Puzzling Disappointment
Back to General discussions forum
In one of the recent topics Clive and Vladimir have been discussing that only few people take efforts to try
newer problems, especially those which have the feeling of puzzle. And that it is much disappointing for problem
author (feeling I easily understand and share).
Vladimir even suggested to make "problem of the week" feature, but honestly difficult to say if on its own this would be quite appealing :)
If I dare to share my meek opinion, it is more about lacking "target audience". The place seemingly is regarded (by those who at least knew about it) mainly as a collection of simple exercises and thus most of our colleagues here are "aspiring beginner programmers", for whom these puzzles are as hard as granite.
I confess I sometimes feel it myself, though I understand these are far not (yet) top-difficulty puzzles - it's rather that I myself am not even average puzzle-solver :)))
On the other hand the site is quite simpler compared to, say, CodeForces, targeted for competitive programmers and I suspect not very appealing to this category of people (though their puzzles are sometimes more special).
So it is mainly the question of attracting proper people. Regretfully I'm not great advertiser myself and what is worse it is difficult to find a good place to make appropriate posts targeted for puzzle-lovers specifically.
If you have any ideas, feel free to share. Or if you have suitable audience as friends in your social network accounts, just notify them from time to time about new puzzles (especially created by you). But it is not a secret many programmers are somewhat introvert so social network way is not for everyone :)
What I have tried over the course of the site's existence:
- keeping updates at facebook / linkedin - difficult to say how much it worked, though FB page at least enjoyed certain number of followers
- using google ads - this seems to be the most useless idea due to very niche target audience - and on the other hand significant amount of various services in this niche
- using link in forum messages footer - this is not something allowed with any forum, but worked to some extent with local java forum I frequented years ago
- posting at reddit - it worked sometimes, when appropriate topic and lucky time chosen, but about appropriate topic it is really difficult (when doing the same at local, somewhat similar site, "habr", I was quickly banned due to them being much eager to get money for anything which may look like advertising).
The ways yet to be tried (but I haven't built enough courage yet) may include working on some online course or book, utilizing problems from site - but that is not specifically bound to puzzles.
I agree with most of what Rodion has said. I accept that the majority of people using the site are not part of the target audience for these puzzles. However, I would expect that at least 200 people who use the site are capable of making a good attempt at most of them.
I suspect that a large part of the problem is that a puzzle with very few solvers is going to come across as hard because of the small number of solvers. When (hopefully) a few others add their solutions this is likely to attract more people to the problem. I certainly think that a fair number of the problems that I solved in working my way through the list were comparable in difficulty with many of the new ones.
The site itself is likely to result in people working their way through the problems in order of decreasing number of solvers. This is exactly what I did so I expect it is a fairly common approach. I am hopeful that others will work their way through the problems to the point where they too can enjoy the harder puzzles that are appearing.