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Haunt_House recently posted a very interesting question. It is set up similair to a code golf question, except for 3D models, as you might've guessed. He posted the desired outcome (a simple arrow), had some guidelines and looked for a solution that requires the least amount of clicks to achieve the goal.

I think this would be a pretty nice idea for a competitive style Q&A site like code golf, with a focus on any 3D modelling software, not just Blender. I actually already created a proposal on Area 51 in case anyone is interested.

If the new site doesn't come to fruition, having a "Challenge" tag for these kinds of questions would be a nice alternative, even if it would be focused on Blender only.

Thoughts?

Side note: If the new site actually does become a reality, we could use this new challenge tag to migrate the questions over to the new site, if that's possible and wanted by the community.

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    $\begingroup$ Well, seeing as the proposal has been closed, it looks like if we want to do this, we'll need to keep it here on this site. $\endgroup$ – Scott Milner Feb 8 '18 at 0:49
  • $\begingroup$ Yeah... it's a shame they don't take these kinds of sites anymore. :( $\endgroup$ – noClue Feb 8 '18 at 8:30
  • $\begingroup$ Some people are so negative, they have to say no seven times before they say yes. $\endgroup$ – Haunt_House Feb 8 '18 at 18:47
  • $\begingroup$ And to be fair, the guy closing it said 'broaden the scope?'. In a way he's right. Blender already has it's stack exchange site, so if you want to get an entire stack exchange site off the ground, you might want to braoden the challenge to all 3D suites or even just call it 'faster' and dedicate it to the best way of doing anything. Depends. $\endgroup$ – Haunt_House Feb 15 '18 at 9:43
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I for one like the idea, so much in fact that I proposed this type of thing over three years ago.

The fun hating iKlsR came out then and said "this isn't going to happen." He went on to say that he would not mind contest on the meta, and we have had a few them. My favorite is X-27's Funny Questions, we really should do more of those Hint, hint.
Anyway, after looking through the contests we have had on the meta, you will see they are all different then this type of thing. (Make an image, and "Funny Questions" were the two categorizes.)

This "blender golf" type of idea is arguably a good fit for the main, further more it really does not fit on the meta - at all.

Take the arrow question as our example. If that was asked without all the consist lingo, it would still be a perfectly good question. (Not unlike this one.)

I like this type of thing, where you are looking for the shortest/most unusual workflows in blender.
My point is this, if we are ok with "fastest workflow" questions, then why not write up some rules (in a meta post) and make a contest?

As the tagmaster, I would much prefer instead of .

We would need to have some well defined rules, and "banned" loopholes and such but I think this could work.

PS someone once said something about prizes.

Now, I need to go write an answer to that arrow question before we ban any loopholes. :)

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    $\begingroup$ Well said. IMO these kind of things inspire a lot of creativity and, often, really unexpected solutions to problems - which get people thinking in new ways (such as @batFINGER’s unicode solution blender.stackexchange.com/a/100298/29586). Provided it didn’t take over the whole site (which I really don’t see happening) then I don’t see any problem at all. Even professionals like to have a bit of fun sometimes. $\endgroup$ – Rich Sedman Feb 8 '18 at 7:45
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    $\begingroup$ Actually, this was when we were still early and I still shouldered a lot of the moderation. We've had lots of these questions tho not quite themed specifically as a challenge but moreso to find creative ways of seeing how to tackle a specific task. I still don't like the idea of having contests on the main site as these can be used to game the system and accumulate a lot of rep fast for one but nevertheless could be a fun addition if structured properly. $\endgroup$ – iKlsR Feb 9 '18 at 4:32
  • $\begingroup$ Well, it's true that my question now has 42 votes and 20 answers. No idea why it soared to 8k in a few days and now it's back to trickle. But the answers are amazing. I use Blender since 2.12, I have become a little rusty of late and these answers make incredibly creative use of modifiers and other techniques. Given the view count of most questions, a bit of new attractiveness might not be a bad idea. I mean, for some reason it soared to 8k in a few days. $\endgroup$ – Haunt_House Feb 15 '18 at 9:54
  • $\begingroup$ @Haunt_House I believe it became a 'Hot Network Question' meaning it was featured on the sidebar across all stackexchange sites. $\endgroup$ – Ray Mairlot Feb 16 '18 at 18:59
  • $\begingroup$ @RayMairlot I told him that yesterday, but I did it in chat as not to clutter the comments. $\endgroup$ – David Feb 16 '18 at 19:07
  • $\begingroup$ @David what is recommended practice re comment clutter? $\endgroup$ – batFINGER Feb 17 '18 at 13:06
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Yes, lets!

We've attempted something like this a few times before, but we haven't had the kind of participation as Haunt_House's question has received. Clearly this is now, more than ever, something people are interested in (and being on the main site helps too).

I agree with a tag, and perhaps more contest-type-specific tags will be in order if different kinds of contests become popular (e.g. , , ).

That said, I do think we should come up with some guidelines for questions. Perhaps codegolf can serve us as a kind of template in this regard. Here's a start based on some of the guidelines found there:

There should be a complete, unambiguous specification of the challenge. It must include at least:

  • A clear description of the goal
  • An example of the result
  • Clear rules on what is allowed at what isn't
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  • $\begingroup$ I'm glad I bothered to check here, it seems the fact that many people have had the same thought at least suggests that it could be formalised into at least a tag. I imagine that these kinds of challenges would uncover some very ricky workflows that some users would not be aware of. So their value as a searchable group would be quite high. Condensed knowledge etc. $\endgroup$ – 3pointedit Mar 3 '18 at 13:10

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