Puzzle themes have been spammed with ‘passed pawns’ theme and new themes don’t take hold

See this discussion (https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/suggest-theme-in-puzzles-needs-moderating), reporting here as well as I believe it’s a bug in the system and it’s greatly deteriorating the “puzzle experience”. While I have little hope this’ll get any attention from @chess.com team (I’ve seen many other unanswered reports, unfortunately), ‘not reporting’ at all would be even worse. 

Bottom line: some themes, like ‘rooks on 7th’, ‘passed pawns’ and others have been selected for many puzzles, the passed pawns theme for almost every puzzle (!!). Since the tiny thumb down/up buttons have no effect (I’ve yet to see ‘passed pawns disappear from a mate in 1 without any pawns on the board, and it’s been over a year), this is clearly flawed and makes using puzzles in ‘custom mode’ virtually useless as a premium (paid!) feature.

Puzzles are great and add value, but they require maintenance. Same is true for wrong puzzles, what use is the report button if no action is taken, or it’s not possible to follow up (something like ‘thanks, we looked into it but didn’t see a problem with the puzzle’ is better than no feedback at all, which is the current modus operandi).

While you’re at it, the ‘suggest new theme’ stopped working as well (I’ve selected it on blank puzzles that were a clear mate in 1 or 2 and checked back later to find that it wasn’t added, which makes this much like a Sisyphus action).

Please, chess.com, join this discussion and talk with the community to improve this otherwise awesome feature of this site. 

I agree with the need for improvements in the puzzles. I have often wondered about the themes suggested. I have pressed the "thumbs down" hundreds of times. I can't believe anyone  actually took the time to spam the passed pawn theme. I think it's more likely that some form of computer analysis is to blame. But whatever the culprit, it makes using the themes a waste of time.

I have wondered who monitors reported puzzles. I haven't figured that out yet.

I'd have to say that 9 out 10 puzzle "bugs" reported here were actually not bugs, so I understand why they don't answer every query.

Meanwhile, I'd suggest sending your post via email to support@chess.com. The staff diligently tries to find the right contacts for suggestions.

tx, I’ll try that, though I’d expect them to monitor the ‘site feedback’ forum as well, I mean, why otherwise have this forum to begin with?

Btw, here’s some examples with ‘passed pawns’

https://www.chess.com/puzzles/problem/46151/practice

https://www.chess.com/puzzles/problem/1177526

https://www.chess.com/puzzles/problem/1349774 

https://www.chess.com/puzzles/problem/44146/practice (No theme, even after I’ve suggested the correct ‘hanging piece’ a few times)

I want to bump this post, as apparently nothing is being done about it! I get so PISSED with the Puzzle themes, because some people actually try to improve in specific areas, but God Bless You I hope you don't need practice on passed pawns

I would really like to see the number of Up/Down votes. I wonder if they are even counted? 

So glad I found this post, been doing puzzles, and im like no way that's a passed pawn, what am I missing lol, ok happy its not me. Fix this issue!!!!!

Super frustrating. I think the issue might be that the computer auto tags every position that has passed pawns with the theme tag 'passed pawns', regardless of whether it's actually the theme or not.

The tags were 100% crowd sourced by member suggesting and voting on them. It's possible that newer tactics, after that feature was implemented, had some automatic processing, but I don't think so.

Just want to bumb this thread, hope it makes a difference.

From what I see, this mess is created intentionally. I would understand when an algorithm adds tags like "pin" or "fork" to a puzzle although it has no impact on the actual solution,  but tagging a puzzle as "bishop pair" or "knight outpost" when there clearly isn't a bishop pair or even a knight on the board... I don't think that happens by accident.

Also I wanted to mention that recently I played a couple of puzzles (low rated, like 0-500) where not only the suggested themes were all over the place (passed pawn, fianchetto, bishop pair...) but the one relevant category, namely "mate in 1" was actually missing.

They really have to address this, because as of now, the whole theme-filter/custom puzzles function (which would be super helpful to newbie players like me) is pretty much useless :/

It’s not only the categories, it seems that clearly faulty puzzles that have been reported many times are not resolved either, example: https://www.chess.com/puzzles/problem/1331593/practice 

I agree 100%. In fact I wrote about this myself a few months ago, in very similar terms. Here:

https://www.chess.com/blog/Josechu/bogus-theme-suggestions-in-tactics-trainer

The only difference is that, after laying out my views on the subject, I went for a humorous (I hope) explanation at the end. I have started tracking what themes I have suggested and what themes I have given the thumbs up and thumbs down to, A couple of days ago I found one where my suggestion had been accepted and I celebrated! I'm an old hand at TT, with thousands of puzzles under my belt. If sensible suggestions from @Misteribel and myself are ignored like this, how is it that Passed Pawns is apparently accepted every time? Something strange going on. And I don't think it can be that the tag is added by a computer because sometimes it's there and there are no passed pawns on the board at any stage. I will try to find examples. 

Lastly, what about the theme "Simple" that has appeared recently? What is that supposed to be? How can it be a theme? Does anybody know?

On a slightly separate subject, it looks like people have found a way to cheat at Tactics Trainer. [Don't make cheating accusations in the forum. They are not allowed.-jbf]

Take a look at who is on his/her Friends list and compare to the other players. Anything suspicious about that. Are they all Bots, do you think?

Another thing I noticed is that the most he/she ever scores for nailing a puzzle is +5. Not because of speed, but because his/her ranking is so far ahead of even the highest rated puzzles, that the algorithm only awards the minimum 5 points for getting it right. I thought that was quite funny!

Here is one where reasonable suggestions have not been accepted and Passed Pawns has not been removed despite thumbs down. See the comments section:

https://www.chess.com/puzzles/problem/1326669/practice

The "simple" tag really annoys me. As far as I can tell it is often associated with K+P vs. K endgames. I guess once you understand the rules for this endgame it could be thought of as simple but isn't that the same with anything (e.g. N+B is just as simple once you work out the procedure)?

Besides, quite often there are other things happening on the board that make the puzzle not at all simple.

A simple puzzle with rating 2633

https://www.chess.com/puzzles/problem/1619718/ Here's another "passed pawns" puzzle that technically contains a passed pawn but the theme is unrelated to that. It should be "mate in one" and/or "smothered mate".

Here's a fairly canonical example of a simple-tagged puzzled: https://www.chess.com/puzzles/problem/1194116. The key motif that seems to trigger the "simple" tag is gaining the opposition in front of your pawn. However, there are a fair amount of steps to get to that point, lots of things that can go wrong, and special cases to consider in these kind of puzzles.

You are probably right, but then why is "Opposition" not a better tag in those cases? The puzzle you mention has the Opposition tag, so why have both? It makes no sense to me and nobody has yet offered an explanation in the comments I have seen. I think we are all as bemused as each other!