing it out to a group of profiles that try it out and give responses - which would then give me and other experimenters an idea of what grabs interest and doesn't? Like ... my first Sudoku creation is one that very much appeals to me (I made it after all, ha ha) and my longtime enjoyment of the classic "Logic Puzzle" where you have 12 clues and have to figure out who went shopping on what day and what they bought - BUT ... I learned quickly that it was not what the really dedicated Sudoku solvers were looking for. They like a nice simple (albeit hidden/tricky) methodology, something more "elegant".

So I'm wondering if there is a site/portal that functions almost like a curator process, so I could learn which of my offbeat ideas will gain an audience ("Battlefield") and which ones will get mostly passed over ("Virus Sudoku"). Or if that is a non-starter idea.

[ildiko]

Somewhere I read a comment about „sudoku haters“.

„Hate“ is such a strong word. Me for example, I don’t hate sudokus. It’s just a matter of time. In 2019 there have been published about 240 puzzles, a quarter of them sudokus. Until yesterday only in June 2020 there have been published more than 180 puzzles, more than 80 % sudokus. But on the other hand: 213 non-sudokus in 2020 until yesterday.

When I have the choice between a lemon pie, strawberries with cream, grilled chicken, cheesecake, a fresh salad an 50 slices of dried bread, between hot chocolate, rhubarb juice with sparkling water, Pina Colada, cappuccino and stale water: why should I nibble the bread and drink the stale water? But from time to time I like a slice of fresh baked bread with butter and a glass of fresh water.

[Realshaggy]

... Like ... my first Sudoku creation is one that very much appeals to me (I made it after all, ha ha) and my longtime enjoyment of the classic "Logic Puzzle" where you have 12 clues and have to figure out who went shopping on what day and what they bought - BUT ... I learned quickly that it was not what the really dedicated Sudoku solvers were looking for.  They like a nice simple (albeit hidden/tricky) methodology, something more "elegant".

That puzzle (the Family Fun Center) is a perfect example of something that in my opinion would have been very well received one year ago with 10% of the puzzles we have now. When I decide which two or three puzzles I do in the evening, it's much more likely that I grab something with a familiar or simple ruleset. (That can still be hard puzzles). That doesn't mean, that this puzzle is not appealing to me, it's just less likely to be chosen and some days later it's so far down in the list, that I will forget about it. That's totally different if it's the only new puzzle of the day and remains on the frontpage in the "5 newest puzzles" list for a week.

Also I think it's more about if the few solvers enjoy it, instead of catering to the biggest audience. The "Logicals" you mention are a good example. There are not many solvers for these, but they are very happy about every well-crafted Logical they get.

[glum_hippo]

Only a very small percentage of people solving Sudokus becomes interested in solving other logical puzzles as well.

What is this claim based on? I am not questioning it but want to know how you reached this conclusion.