Wiki talk:Wiki

RFC - The Scope of this Wiki

What is the scope of Puzzles Wiki?

Please express an opinion on these options below! A bolded Support, Oppose, or Neutral should be appended before writing further reasoning or discussion.

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Soni (talk) 03:31, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Option 1 : Hunt Puzzles and similar only

This option limit our primary scope to Puzzle Hunts and Hunt puzzles. Some future delineation may be required to decide where exactly this line falls, but by and large, the primary scope of the wiki would be Hunt Puzzles.

• Support, but with deliberately wide definition of 'Hunt' - I think having limited scope is preferred for getting focused content drafted and added to the wiki. And I think the fundamental thing that makes "Hunts" interesting to this community is essentially "anything with meta puzzle(s)". Most Escape Rooms, Rally-yes, Treasure Hunts, etc are differentiated in that they are just sequential unlocks and essentially just a race to completion without a meta puzzle. However, I do also believe that there is probably scope for notable stand-alone puzzles if they have a "mini-hunt" like progression within themselves. - CoreyPlover (talk) 04:00, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

• Support - I think, especially in the wiki's youth, that having a focused subject matter and working to flesh out that content is more important than being inclusive of all puzzle types. I believe we should aim to make this wiki the de-facto place for puzzlehunt information, and once that goal is realized, broadening the scope of the wiki. Mononoko (talk) 03:55, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support (With Exceptions) - While I think the primary purpose of this wiki is to collect hunt puzzles/solutions/elements, there definitely should be room for information about puzzlehunt-adjacent topics. However, since we 1) Can't do detailed info on Escape Rooms without attending, nor should we (This falls under the same "No Details" rule as Puzzle Boat/P&A), and 2) Have better resources at hand for detailing ARGs (like Game Detectives Wiki), I don't see a point to handling these other puzzle-y things in the same way that we handle hunt puzzles. I think there is definitely merit to having pages dedicated to these things, but as broader concepts. Escape rooms should still have a page, due to there being multiple puzzle hunts with puzzles that are presented as Escape Rooms, with links to other resources that better deal with the IRL aspect of them. ARGs could be listed, but due to their variability in puzzle content probably shouldn't have the same kind of attention as hunts do. Treasure Hunts...well, those are variable. Some treasure hunts are actually puzzle hunts, and those should be case-by case. Rallyes also have some outside resources that we'd be better off pointing towards, but having a page on Rallyes is still important, due to the presence of (once again), at least one Hunt Puzzles that is also a Rallye. In my opinion, we're a wiki that does two things: 1) Collects information about Puzzle Hunts and their puzzles, and 2) Acts as a resource to teach people about puzzling as a whole, which often overlaps with these adjacencies. Leveloneknob (talk) 04:03, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

• Support per Mononoko and Leveloneknob. It need not be a decision for the forever, but I would like a restricting of scope that focuses on both Puzzle Hunt and Hunt style puzzles. I agree with L1K on the "General concept of what an escape room etc is" but not necessarily specific escape roooms. Otherwise we need to dilineate accordingly to decide which is "Hunt puzzle". Soni (talk) 06:16, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

• Neutral I think while I agree with the general tenor of this option, I think that for historical purposes it would be good to be relatively lenient on the definition of a puzzle hunt, especially for earlier hunts when the structure was somewhat less well-defined. I don't believe that a meta structure is strictly required for a puzzle hunt; for instance, earlier CiSRA hunts had no meta. Rather, the content of the puzzles probably matters somewhat, but this is not actually that easy to formalize. I describe what I believe to be a reasonable extent for our current purposes of the wiki in the later options (mainly, include treasure hunts, which should cover most of puzzle hunt forebears). --phenomist (talk) 09:54, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Option 2 : Inclusion of Escape Rooms

Hunt puzzles, plus Escape Rooms and similar.

• Oppose per L1K's comment above, unless it is Escape Rooms or List of Escape Rooms by Location Soni (talk) 06:16, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Option 3 : Inclusion of Rally-yes

Hunt puzzles, plus Rally-yes and similar.

• Oppose per L1K's comment above, unless it is Rally-ye or List of Rally-yes. Soni (talk) 06:16, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Option 4 : Treasure Hunts and ARGs

Hunt puzzles, plus also Treasure Hunts, Alternate Reality Games, and similar.

• Oppose per L1K's comment above, unless it is ARGs or List of ARGs Soni (talk) 06:16, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
• Weak Support (treasure hunts only) I actually think the line between Treasure Hunts (or even, hunts that purport to be treasure hunts) and Puzzle Hunts is the closest, especially when looking at this from a historical perspective. Consider that the MIT Mystery Hunt originated as (essentially) a treasure hunt. And hunts like DASH unlock things in a linear fashion, with the directions being fairly abstracted away (you get the next location when you submit the answer to the previous answer, through Cluekeeper). A bit more traditional, but still allowing for reasonable amounts of flexibility, are e.g. the Arizona Treasure Hunt and the Herald Hunt, where the answer that you get from solving puzzles can be crossreferenced with a table, allowing you to get corresponding information. This is incidentally how earlier The Games operated. What might possibly be different is the quality of the "clue", often being a lot less rigorous than modern hunt puzzles. --phenomist (talk) 06:53, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Option 5 : Logic Puzzles

Hunt puzzles, plus other logic puzzles of all types, including Logic Puzzle "hunts" like WPF and Sudoku Mahabharat.

• Support. Unlike other puzzle types, I consider Logic puzzles, and Logic puzzle events like WPF events to be puzzle-hunt-adjacent enough. It also is a community with significant overlap with ours. So including notable standalone logic puzzles, notable logic puzzle blogs either as their own page or in a list (Prasanna Sheshadri's blog, Bachelor Seal etc..), and "logic puzzle contests/hunts" sounds in the scope of this wiki to me. Soni (talk) 06:16, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support only genres (for now) Genres are naturally going to be added as a result of puzzle elements, and it's worth expanding these articles to include, say, techniques to solve various genres (as it would help the solver to solve these puzzles as well). Of course logic puzzles part of hunts (e.g. Portals, MITMH 2013) are acceptable for inclusion, but I don't see adding other standalone logic puzzles since very few of these have enough material to write an article. The next area of expansion would probably be logic puzzle events, but those feel already quite far removed from puzzlehunts. --phenomist (talk) 06:58, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Option 6 : Word Puzzles

Hunt puzzles, plus other word puzzles of all types.

• Cautious support. Same criteria as Logic Puzzle, but Word Puzzle have even more overlap with Hunt community. I suppose we will both have to decide on this, and decide what Word Puzzles are logic puzzles (which to me, is just "Does it have an extraction"). But otherwise, if there's suitably notable word puzzles, standalone or blogs/NYT crosswords etc, I suppose they could have their own page? I'm a lot more undecided on this that Logic Puzzles Soni (talk) 06:16, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support only types for now. Same logic as logic puzzles. Types are covered under puzzle elements. Some puzzles might be more discrete and could potentially have a page written (e.g. Ucaoimhu cryptics) but seems alright to expand to this later.--phenomist (talk) 07:03, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Option 7 : CTF / Challenge sites

CTF's are very technical series of challenges (think: decrypting modern ciphers, reverse engineering programs, exploiting security vulnerabilities), run at a fixed time, solved by teams, and you gain points for obtaining the answer. After the event runs, teams often write up solutions and the process for getting there for individual problems.

Option 8 : Stand-alone puzzles

Hunt puzzles, plus other standalone puzzles of all types.

• Oppose. Any puzzle not in above categories will likely be either not notable, or have an assortment of categorising issues. I would rather focus on the core of the wiki as Hunt and Hunt-adjacent puzzles. Soni (talk) 06:16, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
• Shelve for a different RFC. I think after we determine the high-level scope, we can then discuss notability guidelines. For example, stand-alone hunt puzzles - puzzles that could appear in a hunt (main criterion - it extracts to a typical answer) but don't.--phenomist (talk) 07:07, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Option 9 : All of the Above

• Support, with caveats (and also deprioritize until later) I think ultimately, this is probably the option that creates the least questions of "what is a X puzzle?". But for that matter, I would say that the individual notability criteria for the different types of puzzles has a fairly wide range. For instance, we can catalog as many individual hunt puzzles as we can, but maybe for treasure hunts/rallyes/ARG's, it might make sense to only have pages for the top-level franchise, or second-level "hunt"-equivalent (i.e. not one page per clue). Escape rooms could be per company, I suppose, since we probably couldn't get much sourced material for each room. There are also other types of less-hunty puzzles (e.g. logic puzzles could be per genres, plus it could be integrated with "hunt puzzles that use a certain genre" elements. Puzzle games (most likely at a game-level page, not a page per level), mechanical puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, I guess should be evaluated on notability.)--phenomist (talk) 03:40, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. The oppose is already implicit in my other !votes, but also saying so here. I think until the wiki gets a critical mass, adding to our scope drastically will not be a good idea. But also, I am generally going to be opposed to any such additions before we check with the involved communities whether they want to be included in the Wiki. It only makes sense as a effort with the internal involvement of the communities before the coverage. It's both more logical and encourages community involvement, which is what a wiki is about. Hence, oppose until the situation changes (and then can change my !vote) Soni (talk) 06:16, 8 March 2022 (UTC)