Today i was in CF Round 207 when I receive a message from a user sending me the code used to solve a problem (I sent getting WA) and requesting me the solution for another problem.
I don't know how could be people trying to cheat in a contest when a it is for testing yoursefl about how good/bad are you.
My suggestion is to disable the talk system while a contest is running because with this experience I could realize that here we have users who only want to get a good ranking cheating and that's awful for me.
With talk system up you could only find users who solve a problem and request for an explication or worse, for a code.
Obviously I didn't sent any code but I don't know if another user would send it if someone request.
That's my opinion.
That's not a good idea. It's not like you can block cheating by it — if you block the talk, they can just write mails or possibly ask people around for help. It's not worth it to simultaneously disable people who want to talk about other stuff from doing so.
To be honest, I've never gotten such a message during a contest. But if I did, I'd send him an incorrect solution :D
I think correct thing to do would be to report sender to administration after the contest
That too. But I'm evil and won't let it end with just that :D
I was going to say the same thing , but then I changed my mind because using codeforces talk you can send message to a lot of coders but using facebook or email you don't know emails or facebook account of all participants!
Too many people have emails published on their profiles. For example you, me and this blog post's author... it's much less than all participants, but much more than the number of people you can send messages to during a contest.
and who is going to read his email during the contest ?
I do, for example — at least, if I notice there's a message and reply to it, then it doesn't matter if it's a small text under my handle or a text "(1)" on one of the tabs of the browser.
But it's enough if it's just one person, and so it is with usertalk. Just the chance of it happening is lower, but not by much.
even if still there is lower chance,but better than good chance :)
anyway, I don't see any reason for not blocking codeforces talks during the contest, it costs nothing.
I agree, I know that who wanna cheat will cheat with this or that way but in a contest, why could be the reason for a user to contact other user? (I only could think in try to cheat), if you have friends, you could send a message requesting help but that's a limited world, we could only report the cheater to admin but it wont avoid other users to try do it, I guess this is the same like people with more than one account, you could bann it but they could register again and if admin made a more selected users, how could new users like me begin to practice, it's a dilemma.