Well, then the vast majority should just shut up and let the interested players solve the puzzles.
Here is a hint : what if FDev did the following :
1) Add a bunch clues and puzzles each time in a bubble spanning 50lyr.
2) Those puzzles/clues, once solved, provide coordinates allowing to jump to a nearby dark system otherwise invisible.
Done.
Also, if players want to go to YT/reddit and whatnot to bypass the process, then it's their problem, not FDev's.
I really don't think expecting Frontier to hand craft new systems and insert them into the game is remotely viable. As interesting as it would be.
There are already puzzles and leads in game to find things like the INRA bases, or Thargoid sites, or the recent Halloween event. It's not like FD haven't been doing it for years already.
What about the tip off system? That already does what you're suggesting, except it points you to a surface POI rather than a new system, but the POI doesn't spawn unless you have the tip off. I've always thought expanding upon that would be great. Make it for longer journeys.
Rumours would be solved too quickly.
Maybe if they had a mechanic that after a system gets scanned and fully mapped and whoever did that managed to miss a discovery, it gets registered as a rumor instead, since I'm assuming folks won't be looking for discoveries after they see the system's been explored and mapped already.
Bugs aside, personally my biggest gripe with the codex is how it doesn't count your findings after the confirmed one, or how it doesn't send you a new reported one after you find the current one. That would allow some record tracking in-game instead of relying fully on third-party stuff.
It depends on how the rumours were done. We have no idea
I think originally it was just supposed to be to push you towards a region in space to focus the efforts. If it said something like M class stars in a certain region, then you're still looking at sifting through hundreds of thousands of systems. If it narrowed it down by saying it contained 2 or 3 certain types of stars, then you spend hours and hours scanning the Galaxy Map. But still probably have thousands of systems to check.
We do have the rather serious issue though still that you could well scan and even map and entire system, and still not see the thing that was there because it hasn't spawned properly, or because things in low orbit don't show up on the FSS (or even every time in space necessarily). I visited the Zurara for instance, scanned the system, mapped the planet I knew it was around but it didn't show up until I logged out and in again.
People could have easily passed things by and would never know even if they were determinedly looking for it. Until that's fixed everything else is moot in my opinion.
Though I agree with your gripe and would also add that if more than one instance of a thing has been found in a region, then it should give you the option to find the one closest to you. Not just the first one discovered which might be 15 Kylies away.
I suspect this is the issue FDEV had with the Rumours function of the codex. Does everyone's codex update once the rumours have been solved, or do they not update everyone's codex let people just keep hunting only to find when they get there that X player beat them to the rumour ages ago?
I'd originally thought that they were going to use the rumour section to point people to a story related thing. Maybe they had, but then they stopped working on narrative to focus on Odyssey.
