It's been almost a year since the launch of Coding Challenges on Stack Overflow. We think it’s important to share this reflection with the rest of the network, and we also want to know if there is interest in bringing something like challenges to additional sites.

The company kicked off work on Challenges as a fun new way for users at all levels to learn new skills and test their abilities, on a wide range of topics. While some challenges have been more popular than others, we have seen consistent interest and participation from users. There have been 18 challenges so far, receiving a median of 58 entries per challenge. The Challenge Coder badge has been awarded to 382 users, meaning they have successfully completed, or “won”, at least one challenge. No one has yet won 10 challenges to earn the Challenge Hacker badge, but a few people are getting close with 5 or 6 successful challenges under their belts.

Recently we have been excited to showcase challenges that have been written by members of the Stack Overflow community (for which authors earn the Challenge Creator badge), including the current challenge which is open until May 13. We will continue highlighting interesting ideas that come from users. If you have a proposal for a challenge please post it in the Challenges Sandbox and a community manager may reach out to you to finalize the details and get it published so the community can give it a try.

Feedback

If you have participated in any challenges, which were your favorites and why? If you have not participated in challenges yet, what might make you want to give it a try?

We would also like to know if there are specific types of challenges that users want to see. Are there certain topics, modalities, or technologies that you would like to see a challenge on?

For users of sites other than Stack Overflow, could some version of challenges work on your site? The implementation could be different (especially if it's a non-technical site), but do you think your community would enjoy some friendly competition? What would make it successful, interesting, and fun?