Regarding "New" Community Problems

Day 1

I noticed something odd, this morning. I was going through my old problems, and I decided to change the topic of my first problem from "Classical Mechanics" to "Geometry." Then, I went to the community page to look for new challenges. However, I saw this:

The problem I had posted over 9 months ago was counted as "New!" That seemed odd, so I decided to do an official test or expiriment of sorts. I didn't know if this was a feature or bug, so this is why I am making a note. Tomorrow (9/28), I am going to change the problem's content; the next day (9/29), I am going to change the problem's topic. Each day, I am also going to take screenshots of how "new" the problem is.

Day 2

The picture below shows the community page before and after the edit:

As you can see, nothing changed.

As I was reading through the comments, I read Ram Mohith's input on this; this phenomenon is definitely beneficial, giving old and dead problems a second chance; however, since editing the problem itself doesn't make it "new," I doubt this is an intentional feature. I feel that this phenomenon should be kept, but it should also be tweaked so that edited problems show up as new.

Day 3

Once again, this is the community page before and after the topic change:

It was "new" again!

Brilliant user X X was correct, as suspected. I guess every experiment needs a conclusion, even though this doesn't count as a "real" and "rigorous" experiment:

In conclusion, there is a (suspected) bug with the community page algorithm that considers old problems with changed topics as new. The effects and intention behind the phenomenon can only be speculated about without official confirmation. However, this phenomenon can be built off of and learned from: Although this may spoil the Problems of the Week, this feature could be altered to make problems with edits made to the content considered as "new." Also, this phenomenon points out that the community page is not perfect; for instance, there is the bug where the preview for a problem starts an infinite loading process, and this loading preview covers some of the community content (see image below).

Markdown

Appears as

*italics* or _italics_

italics

**bold** or __bold__

bold


- bulleted
- list

bulleted
list


1. numbered
2. list

numbered
list

Note: you must add a full line of space before and after lists for them to show up correctly

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

[example link](https://brilliant.org)

example link

> This is a quote

This is a quote

    # I indented these lines
    # 4 spaces, and now they show
    # up as a code block.

    print "hello world"

# I indented these lines
# 4 spaces, and now they show
# up as a code block.

print "hello world"

Math

Appears as

Remember to wrap math in $ ... $ or \[ ... \] to ensure proper formatting.

2 \times 3

2 \times 3

2^{34}

2^{34}

a_{i-1}

a_{i-1}

\frac{2}{3}

\frac{2}{3}

\sqrt{2}

\sqrt{2}

\sum_{i=1}^3

\sum_{i=1}^3

\sin \theta

\sin \theta

\boxed{123}

\boxed{123}

Easy Math Editor

This discussion board is a place to discuss our Daily Challenges and the math and science related to those challenges. Explanations are more than just a solution — they should explain the steps and thinking strategies that you used to obtain the solution. Comments should further the discussion of math and science.

When posting on Brilliant:

Use the emojis to react to an explanation, whether you're congratulating a job well done , or just really confused .
Ask specific questions about the challenge or the steps in somebody's explanation. Well-posed questions can add a lot to the discussion, but posting "I don't understand!" doesn't help anyone.
Try to contribute something new to the discussion, whether it is an extension, generalization or other idea related to the challenge.
Stay on topic — we're all here to learn more about math and science, not to hear about your favorite get-rich-quick scheme or current world events.

Markdown	Appears as
`italics` or `_italics_`	italics
`bold` or `__bold__`	bold
- bulleted - list	bulleted list
1. numbered 2. list	numbered list
Note: you must add a full line of space before and after lists for them to show up correctly
paragraph 1 paragraph 2	paragraph 1 paragraph 2
`[example link](https://brilliant.org)`	example link
`> This is a quote`	This is a quote
# I indented these lines # 4 spaces, and now they show # up as a code block. print "hello world"	# I indented these lines # 4 spaces, and now they show # up as a code block. print "hello world"

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `$` ... `$` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$

Comments

I too have been noticing just the last few weeks that some supposedly "new" problems are just recirculated (and not necessarily recently edited) old problems. I suspect the the production of genuinely "new" problems has slowed up enough to warrant staff resorting to this recirculation strategy, in part perhaps to avoid having the Community page look stale. I'm also not sure how the "Popular" questions achieve that status, as some that have been deemed so don't appear to have many solvers (even though they are relatively straightforward). Anyway, I'll be interested to hear of the results of your novel experiment. :)

Brian Charlesworth - 2 years, 8 months ago

Yes, my first problem also managed to get to the top of popular somehow. One of my friends tried it out today, but one solver can't be enough to cause that.

Blan Morrison - 2 years, 8 months ago

I rather say that this is a very helpful thing. Many underlying problems can be brought up using this. One the best example is my question Rising balloons. I have posted it on April 9 but it is not featured then. Recently, two months back I have reposted it again and now the staff has looked upon it and it has been featured in the problems of the week and now it has more than 40 K solvers. Hadn't it been featured I will be in a great loss. Thanks to this feature.

Ram Mohith - 2 years, 8 months ago

The "experiment" is done! I figured @Caleb Rash might want to see this, being a Senior Software Engineer; maybe he'll answer some of our questions.

Thanks for conducting the experiment! I have no problem with the users who identify and exploit this "glitch", but I'm not sure if certain problems being kept forever "New" or "Popular" this way is something staff will be ok with. It will be interesting to see how they deal with it.

Hi Blan (and others in this discussion), thanks for pointing this out. I've shared this issue with our other developers, and we'll look into it very soon.

Caleb Rash Staff - 2 years, 8 months ago

I hope this feature will not be removed.

Also, this feature helps gives chance for the new comers to solve some good old problems.

Very good point! You can edit your comments to add a statement you missed.

Only changing a problem's topic would work, I've tried that before.

X X - 2 years, 8 months ago

Yes.

Yes, I regularly use this feature and repost my problem everytime. I too noticed this only 3 months back where one of my problem is changed from number theory to algebra and then it came again in "new" problems of community.

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `\(` ... `\)` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$