It always makes me sad whenever I see almost-obvious alt accounts on "congratulations to the winners" section of contest announcement posts, especially in Div. 2 contests where there are no trusted participant rules. Of course, maybe some of the "grey participants" are actual honest accounts, and in that case I really want to congratulate them. But due to how many of them are likely to be alts, I already start hating most of the mentioned handles.
I think the most effective way to prevent alts is to eliminate motivations to create alts in the first place, and winning lower divisions could be one of those high motivations. Well, there could be not many who can actually try to win them, but due to these alts, people who actually deserve high places can't even get there at all.
It's sad that they can't be praised enough if we stop mentioning the winners, but I'd want to give them a more deserved place in the standings table (this also helps many many top 100 participants), rather than seeing alts being praised by the official announcement and be biased to think that all the winners could be alts.
Highly against this. Small things like this matter,
I have been with people who have been doing CP for 2-3 years who end up in that list and seeing their name in that list has so good impact on them.
I think in most cases people don't even get a chance to get in top 10 before they become "too good" to be in Div. 2 anymore. Being able to achieve it generally requires GM-level skills. I know it could be motivating for some people, but it's easier to just become a stable master than staying in CM for that long and get a chance to get a top 10, unless one deliberately tries to stay in Div. 2.
No but lets say I am expert, I had a crazy good day and somehow end up in top 10. Why shouldnt I be given a moment to celebrate it ?
My whole point is that it's sad that they can't be celebrated enough (and rather be hated) because it also celebrates too many alts. For now I see the "winners" and think "well, there are too many alts again..." and then I move on, unless I'm bored to check their profile one by one and be assured that some of them are not alts. I'm sure most other people would also have this doubt normally.
It was supposed to do good things, sure, but I want to bring up how negative impacts it currently has to the ones who should be celebrated. You can think it's not a huge deal, if you feel so. For me, it bothers me every time.
True but it also leaves good impact on those who use alt accounts.
In my opinion, it does more harm than good.
I don't feel like this is a source of motivation for alt accounts, yet it is important for true participants as a milestone.
Perhaps only including in that list accounts that have done at least 5-10 contests?
Edit: come to think of it, does it even occur that someone reaches top 5 in div2 rounds before advancing to div1?
It's essentially the "trusted participant" thing, and yeah I think this could be another solution.
:) You just need to be very lucky.
or very orz like you
Maybe this is the issue that could be fixed ...
Another episode of "djm03178 and the dilemmata", yeah.
As a participant, yes, I kinda craved that recognition, maybe especially for the top spot (I failed that like twice before, so I do feel salty and thus having a weird sort of motivation).
As a setter, however, I feel kinda oppressed when congratulating the winner. Like, my gut feelings told me full well that something might seem fishy, but my logical senses also told me to just write their names when I didn't have anything to discard their rankings.
Well...
Probably a solution right here, but I don't know what other would think.
To be honest, I think trusted participant could be the most clean way to deal with this. It seems, however, that Div. 2 contests are somewhat treated as "serious" contests (unlike Div. 3/4 where it's more considered "educational") and therefore it might be better to have no other restriction than the rating itself so that an honest new account can also have a place on it. Though I'm not sure if that's the real reason why we still don't have trusted participant on Div. 2's.
not sure why the simplest solution is not used here just make it for accounts with 15-20+ rated contests lets be honest no alt gm will stay in div2 for 20 contests and no normal dude will become top 5 in less than 20 rated contests
Maybe alt GM could deliberately throw contests to stay in div2.
But it would discourage most people who smurf for that top 5. Think about it, what kind of psychopath would deliberately go through the trouble of throwing 15 contests in a row just for a single mention? Might as well use your main account to do the contest at that point.
I think most people who use alts just want the ego boost from being rank 1 or whatever, rather than wanting to be mentioned in the announcement, so I don't think stop mentioning people in announcement will really help. It's like suggesting to "stop giving rating to top 5, because all of them are mostly alts, and having positive delta motivates them to create more alts" (albeit the latter is a much more extreme example, but whatever...). On the other hand, I've been mentioned once in such a blog, and while I am undoubtedly very happy that I got top 5, it isn't really that special for me, so even scrapping it doesn't really matter, because in any case, the main thing which gives you more confidence is the rank itself, not being mentioned in an announcement blog.