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IOI 2020 updates?
By covidioi, history, 4 years ago, In English

Have there been any IOI 2020 updates after the announcement in which it was confirmed that it will not be happening in July as planned? What are the current options? How many countries are yet to host their team selection olympiads? Will it be postponed to 2021 like ICPC?

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +37 Vote: I do not like it

There are no updates since the last announcement.

I do not believe IOI Committees or hosts have the ability to know whether any country has or has not completed their team selection. However, I believe that there is a significant amount of delegations who were unable to complete their selection (Latvia is one of them, for example), hence an announcement was made that “In whatever form it runs, IOI 2020 will not take place any earlier than September 2020” to give delegations more time to complete their team selection.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it -16 Vote: I do not like it

    What about countries that have announced that they've cancelled their team selection tests? We can assume that they won't be participating in IOI 2020? And what about countries which are still under lockdown? It isn't possible for them to have team selection tests. Have any suggestions been made with regards to this?

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +62 Vote: I do not like it

      Cancellation of team selection tests doesn’t imply that team cannot be selected at a later time or in a different format, especially when there hasn’t been a decision reached about IOI 2020 yet.

      It is absolutely pointless to speculate on who will or will not participate in an event for which no dates have been set yet. So I kindly suggest you stop creating anonymous accounts to ask speculative questions to which you will not get any answers.

      As I said previously, it is known that many countries cannot hold their selections in a regular timeframe, hence an announcement was made that IOI 2020 will not happen until at least September, giving delegations more time. Hosts and IC is aware that delegations need to finish their selections and are factoring this into discussions of potential options for IOI 2020.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +14 Vote: I do not like it

        Cancellation of team selection tests doesn’t imply that team cannot be selected at a later time or in a different format, especially when there hasn’t been a decision reached about IOI 2020 yet.

        This is really ambiguous. In countries where governments have announced that no Olympiads will be happening in 2020, are you suggesting that team selection tests can still happen? (Keep in mind that these are countries where national olympiads have still not been organised, so team selections is the next stage).

        As I said previously, it is known that many countries cannot hold their selections in a regular timeframe, hence an announcement was made that IOI 2020 will not happen until at least September, giving delegations more time. Hosts and IC is aware that delegations need to finish their selections and are factoring this into discussions of potential options for IOI 2020.

        If September still is not enough, will there be further postponements? Or is that a question which can't be answered at this point?

        I am asking this because if there will not be any further postponements, it is highly unlikely that team selection tests will be completed in several countries(including mine). If such a situation arises, I do not wish to spend 12 hours a day practicing for something which I won't be able to go to.

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          4 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

          I do not expect host or IOI Committees to be able to answer questions on country-specific selection plans. If you have questions or concerns regarding country-specific plans to host such selections, please contact your country’s contact person with the details available on IOI website.

          It’s highly likely that countries might not yet have that plan ready since situation is changing rapidly and given the current information, there are still almost four months to select teams. So understand that you are not likely to get any definitive answer at this stage, which may mean that you might need to make decisions around your workload based on very incomplete information unfortunately. But such are times we live in now.

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +14 Vote: I do not like it

      Selecting an IOI team is not difficult using an alternative method (for example, online contests). I don't think any country would skip IOI because they can't devise a way to select the team.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +31 Vote: I do not like it

        I have to ask: do you have any ideas on how to supervise contestants during online contests?

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          4 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it +20 Vote: I do not like it

          I think there is no reliable way to do that. I would trust the contestants, clearly state what is allowed to do during the contest and create original problems.

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            4 years ago, # ^ |
              Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

            this is a really bad idea

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              4 years ago, # ^ |
                Vote: I like it +8 Vote: I do not like it

              Why? This is how Google Code Jam operates, for example.

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                4 years ago, # ^ |
                  Vote: I like it +25 Vote: I do not like it

                I don’t think this is a bad idea, but the difference of GCJ and IOI TST is that

                • TST is easier than GCJ WF and thus there is more room for unqualified individual to cheat and win
                • Depending on the view, IOI TST could be more important than GCJ WF
                • If a TST is combined with national olympiad, diploma could be tricky to distribute
                • Possible government regulation
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                4 years ago, # ^ |
                  Vote: I like it +47 Vote: I do not like it

                Well, it would be unlikely that someone gets help from some other contestant, but it may be that they get help from some university student or someone else who's not eligible (this can't happen easily in GCJ cause there the eligibility criteria let almost anyone compete, so if you're capable or willing to help someone else, you'd rather help yourself — note GCJ is much shorter than an olympiad so it's unlikely that you want to waste your time on others).

                I suppose, however, the biggest problem is that even very fair and honest people would be tempted to unfairly maximize their performance knowing that others have this power and they are less fair. It's a horrible position to be in: you've worked really hard and you know many of the other contenders get help; what do you do? This sort of olympiad, depending on country could be someone's chance to scholarships/admission to prestigious universities, so the stake is not particularly low.

                Lastly, I suppose it matters a lot what the general view of your population is: I'm 100% sure that in Romania people would be cheating at least on the very basis that they know (just like I claim here) that others would be cheating.

                I suppose you could at least attempt an online supervision of some kind which makes it difficult for them to cheat. You can use a webcam, one more cam (this one is not what you can expect everyone to have, but I guess many people who hope for IOI would invest in it if needed) and a screen sharing/something else to follow the internet traffic. Even if there are work arounds, it would least cut the idea that it's safe to cheat so many fewer people would do so because they assume others would be cheating too.

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                  4 years ago, # ^ |
                    Vote: I like it +11 Vote: I do not like it

                  Yeah, it can become a problem if everybody thinks "other people will cheat anyway so I have to cheat too" :)

                  However, I think in practice it would be really difficult to even find a competent person that would help in cheating. I don't know what I would do if I wanted to do that as a contestant. Send messages like "I want to cheat in the IOI selection contest, could you help me?" to random people? What if any of them reveals my plan?

                  On the other hand, let's assume that somebody would send me such a message. I'm in the team that prepares our national contests, so I could easily e.g. deliver the problems to the cheater a week before the contest. Why would I do that, even for a large sum of money? Even if I wanted to help in cheating, there is a risk that it is revealed and I would probably lose my job and career.

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                  4 years ago, # ^ |
                    Vote: I like it +26 Vote: I do not like it

                  The webcam solution is what Slovak OI opted for to organise nationals. I don't like it very much because:

                  • I can't get the webcam on either of my laptops to work, so others can have this problem.
                  • Not everyone even has a webcam and it's harder to get one in corona times.
                  • It doesn't guard against Internet.
                  • "Gotta go to the toilet!"

                  Apparently it worked well enough for our nationals, but most kids that competed there are fairly well-off and know the organisers personally. Still, there's no way to know if nobody cheated.

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                  4 years ago, # ^ |
                    Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

                  I think there are quite bunch of excuses to help someone cheat tho. (obv it's still not OK), for example being close friends or relatives, it's weird to say it's hard to find someone to help in cheating.

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                  4 years ago, # ^ |
                    Vote: I like it +8 Vote: I do not like it

                  You could use a phone camera and just put it on a pile of books, and you can use screen-sharing for guarding the internet, but nothing can prevent someone from cheating while he is in the bathroom, and nothing can prevent someone from going to the bathroom.

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            4 years ago, # ^ |
            ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +57 Vote: I do not like it

            I consider this a terrible idea. In the last couple years there have been multiple high profile instances of cheating in the US computing Olympiad, including a completely unqualified participant cheating their way to the TST camp.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it -35 Vote: I do not like it

Do not postpone to 2021, just hold it online, why not

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +63 Vote: I do not like it

Literally today an update was published:

Hi IOI Community

Host updates as of Monday, 04 May 2020.

Singapore is currently in Circuit Breaker (a.k.a. partial lockdown) mode since Tuesday, 07 April 2020 which was initially scheduled to end today (Monday, 04 May 2020) but is now extended to Monday, 01 June 2020 due to a spike of new COVID-19 cases locally. You can view Singapore's first 100 days with COVID-19 in this short documentary video.

We still very much prefer conducting IOI 2020 onsite, on a date not earlier than September 2020. This would depend on the COVID-19 development locally in Singapore and worldwide, especially regarding the reopening of international air travel in the latter half of this year.

We plan to provide "some offsite/online activities" (not the actual competition) during IOI 2020 original week (19-26 July 2020) to make up for the loss of the original event. A brief description is given in attachment — “offsite or online activities.pdf”

Online IOI 2020 currently remains our 'last resort' if we have exhausted all our onsite options. We have experimented with opening our online National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI) first stage to 41 other IOI members on Sunday, 19 April 2020. A summary/statistics from the feedback from 33 out of 41 team leaders is given in attachment — “Singapore National Team Selection (first stage) Open Contest TEAM Feedback.pdf” (partially redacted) All teams are still expected to finalize national team selection by Monday, 31 August 2020.

Regards, Associate Professor Tan Sun Teck IOI 2020 Executive Director

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +28 Vote: I do not like it

    OMEGALUL that feedback format.

    partially redacted

    That's a funny way for them to say: screenshots of web forms that have to be .pdf instead of .png for some reason, so they're missing a lot of responses and since the options are verbose, they're cut off after a few intro words.

    On slide 8, we get 0 information responses like "Safety is important, so please only do...", "If it is impossible to host onsite IOI ...". Why?

    (from the report) at least no clear plagiarism report found

    Yeah, that's either good if it means there was no cheating or bad if it means they failed to detect it.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

    Where is that announcement? I can't find them in homepage or facebook page

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +27 Vote: I do not like it

"Just a quick update from the IC concerning IOI 2020 and beyond. The IC held an online meeting yesterday on May 25.
After some discussion, the following plan was approved unanimously: 1. IOI 2020 will be held online. Detail will be forthcoming soon. 2. IOI 2021 will be hosted by Singapore (originally by Egypt). 3. IOI 2024 will be hosted by Egypt."

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