Hi. Cf is filled with great people, but it is also filled with plenty of users that abuse the system, and dampen other people's fun though their actions.
More specifically, I am currently talking about: (1) unrateds, alts, and contests that manipulate their rating to try winning contests below their division.
(2) users who make alts to shield themselves from backlash when commenting, potentially to make hurtful statements.
I've labeleld things as (1) and (2) to refer what problem I am talking about
Examples:
(1) It is easy to see the div 2 contests which should have been rightfully won by experts, but were unjust-fully stolen by alts or rating manipulators, even in the final standings. We can also see several troll and racist comments made behind the mask of anonymity. See the last couple of div 2's for illustrative purposes.
(2) There are plenty of racist, mean-spirited comments hidden behind unrated users.
I've done my research and several past suggestions have been made:
(1) Make div 2 have some trusted participant system like div 3 does.
(1) Construct a neural network that analyzes style (easier said than done)
(2) Ban unrateds from making comments.
My suggestion, inspired by the stackoverflow model, is community based moderation:
(1) My suggestion is implementing a sort of community based flagging. There are several cases of outrageous alts and fakes in div 2 contests that remain in the standings. Perhaps, upon noticing a suspicious account, a user with good standing (by either rating or contribution [that would be a good way to put that stat to use] or otherwise), can be able to flag a particular participant. Then the community votes based on whether they think the participant is legitimate or not.
(2)We can have a similar community moderation system for users who seem to have accounts solely to make abusive comments. (We can tell by looking at their participation, submissions and contest history).
There are many advantage of a community based system:
-Most community members are honest coders who want to compete, learn, win, and have fun. They will be rather impartial when casting votes, and thorough in detecting cheaters. There are plenty who make cheater shaming blogs anyways.
-The collective intelligence of hundreds of votes is significantly more intelligent than any automated banning or flagging system, as the watchful eye catches what the bot cannot. Ultimately, it will make illegal actions require too much effort to evade detection.
(1) Most cheaters tend to be very obvious. We, as users, can rapidly notice them through their handles, or their rating graph (goes from master to newbie), or an unrated finishing a contest in 30 minutes. Bots and systems can be tricked, but users are a bit tougher to hoodwink. If we see a known GM style, we can tell fairly quickly. Yes, I am very aware that there are talented unrateds. I am also very sure that 99.99% of people who participate in their first contest WILL NOT, and STRONGLY WILL NOT solve the entire contest like it is a breeze. False positives will not be plenty (we can always give benefit of the doubt), but the hoards of obvious abusers will be cut down. It will be worth it to give honest div 2 members a true shot at actually winning the division.
(2) A user can tell what a true account is and what a "made to spout venom" account is. We wouldn't want a systeem to flag Harbour.Space for example, and most rational users would know that this is not an abuse account! Similarly, a user who tries cheating the system by making random submissions for problems to appear like a normal memebr will be caught by the vigilant eye of the community. In fact, it takes more effort than its worth to hide ill-intent from a watchful community!
