Hello everyone, I think that I might have a good idea to combat some of the cheating in online contests. Basically, we can split the rankings (and rating calculations) of div. 2 rounds into one containing users with $$$1600+$$$ rating and one containing users with $$$ \lt 1600$$$ rating.

Here is why. In div. 1 rounds, there are hardly any cheaters (yes, there are some, but they are few and far between). I think that the reason for this is because, in order to reach div. 1, you have to be a bit serious about competitions. Most cheaters aren't serious enough, as they get caught before they reach div. 1, so div. 1 is left with a bunch of honest participants.

But I think that this holds true for those rated $$$1600+$$$, too. Of course, the cheaters become more frequent as the rating threshold goes lower, but I think that finding a cheater expert is quite uncommon, too. This is shown by the standings of the most recent round: most of the cheaters in the top $$$100$$$ aren't even expert.

Another reason why div. 1 has so few cheaters is because div. 1 only has $$$900$$$ participants each round, so cheaters are much more obvious. If we split the div. 2 rankings like this, the cheaters above $$$1600$$$ would be much more apparent, as there would only be a few thousand participants with ratings above $$$1600$$$ (as opposed to $$$10k+$$$ with how the rankings are split now).

You might say that this is just handing the cheating problem to those with $$$ \lt 1600$$$ rating, but I don't think that this would be the case. I think that cheating below $$$1600$$$ would more or less stay the same, while cheating above $$$1600$$$ would go down a bit due to the increased visibility of each individual cheater (because of the smaller standings table). So the $$$1600+$$$ table would have very few cheaters.