When we come to CP, what is our goal overall? Some people could say that they want to improve their skill in solving problems and enhance their algorithm, some could say they aim to achieve better achievements in official CP competitions (ICPC, IOI...), or maybe some people just do it for fun. Each of us has our own ambition, but the similarity is that we want to come to CP in order to be better then ourself yesterday.
Recent days, I mean it has been one month since I know about the existence of cheating in CP, I had thought about it a lot. I usually attend CF and LC rounds, and I could find the comments about cheaters exist nearly in every round, which is a mess for me. Even right now, I could easily find a livestream in Youtube while the contest is running. I usually convince myself like: "That's okay, they couldn't go higher with those behaviours.", or: "That's okay, they could not go away from the system testing after the round", but in the long run it couldn't help much.
What is the goal of cheaters, we have already know about it, right? Higher opportunities in being employed by flexing a tremendous profile from an online platform is one of it (or I have to say that's a lot of it). Trying to find a job with a false information about the own coding skill is nothing than defraud a company. And personally this pisses me off, as this is not what a genuine coder should do, and it goes to far away from our initial noble ambition: improve ourself. At this point, I recall what Um_nik have said when it comes to "CP for jobs", which inspired me one year ago. Don't be misunderstanding here, I don't mean that doing CP won't have any affects in our career. It is supposed to help us a lot when we are in the actual work, not in our resume.
My another anxiety is that, maybe in some days, cheating will ruin any CP online platforms. We know that cheaters need to depend on someone to share the solutions, so the current level of the the one who shares solutions will decide the "game". Luckily right now, they are not too good to make the thing bad, but what will it be if a red, or even a black red coder does it instead? This is enough to be the end of online CP. And with the help of AI, plagiarism is hard to be detected and could make thing worse.
And they are what I want to say. To conclude, I'm pretty left helpless with cheaters, which I couldn't do much to prevent them (or I have to say I couldn't do anything). Although from now on I need to be more focus on training, I hope that the headquarters of any CP pages could take some steps in order to fight with those behaviours.
Finally, I want to hear your perspective about this.
P/S: I wrote the whole blog using my mobile phone, which takes me nearly 1 hour to finish. I mean, it's hard to sleep when thinking about this topic, maybe I'm too overthinking at this moment.
Auto comment: topic has been updated by DuongForeverAlone (previous revision, new revision, compare).
Auto comment: topic has been updated by DuongForeverAlone (previous revision, new revision, compare).
Time will solve this, 100%.
Not cheating, that will be around forever. But you'll learn to ignore it and it won't bother you anymore.
"Time will solve it".
That's what I really, really want it to happen. Just like Covid19 in 5 years ago, which made me thought that I need to be at home in the rest of my life, is actually ended.
as a fellow CP enthusiast, i understand, and even relate to what you're feeling. i sometimes wish companies would stop considering OJ ratings and stuff while shortlisting candidates for OAs and interviews, although i do understand that this might not be a logical possibility, at least it would make these cheaters leave the platform which would re-establish the sanctity and fun CP once used to have (still does, but sadly, it's diminishing).
nobody's winning in this, most of the honest participants who are passionate about the sport feel bad about how the standings are being manipulated, even plagued by these cheaters, and even the cheaters themselves are falling into a vicious cycle of self-deception and fraud which would do them no good, and certainly, one day they'll have to pay for their actions, just like everyone pays for theirs.
That's deep, and I hope the "law of karma" really work some day as you said.
They will pay one day. Or they won't.
smh ,What's the point of cheating when you'll eventually fail in OA rounds and interviews?
they will pay someone to give OA from their behalf
I really don't care about cheating unless the cheaters will get prizes instead of honest competitors. I am not here to win anything, but to learn and enjoy solving problems. There are cheaters in every sport, and here is not different. Actually, I think here in CP is easier to catch them, compared to chess, for example.
Regarding the AI, my concern is mostly "will they be able to solve something that I can't? (even I am pretty bad at this haha)". I think we are not this close of the moment that an AI will code better than tourist or other top competitor.
you are become candidate master, destroyer of cheaters
EDIT: I'm wrong on this point, f**k cheaters
At least the effect of having them for now is just making pupil harder to get (for pupil is the median of their rating)
In the last contest, the solutions upto E were made available by cheaters (blog) and solutions upto D were available on some youtube channel during the contest which could've have been easily found by anyone who had the intention to cheat. So they're aren't only making pupil harder to get but people can even cheat their way to candidate master or even master.
Okay I understand. I must be wrong at this point.
I've recently seen a blog that says the most common misconception about cheating is that they only cheat in lower divisions, but in fact there are a lot of them in Div. 1 as well, although I can't find the blog now.
My experiences include https://mirror.codeforces.com/blog/entry/130285 where some of them solved up to problem D, which results in performance of CM or even higher. Also after I solved E yesterday, I looked through my room to see if there is any suspicious execution time, and I found this with a bunch of useless codes in between, mostly likely to avoid plag checks. Considering that solving 4 problems results in Expert or higher, this isn't only a matter of reaching Pupil.
please ping me if any red or black coders decide to share solutions!!
black coders? Like MikeMirzayanov?
I really like your profile purple waifu with purple title..
really easy fix for cheaters: when calculating rating, ignore indian users. we all know everyone who are in those telegram channels are indian. just leave them out of the equation when calculating delta. mike won't do this though because it's "racist".
Did all squares are rectangles is also interpreted as all rectangles are squares?? If that's true then may be what you said must be executed.
the majority of cheaters are indian. no one claimed all cheaters are indian
Not quite: you didn't yet claim it, but what was the suggestion of "ignore indian users" about? Isn't it actually racism disguised as using the non-cheating Indian as scapegoat/sacrifice?
no one is being sacrificed. im saying if 50% of indian users cheat, and 2% of American users cheat, then just use American users as a baseline to calculate rating changes for everyone. everyone wins
Now I'm curious, then how would you elo-way calculate the ratings for the ignored users? From which baseline would you dictate their rating changes when they were out of the equation? Can you guarantee a way to maintain zero-sum principle, which is the basis of any elo-derived system?
Due to those ideas I thought at first that you would simply unrank all Indians, yet now seeing your clarification I'm actually more confused and lost.
what about Dominater069
Not every Indian is a cheater. I agree most of them are from my country, I also know the reason, in India every college/ university has summer break right now and many influencers (or should I can them influenzas) through LinkedIn and YouTube hyped CP so much, only mistake they did was they promoted cp as a way to get good jobs, in FAANG specifically, and not a way to improve yourself/ your problem solving, to be deserving of a job in FAANG. As a result, the whole of dishonest people (mistakes of their parents maybe) came on codeforces and started grinding, 1 or 2 weeks into this, they realised that they are not good and to reach a certain level they need a whole lot of practice. Since summer break are of 2 months, they started looking for shortcuts and discovered telegram. Since then what is happening we all know. I believe as the summer break ends, things will get back to what they were 2-3 months ago, minimal cheating, and, I'll peacefully reach cyan.
Bro really is optimistic in this situation. National flag could be easily changed in our profile. And though most of cheaters come from Indian, we can't judge all of them so bad like that. I see lots of Indian got pretty high in CP, and I appreciate them for their training.
Rude and insensitive of me, but let them rot. In a way, noticing them is somewhat partially fulfilling of their purposes — to be noticed by the wider audience (not yet employers, but yes).
Also, let them cheat their way and make a circus of themselves in professional scene. Through this, genuine programmers will relatively get more favor in the prolonged competition to keep the job.
I think this is wrong, as no one want to be known as a cheater. This is only true in the case of media, where there are some people try to do things to make themselves being noticed as much as possible. By the way, try not to be obsessed about cheaters is the solution I could do right now.
Just forget them I think. Sounds a bit narcissistic, but cherish your own growth instead of taking time thinking about those filth.
If anybody wants to volunteer in catching cheaters then you may join my discord server https://discord.gg/kKZhfAWKfE
Codeforces is taking blogs exposing cheaters seriously. Almost every cheater mentioned in these blogs gets banned. So we will publish a blog after every contest and others can help me in finding out these users by reporting them in the server. I'm basically trying to crowdsource it to make it sustainable.
We don't really "catch" them, but we are actually making them to create a new account to continue their journey. So I think it's not a good approach.
This reminds me something similar that goes on in online chess. There are a lot of people using stockfish(engines) to cheat in games. For this chess.com uses stats to see if someone overperforms in their games. I am not sure if it is possible on codeforces (as it is difficult to judge someone with new account), but hopefully we see some decrease in number of cheaters.
i wish all indians take aryanc403 as a role model
I'm grateful for CP.
join group AntiCheaters to support
How about the organization that I'm part of
I know people who also cheat for some reason. They just want to boost their ego when they see their color blue or something. It's just really dumb. But hey, those who flex their fake ratings will most likely not have anything else so I think people with the actual rating on codeforces will actually have other experiences that will give them an advantages in jobs.
Disagree. Cheaters are getting a performance of master, aditya_coder07 in the last Div1+2 round (EPIC Institute of Technology Round Summer 2024) for example.
Codeforces is already ruined for like, 95% of the participants in their original rating.
My actual goal of CP is to become better than those programmers who are helping cheaters. e.i, Probably to become like you!
Get good enough so they don't affect you 0_o
حسبي الله ونعم الوكيل ياخى ادعم
for those downvoting, please use translator before downvoting :prayge
It isn't something to be downvoted.
agree