problem difficulty ranking system

[elr]

i think it would be nice to add a system which allow solver of specific problem to give the problem
a rank from 1 to 10 which will tell the difficulty of the problem,the rank would be average of all votes
and would be displayed to everyone who browse the problems

[Slaunger]

Personally, I think that the current "Solved by" column in the problem overview is a better and more accurate metric for the difficulty of a problem, although, of course, older problems with low ids have typically been addressed by more users.

For instance, I work through the problems by id. My next problem (#125) has been solved by 3121 users, which is a lot of users compared to the average for problems with ids in the range 100-200, so that problem is probably pretty "easy". No #126, on the other hand has only been solved by 933 users, so I expect that I will be much more challenged when I get to that problem.

What would be the objective of introducing user-ranking of the problems, what should the information be used for? The problem threads gives IMHO good insight into whether users perceived the problem hard or not.

Cheers,
Slaunger

[klang]

I agree with Slaunger concerning the "solved by" column, even though the solve-by-id style of attacking the problems skew the numbers a bit. So does the solve-by-solved-by style. (taking the easiest problems first)

With the "fastest solvers" information, there is an even better tool to determine the difficulty of a problem. When that list is filled within the first hour, the problem could probably be considered manageable (297) .. if it is filled over the course of 4 days, I'll probably wait a bit before attacking the problem