Um_nik's blog

Petition to make (onsite part of) ICPC WF 2020 1-computer
By Um_nik, history, 3 years ago, In English

In case you haven't heard: ICPC announced that in the Championship (onsite in Moscow) Division of ICPC World Finals 2020 teams will use 3 computers (one per participant). And they did that less than 40 days before the contest itself.

I think this is ridiculous and this is not the competition we have been preparing for all these years.

If you think the same, please comment under this blog in a format you deem reasonable (you can follow my format or not).

Moreover, there was a suggestion from Alex_2oo8 to ignore ICPC and self-impose the rule to use one computer at a time. If you want to do that (in case ICPC will go with 3 computers per team), you can add such a statement to your comment too.

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Comments Comments (26)
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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +384 Vote: I do not like it

I, Um_nik, am a member of the team NNSU Almost Retired, and I ask ICPC HQ to change their mind about this dramatic change of rules. If they will decide to go with 3 computers per team, I am ready to support the self-imposed rule to use one computer at a time, iff it will have significant support in the community.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it -641 Vote: I do not like it

    Is Ekler your wife? LOL. I can not find any other reason to have 2300 rated person in the LGM's team.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it -130 Vote: I do not like it

    Congratulations man. You had no chance of winning without you wife. Congratulations to your wife too.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +34 Vote: I do not like it

I agree that it is unfair to change this rule of the contest so late, and I believe that they should revert this change.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +249 Vote: I do not like it

I, Monogon, am a member of the team Purdue RE. I'm the only member of the original team who can be on-site, and we've invited one substitute. The disadvantage my team has from our sacrifice to be in-person would be exaggerated by the 3-computer format. I ask that ICPC change the format to something as close to the original as possible. Even with safety concerns, you can have a setup where team members do not touch the same device but are still restricted to one person coding at a time.

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3 years ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +187 Vote: I do not like it

I (a member of the ITMO StdDev team) fully support a 1-pc petition, and believe the justification of 3 pcs on the 'health grounds' is ridiculous. Even if it does increases any health risks, the effect of that is negligible over attending the event itself (which, I believe, is also reasonably safe). However, I can not commit to the self-limitation proposed on behalf of my team at that moment.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +123 Vote: I do not like it

I, 244mhq, am a member of Belarusian State University team and I fully support this petition.

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3 years ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +175 Vote: I do not like it

Even tho I 100% agree with this petition, I would be really surprised if ICPC reverted their decisions. It seems like they already lost touch with common sense.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +148 Vote: I do not like it

I, isaf27, am a member of the HSE: Logarifmya4ka team and I fully support this petition to make the onsite contest in the usual format.

If ICPC organizers had a possibility to make a contest onsite in Moscow (at least for some of the participants) it is a great chance to make the contest we waited for two years in the usual, most interesting format with 1 computer. I don't know who really decided to think about COVID at this point, because:

  • All people will come to Moscow, it is much unsafe, than sitting 5 hours with your teammates
  • Come on, all participants will communicate with each other before and after competition
  • At least you will live with your teammates in hotel in one room (or they found a great idea to isolate all participants from each other before the contest, which is obviously impossible)

So, these obvious statements is the proof, that this decision to think about COVID in this place is not effective and just kills the good impressions, that can be after the competition.

Sorry for the long read with obvious statements, it is a great place to publish my emotions, that I had, when I firstly seen the rules. Thanks Um_nik for the petition and I really hope it will change the rules.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +141 Vote: I do not like it

We, Arpa amsen Man, as members of Amirkabir University of Technology team fully support this petition.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +102 Vote: I do not like it

Even if it's your contest and you think you can do whatever you want with it, you can't just change the rules before the final round.

Years of training and trial for best team composition and strategy and now you just abandon all of it because you just want to be done with it as conveniently as possible.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it -145 Vote: I do not like it

Is the change really that impacting on the championship? I mean, if a team is much better than other in the classic format it will still be better in the new format. This might not be true for teams with a closer level of skill, but thats life. What is more important to me at the end of the day is the quality of the problems.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +86 Vote: I do not like it

    Although I disagree with you and I think it does significantly impact the results, consider how late this announcement came, and how unnecessary it is. Should ICPC introduce any random rule change as long as the results are still correlated with good programmers winning?

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +93 Vote: I do not like it

I, Alex_2oo8, am a member of University of Latvia team and I fully support this petition. If they will decide to go with 3 computers per team, I am ready to support the self-imposed rule to use one computer at a time, iff it will have significant support in the community.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +105 Vote: I do not like it

We, waynetuinfor, edisonhello, and skylinebaby, are members of National Taiwan University team and we fully support this petition. If they will decide to go with 3 computers per team, we are ready to support the self-imposed rule to use one computer at a time, iff it will have significant support in the community.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +63 Vote: I do not like it

I, Dmitriy.Belichenko, am a member of SPb SU team and I fully support this petition.

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3 years ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +123 Vote: I do not like it

UPD. ch_egor also supports the aftermentioned text

I, SendThemToHell, am a member of the Moscow SU: NoNames team, and I fully support this petition, and more general, the proposition to return to the standart format of ICPC-style contests.

I believe that the 'COVID-safety' reasoning of these changes is just ridiculous. All participants will be vaccinated, so the risks are already not that high, but what's even more important is that these rules have literally no effect on the chances of getting infected. Come on, every team will spend 5 days in one hotel room together and almost every team will also use airplane/train to come to Moscow so there is no point in making the contest one hour shorter or increasing the number of PCs.

This said, I believe that self-imposing the rule is somewhat hard if not impossible, and thus I can't commit to this.

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3 years ago, # |
← Rev. 3   Vote: I like it +23 Vote: I do not like it

Although I am far from being a participant to this final stage of ICPC (if I understood correctly), I would like to share my own experience with this type of organizing :) (because I need to vent)

Around March 2021, The local organizers announces that the National Stage of the WRO 2021 stage will be held onsite (somewhere in Romania--) on 23rd September or something (I still don't know precisely, but I know it would be in two weeks) . So, we have prepared for this as we should prepare for an on-site competiton, we first write the code for as long as we can, then, in the last weeks we start learning the robot so you can construct it onsite. My team for one, we didn't decide to start learning the robot, but some teams did (to my knowledge). But yesterday, we have been announced that this stage will be held online. There are multiple problems with this announcement:

First: As I explained earlier, some of us started learning the robot*, and to do so, one needs very many hours of practice. This amendment means many lost many hours which could've been otherwise used to improve their code!

Second: We still have to pay a tax to participate :)). I don't mean it as if I am stingy and I don't want to pay money, but if it's a tax, we should get somethnig in return-- right? during the onsite days, the tax was made so the organizers could pay...the organizing costs :)). But now, the we have to prepare cameras for every division, and make sure the conditions are pristine and everything, and in the current situation, we should have 6 teams placed in ~40 m^2. And yet, we dont have enough space to sustain competition environments for all the three divisions. The organizers aren't making this easier though, they don't even provide the filming equipment we lack (we need ~6 gopro's or cameras, and until now we only have 2 or 3).

Third: When asked what the motives for this decision would be (as the "Untold" concert is going on with hundreds of thousands of people, and the national WRO would mean the ""booking"" of a maximum of 100 people in a...big room), we have been "seened" (and we still are :))

In the end, I feel that the coronavirus didn't just bring us into a world where we have to rethink the ways we would do onsite events, but we have to start reestimating the callousness of officials (as it's not the first time we have suffered from an "Covid-19" excuse)

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +71 Vote: I do not like it

I generally agree with the petition. Thank you for bringing up the questions out loud.

Mikhail Dvorkin, jury member of NERC since 2007, ICPC 2007 gold medalist, coach of SPb HSE.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +85 Vote: I do not like it

I am a member of the team MIPT Godnotent, and I also find it ridiculous to change the discipline at the finals.

However, I think we need to email them as I'm not sure that they read codeforces on a daily basis.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +13 Vote: I do not like it

I, bicsi, member of the University of Bucharest team, fully support the petition.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +58 Vote: I do not like it

How many people were truthful to this oath ?

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