I hope all of us are aware of the fact that a registered contest participant doesn't face any changes in the rating if he/she doesn't attempt any submission. But don't you think it's pretty unfair to the participants who have solved a few problems and face deduction in the rating for certain reasons. Suppose, I solved 2 problems in a contest and my rating decreases according to the rules of Codeforces whereas my fellow participant couldn't crack a single problem and of course didn't submit any, faces no changes in the rating. Isn't it somewhat surprising?
I think there should be changes in the rating if a registered participant enters the contest no matter what! Additionally, there should be some options added like "Rated" and "Unrated" to the registration as AtCoder does for the participants who really don't bother about the rating.
I know there are a few blogs posted before regarding the topic but still, let me know your opinions!!!
How do you think it should be done instead? The only solution would be to either make it impossible to lose rating in a competition (dumb), or to make it impossible to read the problems without participating and being subject to rank change (impossible to enforce/implement).
In any case, I don't think this is much of an issue. Since speed is so important in codeforces, I think very few people will read all the problems before deciding whether to participate in a competition or not. If you did that then you would probably get a 10 minute extra penalty on A and B, which would be quite bad, so you wouldn't gain much from it.
I think it is reasonable to set the "Unrated" and "Rated" options.