That is, a tag when the main objective is to write infinite loops without doing useful things, to crash the compiler, to generate errors, to use a lot of memory, or to generate big executables, etc.

I feel those challenges are related, and a user who likes one of them may like the others. And currently they are likely only tagged as .

Should we create a tag for them. And if so, what exactly should be included in this tag?

  • \$\begingroup\$ If such a tag existed, would you add it to your favorites and use it to find questions that you personally enjoy answering? \$\endgroup\$ – Rainbolt Oct 23 '15 at 15:40
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Rainbolt I don't usually use the favorite feature. But I was just going to find some related questions, at least for finding whether a new idea would be a duplicate. And it wasn't easy. I had the idea for a tag when I came across this question: codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/16036/25180 , which is unexpected for me to be existed. It's likely I wouldn't know it by keyword search if not accidentally. \$\endgroup\$ – jimmy23013 Oct 23 '15 at 15:53
  • \$\begingroup\$ I hadn't thought about using tags to search for duplicates. That seems useful. I'm writing an answer. \$\endgroup\$ – Rainbolt Oct 23 '15 at 16:16

I can see why would be a useful tag. If you wanted to write a challenge involving crashes, infinite loops, or other types of misbehaviors, you might use the tag to search for duplicates.

There is another tag called . If you think about it, most questions using that tag are really just a combination of and *. I think we should split that tag into two. This would satisfy your request without increasing the total number of tags. There's no reason to have a more specialized version of popularity contest anyway.

Proposed actions:

*With few exceptions, notably this challenge

  • \$\begingroup\$ No, underhanded is for unexpected behaviors to the users. What I meant is to cause the language itself to do faulty things, and is in most cases expected by the users if they read the code. misbehaviors might not be the best name for it. \$\endgroup\$ – jimmy23013 Oct 23 '15 at 16:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ Not all underhanded questions are popcons. Or "misbehaviours". \$\endgroup\$ – Peter Taylor Oct 23 '15 at 16:35
  • \$\begingroup\$ @PeterTaylor The tag description reads "Votes reflect how non-obvious the bug is." Asking users to vote according to subjective rules sounds exactly like a popcon to me. \$\endgroup\$ – Rainbolt Oct 23 '15 at 16:42
  • \$\begingroup\$ @jimmy23013 Why do you need separate tags for "unexpected behavior" and "faulty behavior"? I don't see the difference. \$\endgroup\$ – Rainbolt Oct 23 '15 at 16:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ The code can be obviously having faulty behaviors. Examples are this question and maybe my question. It isn't necessary to hide what you are doing. Maybe I didn't describe it well. \$\endgroup\$ – jimmy23013 Oct 23 '15 at 16:48
  • \$\begingroup\$ @PeterTaylor Only 8 questions are tagged underhanded but not popcon. One is closed. One is essentially a popcon but with only two judges. One is a combination of popcon and code golf. This one and this one are just mistagged and should be a popcon. The remaining three that are truly not a popcon fail to even adhere to the underhanded tag description. \$\endgroup\$ – Rainbolt Oct 23 '15 at 16:55
  • \$\begingroup\$ @jimmy23013 Okay, so you want a tag for "faulty behaviors", and a separate tag for "unexpected faulty behaviors"? That seems unnecessarily specific. "Unexpected" is subjective, which automatically makes it a pop contest anyway. \$\endgroup\$ – Rainbolt Oct 23 '15 at 16:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Rainbolt But expected faulty behaviors can be pop-con too. \$\endgroup\$ – jimmy23013 Oct 23 '15 at 17:09
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ Huh? I can't see how 24504 is a mistagged popcon: it's fairly explicit that it's correctly tagged code-golf. And I'm not sure why you say that 31615 doesn't adhere to the underhanded tag description. In fact, I think that latter question is probably the best question in the entire tag, both as a PPCG question and as a potential Underhanded C Contest question. \$\endgroup\$ – Peter Taylor Oct 23 '15 at 17:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ @PeterTaylor "Looks fishy" is definitely a subjective criteria, but code golf is a purely objective tag, so either there's a hole in the spec for 24504, or the question is mistagged. My mistake - 31615 does adhere to the tag description. Would you be satisfied if I said that most underhanded contests are just "pop contests" + "misbehaviors"? I edited the answer to clarify. \$\endgroup\$ – Rainbolt Oct 23 '15 at 18:14
  • \$\begingroup\$ @jimmy23013 Yes, a challenge about faulty behaviors can be a popcon. So what? What is the problem with tagging such a challenge "popularity-contest" plus "misbehavior"? Surely that describes any challenge that is a popcon involving misbehaviors (expected or otherwise). \$\endgroup\$ – Rainbolt Oct 23 '15 at 18:19
  • \$\begingroup\$ Basically it just means whether it is automatically a pop-con is irrelevant. For the tag problem itself, I'm just waiting for other answers. \$\endgroup\$ – jimmy23013 Oct 23 '15 at 18:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ @jimmy23013 You aren't directly answering any of my questions. I asked what the problem was, and you said "It means that something is irrelevant." I asked why you needed separate tags twice now, and you avoided the question both times. \$\endgroup\$ – Rainbolt Oct 23 '15 at 18:46
  • \$\begingroup\$ Let me try to explain my idea a little better. If you have a popcon about faulty behavior, tag it [misbehaviors] + [pop-con]. If you have a codegolf about faulty behavior, tag it [misbehaviors] + [code-golf]. If you have an underhanded contest, retag it depending on what kind of contest it is. About 90% will be retagged as [popcon] + [misbehavior], and maybe 10% will be retagged [code golf] or [code challenge] + [misbehavior]. Make sense now? \$\endgroup\$ – Rainbolt Oct 23 '15 at 19:29
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Rainbolt I was trying to respond to your comment before the edit, which now I forgot about the exact content. But fine. "Misbehavior" isn't well-defined in this context. Literally it can mean not good behavior, or just unexpected behavior if somebody expect it to do something useful, which is subjective. It can be the user reading source code, the user being told the rationales, the careless programmer, the language API itself, or the user watching at the system monitor, etc, who doesn't expect it to behave as such. (cont.) \$\endgroup\$ – jimmy23013 Oct 23 '15 at 19:34

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