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I recently rejected a suggested edit to Count the subsequences of length 4 divisible by 9. The edit suggested to add . I didn't know what Codechef was, but it appears to be an online programming competition where you can win money and "goodies". I rejected the edit, I thought it would be better as a comment (at most).

From the answers to Is there a policy on questions taken from prize-bearing coding competitions?, the consensus appears to be that it's OK to ask those kind of questions, as long as they fit SO's format.

However, in my opinion we don't need to organize the information according to programming competition. I'd say code competition tags are useless clutter at best and deliberate advertising at worst.

So I suggest not to use the and other competition tags anymore (might as well burninate them).

I found these competition tags on SO, there might be others (feel free to add them):

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  • Well, I disagree, but then I'm more tag-inclusionist than most, I think. What say you to the 583 project-euler questions?
    – AakashM
    Commented Aug 8, 2012 at 7:50
  • Great example ... and that's a lot more than the 30 or so questions in the other tags. I do feel sympathy for these kind of competitions (especially Project Euler), I just don't think we need the tags.
    – Marijn
    Commented Aug 8, 2012 at 8:13
  • @AakashM could you make an argument for NOT burninating these tags? That would be interesting.
    – Marijn
    Commented Aug 8, 2012 at 8:16
  • We probably should get rid of project-euler before anyone gets a tag badge for it (there aren't any yet).
    – Marijn
    Commented Aug 8, 2012 at 8:19
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    Judging by previous discussions on meta, I'm not sure I understand at all well the site's conception of what tags are for, so I'll leave that to someone else. I will say as a throwaway that there is potentially a middle ground between 'need' and 'burninate'...
    – AakashM
    Commented Aug 8, 2012 at 8:25
  • ok, point taken
    – Marijn
    Commented Aug 8, 2012 at 8:50
  • Incidentally, my opinion on tags like this matches yours, @Marijn
    – Andrew Barber
    Commented Aug 8, 2012 at 12:17
  • @AakashM: if their sole tag is project-euler, I'd be worried about their usefulness on SO (perhaps more appropriate on Code Review).
    – user7116
    Commented Aug 8, 2012 at 13:41

2 Answers 2

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Project Euler has specific problems, and a great deal of people seek out to solve them; nearly 300 people follow the tag on Stack Overflow after all. Unlike "what's the most awesome shark algorithm to beat up gorillas" it's a real and useful tag for people, not just a meta tag which means "this problem is hard/easy/intermediate/etc".

Seems like the same goes for the other competition tags...I've never heard of the other two, but if they have a defined problem set and people are asking specifically about them, it seems like relevant data to include as they may have specific rules/styles which makes it very relevant to search for/categorize these problems together.

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    +1 for pointing out that these tags are useful to some; however, I still feel these tags are clutter and potentially are used for advertising purposes. Then again, SO supports sponsored tags, so nothing really wrong there I suppose.
    – Marijn
    Commented Aug 10, 2012 at 9:12
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The Project Euler problems, for example, have a rather specific style. The main focus is usually that you need an appropriate algorithm to solve them and that brute force won't work optimally or not at all. Aside from that the problems are rather small and there is not much else to do, it usually really comes down to the algorithm.

Additionally, questions for such programming competitions usually don't look for a complete solution, but just for hints or solutions for specific parts of the problem. Since solving the problem yourself is the whole point of these competitions, getting a full solution in a SO answer would be pointless and spoil all the fun.

A tag like gives such context to a question and shows potential answerers what kind of problem they can expect and what kind of answers are expected.

There are people who enjoy solving these kind of problems, and they can favorite . Others who think such exercises are pointless can ignore the tag.

I don't see why the tag, or similar tags, should be removed or what would be gained by doing so.

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    +1 for pointing out that these tags are useful to some; however, I still feel these tags are clutter and potentially are used for advertising purposes. Then again, SO supports sponsored tags, so nothing really wrong there I suppose.
    – Marijn
    Commented Aug 10, 2012 at 9:11

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