Hi, a few disclaimers first.

1. I work as a coordinator on CF, but this blog is solely my initiative (I didn't tell anyone from CF about it).

2. I was a few times in the author role, so I think that I have the right to speak on behalf of both authors and coordinators. Obviously, it doesn't mean that all authors/coordinators think the same, but (based on discussion with some people) I think that my opinion is not unpopular.

Main point of this blog — I feel like our community is becoming much more aggressive towards any things (some of which I can't even call issues) that they don't like during the round. I don't think it's a good direction, and I think it can decrease the motivation of authors & coordinators to do more rounds.

Now I will explain why I think so.

Obviously, you might guess that this blog was inspired by yesterday's round, but also a few recent ones too (for instance, CF 1069, CF 1058).

The first thing that any person will see on the home page now is that this round was heavily downvoted. I checked the comments and found the following reasons:

1. Weak samples in some of the problems. I understand that currently it's not a standard thing on CF (and usually samples are very strong), but I don't think it's a bad thing to have from time to time — it encourages people to try to prove their solutions more, which is a great skill.

2. Boring problems. While I agree that some problems were standard (and, as a coordinator, I might not accept some of them), I think that the overall quality of the round was not bad.

Obviously, I express my subjective opinion here, which might be different from yours, and also might be biased because I got a positive delta and didn't have any issues with my solutions because of weak pretests.

But, in the same way, as for a lot of us a positive delta in our performance is important, it's important for authors (and coordinators) to see that their work is being appreciated.

And, just to emphasize what part of the work was done well:

1. There were no issues (at least what I know of) with the preparation of the round — statements, tests, validators were good.

2. The balance of the round was good.

3. The editorial was released quite fast after the round.

4. There were no problems that were well known.

So, I want to finish my rant with 2 things:

1. Please, understand that your opinion as users who solve rounds is very important for us (authors and coordinators). So, even if you disliked the round — please, try to write constructive feedback where you write not only about the things you didn't like, but also the things that you liked there. Also, don't forget to upvote the blog if you think that the round quality was at least not much worse than average. This might be a controversial opinion, but generally I think that it's better to press upvote on a round, even if you're slightly unhappy with it, just to encourage authors for future work.

2. If you're generally unhappy with the quality of the rounds — please, try to help. There are a lot of ways you can help (based on the amount of free time you have) — testing, authoring, coordinating.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.