I know that the following content might not be welcomed and I will lose lots of contribution, but I should write something about such a bunch of chaotic comments under there.
I may delete this tomorrow if I find my words useless.
What happened
Several months ago, Mike posted a blog about banning orzdevinwang's alt, zh0ukangyang, and more alts. Lots of participants, including myself, were angry because zh0ukangyang is such a talented coder and codeforces didn't treat the rule of single account seriously at that time. Then more and more alt accounts with high rating are reported, including mine.
After that I didn't use alts anymore, and most of high-rated Chinese participants(100% in my friends) discarded their alts and followed the rules. We might think that the rules are not that perfect, but rules are rules. I believe that no one will say "Banning zh0ukangyang is unacceptable".
But I know what you are thinking is how to detect the alts with lower rating. It's obvious that 10k alt accounts with 2100~2400 could be much more annoying. But detecting them is as hard as detecting cheaters!
So in the last round, Mike just banned some accounts. I heard that you will be banned if you login to both two accounts on the same computer and register for the last contest. Somebody complained that both of his accounts got banned, but he didn't participate with alt account anymore after the announcement!
Then the chaos appeared. Offensive comments are made. Meaningless comments are made. Mystifying comments(called Mo Zheng in Chinese, which I strongly hate) are made. In my opinion, those comments make no sense at all because they only scold Mike, without saying why they got angry. So that is why I want to write a blog about this.
Personally I agree with the current policy for alt accounts now. I want to write some points from people who are complaining（maybe including myself in the past）.
Why participants use alts & my comments
In my investigation, there are 4 main usages of alt accounts.
- Create 2 accounts, always participate with the lower rating.
The advantage is that your maximum rating never decreases. I think that it is because codeforces has a huge jumping system: -100 for a blunder seems to be too much for me. When people are talking about rating, they always talk about the current rating, not the history maximum one. I think people are less willing to use alt in ATCoder because you lose less rating when having bad performance, and there is a Dan system(I messed up two contests in a row and losing ~50 rating) with the highest rating, which has more levels. I can still call myself a 6-Dan coder. So adjusting the rating system might be useful...?
- Create some new accounts and take the win of Div.2/3/4 easily.
Certainly, this should be banned.
- Create 1+1 accounts, one for participating and the other for hiding submissions/VCs.
I think this should not be banned. This could be the main point that people complain about.
- Create some new accounts for participating "unofficially".
This should be legalized. I hope that hacking phases will be removed soon and we can have "unrated register" option.
My thoughts
Codeforces is getting older and older. UI/Rules/Problems are changing year-by-year, so codeforces looked like an outdated website today. But currently it still has the most users, most contests, and the largest rating system. I think that holding traditions is OK, but removing the outdated modules can make the site better.
Cheaters, boosts and alts are impossible to detect. Indian cheating groups have made me upset for a long time. It must happen when the site is large and the rating is useful IRL(for jobs). What we can do is just follow the rules and protect our environment. I fell in love with coderforces 6 years ago, when I started doing CP. With so many ups and downs, codeforces is still a great online judge that I will suggest to every new comer. I hope everyone maintains a nice forum of competitive programming.
And for the Chinese coders, I hope that we should not write rude comments anymore... Discussing the rules is acceptable and may lead codeforces to a better platform of CP. Just shouting and attacking Mike makes you like a joker.
