Professionals, a good new for you.

[Paul Jaray]

I'm giving up with puzzles.
For reasons I already expressed to Editors, I won't keep solving puzzles once I'll reach my self 'inflicted' next goal: 2000 points.
As a side effect, I hope there will be more fun for all of you, knowing that there won't be the need to keep an eye 24/7 on the board trying to beat who already is here 24/7 
There still be sharks ready to bite, but also Wendax's idea to restrict puzzles to players with less than 400 points will improve your chances.
I will have more time for other projects here at Autopuzzles: more puzzles of mine, more books to review and so on.
Just be patient for those few missing points. 

[D-type]

It's getting more and more difficult as we progressively exhaust the world's supply of cars.  With me it has reached the limit of my knowledge.  I think I recognise the name of about one car per page of "Solved Puzzles" and after that maybe 1 in 5 of them I might recognise the car - the "Oh yes! I recognise it now I've been told." situation.  I log in out of habit rather than with any expectation that I will be able to solve anything. 
I'll often ask a "twenty questions" type question, eg "Is it Austrian?" purely to speed things along and help others.  Personally, I'm not particularly concerned with points and am quite happy if my guess or question leads to the answer.

How about a complete rethink. Say

- Puzzles remain in Rookies until 1 week without a response, that seems a reasonable time to see that people have run out of ideas.  Remember that a rookie still investigating can follow the puzzle into Experts
- In Experts  maybe more precise information required (leave it to the puzzle setter to decide if necessary).  Time limit 2 weeks after last response.
- Pros stage 1 (<400 semi-pros or whatever) More precise details.  Time limit 2 weeks from last response
- Pros stage 2 ( >400 super pros)  2 weeks then hints until it is solved - or declared as "Puzzler wins" (see below).
- Abolish the Black Hole and replace it with a set form of words to say "Gotcha! This puzzle has defeated everyone".  If points matter maybe the editors award the setter a point.
- Abolish "Pros and Feature Writers"  It has served its purpose.
- Allow progressive solving.  A difficult one this.  The way I see it could work is that a rookie (or expert) gets a point for saying, say, "Alvis TD 21".  The puzzle setter awards a point and promotes it to Experts (or Pros) with "Name the coachbuilder for another point"
- Encourage hints
- Allow reposts of previous cars, but not the same photo as appeared previously.  OK this may mean some get solved rapidly, but with the number of previous puzzles, who will be able to remember them all.
- Introduce a new section for "I don't know what this is, do you?"  This will encourage collaborative working

Hopefully this approach could rejuvenate the site.

[nicanary]

Interesting points here. I agree that the website has been reduced to just the puzzles section - very few posts or interest in the other sectors of the site.

Points for the puzzle-setter is a new angle! Worth consideration, although it'll never apply to me because the Pros find mine too easy! I reckon a point to the poster of a puzzle which reaches the Black Hole would be a good idea, provided the poster could prove to the editors that he/she knew the answer themselves.

We've all had the notion that we're going to run out of subjects, but there are well-known sites which are packed with obscure marques and where we've barely scratched the surface.  I'm not going to reveal which ones!

It goes without saying that many new members are deterred by the difficulty of the subjects and the quality of the "opposition", and not many stick around. We've got to increase the number who visit the site for the first time - the more folks we attract out of curiosity, the more who might join in. Throw enough crap at the wall, some will stick to it. The question is, how do we get them to look in for the first time? Any marketing experts on here?

[kwgibbs]

I agree, great idea changes,as far as the section pros and feature writer,s its a shame some of the cars from the enigma,s can,t be solved.I,ve also came across many very obscure cars that are alittle odd that never been on autopuzzles before,there are still quite a few sites to be tapped into yet.

[Paul Jaray]

This is an old history repeating.
I joined Autopuzzles on September 2007.
This was happening on October 2008, while I was in Afghanistan:
(I was reaching 500 points)
http://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/index.php?topic=5325.0
Few months before, April 2008, the problem was addressed:
http://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/index.php?topic=4210.0
A new category was introduced and me, Grob and SeaLion were the only Pros for some time.
As I thought, Experts had the chance to play from 20 to 200 and now, again, we have few puzzlers scoring 80-90% of the available puzzles: 5 of us have more than 800 points (including Joao and Allemano that are not regular visitors) and 10 more with a score between 400 and 700.
Now, again, we have to confine these 15 Pros that are taking away the fun from this game...(but we know that actually the real problem is the time they can spend here, that allows them to answer to all the puzzles before others and thank to their knowledge).
I think I've made my point now after all these years.
I learnt a lesson: if you know many obscure cars, you have a lot of time to spend on Autopuzzles and you don't mind solving all there is to solve regardless to others, this will be fun for you and you alone, but there will be no more fun when you'll be the only player.
On a sidenote, I've noticed also that now the competition is, in my opinion, far less sporty than before...too many times Autopuzzles changed into Speedypuzzles: fine with that (it is part of the game after all) but I like to play with gentlemen.
The puzzler is not obliged to set a lock in case of an incomplete or slighlty wrong answer, but now he has to do it and have to be quick at it!
When I joined AP, there were no lock at all! There was no need for it...if a member was nearly there (or we all understood he was close to a solution) no one would have jumped to steal his point.
I now realize that points are not all and I prefer to have Autopuzzles back like the good old days.

[Ultra]

Interesting ideas and I'm considering them all. 

Gentleman, each of you craft the content that makes the site. I've been saying this for a decade....  Get out of the puzzle sections and post up other stuff.  There is no other way to diversify the site's membership than by diversifying the site's content. New cars should be posted as they hit the market and the racing section should be filled with current info, at the least.

[Oguerrerob]

After a few weeks from the installing the new feature Below 400, Could it be possible to create a new category to separate them from the Over 400?, to avoid the possible confusion or/and frustration over the excitement of a new puzzle.

[Otto Puzzell]

I proffered a simple reworking of the puzzle structure, but it was mostly overlooked.

The fragmentation in the Pro puzzles is a source of confusion, for sure.

[nicanary]

I proffered a simple reworking of the puzzle structure, but it was mostly overlooked.

The fragmentation in the Pro puzzles is a source of confusion, for sure.

I had mentioned to Carnut that I thought that interest amongst some Pros could be re-kindled if they were given a chance against the handful of regular puzzle-solvers. This sub-400 club is an experiment, which I think has worked, because several long-standing Pros have added to their totals, and hopefully to their enjoyment of AP.

If we all agree that it has been a success, perhaps now is the time to convert that part of AP to 4 sections. It confuses me for sure (that's F1 driver-speak) because we have to look through every post to see whether we can apply to take part. My suggestion has actually worked against my interests, because now I'm up in the stratosphere with the likes of Wendax and Paul Jaray!

[Carnut]

Yes, you're absolutely right.  A new category of Super-Pro for the 400+ puzzlers is the answer, but it might be quite complicated to re-write the system to get there..

I re-checked Otto's idea, which was basically sound but I think would lead to confusion amongst many, who never really read and fully understand rules...

[Ultra]

I think reconfiguring the 3 categories with higher cut offs makes more sense than creating yet another category.  Rookie to 50.  Expert to 400. Pro after 400(500?). Delete the Black Hole and Pro & Feature Writer section and put those puzzles into expert or pro. 

I would have already done as much but I don't wanna piss off too many with authoritarian actions.

[Carnut]

You're probably right, but you'd either have to demote Pro's with 200-4/500 pts back to Experts and Experts with 20-50 pts back to Rookie, which would prevent them from posting puzzles.

People are generally not entirely happy when they reach 200 pts and some, as we know, vanish forever because it kills the game for them, but the currently ad hoc system has worked well and I think hasn't put those guys off.

Certainly it would be the easiest change to administer; just leaving the puzzlers where they are but allowing, say, a Pro with 300 pts to answer Expert puzzles wouldn't work would it because I don't think they can access others' puzzles to post answers can they?  Or maybe they can?

[Ultra]

No.  I would just move those that didn't hit the new threshold back. There is no shame in that and with all the new puzzles for those moved back I doubt they'd have much inclination to complain. As to those who wanna post puzzles before reaching 50 puzzles answered, they can prove their knowledge of and authentic love for vintage vehicles by joining the Feature Writers club via an article they write for the website. :-|

I feel confident that's the way to go.

[oko94]

Rookie to 50.  Expert to 400. Pro after 400(500?). Delete the Black Hole and Pro & Feature Writer section and put those puzzles into expert or pro. 

I agree with that entirely 

[oko94]

I would just move those that didn't hit the new threshold back. There is no shame in that and with all the new puzzles for those moved back I doubt they'd have much inclination to complain.

Indeed.

And I believe that the points are more important than the status. As long as I keep my 496 pts you can call me a pro, an expert, a loony or whatever.

[Wendax]

The Rookie status should be stretched over a wider point range in order to revive the rookie board. 50 points should do it. Perhaps we could keep the expert status for some active puzzle posters below the 50-point threshold like BERTRAND. I would miss his puzzles.   

I'm not sure whether a extension of expert status up to 400 points would cause some frustration among the current experts because of the grwing competition by former "junior" pros. As my puzzles are mostly solved by pros, some other puzzle posters should comment on that.

The Pros and Feature Writers board can be deleted in my opinion, as it is mainly a cemetery for cars even unknown to the poster.

I would keep the Black Hole in order to separate the old, almost unsolvable puzzles from the newer ones which promise more success when being tackled.

[nicanary]

Like oko94, I don't mind what happens, provided we don't upset any of the newer members. Past experience has shown that some of them can get upset fairly easily if they think the goalposts are being moved. My personal opinion is that the site should just be a bit of fun for people with a common interest - so it shouldn't matter if the rules are changed from time to time.

I think we should consider anything that would encourage some of the new joiners to take an active part - even if it means starting off the harder puzzles in the Experts section, and posting everyday high-volume cars for the Rookies to make them feel in their comfort zone. We mustn't forget that younger Rookies have maybe never seen a Wolseley 15/60 or a mid-50s Opel Kapitan.

It's been a bit of a slow start to the rejuvenation of "other" sections of AP. Maybe it is indeed time to cull some of the forums which are hardly ever visited. An over-complicated site can deter people.

[Ultra]

It's been a bit of a slow start to the rejuvenation of "other" sections of AP. Maybe it is indeed time to cull some of the forums which are hardly ever visited. An over-complicated site can deter people.

That is gonna be a long term project that could take a year if it takes a day.

Puzzle creators like Bertrand get a bump to Feature Writer for all their contributions to the board.  Issue solved.

Changes are announced with 30 days warning. Keeps the newly created experts from feeling the invading army of professionals right away.  Weekly updates with encouragement to those newer experts to get solving puzzles before those soon to be orphaned pros come a calling.  Issue solved. 

With any change, some are gonna not like it.  Can't please everyone, hence, gotta do what's best for the site....

[nicanary]

......a man's gotta do, what a man's gotta do.........

[Carnut]

Go for it!

[Ultra]

Carnut, I'll do the admin work.  What say you do the announcements of the impeding change?

[Carnut]

Carnut, I'll do the admin work.  What say you do the announcements of the impeding change?

Can do, but it would have to be this afternoon as I'm going to be away from later today until Friday next week.
I'll read your post again to make sure I understand it and what we're going to do then send you what I'll say.
I think it would be a good idea to post it on the puzzle boards rather than the other forum boards to give everyone the best chance to see it?