Nams's blog

Topcoder SRM Editorial
By Nams, history, 8 years ago, In English

Hi everyone,

I recently gave Topcoder SRM(698) for the first time. After solving the problems I wanted to up solve but I could not find the editorials for the contest. I googled it and most of them have directed me to this Link .

But I could not find editorial for the recent contest there and there has no update on this link for the past 4-5 days. So does it take them time to update on this link or I am looking at the wrong place.If so where should I look?

Please help!! Thanks in advance.

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8 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +8 Vote: I do not like it

TopCoder has been having issues with its editorials for a long time now.

The link you posted leads to their best maintained editorials page. Observe that it has great lengths of time with no updates: for example, there were no editorials posted between 9.6 and 18.8 — i.e. for over two months, skipping at least 4 SRMs.

Furthermore, most editorials that do get published are incomplete. For example, the last 3 editorials that were published before the gap are all still "WIP", with only some of of the problems solved.

While there are still occasionally excellent and complete editorials published, such as the one for SRM 697 by Errichto, overall TopCoder has been neglecting this really important feature.

Codeforces is far more consistent with its editorials. Almost always there will be a complete editorial published immediately after the contest. This is a huge benefit, especially for beginners like myself, and why I spend most of my practice time on Codeforces and hardly any on TopCoder.

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    8 years ago, # ^ |
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    Then why people are so addicted to topcoder? Surely problem quality may be great but learning after the contest is most important. Topcoder should fix this issue.

    Anyways thanks for the info :)

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      8 years ago, # ^ |
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      Then why people are so addicted to topcoder?

      Are they?

      The SRM you asked about, 698, had only 1,016 participants. And that was a major SRM, sponsored and promoted by Google. Scrolling down the match list shows most recent SRMs have well below that number.

      Compare that to the latest Round here on Codeforces, which was just a random regular Round organized by candidate master zscoder with nothing special about it, yet had over 8,000 participants. These are typical figures for Codeforces Round participation.

      There's clearly something Codeforces gets right about community engagement and participation, while TopCoder has been dropping the ball. I believe editorials are an important part of it.

      Often I see more discussions and editorials about TopCoder SRMs here rather than on TopCoder. There's still no discussion of the SRM you asked about (698) on the official TopCoder forum dedicated to SRMs, yet there's a big discussion thread with some editorial content here on Codeforces.

      In short, the Codeforces community is far more active in discussion and analysis of problems. TopCoder is lagging far behind when it comes to publishing official editorials, and the community hasn't been picking up the slack. This is also reflected in their contest participation numbers, which nowadays are an order of magnitude less than those of Codeforces.

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