Puzzle Collections

There are two collections of puzzles:

• User listed Puzzles
• Collected Puzzles

Users have the opportunity of listing their puzzles for the public. When they do so, they are told that the puzzle might be brought into the permanent collection. They are also prompted to list a category and language of the puzzle.

People don't have to list the puzzles for the public. They can send the URL of any puzzle via email to their friends, and their friends can come and see the puzzle. Ideally, only puzzles of general interest would be listed, and people would keep lists of class mates, and lists of things in their room to themselves or to their friends. It doesn't always work that way.

This User Listed collection is open for everyone to look through. The puzzles are only available until they time out or until they are removed from the index by the owner or an administrator.

While they are listed, other people can vote on the puzzles either giving it a recommendation or an "un"recommendation. This provides notice to other users that a particular puzzle may be interesting or should be avoided. There is some basic checks to avoid one person stuffing the ballot box, but that wouldn't be a challange for someone determined to do so.

Periodically, there are administrators who keep an eye on the public puzzles, and if there is anything too anonying, the puzzle listing is removed. Note that this doesn't remove the puzzle. Puzzle listing get deleted because of vocabulary, horrible spelling, mindless content, many negative votes, and other reasons that administrator believes that nobody else would really care about the puzzle.

Puzzles only stay on the web site for two to three months, and as they time out, they are also pulled from the listing of user listed puzzles.

While the administrators are looking for inappropriate puzzles, we sometimes see puzzles that look like they have lasting value. These are pulled into the Collected Puzzles collection. So these puzzles are hopefully more consistant in being useful. There is still a voting process that goes on, and if the vote gets too lopsided we will remove a puzzle from this collection. Although I still wonder about those puzzles with 15 negative votes and 20 positive votes. People are seeing very different things.

So if you use the collections, make sure to vote on the puzzles you like and don't like, as those votes influence the administrators about the life of the puzzle listing.