Teams advancing to 2016 WF Phuket in Asia have been announce recently. This announcement undisputedly tantamount to a death sentence for me. I am the one who waiting anxiously, refresh Dr. Hwang's blog everyday. But it seems that for years, our training was meaningless.

I think many of us dedicate our passion to programming contests because we see them transparent, fair and without any corruption. And I also believe that as contestants, what should we do is only focus on the practice. And I thought those political business should never come to bother me one day. But sadly, that is my team who is going to become one of the sacrifices of the a succession of the dissension.

What happened so far

The quarrel between the Asia director and the local community is a long story to told. But it has never been as serious as the past season. Now look back to this, I know on the surface everything is going okay, but I still feel something wrong. The total slots are decreasing, as well as the power of those multifarious bonus are rising. So the felling of the unfairness multiplied. According to this article, before the last day, you do not know the exactly X or Y in his algorithm. That means, you can always put any number to these parameters after the contest. And the way he decide to put in those variable, which is quite arbitrary and dictatorial. The logic is just same as what he done on the Chennai flood. I am afraid the parameters is been used to suppress opponents and those who are close to Dr. Hwang will easy to pass. Now can it be right, to reject a team on the relationship between the authority? But it is exactly what we do, and now it is almost a open secrets for us. If you guys have any opposition, you are directly set yourself to the hard mode. In quicksort, there is a strategy called “killer adversary”, I think that is exactly the situation. In fact, last year in China, the contest divided into 2 event, one called ICPC and another is called CCPC. The CCPC event is simultaneous with Changchun site. And some of the school last year was united to refuse to take part in Changchun Site in order to against the overladen bonus, so lots of strong teams seems didn’t come and take part in to the Changchun site according to the board. But despite of this, Changchun site still get 1 more slot than other sites, and some site has 3 slots while some site is only 1 slot barely. Is that fair? I don’t think so. Last year, I thought stay in the top 6 could have an a chance to enter final… This year, I thought stay in the top 2 must have an a chance to enter final. As far as I know, there is no team in our region in history which get 2nd place but cannot go to final. This logic is same as what he done on the Chennai flood. Initially a rule was brought out to reduce the number of slots from Chennai to 1. It was later decided to award an extra slot to Chennai. But it turned out, this extra slot was actually the bonus slot that was going to be given to Amritapuri (as it had proposed to host the world finals in future). The net effect is, the number of teams from India is reduced due to postponement rule announced so hastily after the Chennai regional was postponed. This awarding of the extra slot to Chennai is just a sleight of hand designed to look like it is fair.

My wish

Well, don’t get me wrong. I am not against the rule this year, I am against the way the rule have been made. The problem with this system, is it’s this sort of long, slow expansion in personal power. If you don't make a sound this time, things may become more and more dangerous in the future. One of my spiritual idol Aaron Swartz once argued that it was sometimes necessary to break the rules that required obedience to the system in order to avoid systemic evil. So, at my point of view, at the least all officials concerned should be consulted. There should be some discussion before taking any decision. The voting should be transparent. The slot calculation is needlessly complicated and could be much simplified. There could be bonus slot but shouldn’t affect the acknowledged game rule. There should be no parameters remain to be determined after the contest. I know in the early day in the ICPC history, Dr. Hwang had done great contribution for us, but today, he is stand on the opposite of the sport spirit, the way that Dr Hwang make decision should be questioned. What Dr. Hwang do this time is just to make an example out of us, to use this case for deterrence. So that next time we are submit to his power. And if we could not do something that bring us the fair environment back. the reputation of the contest in the sub-region will be badly influence. I am sadly to see what will coming in next season, there may have 5 CCPC and 5 ICPC in one season. Students will be serious tired and exhausted and the community will appear to diverge further.