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Since we've not had any in a little while, I thought maybe it'd be a good idea to 'bring back' the fun. In the past this has been in the form of Winterbash, community challenges, best of Code Reviews, and a couple other things.

I'm unsure what we as a community want to do, and so I think it'd be nice to have a little poll of things we could do together. I've included some things that we have done in the past in the poll by default, but that doesn't mean that we can't have more things to do. Or that we even have to do those things.

Since this post is just a poll, the core isn't to discuss all the ins and outs of the ways we want to have fun.

  • Say we want to play some Factorio together we could continue the discussion in chat and come to a conclusion of how to play there.

  • Say we want to continue community challenges, we should have a meta discussion on what they should be. Currently there a weird mix of winning and slowly becoming bigger and bigger challenges. So a refresh of these could be good.

How would we all like to have fun?

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Zombie Hunting Season

The old memes pretty much all happened during the Great Revival, during which we equated unanswered questions with zombies, and votes/answers with ammunition.

The site currently has ~10% unanswered questions, which means a population of ~5K zombies; how about reopening zombie-hunting season? Sportive reviewing for all!

Have you killed a ZOMBIE lately?

The idea being, of course, to foster answering activity, by encouraging everyone to pick a daily zombie and slay it - and encouraging voting activity too.

Of course this entails taking a snapshot of the data before the launch, then publish weekly updates, charts, leaderboards - upping meta-site activity as well!

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  • \$\begingroup\$ So, I've re-submitted the ad on the 2018 community ads meta, to help promote this. \$\endgroup\$
    – Mathieu Guindon Mod
    Commented Mar 26, 2018 at 0:43
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    \$\begingroup\$ Loving this. Maybe it could be executed similarly as your Call of Duty post. \$\endgroup\$
    – janos Mod
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 17:33
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    \$\begingroup\$ @janos I'm thinking we need a number of SEDE queries, exports to CSV, and a PowerBI dashboard =) \$\endgroup\$
    – Mathieu Guindon Mod
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 17:52
  • \$\begingroup\$ I think we should set a goal for such an event, such as @janos stated in his (now deleted) answer. It's not realistic to get rid of all the zombies, but having a goal to reduce unanswered questions % to 9 would be nice. \$\endgroup\$
    – Simon Forsberg Mod
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 18:36
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Community challenges

These started off as weekly challenges, and has slowly expanded to three monthly challenges. These can be found under the tag.

We should probably refresh what these are. As they've been forever changing.

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    \$\begingroup\$ FYI: I'm working on a flexible game server that will support several different turn-based games. Get your Sockets and WebSockets ready and we can have AI battles! \$\endgroup\$
    – Simon Forsberg Mod
    Commented Mar 25, 2018 at 21:35
  • \$\begingroup\$ @SimonForsberg That's pretty cool, it'd be cool to see that in the wild! \$\endgroup\$
    – Peilonrayz Mod
    Commented Mar 25, 2018 at 22:04
  • \$\begingroup\$ A flexible online game server can be found here: github.com/Zomis/Server2 . Documentation might still be lacking a bit, but most of it is there. See README.md and MESSAGING.md for starters. \$\endgroup\$
    – Simon Forsberg Mod
    Commented May 12, 2018 at 23:28
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Secret Santa

This happened once, and had large community support. And an ex-community manager followed the fun.

It was actually really fun, and made me appreciate the community a lot. I think we should bring these back. I'd be happy to look into setting up future ones too.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ If I might say, it was pretty easy to organize and it was great fun. I still have my Cloud Storage eh eh \$\endgroup\$
    – IEatBagels
    Commented Mar 21, 2018 at 2:07
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IRL Meetup

I'm not sure if we have ever successfully organised one, but I know in the past we have talked about doing one.

I think it'd be unreasonable to get everyone together. But a couple of us that live in the same country or continent could try to meet up.

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    \$\begingroup\$ In the alternative, a Hangout/Skype/whatever live meet could also work, most of the regulars live too far apart to meet up in person. \$\endgroup\$
    – Phrancis
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 18:02
  • \$\begingroup\$ I know for a fact that A&M did conduct an IRL meetup in Europe. I can try dig out their meta post on the matter if anyone's interested \$\endgroup\$
    – Vogel612
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 22:17
  • \$\begingroup\$ This is an awesome idea! :D \$\endgroup\$
    – Grajdeanu Alex
    Commented Mar 26, 2018 at 8:44
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Reputation Races

Back in the days, a Mug and a Simon were racing to... 20k? 10k? Some k. reputation, it is a fun thing to do together with someone else and leads to more activity and answers. It's a win-win even if you don't win the race.

One can even use our favorite bot to keep track of the rating differences.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I've always wondered, how do you set this up? Say I want to race another member, what would I need to do? \$\endgroup\$
    – Peilonrayz Mod
    Commented Mar 25, 2018 at 22:05
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Peilonrayz Either just let me know, or give me a pull-request adding a line here: github.com/Zomis/Duga/blob/develop/grails-app/services/net/… \$\endgroup\$
    – Simon Forsberg Mod
    Commented Mar 26, 2018 at 9:46
  • \$\begingroup\$ That is: ratingdiff;(chat room id);(userid 1),(userid 2);(site) \$\endgroup\$
    – Simon Forsberg Mod
    Commented Mar 26, 2018 at 9:47
  • \$\begingroup\$ "Back in the days", officially there are still 2 (1 2) races running. Quite slowly... \$\endgroup\$
    – Mast Mod
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 17:35
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Playing our home-made games!

There are several games that are being developed by the community, mainly in the Coding Projects chat room. We should have some events every now and then to play these games. Some of us will also stream this on Twitch.

The available games to play are:

  • Connect Four
  • The Royal Game of Ur
  • Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe
  • Cardshifter
  • Checkers
  • Minesweeper Flags
  • and possibly more...

The first event was held on Saturday, May 12, at 15:00 UTC in Coding Projects chat room.

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Best of Code Review

These happen once a year, normally in January. And we give bounties to some of the best answers and questions in the year. These can be found under the tag.

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    \$\begingroup\$ IME it gets hard to track/remember Q1, Q2 and even Q3 posts in a yearly setup. I've seen other sites do something similar, but on a quarterly basis. Maybe that would be a better thing? \$\endgroup\$
    – Mathieu Guindon Mod
    Commented Mar 23, 2018 at 18:46
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Factorio Server

It may come to a surprise to some but some of us are really mad about Factorio. We have 150 messages of chat history with the word 'factorio'. Maybe some of us have played too much of it (no judging I have 2k hours in DotA 2):

@rolfl Couldn't have described it better myself. Although my time counter is "only" 917 hours. - in chat

Should we try setting up a Code Review Factorio server?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Not counting a lot more Factorio talk in our Coding Projects & Factorio Heaven room =) \$\endgroup\$
    – Phrancis
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 18:04
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Phrancis Oh damn, that place is a thing... :O #AddNewRoomToFavourites \$\endgroup\$
    – Peilonrayz Mod
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 18:10
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Reviews

We just love reviewing here! And had a '14 review of the site, along with a review of the memes we've made.

I think these can help keep our users voice problems they think the site has. I think we all have a couple of concerns with the site at the moment. But I've not seen a central place to discuss these views.

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No!

We should not bring back the fun. Fun is dangerous, immoral and antithetical to writing high quality code. What we really ought to do instead is write accounting software in COBOL.

Yes, I'm joking. :)

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Winterbash

We've always included ourselves in Winterbash. It's a bit of a ritual. And a couple of years back a few of us got quite far in it. We've asked about doing it every year since 2013, except this year. 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ We have participated in 2017 as well though, we just didn't make a meta post about it. \$\endgroup\$
    – Simon Forsberg Mod
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 17:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ @SimonForsberg I may have not been clear, but I said that in the above post, :) \$\endgroup\$
    – Peilonrayz Mod
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 17:29
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    \$\begingroup\$ Kind of the wrong time of year for Winterbash... \$\endgroup\$
    – RubberDuck
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 22:22
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ IMO CR should be de-facto opting into the year-end hat-fest - 2017 we didn't ask, because we knew what the answer was going to be. Everybody loves hats!....right? (and if you don't, then you can hate hats on your own, no need to spoil the fun for everyone else on the site) \$\endgroup\$
    – Mathieu Guindon Mod
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 22:55
  • \$\begingroup\$ @RubberDuck I know how Winterbash works and when it happens. Just like I've added an answer for 'best of CR', I added Winterbash so we know if we want to do it. \$\endgroup\$
    – Peilonrayz Mod
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 23:15
  • \$\begingroup\$ We've got 9 months till the next bash.... Let's focus on other kinds of fun in the meantime. \$\endgroup\$
    – RubberDuck
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 23:17
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ @RubberDuck I don't think you understand the point of this post. It's not about right now. We're not going to do secret santa, or best of CR for another year either. It's about things we want to do this and future years. \$\endgroup\$
    – Peilonrayz Mod
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 23:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ Then please clarify the question. \$\endgroup\$
    – RubberDuck
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 23:21
  • \$\begingroup\$ @RubberDuck I don't see how it's not clear. I've only said that I want to know ways we want to have fun. I never said ways we want to have fun today, this week or this month... \$\endgroup\$
    – Peilonrayz Mod
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 23:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ @MathieuGuindon Aren't all sites by default opted in nowadays? \$\endgroup\$
    – Mast Mod
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 17:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Mast IIRC since 2016 that's been the case \$\endgroup\$
    – Peilonrayz Mod
    Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 17:48

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