[Discussion] Tag system changes for puzzle grouping.

[jwmclaren]

One thing that a few previous hunts have shown is that our system for sorting puzzles into groups is not necessarily as flexible as it ideally could be.

Part of this is the distinction we currently have where we tag puzzles as being in/<group> and then tag a meta meta/<group> then have code to process the tag names to extract just <group> where we need that for sorting purposes.

My proposal is to separate out the ability to tag puzzles as meta or not based solely on that tag without additions, and instead have all puzzles in a logical group indicated by group/<group> - this maintains the usefulness of the Meta view (where we would just display puzzles by group and sort any tagged metas to the top) and allows for simpler logic for filtering the Puzzle view.

For example, this year's Mystery Hunt had one round that contained three metapuzzles and we did not change any of the tagging in that round, so as the first meta for that group had been solved, the group was sorted to the end in meta-view despite having at least one open metapuzzle in it for the entirety of the post-solve process. It is my proposal that sorting those by group and displaying the metapuzzles at the top would show there was still meta-work to be done in that round as well.

[obijywk]

I think an approach for that case could be to add additional in/<meta-2> and in/<meta-3> tags to the puzzles that feed the 2nd and 3rd metas in the round? I didn't follow along with the structure of that round as it was happening (I'll check it out if/when solutions are available).

The intention of the Metas page is to display an element representing a single metapuzzle and the puzzles that feed it, not an element representing an entire round or a generic group of puzzles. I don't think we want to assume that puzzles will always be delivered in rounds or groups. It's also by design that feeder puzzles might appear on the Metas page multiple times.

If we instead had a design that would display a "group" containing multiple metapuzzles, I'm not sure how we would indicate which feeders within that "group" feed which metapuzzles... seems clearer to me to stick to one-metapuzzle-per-page-element like we do in the current approach.

I am open to broader discussion about useful additional presentations of puzzles - I just don't think we want to replace the current in/ and meta/ tagging and Metas page design, which is based on a specific definition of feeders and metapuzzles which should work no matter what the broader structure of the puzzle hunt may be.