Talk:/dev/null/nethack tournament

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Unknown challenge

Yes, this whole wiki is all about spoilers - however I personally think it takes a bit the fun and the challenge out of it to spoil the unknown challenge before the tournament has closed. Yes, I'm aware the tournament patch is free to download, but reading through the sources is a lot harder than just reading up the finished solution here.

Bcode, your descriptions are absolutely great, with 'screenshots' and everything, kudos, but would it be ok for you to hide it until Dec 1? What do you think? --62.80.22.187 12:04, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

The solution is pastebinned somewhere else, anyway, so that wouldn't stop people from looking it up. (Not even considering that any "hiding" I could do would still leave the solution easily accessible in the page history.) Also, IMHO if you don't want to be spoiled, just don't read the article/section - especially given the spoiler warning on the Main Page. As you mentioned, spoilers are what this wiki is all about.
(FWIW, the most recent version of the tournament patch including the newest challenge isn't yet downloadable; at least it wasn't the last time I checked.) --Bcode (talk) 12:37, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
I wasn't aware of that, you're right: all previous patches can be downloaded except the current one. But doesn't that even strengthen my point that the tournament admins want the Unknown challenge to be unknown. I mean, they don't publish any description, not even its name, unlike with all the older challenges, until the tournament is up. And they 'hand out' a trophy for it, IMHO this is worth more if you don't know in advance what's coming. So publishing all details while readers can still register and get listed as trophy winners on the Devnull homepage diminishes this achievement for all others who succeded earlier.
And about the history, and the pastebinned solution - sure you can always find something if you really want. What I meant is just handing it a little less on a silver platter.
PS: how do you like my DigDug writeup? :-) --62.80.22.187 21:10, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
I think it's only fair to publish it here – people asking in the tournament's IRC channel will be told about it anyway, too. (Including the "silver platter" pastebinned solution.) Thus there isn't much to winning the trophy even now.
FWIW, I don't think it "diminishes" the achievement for me (the solution listed (and pastebinned) is actually the one I found myself).
Having things on a silver platter is kind of the idea of spoilers. :) Seriously, I think that just because someone wants to keep the details unknown, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have them on the wiki – even if that "someone" is the tournament administrator. (To avoid being misquoted: this obviously exludes any sensitive (i.e. personal) information.)
Thanks for the DigDug writeup, too; I would've done it myself, but then I'm lazy... It's nice, though I changed the wording a bit to be more consistent with the other sections of the article. –Bcode (talk) 21:34, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, ok then. Maybe next year you can just keep being "lazy" until Dec 1... ;-)
(Changed the corridor color back, I'm 99% certain I remember them lit. In the 1% case just fix them again.) --62.80.22.187 21:47, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

KoL

before being allowed to engrave Elbereth.

Why was this removed from Kingdom of Loathing? --Tjr (talk) 15:07, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I removed this as the column is titled "Official description" and the description on devnull's trophies page doesn't include it. It should probably be added in some way to the KoL challenge subsection; maybe I will add to it later as I still need to add some other challenge subsections, too. --Bcode (talk) 15:16, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Adding Mandevils overview page

Mandevil made a great overview page for the results of the tournaments from 2005 onwards (without clans) here http://voyager.lupomesky.cz/devnull/, and i would like to see it added in somewhere on this wiki page. Yet, i am not really sure where to place that link. Some of the 'year' sections of the page provide links to result pages. Should Mandevils page get an extra section, or should it just be linked in the 'External links' section? I find it rather important for the page, so i'd like to see it in an extra section or in the introduction paragraph. What do you think about it? ——Stenno (talk) 17:19, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

It was already linked in the external links section, FWIW. But I agree; I've replaced the year sections with a "Results" section that also mentions alternative scoreboards. The old sections not only had little information, the links they had mostly linked to the current year's scoreboard, too. —bcode talk | mail 18:36, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Oops! I see it was added two days ago by bhaak. I should have actually read the history... --Stenno (talk) 00:27, 15 December 2013 (UTC)