I think that there should be some kind of 'lock' on the thread for the user who created the node in the 'lock'.
I am not proposing that this require any modification to the way the Monastery works now. You have to give a certain amount of trust to your peers or you take away the fun factor.
After a set period (lets say one year), the original user should get a notice ( and a link ) to post the new solution to the problem. Only after submitting this solution should he/she be able to see the thread.
I will personally be responsible for notifying all the authors that it is time to look inside. I trust that they will wait for that notification before looking.
When regarding the above notes, this should/could be an extra feature in PM so people can add there 'timelock node' at any time.
In general, people tend to lose sight of the original goal of having fun and get lost in the details. If someone else wants to champion a proposed change to the Monastery I am not going to stop them but I do not want it to be driven by this project.
As far as possible project ideas... It could be a number of things..... You could leave it upto the imagination of the author, or create a couple of categories for different skill levels
I don't like the idea of leaving it up to the imagination of the author. Part of the fun is comparing yourself to others and for that it needs to be apples to apples. I do like the idea of potentially having several tasks to choose from depending on your skill level so I hope people propose tasks covering a range of skill sets.