I am an emissary from Programming Puzzles and Code Golf, bringing a more co-operative and friendly challenge than before. I am aware that this too may get shot down, but I hope not, as this one is more in the spirit of working together.
In light on the recent challenge declaration by one of our members, I thought that it would be fun if some sort of inter-site challenge happened. However, as the last one was rejected as being not friendly and unfair, I thought I'd even it out a bit. Here is my proposal:
The challenge consists of 2 stages, a code golf stage and a code review stage, in order to be about both our sites.
The code-golf stage
This stage is where you break your rules (don't worry, we'll break ours later) and try to write the most golfed code you can for a given task (or two). You may use any language you like, even golfing languages, but the aim is for us to teach you how to golf code.
A code golf question will be posted on our main, inviting Code Review users to try their hand at golfing code. People from both Code Golf and Code Review can, should and will help you golf your solution down as much as possible. Now, while the overall challenge won't have any scoring system or something like that - it isn't worth the trouble - this stage will, as it is a requirement over on PPCG.
However, as Simon Forsberg correctly pointed out, it isn't fair or allowed to only allow certain people from competing, so this question will also be open to PPCG members. Now, as this is about working together, people from both Code Golf and Code Review can help you golf your answers even more to improve your bytecount.
The code-review stage
Now this is where you get to make us break our rules. In this stage, Code Golf users have to create the cleanest, most well written code to do another task. This (hopefully) will be asked here, on your main, but this is open to change. Now, this is the tricky part. As there is no real objective way of judging which code is "better", I would like to encourage users to upvote well-written answers, and downvote those that look like something that got lost on SE (golfed code, if you didn't get my joke). While the votes don't count towards anything, I think it'd be a nice way to welcome us into your community, and, if you participate in the code golf stage, I can guarantee that you will get votes, depending on how "good" your code is.
Code Review users are also encouraged to join in this stage, to show us golfers how its done. The key part of this stage is that people review the code and post suggestions on how to improve it in the comments below. This means that each user makes a small contribution to each post they improve, rather than one user telling the poster all the ways they can improve.
This section is open to change, because it may not fit very well with your Q&A format, as noted by Simon Forsberg in the comments. Please don't post ideas on how to improve it, that can be done later
That is the bare bones of the challenge idea but what do you think? Do you think this is worth doing? Could it be fun?
I think it would also be worth addressing some of the points raised by your users, and why they aren't applicable (or are) here.
this is is a duel. For honor and glory. There is no possible good outcome to a duel. PPCG is going to lose. Then you'll be out for revenge a rematch. When is it going to end? - 200_success, Jul 29
Given that there are no winners or losers, it is a co-operative "project" as we work together to improve our golfing and reviewing skills, this isn't an issue. Either way, we've all learned something and had fun expanding our coding comfort zones.
That is precisely the kind of hyper-competitive attitude I am wary of. - 200_success, Aug 1
While I agree that PPCG can (and does) get very competitive - its what we do after all - this isn't a competition. I would like to stress, yet again, that this is about co-operation between two opposite stacks, to mend any and all conflicts that we may have (as demonstrated by the previous challenge)
the motivation seems to boil down to
"We want to be able to say that we beat you at something"
Which, frankly, is not something our community wants to be involved with -Kaz, Aug 5
This was a valid point raised on the original idea of this challenge, which was more similar to the kind of contests we have over at PPCG, rather than the learning and teaching process that goes on here. I have revised this question, so that it is more "lets work together on something" rather than "We want to beat you at something".
Now, another point raised by Kaz was the old scoring system, which has now been removed. And yet there will still be a score involved, at least with the code golf section of the challenge. This is because, while you don't have competitiveness over here, we still have it on code golf, and so a score (isolated to that post) is necessary on our site.
Overall, it seems that one of the biggest issues with the previous one, was that code golf can't lose. By that I mean, if code golf wins, its all well and good, we'll leave happy, and this could happen again but with you challenging us in another few year. But if you beat us, this would just devolve into Stack Eggs.
However, neither of these options can happen, given that is isn't a competition.
Note: I currently cannot post over at Code Golf, but once I've heard what you have to say about this, if you like it, I will post a similar post over at code golf, to prevent cross site duplicates, both with "No, we won't do this" or "Yes let's do this" on them (like the previous challenge). Basically, I'm giving you the first move, so I hope you agree to doing this, it could be a lot of fun working with our "mortal graduation enemies"Just joking :P
So what do you guys think? Would you be interesting in doing this? What do you think of the new version?
