I will briefly enumerate the changes at Codeforces:

• Codeforces beta Round #1 is announced. It will go according to the ACM-ICPC rules, but will last for 2 hours. You shouldn't expect much from the problems - in the first place it is organized to check the system function and your feedback. The problems will be in two language: Russian and English. If I finish all the preparatory work earlier, I'll bring the Round some two days forward. It's planned to have the rating system at Codeforces similar to that at TopCoder. If the beta-competition goes without system failures, the participants will get ratings. To take part you are to register first.
• The visual organization of “Recent actions” has been changed - "new comment" and "compose/edit text" can be seen in the sidebar. Blog entries are sorted by the date of events, it means the last 15 entries are displayed.
• A new “Recent actions” detailed page, from which you can clearly see who has been doing what in recent time, is introduced.
• The algorithm of your "contribution" evaluation has been changed. For more details see below. I think I might change something again later.
• I've fixed some bugs.

As you have already noticed, every registered user has the right to vote for others' blog entries and commentaries. If you write relevant things, you get "plus", if you're out of the topic, or act inappropriately - be sure, there will be people who'll give you "minus". The weight of votes can be different, it depends on the user. At the present moment, if your contribution is equal to or higher than +25, your vote gets index 2 (it's more complicated here, because your contribution is based on the last month evaluations). Of course, misbehaviour and insults are forbidden at Codeforces - I have the right to ban the user.

Your contribution number will increase depending on the evaluations you get - I don't reveal the function, but it'll increase quickly at the beginning, and then the process will gradually become slower. I plan to experiment with the function from time to time, searching for the most suitable variants.

Moreover, there will be one more rating system - you'll get ratings for your contest achievements. This will be a modified Elo, designed by me, Maxim Ivanov (e-maxx) and Andrew Lazarev. From the outside it will resemble the TopCoder rating system, which isn't surprising, because it's the Elo rating adaptation .

That's it for now, I'll give the news as a UPD-section.