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This question is about Is it NP-hard to fill up bins with minimum moves? It is one of the "greatest" open questions. It has so many upvotes and views, I hardly believed nobody ever put a comment, so I assume they were deleted to keep the purity of the question. But comments can also be used to clarify things. The question mentions that even a specific restricted version of the problem is "not obvious", but I think I've found a greedy algorithm for that case so I was wondering if that's worth discussing. (I would have to really think it through before posting it, but this current meta-question is valid regardless).

This is my first meta-question and I didn't find a search method for a meta-search for this question. Also I didn't try putting a comment / partial answer to have it removed and then complain on meta.

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  • $\begingroup$ If you think you have an answer, do post it. If you want to discuss, hit Computer Science Chat. I don't understand what the question here is, sorry. $\endgroup$
    – Raphael Mod
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 11:16
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    $\begingroup$ I have seen this question a long time ago, I perfectly understand the question, it is good, proper, clear, just do not know what to say, I have no answer, and the question itself is of this kind that hint is equal the answer (at least I think so). Any kind of "I want to know too" or "what a cool question" comments are not proper, so they are not there (I do not know if they existed). Keep in mind that "NP-hard", "bins", "fill", "minimum moves" are very common CS queries, some questions are tumbleweeds, some are just popular thanks to topic. And I agree this belongs more to chat than meta. $\endgroup$
    – Evil
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 15:46

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In the lifetime of this question, there have been a grand total of four comments: two comments by people requesting a clarification, and two replies by the asker. In both cases the asker edited the question to include the requested clarifications, which made the comments obsolete.

Having no comments is a good thing! Comments are meant as temporary notes discussing issues with a post. If there are no issues, there should be no comments.

I don't know why this question has so many upvotes. It is a good question, with a clear problem statement and some comparison with related problems. That doesn't always translate into much attention though. It definitely helps that many people more or less understand the question even if they have no idea how to solve it. I suspect this question made it to the hot questions list where it was seen by many programmers who know (more or less) what “NP-complete” means and who know a good question when they see it.

If you have an answer, then by all means please do post it! Even if it's a partial answer, e.g. a special case. (As long as it isn't a special case that trivially follows from the material in the question, but if the question says that the case you solved is not obvious, then go for it.)

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