Hello everyone! I am Vietnamese. I write this blog to talk about the time of contests in Codeforces. As you know, almost contests on Codeforces begin at 19:00 in Russian, so that is 23:30 in Vietnam. It's very hard for coders in Vietnam and many other countries. Because that's too tired to take part in. I don't ask to change time of contests to another time. I just want to find some ways to make more easier for me and other people like me. Are there anyone has idea about this problem ?
This is my idea :
We can create a long contest like USACO but the duration is shorter (maybe 7-8 hours) and each person can choose their approriate time to take part in, but everyone just only has 2,5 hours (or ...) to solve all of the problems.
I'm glad to hearing other ideas from you. Share your idea to make Codeforces better!
The problem with such contests is that cheating is extremely easy. With Codeforces' rating system it will be very appealing to cheat and the whole rating system would become meaningless. If they are unrated on the other hand, the interest will be much, much lower.
Another thing is that such contests take away the fun of competing. The fun for me comes from the fact that there are other people solving the problems at the same time. I can go on the problem page and see which problem was solved by how many people, and check how I'm doing compared to others. Of course, hacks would also be impossible.
In general Usaco-type contests are good for practicing your skills but are quite boring for me personally.
It sucks that it's 23:30 for you but I can't think of a reasonable solution to that. Moving the time of the contest will just ruin it for someone else :\
Thanks for your reply. Do you have any suggestion ?
Actually, some international contests (such as VK Cup qualification rounds) have the duration of 24 hours to let everyone choose the appropriate time to participate. On the other hand, such contests usually are not cheating-critical (if you cheated on the qualification, you probably won’t pass the Round 1 anyway), so the main rounds still have the fixed time, because there’s no other way to avoid cheating.
How about holding contest in different time (for example, Round#1 hold on 1:00, Round#2 hold on 3:00, Round#3 hold on 5:00, ..., Round#11 hold on 21:00, Round#12 hold on 23:00, Round#13 hold on 1:00). By doing this, all the contestant can find a contest that has suitable time zone to solve.
Please read the first comment
It will be easy to cheat and find easiest contest. Anyway, it seems to be NP-complete problem of codeforces :)
I think you mis-understood what I say. I mean, the contests should be held in various time zone, not only 19:30 time zone. For example:
Codeforces Round 298 (Div 2): 15:30 08/04/2015
Codeforces Round 299 (Div 1): 11:30 15/04/2015
Codeforces Round 299 (Div 2): 11:30 15/04/2015
Codeforces Round 300: 19:30 22/04/2015
Codeforces Round 301 (Div 2): 07:30 29/04/2015
Codeforces Round 302 (Div 1): 23:30 06/05/2015
Codeforces Round 302 (Div 2): 23:30 06/05/2015
Codeforces Round 303 (Div 2): 05:00 13/05/2015
They probably won't do this because I'm sure they want a time convenient for Russian participants since this is a Russian website.
First of all, they prefer a time convenient for themselves — it is better to have admins online during round, they have to watch that everything goes OK; at the same time, they have a lot of other things to do — lecturing, studying, working, personal life, willing to sleep during nighttime and so on :)
If you know how to avoid all possible something went wrong situtations during contests — tell us:)
I'm pretty sure they want time convenient for admins, which happen to be Russian. While Codeforces is based and is very famous in Russia, it has grown to be much more than just a Russian website, it's international.
23:30 is not that bad, I participate sometimes in SRMs at 3AM and some crazy Russian guys participate at 5AM.
Though maybe whether a particular hous is good or bad depends on one's lifestyle. I often go to bed at ~3AM, so for me 23:30 is totally fine, but if some people care about their health and courses at 8AM then maybe it is not that fun for them :P.
Why don't you take a nap at 21:00 and wake up at 23:30. I usually do it before the contest :D
Sleeping time should be organized according to contests, not the other way round :P
Why not just schedule more contests on weekends?
i think in every week at least one contest in schedule time. it bacome after 5-6 days. if it is happens it is very helpful for contestant. they participate in schedule time.