Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
We don't bite newbies here... much
 
PerlMonks  

Contest Ideas Quest

by vroom (His Eminence)
on Jun 05, 2000 at 19:57 UTC ( [id://16432]=quest: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??
Quest starts at:Jun 05, 2000 at 20:10 UTC
Quest ends at:Jun 12, 2000 at 20:10 UTC

This quest has ended

Your mission: come up with contest ideas that you think sound interesting. (Going into high school english teacher mode) The 5 things you need for a first rate contest proposal are:
  • What is the contest?
  • How will entries be submitted?
  • How will the entries be scored?
  • Who will score the entries?
  • When/will submissions be viewable by everyone?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Best MonkBot
by swiftone (Curate) on Jun 06, 2000 at 00:40 UTC
    What is the contest?
    Each entry will run a bot in the Perlmonks Chatterbox. The goal is to provide the best bot at the following services:
    • Provide Wall-ism on demand.
    • Provide Haiku on demand
    • Answer any Perl FAQ, PerlMonks FAQ, or near-FAQ with a reference
    • Not speak up if there is nothing useful to say (random haiku or sayings every now and then when quiet is fine).
    • As a fun option, it can perhaps be told to "chatter" or "converse" and it can enter Eliza-like (or whatever), and will cease when told to "Shut-Up", "Be Quiet" or "Be Silent"
    Special Note: To prevent horrible crimes, all MonkBots should follow these rules:
    • They should use the XML interface vroom supplied at
      • http://perlmonks.org/index.pl?node=chatterbox+xml+ticker displays all current public messages
      • http://perlmonks.org/index.pl?node=private+messages+xml+ticker
      • http://perlmonks.org/index.pl?node=other+users+xml+ticker
    • They should not be in the chatterbox for most testing (they can get info from the above slots, and "speak" to STDOUT for most testing.
    • If and when "real" testing is necessary, the bots should either be usernames with "bot" at end, or speak "(bot)" in each post.
    Judges will be fully justified to penalize you when scoring comes if you practiced bad manners during testing. Entries may make use of any modules, but note that tempermental, complex, or platform specific modules may hurt you when it comes to judging your code

    How will entries be submitted?
    On a specified date, all Monkbots will be run for a 24 hour period. THe next day the bots code can be posted, and judged over the next 24 hours.

    How will the entries be scored?
    Judging should be based on achievement of listed goals, how pleasant the bot is to be around (everyone hates a loudmouth or inaccurate bot), and the elegance of the code. (and of course, adherance to good manners during testing)

    Who will score the entries?
    Judging will be done by any and all Perlmonks who wish to vote.

    When/will submissions be viewable by everyone?
    Following the Demonstration date.

      I like this idea a lot, I have one small criticism. Not all monks have access to a machine connected 24/7 to the internet, of those that do, how many are allowed to run background processes for 24 hours straight.

      Alright I admit it, this is a post about me, I don't have access to these. :-(

      Nuance

        I think helpful fellow monks with constant connections might be glad to host another's bot. In particular, if you were to write a bot, Nuance, I'd be glad to leave it running for you on either of my machines for the duration of the contest. I don't know how many monks I could do this for but probably lots of help could be enlisted if there was need.

        My concern for the contest is the number of submissions. Maybe an addendum (sp?) could be made to only accept 16 (or some reasonable 2^n || 2^n-1 threshold) entries so that the chatterbox isn't oversaturated and worthlessly cluttered/unusable for the duration of the contest. If somebody asks some FAQ question which clearly is the point of the contest, all the bots are gonna respond and that can be a lot if lots of bots are spouting. Sounds like fun though. TTFN & Shalom.

        -PipTigger

        A very good point, but one to which I have no good answer. Selecting any period of time hurts people on some section of the globe. Certainly running for all 24 hours wouldn't be REQUIRED, but it'd hurt your chances not to be seen by everyone. Anyone want to donate a server connection?
RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by Rydor (Scribe) on Jun 06, 2000 at 23:14 UTC
    What is the contest?
    A game called spoons(i posted the idea as a response in my original sugestion). The normal version works with 5 rows of 1,3,5,7,9 spoons, and each player takes as many spoons as he wishes from one row at a time. The loser is he who take the last spoon. 1st and 2nd players are chosen randomly. As this game is actually a forced win with only 5 rows, I now opt for n > 100 rows, with the number of spoons increasing in odd numbers (2n-1) per row. Each entry is really a subroutine, and the subroutine is passed 2 arrayrefs, 1 with n elements, with the number of spoons in a row such as an array of (1,0,0,1,3,5,2,3) if there are 8 rows, with index 0 being the top of the triangulars shaped game, and 7 being the bottom. the other arrayref has the elements (n,m) where n=number of spoons last taken by opponent, and m=from what row the opponent took the spoon. The subroutine returns an array containing how many spoons it took, and from what row. If the move was impossible, than the subroutine is disqualified(and to prevent slaves being disqualified to masters, all games with that subroutine are null and void). all moves must occur within less than 20 minutes.

    How will entries be submitted?
    They will be emailed to a specific email address, with a _start_ and an _end_ block around the script.

    How will the entries be scored?
    They will be played against eachother in a script that plays the subroutines against eachother some number of times (let's say 10? maybe another). The winning script at the end of each match, gets 1 point. The full winner wil have the most points, in the case of a tie, the tied scripts will play in a best 5 out of 9 play off.

    <STRON

      heh. cut me off a little. to continue:

      Who will score?
      I dunno. someone with linux installed, and a relatively good machine, preferably vroom, or someother high up. he doesn't have to really judge, just start a script to compete the subroutines.

      when will submissions be viewed
      the contest will last some predetermined time, such as 1 week, 2, or a month(it may be difficult). as soon as it is done, no more entries willbe accepted, and the entrants will be posted. the scoring will take place the next day or over the course of a few days (depending on the amount of scripts, and the length each takes).

      the winning subroutine gets mega XP!!!!!

RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by ivory (Pilgrim) on Jun 07, 2000 at 02:41 UTC
    Okay....admittedly this might sound a little strange, so let me explain where I am coming from on this contest idea. There are lots of people here with different levels of experiance with perl and programming in general. While I understand that any contest is going to test proficiency with perl to a point, I'd like to see a contest where even beginners can compete... What is the contest: It's sort of like a camp game where you write a bit of a story and pass it on to the next person...they get to read only what you wrote, and then they add their bit. At the end you sometimes get really weird stuff, but other times you get neat little stories :) Everyone who wants to participate will be split into teams. Each team must have members with varied experience levels :) Then, basically we will start with a mission to produce code to do something (this will have to be a fairly involved process). Then each person will have a chance to add two lines of code (there will be specific rules such as only one operation allowed per line, or something) and no comments! The next person will know what we are trying to do, but will only get to see the last three lines of the program. The program will keep being passed back and forth among the team until the team thinks they're finished...then whichever team has a working program wins :) So...what do you all think? It will take some work to set up, and of course everyone will be on the honor system, but I think it'll be fun :) --Ivory
      I wanted to add something...we could also pass around a list of variables that have been creatived...good time to use descriptive names :)
RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by ar0n (Priest) on Jun 08, 2000 at 20:08 UTC
    How about a contest where people get an existing moderately- to large-sized script
    and try to make it as short as possible.
    Say, if I get script which is 300 lines long and am able to reduce that
    down to 50 (not very likely ;), I get let's say 25 points (300-50/10).

    It's a little a sketchy and perhaps vague too, but I think you'll
    get it.
    Just my .02 Euro
      I like this idea. Even more than my own. I feel that it would be good practice for people since they could shorten the code in many different ways. I also like it because the scoring system is not based on the personal opinion of the moderators, rather it is based on the fact of how many lines you made it to be. Now, if you could elaborate on your idea, like how the code will be managed and when it will occur, I think we have a winner, at least in my book. Heh.

      -- zdog (Zenon Zabinski)
         Go Bells!!

        Well then... I guess the best way to tackle this is, someone who enters the contest gets a script to work on -- I'm not sure how we should do this, to each a different script or all the same, ideas? -- and when done, mails the new code some authorative figure (whom we shall name The CareTaker -- The Manager sounds too corporate ;). I guess this could be Vroom. When reviewed, the code should be posted up on a node for all to comment on.

      I like that idea. It would be a good training for newbies finding out shortcuts that are typical Perl. Of course the script shouldn't be shortened just by removing all unnessecary white-space :-)
RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by ivey (Beadle) on Jun 06, 2000 at 23:10 UTC
    W: To see which Monk can develop the most useful (1..3) liner

    H: Either by following up to a contest node, or via email to a maintainer.

    H: Elegance: 30%, usefulness: 70%

    W: A team of Monks with XP over $somenum selected by PM staff

    W: At time of submission (followup) or at time of final decision (email)

RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by perlcgi (Hermit) on Jun 05, 2000 at 23:38 UTC
    What is the contest?
    Perlmonk of the week. What perlmonk, by the quality and quantity of their posts, by their helpful and courteous activity in the chatterbox contributes the most in any week.
    How will entries be submitted?
    Anyone who contributes responses to questions in any week
    How will the entries be scored?
    Only peer Voting XP counts - not XP for actually voting or votes obtained from peers for submitting questions.
    Who will score the entries?
    The Perlmonks community
    When/will submissions be viewable by everyone? As per normal perlmonks activity
    In the event of a tie, vroom can adjudicate by examining the chatterbox log, and score by examining chatterbox contributions.
JAPH Generator
by swiftone (Curate) on Jun 06, 2000 at 00:10 UTC
    What is the Contest?
    Entires will generate obfuscated perl code that prints:
    Just Another Perl Hacker\n
    generated code should not surpass 5k. Generated code should not be the same every time (this can be random, or based on input, see below)
    Entries can optionally accept any arguments, and can do with them as they wish. Options cannot be mandatory. Entries cannot use any modules.

    How will entries be submitted?
    Entries can all be emailed to one person who will not participate (I'll volunteer if we need one, I can't obfuscate well). That person will post each submission for judging when entry time has expired (Vroom will need to ensure actual author's get due credit and XP) Each entry should be accompanied by the authors PM username, and three sample runs, one of which must be without command-line options. Alternatively, Vroom can supply us with a private section to post code in that will become public at a certain time.

    How will the entries be scored?
    Community voting after posting, with a request (but not demand) that each person vote no more than 3 times. Scores should be based on how obfuscated the final code is, and how elegant the original script is. Voting period lasts for 1 week from initial posting. Votes can be acquired after that, but do not count for the "contest".

    Who will score the entries?
    Someone (who can see all the reps) merely needs to note the top-ranked persons. Vroom can award XP and titles to those people as appropriate.

    When will submissions be viewable by everyone?
    At beginning of voting date.
    If you want hard dates, I propose that all entries be submitted by 12 noon GMT -0000 June 19. Voting begins the next day and lasts 1 week.

RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by Voices (Initiate) on Jun 07, 2000 at 02:06 UTC
    What is the contest?
    The contest is to write the most helpful new tutorial on any aspect of Perl programming.

    How will entries be submitted?
    Entries should be submitted by email because some may be quite long.

    How will entries be scored?
    Scoring will be based on the depth of the tutorial and how easy it is to understand.

    Who will score the entries?
    All registered users will be able to vote on which tutorial is the best, in their opinion.

    When will submissions be viewable by everyone?
    There will be a deadline for submitting entries. After this deadline, those received will be viewable for voting.

RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by buzzcutbuddha (Chaplain) on Jun 06, 2000 at 17:31 UTC
    I definately think that any of the contests, we should have the ability to vote on 3 categories:
    • Elegance/Flair/Obfuscation
    • Speed
    • Accuracy
    with say a sliding scale of how well they did in each category from +5 to 0 (or -5 if you really
    to crush their contribution) so we can break them down by the different scoring categories.
RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by Miles (Sexton) on Jun 06, 2000 at 19:00 UTC
    What is the contest?

    A weekly or biweekly game, to be played by the submitted programs. These games could be suggested and voted upon by any interested party.

    How will entries be submitted?

    Entries can be mailed to a single person, or an entry handling script, or can be posted to a non-publically viewable node.

    How will the entries be scored?

    Entrants get a number of XP based on the number of opponents defeated, with bonus XP for making it to the semi-finals, finals, or winning.

    Who will score the entries?

    Since this is a fairly straightforward method of calculating a winner, it could be automated with a game-running script.

    When/will submissions be viewable by everyone?

    The submissions will be viewable by everyone the day after the deadline for entry, allowing competitors to discuss various strategies, and predict the winners before the resolution of the game.

RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by barZion (Beadle) on Jun 07, 2000 at 00:05 UTC
    <html> What is the contest?
    How about a script to unscramble the daily Jumble in the newspaper?
    The program would take the letters as entered from <STDIN>, try various orderings until a word is formed, and print the result.
    How will entries be submitted?
    Um, through a node like this one?
    How will the entries be scored?
    some possible criteria are: how tight the code is the "elegance" of the solution the readability of the code
    Who will score the entries?
    higher level monks
    When/will submissions be viewable by everyone?
    When the winner is chosen</html>
      This sounds like a great constest!
RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by BigJoe (Curate) on Jun 06, 2000 at 04:14 UTC
    I like the previous comments but... I can't do code obfuscation. I think it is ver cool that people can do that with code.

    I would rather see a problem being solved. There are so many ways to solve the same problem so it very interesting to see how different people come up with it.

    I think the Contest should be a problem solving program. No real ideas for that right now.(ex. a Perl Script for a web browser but for an intranet to keep track of all network printers and Queue or set up a perl script to make a history of the nodes on Perl monks so that the numbers can be recycled but yet keep the information for later use and leave like home nodes and such.)

    How to submit I would set it up so a new link in the right area to submit/edit your answer. The nodes should be hidden until the contest end date. At which time all users can't change their answers. Then everyone can vote for like 2 days on the answers and they get like one vote for it.

    Scores would be tabulated by the number of votes one gets.

    Who will score them? All monks (of good standing)

    UPDATE: I really like Rydor's idea about scripts playing games against each other in this node.
Contest Ideas Quest
by Bourgeois_Rage (Beadle) on Jun 08, 2000 at 22:30 UTC
    What is the Contest?
    Speed Coding Contest. A time will be set when the problem will be presented. The problem can be defined by Vroom or somebody that will not participate. It should be some kind of strange unusual task. The first to get a working program submitted wins. The method does not matter. It will be interesting to see how many different responses we get.
    How will entries be submitted?
    Users will place there code in response to the Contest post.
    How will the entries be scored?
    First program that works without errors or warnings wins. Must use Strict and -w.
    Who will score the entries?
    Vroom or whoever starts the idea for the contest.
    When/will submissions be viewable by everyone?
    When they are submitted. The first working one wins, so no one can cheat because if they steal code, it's too late anyway.
      Those of us who thinks best during day and live on the other side of the globe, might suffer from a contest starting US time. Maybe we could push a button and have the problem mailed to us. The time taken will then be calculated from the button-push to the posting time.
      ... and monks must promise not to forward the mail to someone else. But that would be quite unmonkish, wouldn't it ...

      /brother t0mas
        I completely understand your concern. My thought was that multiple contest could take place all at different times of the day, for the different users.
        I do like your idea about having the push button that calculates time, but then when people submit their solution they will have to be emailed or something.
        We can't have the other monks having a sneak peak at the code before they hit the button.
        -Rage

        Back With Another of Those Block Rockin' Beats
!POTM
by turnstep (Parson) on Jun 06, 2000 at 23:20 UTC

    Forgive the non-Q&A structure of this post. All of the "required five" are in here, I promise! :)

    The contest: solving a particular problem using perl. The problems should be fairly simple, as we are focusing on more of a "perl" rather than a "programming" skill contest (like the POTM). Each week (hopefully, actual time may end up being a month, knowing how everyone else (even vroom) has other things to do in life) a new contest will be announced by the Contest Master, who is the monk who won the previous contest. It is their responsibility to run the contest. They also have to come up with the contest, but can solicit (private) ideas from others. I've got dozens in mind! :)

    Once the contest has begun, a private "write-only" page is set which announces the contest, and allows people to post their answer. The only thing visible on the page is the question and your answer(s). The Contest Master, of course, can not only see all the posts, but can delete them as well (in case of duplication, blank nodes, or irrelevant posts). The Contest Master (hereafter called CM, as my fingers are lazy) should also test each post to make sure that it runs, but is under no obligation to do so - it would merely be nice to do so if they can, and msg the person about their problem. Each person can edit their own node and change their entry as often as they like until the contest ends. At the end of the contest, the CM is given a small amount of time to finish editing/testing the entries. Once they are done, the page is displayed for everyone to see, and each person may vote on all the entries except for their own (voting detailed below). After a specified time, the votes are added up, a winner for each category is announced, XP is awarded, and the new CM/winner is assigned, who has a week to come up with a new contest.

    (Whew!) About the contest: as I mentioned in a previous node, there will be 4 different categories:

    • Most Elegant (easiest to read, nicely formatted, "cleanest" use of perl, etc.)
    • Most Obfuscated.
    • Most Terse (i.e. fewest characters/lines)
    • Most Efficient (which one does the task at hand the quickest)

    The first two are subjective, the bottom two are objective. The CM shall be responsible for measuring the last two (wc and Benchmark, natch), and the first two shall be voted upon by the Monk masses. How? Well, since obfuscation and elegance should be extremely easy to distinguish, there is no need to discriminate - just have each person get two votes, which they use to mark what they think are the Most Elegant and the Most Obfuscated. Or they could use both votes for two elegance answers, etc. I don't think that matters too much.

    Once the voting period is over, the CM tallies the votes (and she/he should be the *only* one allowed to see the counts, unlike today's voting system). The highest number of votes in each category wins. Tiebreakers of the first three categories are determined by a efficiency runoff, and Efficiency ties are determined by terseness. Final authority on all ties shall lie with the CM.

    Depending on the number of entries, first, second, and third place will be awarded in each category. Entries that place in more than one category (i.e. elegance *and* efficiency) gain bonus XP for their creator. The overall winner is determined by adding up the results of all their entries as follows:

    • First place: 3 foobars
    • Second place: 2 foobars
    • Third place: 1 foobar
    • Same program placing in 2 or more categories: 2 foobars

    The one with the most foobars wins. Ties are solved by the method explained above (efficiency or terseness)

    Once the final judging is done, the page is revealed, with all entries shown, as well as the top three marked. Showing total votes is probably not a good idea: why embarrass anyone who gets 1 vote compared to 120 for the third place? The page becomes a "normal" page at this point, as people reply (and discuss, and argue) about the entries.

    Posting answers elsewhere on the site results in a -100 XP penalty and an immediate disqualification. AM's get their IP banned from the site (how else can you punish them?) Perhaps have the contest only visible to logged in users? Hard to say if these measures will be needed until we try, but I'm being thorough.

    The only question is, should each person be allowed four entries? Two? Only one? Each will have to be a separate post, assuming that all of this will be done by using the existing perlmonks engine. This could be written as an external cgi script somewhere, but then there is no access to the perlmonk user data, so perlmonks code it is! :)

    Question/comments welcome.

PM Enhancement Quest
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jun 12, 2000 at 19:03 UTC
    It's easy to make suggestions (especially to vroom, as he's efficient and effective), but it's better to provide code. Got an idea for a nodelet or a superdoc you'd like to see as a PM feature? Grab the Everything code (to see how to do it) and hack one up!
    • Make a new feature or improve an existing part of the monastery. (vroom, would you allow certain monks to have a look at the code behind certain nodes?)
    • Entries should be posted publicly, or sent directly to vroom if he wants to keep certain things private for the time being.
    • Entries will be scored on usefulness, code completeness and elegance, and value to fellow monks.
    • Voting will be open to anyone.
    • Submissions will be available -- at least by description, if not actual code -- when the code is completed.
    • .
(zdog) RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by zdog (Priest) on Jun 06, 2000 at 07:48 UTC
    What is the contest?
    Monks should be given some kind of problem to solve with Perl. A quest can be created where monks come up with ideas for a problem and rules for it. The problems are voted on and the top vote getting problem after a certain date is used. Once a problem is selected it should be displayed on the Node Home Page.

    How will entries be submitted and when will they be viewable to everyone?
    A person will volunteer to run the contest. The scripts will be e-mailed to that person by a certain date. The next day, the person will post all the scripts on a specified page.

    How will the entries be scored and by whom?
    On the page where the scripts are posted, Monks that did not participate(otherwise people would only vote for their own) will vote on the scripts. They will vote for a first place, a second place, and a third place. The one voted first will get 3 votes, second - 2 votes, and third - one vote. The votes should be based on program correctness, speed, how well the problem is solved, extras that elaborate on the problem, etc.

    -- zdog (Zenon Zabinski)
       Go Bells!!

PM Reorganization Contest
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jun 12, 2000 at 18:58 UTC
    We have a lot of nodelets, sections, and links, and a lot of places to go for information. Can the monastery be organized a little better? (Maybe, maybe not.) Here's the quest:
    • Come up with the best scheme for categorizing all of the information in the monastery. How can it be presented to make sense to new monks and still allow existing monks access to what they need?
    • Post entries as replies to the contest.
    • Entries will be judged on the basis of workabililty and completeness.
    • High-level monks (the top five?) will score the entries.
    • Submissions will be viewable as soon as they are posted. No secrets here.
RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by JanneVee (Friar) on Jun 07, 2000 at 22:08 UTC
    Actually i'm for along POTM kind of idea.
    • What is the contest?
      Solve an AI problem with Perl as fast as possible. Also as efficiently as possible.
    • How will entries be submitted?
      Entries submitted to each and everyones homenodes.
    • How will the entries be scored?
      Scoring Performance and Functionality(like errorhandling).
    • Who will score the entries?
      A program.
    • When/will submissions be viewable by everyone?
      After the contest.
      I'd definately be more interested in competing with code :-) All the posts along these lines seem to have been a bit vague, so here are some more specific ideas:

      W: Write a perl script to solve a simple 10x10 maze. The maze is generated by a perl module, and the script is only allowed to call functions defined there and the standard perl functions. Access to the data structures from the maze module are strictly forbidden! (The script may only be allowed to 'look' north, south, east or west, to see if there's a wall or not, and 'move' in a direction). The script should travel from an entrance to the center of the maze and out to an exit (different from the entrance)
      H: Submitted to homenodes
      S: The script that traverses a random selection of mazes in the least number of steps wins
      W: The maze module
      W: After the contest

      And some more ideas along a similar vein:

      • Solve a 5x5 sliding block puzzle, only using the four squares around the empty square. (Once again, scored by total moves over a random selection of boards)
      • Play the game 'black box' against another perl script. This gives you a number of atoms in a box. The script has to work out where they are by shooting rays into the box. If a ray hits an atom dead on, the ray is absorbed. If a ray passes one square away from an atom, it is deflected 90 degrees away from the atom (and again, if it meets a new atom on its travels). Each script can see the results of the other, and the winner is the one that guesses the correct position of the atoms first, so the competition can have a knockout format ;-)

      Hmm, dried up, I have. There are plenty more ideas in this area, though. Knockout competitions in particular would be fun. Prizes could be XP, and maybe an 'awards cabinet' section on the home node (because then you could add runners-up and booby prizes such as 'most obfuscated code', 'shortest correct solution', 'most blatent cheat', 'most compiler warnings' and so forth :-)

      Andrew.

RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by Ozymandias (Hermit) on Jun 06, 2000 at 00:20 UTC
    What is the contest?
    Longest "Hello World" Program; whoever can create the longest, bug-free script to print "Hello World" ten times and exit is the winner.

    How will entries be submitted?
    All code must be posted for peer review as a reply to the contest node. ONLY contest submissions will be allowed as first level-replies.

    How will the entries be scored?
    1 point for every line of executable code. Comments and whitespace won't help you! +10 bonus points for style (formatting of code/output, interesting routines, etc.)

    How will the entries be scored?
    Code length, of course. "Style" bonus points determined by peer review, based on either Rep. or replies.

    Who will score the entries?
    The community, or one individual selected by vroom.

    When/will submissions be viewable by everyone?
    Of course, the submissions will be viewable from start to finish.

    - Ozymandias

      Maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me that one could submit any long perl script, provided that it also printed Hello World a few times... I think there need to be more rules...I mean, you could write a million line program that had one variable that you manually added 1 (one) to at each line, then printed "hello world". Seems weird. --Ivory
        Mmmm. Good point. Perhaps it should be something like "each line must do something towards the goal of printing the output; but that would get really difficult. Scoring would have to become a matter of popular vote, and that has too much chance of simply becoming a popularity contest.

        The reason I like the idea of a "longest script" contest is that it's a challenge. We're all very used to squeezing code down to the minimum; it shows in our penchant for one-liners, our preference for haiku. Every contest I see, one of the criteria is "shortest code" or "most elegent code" - which amounts to the same thing.

        That's normally a good thing. It helps us write better code. I just thought that, for once, vying to create the LONGEST script would be a good change of pace.

        - Ozymandias

      Ya, I agree with ivory. The truly good Perl programmers work to make their code as short, as readable, and as fast as possible. This idea of the longest Perl program to print Hello World needs to be edited a bit.

      -- zdog (Zenon Zabinski)
         Go Bells!!

Home node contest
by ergowolf (Monk) on Jun 09, 2000 at 17:22 UTC
    What is the contest? I think a good contest would be rating everyone's home node. This would encourage everyone to create more creative home nodes.
    How will entries be submitted? They already are. :)
    How will the entries be scored? The perlmonks will rate each other's home nodes each person gets one vote.
    Who will score the entries?
    We will put a voting booth for all nodes. It would be a write in ballet that calculates
    When/will submissions be viewable by everyone? Everyone will be able to view the votes on a graph or bar chart on a separate page.
    Ergowolf Does code make a sound if no one is there to type it?
RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by Ovid (Cardinal) on Jun 10, 2000 at 03:04 UTC
    Update: The scene below is the final battle scene from the movie "Aliens." Forgot to mention that. :(

    I had an odd post on Meditations when it struck me (and another Monk suggested) that this would make a great contest.


    Synopsis: Ripley, the heroine, is trying to protect the little girl Newt by strapping on a Heavy Loader and attacking:
    if ($newt =~ /running from alien queen/i) { RIPLEY: { use HEAVYLOADER; kill $alienqueen || undef $newt; open (AIRLOCK, ">>hacknedstoryidea.dat") || last RIPLEY; } }

    The contest: Write a short-story or rewrite a favorite scene from a movie in Perl.

    Submission: My first thought is to have everyone go to Amazon.com and enter their submission as a user review to a book about a Micro$oft product and then post the link here. Then I realized it would be easier to just post submissions here to a contest node.

    Scoring:

    • Do you like the story? +/- 10 points by each person voting.
    • Do you understand the story? +/- 10 points by each person voting.
    • Minus 5 percent of grand total for each syntax error.
    • Plus 10 percent of grand total if the program compiles.
    • Plus 20 percent of grand total if it actually does something useful (We might want to put a minimum program size for this one).
    Who will score:All Monks who are allowed to vote at the time the contest begins.

    When will submissions be viewable: When a submission deadline passes.

RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by barndoor (Pilgrim) on Jun 08, 2000 at 17:30 UTC
    How about a competition to find the longest (and most useful) regex which is a palindrome. (i.e. same read backwards as forwards). e.g. (stupid example) s/abc/cba/s It would be easy to submit, the winner would be chosen by the members of the monastry voting for their favourites. Entries would be visible to everyone. Hopefully early entries would get the creative juices flowing in others.
      Cant really see this one taking off.... Its too complicated, and most people cant be bothered to search for palindromic regex's.
Most creative home node.
by Adam (Vicar) on Jun 11, 2000 at 04:51 UTC
    What is the contest?
     Most creative home node.
    How will entries be submitted?
     Make your homenode cool.
    If we want to limit participation to only them that want to participate, then we'll need some mechanism to alert everyone that their homenode is in.
    How will the entries be scored?
     I have thought of two ways, one is to use the current voting mechanism, but don't use the normal node votes. Each PerlMonk's member gets a certain number of votes for this contest... say 5. And they vote for their favorite nodes. Also, don't show the counts or give xp or anything. Just vote. The second is that people could somehow rank each home node on a scale of 1 to 5 (or to 10 or whatever) Anyway, the homenode with the highest rank wins.
    Who will score the entries?
     All the perlmonk's members will be aloud to participate in the scoring.
    When/will submissions be viewable by everyone?
     The day that entries will be scored will be anounced, participating homenodes should not be changed. (or risk forfeiture(sp?)) That day everyone will peruse the participating homenodes and vote and the next day the winner will be posted on the gates and given some kind of award. Maybe first place through fifth will get some XP or something.
      How do you propose to handle the issue of people that are level 5 and above can insert pictures, and the rest can't? And are there any other formatting rules that are level sensitive?
        I was thinking about that. But I have seen some cool home nodes that didn't have pictures (admitedly not many though) Maybe we could run two parallel contests for those people below level five and those above.
RE: Contest Ideas Quest
by turnstep (Parson) on Jun 13, 2000 at 05:40 UTC

    Is it me, or are missing the results of this quest? (Of course, I think my idea was not voted high enough, but everyone thinks that of theirs, I'm sure :)

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others making s'mores by the fire in the courtyard of the Monastery: (4)
As of 2025-02-18 15:36 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found