Talk:MIT Mystery Hunt

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Possible Copyright Violation?[edit]

It appears that a large chunk of this page's text was taken directly from http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/huntintro.htm. While no author is explicitly stated, no permission seems to have been given either.

True - however, as ownership of that page (and the rest of the site) changes from hunt to hunt, it's not clear who would own that text. I was part of the team that owned the site in 2002, when it had pretty much the same text on it - can I give permission? DenisMoskowitz 14:51, 2004 Aug 30 (UTC)

User:65.96.180.247's statement[edit]

Most of this text was a copy of this page, submitted without permission, as far as I know (I'm on the Hunt contact list, but perhaps the authors of the page queried or knew the original author directly.)

In any case, someone should address this.

It was originally submitted by an anonymous user, so we can't ask them, and the "original author" of the hunt intro page is probably lost to history at any rate. Do we need to rewrite the whole page? DenisMoskowitz 17:56, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)

Rewrite[edit]

I just submitted a complete rewrite of the Mystery Hunt article. The article which appeared previously was taken almost verbatim from the official Mystery Hunt web page. I tried to keep all the information that was there, and I added a link to the official web page.

Robbie

Memorable Events?[edit]

I think this section should be taken out entirely... Most of these events are memorable/interesting only to the few teams actually involved, and don't have much bearing on the Hunt as a whole. If people feel they should be memorialized, the proper place would be on the Hunt website. Otherwise, this page will basically become another wrap-up session, with every team feeling the need to tell their "funniest" story about the wrong answer they pursued.

(previous was by User:68.42.71.28)

I agree - there should perhaps be a place to put hunt history, but this is not it. (And this from the discoverer of "Be Noisy".) DenisMoskowitz 14:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree; the use of the memorable events section is to give a sense of the personality and aesthetic of the Hunt, and I think the section does a good job of that. 68.49.189.252, 22:56, 6 October 2005 (EST)

The "Phys plant" event didn't even really happen! They don't give a sense of the "personality and aesthetic" of the Hunt, they make it sound like the participants are the self-absorbed type who think that every one of their personal little in-jokes must be important to the rest of the world. If you want to give an idea of the Hunt's personality, put up more information on the structure and puzzles involved, like the everyone-works-together puzzle at the start of last year's. Perhaps a "Hunt Innovations" section could track some of the more interesting and clever twists designers have given to the event. 68.42.71.28 15:01, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps "Notable Puzzles"? Something that would give actual flavor. But "Notable Events" definitely must go. DenisMoskowitz 20:04, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Correct Name for the Hunt?[edit]

The name "IAP Mystery Hunt" is neither the most useful, nor the most common, name for this hunt.

USEFUL: "IAP" is a term that's unknown to people outside the MIT community, while "MIT" is familiar throughout the world. If someone wants to get information about this hunt, they're more likely to find it under the name "MIT Mystery Hunt".

COMMON: In my experience, this hunt is more commonly called the "MIT Mystery Hunt". The "MIT Mystery Hunt" is also the "official" name, as it's been listed for years at the top of the main page of the hunt's web site.

SUGGESTION: Rename this Wikipedia entry to "MIT Mystery Hunt" and make "IAP Mystery Hunt" point to that entry.

Eric-Albert 19:48, 2005 Oct 19 (EST)

Done. :) DenisMoskowitz 16:13, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Requested Move[edit]

I believe the specific reason for the move of this article needs to be made clearer. The article makes its history and importance plain; it goes into detail without turning into cruft; and it is not an abandoned stub. While the Hunt should obviously be mentioned in an article that lists MIT traditions, it deserves its independent article. Qaqaq 16:12, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. If no dissenting voices appear by 8/16, the notice should be removed. DenisMoskowitz 21:09, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was not notified that I should have dissented here on either the destination page or my talk page, nor was a substantial amount of time allowed to elapse on a infrequently visited page for other editors to give their opinion, nor does 2vs1 constitute any type of consensus — so I don't believe complete good-faith was exercised in this one-sided removal of the merge request. Rather than get into an edit war, my comments are below. If the page is not improved substantially by August 28, I will merge it then. Madcoverboy 18:29, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, the very tag you posted said that discussion to support or oppose the requested move should appear on this page, under the heading "Requested Move", so you can't really say you weren't notified that that's where the discussion would be. Qaqaq 06:45, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it one-sided for two people to remove a merge request but not one-sided for one person to place and implement the merge request in the first place? Anyway, the MIT Mystery Hunt is much more than an internal MIT tradition; it's been covered in national media (such as Games magazine), and draws competitors from all over the country. I feel this merits a separate entry. And what's with tagging practically every single sentence with "citation needed"? As someone who's attended the event for many years, I can personally confirm it's all correct, but you don't need to take my word for it when large chunks of it can be confirmed at http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/gamesarticle.html, http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/huntintro.html, and http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2007/01/column_beyond_tetris_the_mit_m_1.php. Fheaney 04:15, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to try really hard to not bite the newbie here. :) A merge request is meant to broach discussion of a topic and inform visitors to the article that such a discussion is going on; putting the template up doesn't mean that a merge is automatically going to happen, so it's perfectly reasonable for any editor to put it up on an article to open discussion. Certainly, one of wikipedia's most fundamental guidelines is BE BOLD in updating pages. I tagged every sentence with a citation needed because it makes a claim that must be verified:

"All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. The source should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question. If an article topic has no reliable, third-party sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it."

Moreover, while you cite the Mystery Hunt pages as sources, WP has a fairly high barrier for self-published or self-referential sources, which, according to your previous contributions, should be a rule you should review. :) As I noted below, it appears that considerable swaths of this article appear to be copy and pasted from these external MIT webpages, which is a violation of both the verifiability rule as well as copyright protections (as the MIT Puzzle Hunt page has no disclaimers about its content being released under a GFDL-compatible license or being in the public domain, it is automatically copyrighted under the law). These sections should be removed or altered so as not to impinge on copyright. Madcoverboy 15:04, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No need to get all smug about the fact that my listed contributions were largely to my own page. I'd made lots of contributions to Wikipedia before I ever had a username, and I felt it would be dishonest to edit my own page without it being obvious that I had done so, so that's when I registered -- and if you'll follow the discussion pages on those entries, you'll see why I edited them. (I don't always log in to make edits, either, because who cares who's responsible for fixing a typo?)

You say that a merge is not automatically going to happen, but you have set your own deadline by which you'll merge the article if it's not amended to your standards, which sounds fairly unilateral to me.

Anyway, to point out a few "citation needed" sentences you've flagged which are, in fact, accounted for in the existing citations for the article:

"The Mystery Hunt was started in 1980 by then-graduate student Brad Schaefer." This is referenced in the second paragraph of the Boston Phoenix article (http://bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/04398747.asp), as is the Indian head penny two sentences later. As for the Vigenere cipher, etc., and the choice of prizes, this can all be confirmed by checking the pdf of the 1980 hunt handout available on the official MIT Hunt website (http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/80/MH1980-1.pdf and http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/80/MH1980-2.pdf).

Here is the Duck Konundrum puzzle from 2000, which, as you can see, consists of nothing but an elaborate set of instructions: http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/00/set5/6/Puzzle.html, and which is already used as a citation later in the article.

You seem disinclined to see for yourself what parts of this article are confirmed by external sources and which aren't before tagging them as "citation needed", which makes me think you're not interested in the subject matter and are giving your attention to this page solely to find a reason to merge it with the MIT Traditions page -- which is apparently an agenda of yours, as a Mergist. Fheaney 23:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Madcoverboy has identified several parts of the article that could use improvement. That's great. He suggests he'll merge it without consensus. That's not great. The article Puzzlehunt shows that puzzlehunts all stem from the MIT hunt, which is covered every year in the national media. I'll definitely revert a merge that no one supported and all other participants objected to.--Mike Selinker 11:22, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Necessary improvements[edit]

I have tagged the page with importance and verifiability tags as well as numerous fact tags noting specifically where references are needed to verify the claims. Regarding importance, no reasons are given to the lay reader as to why this is a notable activity either in a global or MIT-local sense.

Notability for organizations, a local activity such as this needs verifiable information from reliable independent sources, which is present in the form of the coverage from the Globe and Phoenix, as well as the organization’s longevity, size of membership, or major achievements, or other factors specific to the organization may be considered. The article currently only makes unverifiable claims as to the size of either previous or current events (although these numbers are cited in the sources) and establishes no context for its emergence and predecessors (Assassins Guild or other LARP, hacking, TMRC, etc.) within MIT culture. Certainly, the hunt has had a considerable impact on "puzzling"
The numerous fact tags are from claims that I could not find in the referenced articles and in fact appear to be copy-pasted from the MIT mystery hunt website without reference. Assuming the information on the MIT page is released under a GFDL-compatible license or is in the public domain (which is unclear on the page), this is fine since some measure of notability is already established by the references in the Globe and Phoenix. Alternatively, this is just OR in which place it shouldn't be in wikipedia.
Cruft: Generally anything in the parentheses is cruft and mention of specific puzzles should only be done within a context of how it changed the direction or tradition of the competition.

I have no doubt that the hunt is a significant part of MIT culture and history, but this isn't conveyed in the article to the lay reader. Madcoverboy 18:29, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly you are aware that many of the "cite needed" tags you added refer to facts that are confirmed in the media-coverage links at the bottom of the page. Why haven't you added any such citations yourself? DenisMoskowitz 13:58, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Because it appears there are 3 editors who are very dedicated to the preservation of this page and 1 of me trying to responding to other editors who don't want their article merged either. :) Madcoverboy 14:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't be insulting, even with a smiley face. It is quite reasonable to believe that this merge is a bad idea without it being because of any feelings of ownership (I for one have made only minor edits to it in the past). You yourself have admitted on the other page that this article meets the notability criterion. So the question becomes whether your claims of original research and "cruft" are enough to warrant removal of the page and merger into a longer article. No one but you, so far, believes this to be the case; that said, I agree that there are passages that need improvement, and I will try to find the time to work on them, though I don't know that I can do it by your self-imposed August 28 deadline. If you wish to put the tag back and have further discussion here for a short time, I have no objection, but understand that a merger decided by one person against a majority opinion is not going to stand; let's all try and avoid the inevitable edit war that would occur if you were to merge with no support. Qaqaq 16:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Notability criterion govern what content can be included in wikipedia, not whether such content justifies separate articles. One could put this up for AfD and there's a very high probability that the consensus there would be to let the content stand but merge it into another article, which is exactly what I'm proposing to do. I see two options:

We can go the AfD route and get lots of eyeballs to look at it critically and end up recommending a merger
We can redirect this page to its section on Traditions and student activities, and have it conform to with WP guidelines (eliminating copy-pasted text, removing cruft and uncited passages, emphasizing importance within MIT and puzzling community), and as the section expands, improves, and interacts with other content there, make a determination at a later time if there is enough content to warrant a separate article.

WP:MERGE states: "If a page is very short and is unlikely to be expanded within a reasonable amount of time, it often makes sense to merge it with a page on a broader topic." Once the necessary edits are made to bring this article in line, the result will be a considerably shortened page. You have also stated that the article won't be improved within a reasonable amount of time. Indeed, the discussions above reveal that the copy-pasted text has been present since 2004. Madcoverboy 17:49, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't put words in my mouth. I never said that the article wouldn't be improved in a reasonable amount of time; I said that I personally might or might not have time to do it myself within the next few weeks. Those are two entirely different statements.

There is a third option, of course, which you choose to ignore: leave the article in place and make whatever improvements are necessary here, while merely linking to it from the new page. These edits will not appreciably shorten the article, as you suggest; while a few sentences here and there might be deleted, more will have to be added if you want more text to explain the significance of the Hunt, as your tag says.

If you wish to go the AfD route, that is your prerogative, though I totally disagree with your assessment of what the result will be. If you choose to unilaterally merge the page with no further support, it will be unmerged soon after, and you will then have to find further support for the merge elsewhere, though so far that support seems elusive. Qaqaq 06:27, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see, so you're slapping "citation required" notices all over the article, even in places where citations already exist in the article, to justify making the article short enough to further justify moving it. And you keep repeating a claim about copy-pasted text. What parts of this article are ostensibly plagiarized? A quick comparison of this page to the Hunt intro page (http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/huntintro.html) doesn't seem to reveal any verbatim passages. Fheaney 23:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Madcoverboy, your {{fact}} tagging of the article seems to me like disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. It is unreasonable to suggest that every single sentence should have its own citation, or that every sentence that doesn't have its own citation is in question.

If you think the article needs improving, then help improve it instead of fighting with those who would. But your proposal to merge it will go nowhere. Trying to merge one of the largest and most well-known puzzle-solving competitions into an article about "MIT traditions and student activities" is an error of scale. It would be like merging George W. Bush into List of people from Texas. As a thought experiment, if MIT stopped hosting the Mystery Hunt, someone else would.

Also, AfD is not meant to be "Articles for Lots Of People Looking At Critically", so don't misuse it like that.

Meanwhile, to contribute something constructive, I'd like to point at a source that could be added. The radio show "This American Life" did a segment on the Mystery Hunt, including interviews of participants on last year's winning team, Palindrome. http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1172

rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 07:17, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Re Madcoverboy's claim that "the discussions above reveal that the copy-pasted text has been present since 2004", a closer reading of the discussion page and its history reveals that the page was completely rewritten to remove all such potentially infringing text on October 21, 2004. Fheaney 20:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All these naysayers have so little good faith in me! I only hope that they will return to contribute as much as they criticize. I redid the introduction to satisfy my concerns about importance and implemented named ref tags to make referencing later claims easier. The next stage will likely involve more controversial edits to decruft and combine the "Structure" and "Type of puzzles" sections, include some sort of list of stats, themes, or other info about previous puzzles from the puzzle history site, removing redundant text, and citing fact-tagged statements and removing statements that cannot be verified. Madcoverboy 16:29, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now what?[edit]

The most recent rewrite and subsequent corrections have remained largely stable for almost a week. Is this an article that the rest of you would like to parade around on the DYK/GA/FA circuit someday or just leave here in its quiet corner of wikipedia? What things need to be addressed and improved? With what other articles can we crosslink? Madcoverboy 03:44, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't feel any particular need to push this article into some sort of contest. It's informative about its subject and provides links for interested readers to learn more. I'm not opposed to improvements but I don't think it's particularly broken. DenisMoskowitz 17:29, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Same thoughts here. I don't really understand what the "good article" distinction is for. I'm happy to just help maintain this article, and if I see a way I can improve it, to do so. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 20:43, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Writing team names?[edit]

I don't see what the benefit is of listing the names of the writing teams of each of the past Hunts. They're basically meaningless to anyone who's not already familiar with who the Mystery Hunt teams are, and in some cases they're actually potentially misleading (the Palindrome team that wrote the 2001 Hunt did not have the same membership as the Palindrome team that wrote the 2008 Hunt, for instance). AJD (talk) 19:30, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It seems the closest we can come to shorthand attribution for the hunt and theme. The two groups of Palindrome writers were not the same, but it was the same team -- in the sense that a sports team retains a certain identity even if it loses or trades its star players. It wasn't a new team that happened to share a name with an older one (in that case, disambiguation would be in order). – SJ + 10:04, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's reasonable, but the way it's done now still loses data: for example, if a goal is to indicate when the same team wrote multiple Hunts, the list doesn't note that the 2004 and 2014 Hunts were written by the same team. And: was the 2011 Hunt written by the same team that wrote the 2006 Hunt, or was the 2015 Hunt? AJD (talk) 06:13, 20 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this article would be improved by the deletion of info about team names Rainjacket (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 01:03, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Please avoid using words that are not words.[edit]

The article uses words like "puzzlehunt" and "runaround" that either are not words (puzzlehunt) or are used entirely differently from a word's usual meanings (runaround). (With the word "runaround" never defined.)

This is completely inappropriate for an encyclopedia, where the goal is clarity.108.245.209.39 (talk) 20:44, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Puzzlehunt" has its own article on Wikipedia, so I disagree there. I agree that "runaround" could use a brief explanation, though I think the word itself should be retained, since that is the official term for the final puzzle of the hunt. Qaqaq (talk) 18:13, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]