Puzzles: Nominate/Feature
Hey, Gang,
Was catching up on solving some old puzzles when I came to this Hypercross:
http://www.tanga.com/crossword_puzzles/299-4-26-2008
In which Spamwise, the creator, wrote this:
â[Hey puzzle makers, when you get the notice your puzzle is going live, check your layout and spelling.]
“I do, except I didnât get to check the site yesterday (busy Saturday) until after puzzle release time. I received both âcongrats, youâve been nominatedâ and âcongrats, youâll be featuredâ within a 9 hour period⦠all on the day of publication.
âNot that I want to make it harder to get published, but thatâs fairly short notice⦠â
And then Scoutmom added:
âI received my nomination and featured at the SAME time a puzzle was being released â and it was the night that everything was late. I agree a little advance notice would be a good thing. All that being said, this was a nice little puzzle, especially once it was fixed. Thanks spamwise!â
Soâ¦
Hereâs how Tanga is currently set upâ¦
When you submit a puzzle, a thumbnail/link of it goes onto a separate page which we can access by clicking an AdMin âsubmittedâ link.
When we then click on a specific puzzle, we have only four options: Delete, Reject, Approve (which sends it to the Unfeatured section), or Nominate.
We â and by âweâ I mean Aaron, as well â cannot immediately Feature a puzzle. This is specifically in place for when Moderators come aboard.
So, if itâs, say, 5PM (or, I donât knowâ¦? 6:50) and the puzzles havenât been picked for that night (not that that EVER would happen, right?), Aaron canât just find 4 puzzles and Feature them. He has to Nominate them first, then click the ânominatedâ link and Feature them.
Which is why you often get BOTH notices right on top of each other.
I think this will be âfixedâ when Moderators start doing their thing. Also, when the mood strikes and I have the energy for it, I pick a whole weekâs worth of puzzles in one night. Like this week, for example. Sunday, two days ago, I published 60 puzzles: 10 puzzles a day â 4 featured and 6 unfeatured â from Monday through Saturday.
That took almost 3 hours, by the way. Not saying as that an excuse, but thatâs why puzzles are often NOT picked far in advance⦠and also how, for those that legitimately wonder, typos can get through sometimes.
Very enlightening, Arnott--thanks!
Got my notices today for upcoming featured and unfeatured. Going to make sure everything is hunky-dory!
Thanks again, Arnott!
Yes, I too have had enough advance notice to double check mine as well. Thanks Arnott! :)
Your welcome. I'm pretty determined to make it standard operating procedure here that puzzles get picked WAY in advance.
this is great to find out how this stuff works.
so I have a couple questions, if you don't mind...
how many (ballpark figure) puzzles are in limbo waiting for 1 of the four mentioned actions?
so if I understand you correctly for every puzzle submitted, some action will be taken and the submitter notified whether deleted or rejected, or approved or nominated, is that correct?
how long does it generally take from submission to del/rej/app/nom?
thanks again.
[5] As to your last question...
I have had a puzzle published the same or next day as submitted... And I have had a puzzle published 13 months (or so) after it was submitted...
The system is being overhauled - so we'll see what comes of it.
[5] There are roughly 1200 puzzles in the queue, give or take about 100. The variance is high because some are duplicates (people resubmitting, rather than editing), and a lot are unfinished/aborted Hypercrosses (people testing the format/software - yeah, believe me, I'd like a "submit" button for Hypercrosses, too)
Yes, for every puzzle submitted, one of those four actions will eventually be taken â the key word being âeventually.â Once Moderators are in place, this process should greatly accelerate.
Time from submission to action..? A lot of that depends on who's doing it.
Renfurdson, for example, likes to draw from the most recent stuff. There are many reasons for this:
1) They come up on the page first :)
2) More recent puzzles may be topical
3) For the most part, the newer puzzles are just better. Like most things in life, experience gains you knowledge, and almost all of the puzzlemakers here have grown and improved over time.
On the other hand, if you go back and see when the really old puzzles started showing up - mid-March, I believe - well, that was me (logged on as refurdson, at the time).
Sure, that gets you Christmas puzzles in May, as well as puzzles that might not be as good as "today's", but, well... the more Aaron took from the front of the line, the further away the back got. And I didn't want those puzzles to disappear.
Also, Iâve been Unfeaturing fairly regularly â I try to put out 5 or 6 a day â which has made a small dent in the queue. This numberâs gonna go way up, though, I think, when the Moderators start doing their thing.
But since the âoldâ batch of puzzles is from so long ago, those pages have NO Cryptopi or Hypercrosses on them. Yeah, I'm actually talking about puzzles made before we had either of those features :)
So, your best bet for instant gratification is a quality Hypercross. A Cryptopix is probably next, but - no surprise - that's what we currently have the most of, which makes sense... I think they're the easiest to do (make and solve).
>when Moderators start doing their thing.
And when might this be?
And who might these be? And are those who are aware that they are those who's?
There's one more programming thing we'd like in place before we start. As to who... watch this space :)
R-knot, you are freakin' awesome. Thanks for all that information--and for all the regularly-appearing Unfeatured puzzles! It's really nice to come to this site looking for a brand-new puzzle... and to find one! :-)
Now that I know a lot of my older puzzles have at least been looked at I feel more in the mood to try and make some new ones.... as soon as finals are over that is... Thanks Arnott!
You should save some of those Christmas ones - and do Christmas in July!
[11] Cool.
[12] Well, we've done Christmas in April and May, I see no reason not to have it in July as well.
Hey I was catching up on some old CPs and all of Arnott's are gone as well as his profile! Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself:
http://www.tanga.com/puzzles/2689-3-16-2008
http://www.tanga.com/puzzles/2688-3-31-2008
just 2 examples. Where his profile used to be:
http://www.tanga.com/users/arnott/profile
Where could he be?