TaashKlaush's blog

By TaashKlaush, history, 3 years ago, In English

So, in the previous contest, Good Bye 2020, some of the users exposed the mass level of copying that was done in the round. For those who didn't follow, this was done with telegram channels used as a platform for sharing codes of contest problems.

Personally, I feel that, this exposure has led to more participants joining these channels. And, therefore, more amount of plagiarism in the subsequent rounds.

The Div 3 that happened today was one such contest. Such activities are killing the competition. So, Headquarters, kindly look into this.

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3 years ago, # |
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This news is so frustrating and pisses me off everytime i hear about it , first i used to do codechef long challenges but with so much of cheating and discussions between the college students of the problems , i totally moved to short contests so that because of the lesser time constraint it could be a fair way to see your true standings but now this news of cheating in codeforces short contests totally demotivates me :(

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3 years ago, # |
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I honestly don't understand why (most) cheaters aren't banned. Of course, the ban is only a part of the solution to this cheating problem, but it will at least somewhat discourage the cheaters.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    I feel Ban may not be the permanent solution, (Though I agree it would discourage cheaters a bit) but what I think is eventually, They would create another account for ratings again. And I have seen most of the time to skip plagiarism check Cheaters just change few lines of codes and add some header files and comments and escape away.

    I think something like Phone Number should be made compulsory so that if that account would be banned then next time cheater cannot be able to make another account from the same phone number. Typically any person would never own many Phone numbers so It would restrict cheaters to make fake accounts again and again. Do You agree, correct me in case I'm wrong !!!

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      3 years ago, # ^ |
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      This seems good, but consider that you can then take your mom/dad’s phone number to make a new account, as the people who do cp are not many, one may have many friends who don't even know what cp is, and take their numbers.

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        3 years ago, # ^ |
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        Yeah, I know you are absolutely right. What I thought was there would be a limit on that, any person would not be able to make more than 50-100 such fake accounts after that he/she would also be discouraged.

        Well One harsh thing could be to prepare a platform like interviews/tests where people cannot change tabs till the test is over will reduce cheaters in large amounts but again it would affect other people also who solve honestly. Since most of us code on local compilers.

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          3 years ago, # ^ |
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          But if you prevent people from changing tabs then it would affect honest guys like me as well.

          In today's contest, I could not remember the syntax usage of upper bound function in c++. I just saw that quickly.

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          3 years ago, # ^ |
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          This is also probably useless as people can still chat undetected via phone

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      3 years ago, # ^ |
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      Why this comment is downvoted? I think this is the best solution I've ever seen for discouraging new accounts.

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        3 years ago, # ^ |
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        Because no one wants to force some kind of identification. I’m not gonna give Codeforces some identifying information just to participate in contests.

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3 years ago, # |
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Those cheaters were never a part of the community. They don't deserve to be a part of any community. I don't understand how can they get a good night's sleep even after knowing that they cheated. They are not even truthful to themselves

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3 years ago, # |
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They must add a minimum time limit for questions. Lock the problem for submissions once the following time limits are reached:

Problem A : max(time when 50% solved the problem, 15 minutes)
Problem B : max(time when 40% solved the problem, 30 minutes)
Problem C : max(time when 40% solved the problem, 45 minutes)
Problem D : max(time when 30% solved the problem, 75 minutes)
and so on...

This way the number of cheaters will be significantly reduced.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    I don't think this is a good way to ban cheaters.

    You can't tell whether one is cheating by their submission time.

    Also, some contestants don't solve the problems in the given order.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    It's very weird solution. I agree with previous comment and add up something.

    Suppose a participant got stuck with a problem and eventually solved it. Do you mean he would be unable to submit it? Also there are people who can't solve A within 15 minutes.

    Someone who wants to help cheaters and share his solution can do it right after the submission. So gaps between the main solution and its copies would be very small.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    but there may be people who wouldn't be aiming to solve all these problems. Some might aim to solve 2 out of 5 questions because they aren't confident enough or are mainly beginners like me. The time limit on questions would be troublesome for them.

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3 years ago, # |
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I believe there is almost no solution to this problem, except starting to enjoy cp (specially for those who DO NOT CHEAT) and, let them cheat... what will they get?! (I mean cheaters don’t have any effect on cp lovers)

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    It actually has an effect: it discourages those who participate fair-play in contests (see this), because they would get worse results than they actually should. Also, their ratings could be lower because of all these cheaters and I think many people find the rating system pretty satisfying: think of what a great achievement it felt to get a new color.

    I actually think there is a solution, which many people have proposed: ban cheaters' accounts and make a better cheater detection system, relying on some trusted members of the community.

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3 years ago, # |
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3 years ago, # |
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Codeforces needs a better plagiarism checker & to ban people who have cheated in the past. Yes, the cheaters could make a new account with a new email adress, but then they'd start from scratch — the best we can do anyways. Please, this is very frustrating. I spent my entire winter break studying for Codeforces, only to see that there is mass cheating going on. It's quite discouraging.

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3 years ago, # |
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My idea for a solution would be to ban cheaters permanently as well as enforce 2FA(Two-factor authentication) if you want to take place in rated rounds. Perhaps all contestants could be required to participate in SMS verification(connect phone number to cf account). Banning cheaters will just cause them to make a new account and cheat again. If 2FA is enforced, it will be harder for cheaters to just keep opening accounts since they will need lots of phones just to make new accounts. This would also help with alt accounts. I don't know, maybe this solution will reduce the number of Codeforces participants, but I think it would improve contest integrity a lot.

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3 years ago, # |
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Examining this situation, any economist would immediately start to examine the incentives. What is the incentive to cheat? Or rather, what is the incentive—is there any?—to getting an artificially high rating? Aiming to make cheating harder will never fully eliminate cheating, but changing the fundamental incentives at play will lead to a long term solution that benefits the entire CP community without imposing additional difficulties on the rest of you and me. This is mentioned in another thread: https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/86387

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    You're right -- changing the incentive is important, but this is fairly obvious and nothing new I think.

    I wasn't able to find your proposed solution based on the linked thread, so it might have been useful to mention that explicitly in your post.

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      3 years ago, # ^ |
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      The thread I had in mind was deleted, but the solution would largely imply a reform in the way many people come to CP in an attempt to secure a better job. Some companies, many not located in the US, will view your rankings on CP sites as part of your portfolio. From my understanding, this is the only pragmatic explanation of why people decide to cheat.

      Now solutions are subjective; my proposal would be to have people excel in other areas, demonstrating proficiency without CP. Hopefully this leads to an eventual tendency for those companies to look beyond CP knowledge. In addition, this would prevent unenthusiastic drones from muddling the CP community, which rightfully should consist of people who are actually interested in CP.

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3 years ago, # |
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Today (after #693 (div3)) i reported l0 handles which i found very suspicious to mike, we will not let code forces down. These are the handles:- 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

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3 years ago, # |
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Unpopular Opinion , but , I feel this copying thing should continue for a while , until so called "FAANG" recruiters/(people who provide referrals) get to know the reality and stop caring about rating on OJs, that way, the hype will come down , and the cheating scenario improves.

Comment mostly in Indian Context , because most of the cheaters are among us.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    So let the coronavirus continue and no mask until we all adapt to it and be immune?

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3 years ago, # |
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Each other cheating exposure blog pasted some sort of evidence to support their talks, I dont see any in your case. Can you please provide some of them ?

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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      3 years ago, # ^ |
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      I dont see how this is cheating?

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        3 years ago, # ^ |
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          3 years ago, # ^ |
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          I dont think D is an easy problem for people rated ~1100. Even a lot of blues couldnt solve it. Judging people on whether they solved D or not feels wrong to me.

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            3 years ago, # ^ |
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              3 years ago, # ^ |
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              This is one of the worst arguments I've ever seen. Please don't make CodeForces like CodeChef discuss. If you want to accuse someone of cheating, provide more solid evidence, for example plagiarized submissions or extremely suspicious submission times (50 minute A, DEF in 20 minutes). Simply because someone had fast ABC but couldn't solve anything else doesn't mean anything. Enough time doesn't mean that you can solve a problem, especially with those requiring some observation.

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                3 years ago, # ^ |
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                  3 years ago, # ^ |
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                  If you can't solve ABC quickly, that's your problem, but wrongly accusing people of cheating with absolutely 0 proof is a terrible idea. You mentioned their speed. I'm interested in how you can cheat and solve 3 problems in under 14 minutes. This must be very organized cheating. Finally, I didn't find anything suspicious. You can see that almost all of them tried to submit to other problems, and honestly having solved all the problems you can in 14 minutes isn't a surprise. You can probably find handfuls of these people from every contest.

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3 years ago, # |
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[DELETED]

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    What about banning all idiots? Would also be cool.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    What about the good Indian students who are trying to learn and are not cheating? And also your solution is not sustainable as people can change their country.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    So according to you, only Indians cheat? Why banning Indian cheaters only will solve the problem? And why not ban all cheaters?

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3 years ago, # |
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Give me the id of such telegram accounts, I will be posting wrong solutions there, this is the best method to make those cheaters learn.