lOthBroK286's blog

Just a thought....
By lOthBroK286, history, 7 months ago, In English

In div 2 rounds, we can lock our submission and hack others code, cheaters use this opportunity to cheat or leak solutions during contest. How about hacking phrase starts right after contest ends and last for 1 or 2 hours (Unlike 12 hours in div 3 or educational round)?

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7 months ago, # |
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It might also be possible that someone innocent is accused of cheating without them realizing their source code being shared across

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7 months ago, # |
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remove hacking ?

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7 months ago, # |
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Congratulations, you have rediscovered topcoder hacking :)

I agree that with cheater incidents on the rise, this might be a good way to still keep hacking in contests without delegating it solely to an uphacking phase (though an extra hacking phase might make participation lower because people would need to stick around for longer, and "bounty-hunting" might become a collective effort).

As a byproduct, it'll also reduce proof by AC incidents because people would be more careful about submitting solutions, since currently they rely on being able to resubmit if they get hacked.

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    7 months ago, # ^ |
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    well sometimes code fails in system test as well, where we can't resubmit.

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7 months ago, # |
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Ok, but a cheater can only leak a solution to a problem they've already solved, so surely if they leak someones solution and that person gets flagged for plagiarism, it's easy to deduce who the cheater is?

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    7 months ago, # ^ |
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    But in general it is impossible to deduce whether it was the solution author who leaked it or if it was someone else in their room who solved that problem too. How do you solve this issue?

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      7 months ago, # ^ |
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      If someone gets flagged for plagiarism, then they can appeal it and then maybe someone can check whether there was someone in the room who looked at their code during the contest.

      If there was, then you could also look at previous contests and see if that person has looked at other people's code shortly before they got flagged for plagiarism.

      Of course there is still the problem of people just going ahead and making new accounts to avoid this

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        7 months ago, # ^ |
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        Yeah, that makes sense in the steady state, but it is a bit too late once someone has already suffered at the hands of such cheaters. In my opinion, doing something that prevents this scenario altogether is a better idea, since getting falsely accused of plagiarism is an unpleasant experience and leaves a negative mark on the person's profile, regardless of whether they actually cheated or not.

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