nks43's blog

Option to participate in contests "out of competition"
By nks43, history, 5 years ago, In English

I have found myself in a number of situations where I feel like I should participate in the contest but I am unable to because I know that I would not be able to participate for the entire 2 hours as I have my exams tomorrow and that my rating might fall.

This "fear of losing" could be avoided if there was an option to participate out of the competition without having any effect on the rating. I know we can virtual contests later but then if I have one hour of time to participate in the contest, I should be allowed to participate without fearing my rating dropping for the number of problems I might have solved in the second one hour right?

MikeMirzayanov Please look into this.

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5 years ago, # |
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I agree. But it will not help the fear of losing.

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5 years ago, # |
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It also can reduce the fake accounts issue.

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5 years ago, # |
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Remember that you (and any other people) are adding extra load on servers and extra submissions to test, including systest time — you may not care if something takes more time in the queue than usual, but those who compete seriously often do. Virtual participation is the way to go.

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
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    A lot of my friends participated yesterday with fake accounts. Assume that double the number would have participated in a contest with out-of-competition registeration. Would you rather have y+x participants where x are running fake accounts or would you have y+2x participants with all of them having legit accounts? y is the count of users who would have participated anyway.

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      5 years ago, # ^ |
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      Smurfing is another problem. Tell your friends not to do that.

      I'd rather have everyone using legit accounts, but that's clearly not an option in reality, so I'll take y+x where x are fake over y+x+z where z are out of competition and wouldn't have made a fake.

      Also, one important difference: for split division rounds, you can't compete in div1 with a fake anyway.

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
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    Every day, new people register on Codeforces. Assuming the servers don't improve, it will also 'add extra load on servers'. Should we ban registering on Codeforces for the same reasons?

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      5 years ago, # ^ |
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      So you're saying that since the number of participants is increasing, the top priority is to make it increase more?

      IIRC, CF adds servers/processing power for contests because the load is huge. Since more servers can be added, yes, the servers are "improving" proportionally, but it has some cost. There really isn't a good reason for deciding not to keep that cost as small as it can be without inconveniencing rated contestants. It's the same logic as disabling unnecessary functions of CF during contests or adding the m* mirror sites.

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        5 years ago, # ^ |
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        The objective of Codeforces is to have as many people taking part to contests. I don't think we will ever see a post saying "Tomorrow we have a CF round but please don't participate all of you we don't have enough servers".

        Using fake accounts basically makes the site more unusable (unable to see the true rating of someone, twice as many accounts etc).

        Basically, any user that creates a fake account and is dark-blue or higher is taking rating away from other participants. Being able to register "Out-Of-Contest" just like div1 users can for div2 contests would solve all those issues.

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          5 years ago, # ^ |
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          Read what I wrote. "IIRC, CF adds servers/processing power for contests". That's the exact opposite of "we don't have enough servers" ever happening. This is some top-level strawman argument.

          What the hell is so bad about virtual participation? Do you people feel some obsessive need to compete at the exact time of the contest? For that matter, if virtual participation isn't an incentive to not compete with a fake, what extra benefits does out-of-competition bring besides a different timestamp? (UPD: Yes, pretests, but CF could fix that first of all.)

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        5 years ago, # ^ |
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        My main argument is that I don't see a reason to focus on 'serious' contestants. I think that Codeforces is a platform for everyone and it's supposed to help everyone improve. While ratings are just some imaginary internet points, it scares and prevents a lot of people from competing as regularly as they'd like.

        If this change will motivate a lot of new contestants to compete, when they improve they may even start competing as rated contestants. Of course it will cost more, but it's not unlike a lot of contestants registering at the same time (for which I see no reason why it should be discouraged).

        Also, I think you're underestimating the number of people who would just switch from smurfs to real accounts. Yes, this wouldn't solve the problem completely, since there are still people who just like getting easy rating increases (for whatever reason). But for a lot of people, smurfs are just a way to do a contest without having to worry about performance.

        In the end, I think it would be a good idea to at least try this. If it turns out it was a bad idea, Codeforces can always go back. Changes don't have to be permanent.

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          5 years ago, # ^ |
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          I think that Codeforces is a platform for everyone and it's supposed to help everyone improve.

          Virtual participation.

          While ratings are just some imaginary internet points, it scares and prevents a lot of people from competing as regularly as they'd like.

          Virtual participation solves that.

          Also, I think you're underestimating the number of people who would just switch from smurfs to real accounts.

          That are, for some reason, unwilling to just virtually participate later?

          But for a lot of people, smurfs are just a way to do a contest without having to worry about performance.

          So is virtual participation.

          Same question as above, what are the benefits of out-of-competition vs virtual for people who decide to make fakes instead of virtually participating later?

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            5 years ago, # ^ |
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            Well, I agree with you that in terms of benefits for problemsolving ability, virtual participation and out-of-competition are basically the same. But then you tell me why div1 contestants prefer to compete in div2 rounds rather than doing them virtually? I doubt div2 rounds help them much for practice. Virtual participation is a practice method, while Codeforces contests are events and as such they interest more people. I don't have the answer for why that is, but that's how it looks. I think that out-of-competition is a good way to interest people to compete more, which will in turn make them better competitors, which will help them start competing as rated contestants. I can't say I'm SURE it will help, but I think it's worth to try it, especially since we already have similar features.

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              5 years ago, # ^ |
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              But then you tell me why div1 contestants prefer to compete in div2 rounds rather than doing them virtually?

              In my case, it's "oh hey, it's a contest" vs "let's see, what's a good contest to try?". The answer in the latter case is clearly a div1 contest, while I don't have a choice in the former. If I had the option to pick div1 or div2, I'd pick div1. The only attraction of a div2 contest is that it's a currently running contest and even that's so weak I'd rather just upsolve something hard.

              Besides, div1 people prefer to just not participate in div2 rounds.

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          5 years ago, # ^ |
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          My main argument is that I don't see a reason to focus on 'serious' contestants.

          I kinda disagree with this. I've been organized a few online contests before and I can tell from my own experience that organizers would like to encourage people to take the contests as seriously as possible. People spend lots of time and effort preparing a contest and they definitely don't want to see participants compete half-heartedly. Allowing users to participating unofficially at will seems to go against it (virtual participation exists for a reason, right?).

          People who smurf gonna smurf anyway. My subjective opinion is that the improvement wouldn't be worth building such feature. Bear in mind that implementing a new feature is as easy as you make it sound.

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            5 years ago, # ^ |
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            Well, while my problemsetting experience is limited, I've done it a little and my goal was always just for as many contestants as possible to have fun solving my problems. I didnt care about how serious they are, so there's obviously different opinions on that. A good compromise for that could be to ask the problemsetter for each round whether 'out-of-competition' should be allowed.

            As for building the feature, I would agree with you generally, but for this feature we already have similar features for div1 contestants competing in div2 rounds. Of course, I dont know Codeforces backend, but something like this shouldn't be TOO much of a problem. It would be nice to hear Mike's opinion on it.

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              5 years ago, # ^ |
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              Fair enough, I can see where you’re coming from. There is no right or wrong in this argument so we can wait for the CF team’s response.

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            5 years ago, # ^ |
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            People who smurf gonna smurf anyway.

            I can't agree with this saying. People can always use this kind of saying just like "people who is what always is what" and at the same time many people would like to hear these, but this kind of saying is literally empty. In my opinion, it seems that this saying is defining definitely two poles in those complicated things and denying many general situations. I guess Reality is always useful than "people who is what always is what". At least, according to what I saw in my school team, there is no doubt that this new feature literally will reduce unfair issues. Or maybe some other people can be opposite to me, but at least that's better than empty sayings.

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              5 years ago, # ^ |
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              At least, according to what I saw in my school team, there is no doubt that this new feature literally will reduce unfair issues.

              Can you give me some examples on this?

              I said that because I think CF has done a lot of things to prevent people from smurfing:

              • Allow div 1 people to join div 2 unofficially
              • Show div 1 top participants in div 2 round announcement
              • Do not show untrusted participants in official standing for div 3

              If people still smurf after all of these improvements, I doubt anything would change it.

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                5 years ago, # ^ |
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                Those of your examples are alright, I have to admit. Maybe your saying is somehow reasonable, but I guess this new feature is about not only smurfing but also other unfair issues. As you want my further explanation, I previously posted what I saw in recent just here, and it's not first time they do that. I feel that it's literally necessary to add this feature to solve similar situations. Poster also mention this : I know we can virtual contests later but then if I have one hour of time to participate in the contest, I should be allowed to participate without fearing my rating dropping for the number of problems I might have solved in the second one hour right? Maybe some of you think this is not that necessary, but I guess maybe you will agree with me when you see that happen just near you. Sometimes adding new feature can be annoying, but I think it's always better to improve more if it can be improved, although you think it's work well now.

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                5 years ago, # ^ |
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                [deleted because send twice wrongly]

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5 years ago, # |
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In last round, one of my teammate registered but submitted nothing because he was not available for the whole round. Actually he thought up a solution of E when all of us have no idea about it, but he was not willing to submit because he know he will lose his rating if he did. At last he submitted in my another teammate's account and got AC, and who lent him account got rating increased unfairly.

What I want to say is, because of the lack of more reasonable way to solve this kind of situation, there is not only simply single issue like fake account but also lierally many different kinds of unfair issues. I guess out of competition is a way which we should at least try for a while.

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4 years ago, # |
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MikeMirzayanov Please add this option. This is so necessary when your schedule is just after a contest had started and you don't have any more time in you schedule to participate virtually.

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