This is my first blog so please tell me if something can be improved.
I've noticed that a lot of the blogs and comments on CodeForces are from people asking for help to debug their code. And while I think this is fine, and people ask for help if they're stuck, these comments and blogs take up a lot of space, especially in Recent Actions and Contest Announcements. For people who don't feel like debugging someone else's solution at the time, it can get annoying to scroll through those comments or blogs. I admit that I have better things to do than scroll through Recent Actions over and over, but I'm (hopefully) not the only one and this would help people find what they're looking for faster.
This would also help people who do debug others' code, and the people asking for help. I recently saw someone post the same request for help on 4 different blogs. See here, here, here, and here. Having a specific area for people to ask for help would stop this, and would match people who need help with those who can help them faster.
I understand that the CF team is probably busy during this time, making sure they're staying healthy and making sure CodeForces doesn't crash every contest. But I thought I'd just throw this idea out there to see whether it's possible, or if there's some obvious flaw I've missed. I know tags exist, but many people don't seem to use them and I don't think you can tag a comment.
Feel free to add your thoughts below.
Auto comment: topic has been updated by qpwoeirut (previous revision, new revision, compare).
wish you to be a newbie (grey on codeforces) forewer and also I wish permanent ban to your account.Also i wish a brick fall on you.
Well, thanks for bumping my post at least! That's very kind of you.
lol,the last line was actually funny
great idea
wish you to be a newbie (grey on codeforces) forewer and also I wish permanent ban to your account.Also i wish a brick fall on you.
Dude does this guy has a template for this message? Be's just got insane abt it on various blogs. Come on man get a life.
The whole idea is maybe flawed — the distaste for help requests is probably not shared by a dominant portion of the community. One possible reason: in the current Recent Actions section, half of other blogs don't contain any competitive programming content at all.
I agree that the Recent actions section is pretty rudimentary, and could benefit from work on it.
About the actual proposal: I think a gamification approach could be used. Have a standard way for people to submit their codes and explanations of their issues (no more boldface include <bits/stdc++>!), and have a leaderboard of people that help them.
The whole interface/website need not be tied to Codeforces, except for the authentication by Codeforces accounts. If it's hosted outside of Codeforces, it's almost a static site (only thing is a database which doesn't need to support anything complicated). This could remove the pressure of help requests to Codeforces problems. Also, could make the thing searchable (open to search engine indices) so well-mannered people don't repeat questions.
Well it's not like "sweep help requests under the rug so no one will see them". It's just separating them so people who don't want to look at them don't need to, and vice versa.