It has been a little over 4 months since our team of moderators started reviewing puzzles, choosing whether to nominate them as featured puzzles, publish them as unfeatured puzzles, or reject them (usually with feedback for improvement and resubmission). Lately, however, there appears to have been a decline in the participation with the unfeatured puzzles, as well as in the volume of puzzles being submitted. That, coupled with some of the less-than-positive opinions that have been recently expressed by a number of puzzle submitters, has prompted us to open this up for a broader and more open discussion. Rather than having people complaining privately amongst themselves, we moderators believe it would benefit everyone involved if the issues were put on the table and hashed out.

Therefore, we would like to open up this discussion thread for the puzzle submitters to step forward and bring up whatever issues they have with the current puzzle moderation and publishing process. This is intended to elicit constructive criticism and supportive suggestions, much as we try to provide back to you on your puzzle submissions.

This is NOT intended to be a puzzle-bashing, where you complain about other people’s puzzles that were published, errors, who is or isn’t getting featured, etc. I would suggest that you focus on your own puzzles that have been submitted, and speak to your own personal experiences with the puzzle moderation system, good or bad. We’d like to know what’s working for you, as well as what isn’t.

If you DO have specific feedback regarding a puzzle that you submitted, feel free to include a link to it with your post, as well as detailed information on what you think should have been done differently (e.g. published as hard instead of easy, published as Cryptopix instead of OWW, nominated instead of unfeatured, changes that should/should not have been done, etc.)… and WHY. Or if you have a specific comment/gripe about how puzzles are handled (e.g. number of unfeatured puzzles per day, available “responses” for a puzzle, number of points received based on solves, ability to search the puzzle archives, etc.)… feel free to voice that here, as well.

Please be up front and honest with your feedback, but also kind. Again, be reminded of the respectful and supportive feedback that you prefer to see as a response to your submitted puzzles. As moderators and puzzle submitters, we all have a common goal: to have the best puzzles published. We need to be communicating and collaborating on this, so we can all get the most enjoyment out of doing puzzles here on Tanga!