djm03178's blog

Unreasonable delay for viewing submissions
By djm03178, 3 days ago, In English

I don't know since when this has been like this, but now it seems Codeforces has exclusive delay policy for submission pages.

For example, try to open 286905356 286913842 286925333 286943910 287014608 these pages in 5 separate tabs (open one in each second). If it's not only me, it will go like this:

  • 1st tab: opens immediately
  • 2nd tab: waits for 10 seconds and then opens
  • 3rd tab: waits for 20 seconds and then opens
  • 4th, 5th tab: immediately goes to the "Oops! Probably Codeforces can't be reached right now or your Internet connection is broken." page

If you open the same submission page multiple times, the only difference is that all of them eventually opens with 10 seconds of delay, one after another, instead of going to the error page.

I honestly don't see the purpose of this overwhelming policy. Does opening a few submission pages really hurt the server that much? Of course, I am maybe a bit biased because it's extra stressing when you face this while trying to hack hundreds of submissions, but it's annoying for other usages, too.

For example, this applies not only for the whole submission page, but also for the submission view on popup windows. You can try clicking a submission number on my submission list, then the popup appears immediately. But if you press the '#' button on the top of the popup, it gets that 10 seconds of delay. Then if you press the 'Click to see test details' button on the bottom of the page, it gets another 10 seconds of delay! Furthermore, if you're trying to hack a submission, opening the hacking page also gets additional delay. If you accidentally close a tab (or a popup) and try to open it again, you get 10 seconds of delay.

Why do we need to wait for every consecutive action regarding the submissions? Doesn't it need only to block real spam actions, such as auto scrapping every submission?

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3 days ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +12 Vote: I do not like it

Also, the source on a submission says "N/A" and nothing else. Does anyone else have this problem?

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    3 days ago, # ^ |
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    I also have that problem

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2 days ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +18 Vote: I do not like it

You can try clicking a submission number on my submission list, then the popup appears immediately.

Hell. You are lucky. Every hot submission I made took a million seconds to respond every single time I clicked on the id...

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2 days ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +14 Vote: I do not like it

Also, opening a submission link on a browser where you’re not logged in (e.g. discord on mobile) is completely not allowed. It’s really inconvenient D:

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2 days ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +23 Vote: I do not like it

I experience the same issue and it's especially annoying when trying to hack multiple submissions on Edu/Div3/Div4 rounds. It would be nice to get a response from CF Headquarters why it has to be like that. MikeMirzayanov geranazavr555

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2 days ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

With how strict the limits are for viewing submissions, I assume someone is scraping must be scraping all of them at a huge scale and massive rate. I can't find any other reasonable explanations

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    2 days ago, # ^ |
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    Just like how microsoft bought github and trained co-pilot on github code, I think big tech now wants to train AI on codeforces code, but obviously they can't buy it.

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      13 hours ago, # ^ |
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      this is reasonable. I'm curious if there a anouncement about that

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39 hours ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +4 Vote: I do not like it

for once I thought it's my potato ISP... now it's confirmed someone else is sharing the same pain :(

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