I thought of this long ago but was too lazy to write it. I will try to keep the idea brief.Lets ask some series of questions.
Why do people are cheating in CP?
Major Reason
Now we have some idea why people may cheat.
What Codeforces can do?
We will use Fear, Shame and simple Probabilty
What People working in different companies can do?
Spread it like fire
What more/additional thing Codeforces can do?
Strict registration rules
What Other user(non cheaters) of CP community can do?
You are vital force
I don't know how much of this can be applied in there real life but I feel this will significantly reduce the amount of cheaters and will force people to enjoy CP instead of cheating...
Further idea from you will help to make better CP community so you ideas are welcome!
About cheating. As I know, there are some people who cheat just because they want to see higher ratings. They practice CP a lot (for example, participants of some national OI), but cheat on Codeforces just for their delight.
About the "cheater badge". There are many situations, when innocent people were accused of cheating. They really don't deserve this badge. And cheaters can create multiple accounts.
About strict registraiton rules. I can create many accounts with my real name and surname, and cheat using many accounts. Also why can't I hide my real name and surname? Who cares about my personality?
About companies and hiring tests. I have never heard about the fact that the recrutiers in my country even care about my CF ratings. Maybe it occurs in some other countries...
About "trying to accuse somebody". I think this is pointless. Codeforces is overfull with blogs "CHEATER REPORT IN ROUND 228!!! BAN USER 1337!!!" You catch only a small percent of cheaters, who just copypaste solutions. We should fight not the effect but the cause of the problem.
But overall this is a good and neat blog. I enjoyed reading it, because it is well-formatted and wriiten in good English.
India enters the chat
About strict regulation rules :- Identifying your self is the main thing , it's not about personality. Once you identify your self, and if you get caught, all the people around that person will look down upon him/her and he/she will be forced to solve problems on their own. If they are innocent, they might be condemned , sure, but after proving their innocence they can get rid of the tag, but if they get penalised again and again , it will definitley mean they are involved in cheating. I don't think there is a high probability of someone not cheating being penalised again and again.
And guess what if you would have written the same thing, a lot of people would agree. In your blog, you talk about finding cheaters , telegram groups, youtube channels, come on man , who has time for this. Yes, if we come across such crap, I might report, but what can I do about a telegram channel?? We can report YoutTube channels, but that requires a large number of reporting. Telegram team might have limited options, but nothing has been done from their side too. So the onus lies upon the Codeforces team to do something before it's too late.
People on CF now have started to look down upon people below their ranks.
Though , I would like to thank you for speaking on this matter as most of the high rank people are not affected so they believe it's not their thing to handle.
Or simply add a way to report/flag submissions or profiles which are then reviewed by coordinators ?
It'd be way better then every person catching a cheater making a blog about it and mentioning Mike.
Maybe make it if it reaches a certain report count, only after it's sent to review ? Lock the ability to report to users with rating above X
I don't know about other countries but i can surely tell you why the sudden craze of plagiarism in India.
Around previous year's September/October a bunch of big YouTubers like Aman Dhatarwal and Love Babbar made several videos claiming that "5 stars on codechef == Job at FAANG" For example How to be a 5 star coder | Wildcard to Google, Facebook and top MNC's.
These videos have 500-600k views each. They basically made people believe that you just have to get good ratings on online judges and you will get the job. After this a storm of these cheaters entered codechef. Several youtube channels were opened that shared solution both for free and paid during the contest. As a result a question that should only get 1k submissions started getting 5-10k submissions.
Several of my college friends became a victim of this scandal. I saw many if them submitting solutions directly copy and pasted. Some of the solutions even contained the YouTuber's name in the comments!! In the recent codechef cookoff challenge i saw one of my friend submitted a solution in java even though he hasn't written a single line of java code till now.
In the end i would like to say that the plagiarism has spread soo far in the indian community that there is no going back now, all thanks to these youtubers, the majority of which haven't even done competitive programming.
That's why we should fight that youtubers and telegram channels, not cheaters (if it is possible).
FAANG jobs are not even that good tbh
Agreed. I've ditched few FAANG companies to join an awesome startup. Now I'm happy I made that decision.
Leave FAANG, we Indian students die for a 6-8 LPA and will be ready to work for 24 hours a day and companies are increasing the level of online coding round, even harder than FAANG. Sad, but that's the reality of India.
**Indian Male Students !!
What is the secret behind your consistency. It is mind boggling to me how you can maintain that level of consistency
I solve one problem every day
About badges, I think it's more optimal to put potential cheaters on some list that can be viewed only by certain amount of people(for example to interviewers of companies that consider cf ratings) rather than showing it to whole community. So that cheaters will be fooled by thinking that they showing their "true" rating.
When I saw the title "A Beautiful Solution for Cheaters", I thought you were teaching people how to cheat :-)