Thoughts on Puzzle Cheating?

I think the best method would be to ascertain who is cheating, and if they end up winning the giveaway, just ask for a reroll, and send the proof that they cheated on the ticket. Mods will then deal with the situation appropriately.

My only input is if it's a test of knowledge, you aren't going to be able to prevent communication amongst people. I personally don't enjoy the maze-style puzzles, but that is really one of the only ways. It's also pretty much impossible to guarantee who the person/people is/are asking for help. It all comes down to the fact that there isn't a 'timer' on being able to answer a question, so they have all that time to find help. ;0

It's not cheating... Since you got internet you are going to use it to your advantage, am I wrong?

Did you explicitly say something like "no sharing/helping/etc" in your puzzle?

idk, since the differences between cultures are large, i don't expect you to know what i considered normal knowledges here ( where i live) and vice-versa. doing a puzzle based on your specific knowledge and interest about some problems, u should know that most people don't have a clue of what you're asking about.
try to ask questions about general knowledges. and yeah where do you think the answer will come from? internet.

my solution is if you cant prevent it, you encourage it. let make a puzzle that favor "cheating". it's more interesting.

Boo! More cheaters = less chance for me to win! :)

Well, people always search for the easy way out...
I guess a quick "No sharing the answers or I'll kill you!" quote in the start of the puzzle would stop the people who don't know that they shouldn't share.
As for the people who know and do it anyway, well... apart from checking around if they cheated I don't see another solution. There is technically no way of knowing for sure in some cases, you can't monitor the entire Internet. :/

We have a weapon for cheaters ----> MEMOIR! His name does wonders, you know.

Puzzles are serious business now.

Just let them go. I see little difference between looking up answer in Google and asking somebody about it.
I agree that your rebus is not the case of "looking up in Google", but you should make additional warning that asking for help on other Internet resources is not allowed when you are making such puzzles. Yes, I will assume that asking people not involved in current puzzle solving is allowed in this case, because they cannot "leak" answers or links.

P.S. That picture with suns was only question in your puzzle that I could not solve. What was it?

I don't really mind asking for their friends help on Skype, Facebook, or something like that. But going out of their way (creating a forum topic on another site, tweeting, etc.) to just try to find the answer is more weird to me than making me angry.

Cheating to me would be someone literally giving them the link to the giveaway or if they discuss it on my topic.

I honestly don't see what's wrong with asking for help, the rules say don't tell people the answer on here (aka don't make the puzzle pointless by posting the solution in the comments) but asking other people on the internet for help is just logical in some cases, it's no differnt from going and looking it up in a book.

I wouldn't bother personally, I stick to "If you can't do it, don't enter", but there's no way you can enforce this so there's not much point arguing it

I have two differnt points of view related to this subject:

1. Me being a puzzler. I'm pretty pissed off, when I invest a decent amount of time / thinking to solve a puzzle. If my chances on winning the giveaway get smaller by some people "not following the rules" it sucks pretty much.

2. Me being the creator. As long as I can't say for sure who is cheating (also if the history of sign ins might be an indicator as well as the relation between solvers at it's too hard and joiners on the giveaway link, I can't bother much about it. As a creator (I only did one right now) my rewards are the comments in the puzzle post (inlcuding possible questions) or in the giveaway's thread for solvers. So in this case I don't care that much about those scumbags ;).

Concerning your new question I would say it depends on how, who and what you ask for. If it's just like asking friends to solve it together it's a slight breaking of the rules. Is it asking some "strangers" on another site it is real cheating for me like it is cheating at its best if you just copy that giveaway link and post it so people can join without effort.

Well, since the posts in this thread have made it clear that most people think cheating is okay as long as you can get away with it on a technicality, you apparently need to spell out exactly what is and is not considered cheating in the original puzzle post. Include a warning that things like asking for help on other websites will result in the giveaway being deleted in the event the violator cannot be linked to an SG account, and follow through if it happens. People who solve puzzles tend to be clever and resourceful, and having it ruined by someone like that might result in some vengeance on your behalf. You are then free to create a new puzzle or do a completely different sort of giveaway or whatever else you like.

I use to make puzzles very frequently and what I found was that if you don't want people to cheat, make puzzles that people can't cheat on. For example I made a lot of story puzzles where you would need to use clues and solve puzzles within the story to progress. The only way to cheat on them would be to share hints which I got rid of by using group puzzles. But I found that cheating happened very infrequently on my puzzles and the one time it did was someone posted a wiki questions with a riddle but I quickly found it and got him removed from the giveaway.

I notice that strangely worded questions seem to throw off the genuinely lazy. Like, reference a game made in 1992 by Psygnosis - but then ask for the main character's last name. Even if they ask for help elsewhere, they're likely to be asking for the game name.

I would consider it cheating myself to ask someone else to give me answers, no matter where I am. I don't mind looking stuff up, and I don't mind letting go of a puzzle I can't finish. I am, however, able to finish quite a few. I can vaguely understand the frustration felt by seeing other people successfully find meaning in an apparently meaningless puzzle.

But cheaters still suck.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Looks like most of you think it's okay to ask for answers on puzzles. I'm going to run a little social experiment and see if that's actually a wider representation of views.

This thread is weird cuz if i remember correctly you asked for hints in a puzzle a few hours ago yourself

Stop whining about people asking for help on puzzles, if you don't want that just create a normal giveaway like most people do.
At least that way everyone has a equal chance of winning. Puzzles are overrated anyways.

"Okay, from the comments in this thread, I can see that perhaps some people cheat because they never read the SteamGifts FAQ." I honestly think that's a very weak reason to cheat. Just because it's in the FAQ isn't the reason you shouldn't cheat, it's because your own community members are making these puzzles and it's extremely disrespectful should be the reason you shouldn't cheat