In light of recent events and general trends in competitive programming over the last few years, it's become increasingly clear (and frustrating) to me about how ineffective the current rules page in Codeforces is.

Here's a challenge for you — using only the Codeforces platform (no Google/search engines), try to find the answers in-text to the following five questions:

• What's an "open hacking phase", and why do hacks sometimes give points but sometimes not?
• If you resubmit a solution that passed pretests due to a bug you found, which submission time is used?
• What online resources are you allowed to use? Language documentation? StackOverflow excerpts?
• What are the punishments for cheating?
• What kinds of blog posts are appropriate on the platform?

See the issue here? One could argue that people could easily search up and find the answers to some of these questions on external websites or unofficial blog posts, but consider this: when was the last time you visited a website that didn't have a clearly outlined "Rules" section accessible in one (perhaps a maximum of two) clicks from the home page? Moreover, what's with all the rules being split across five different blog posts? I couldn't even find an official source to answer the fourth and fifth questions (does Mike flip a coin between banning a user and just skipping them whenever he finds a cheater? Who knows, it's not officially listed anywhere I could find.) Even the USACO website, which has a UI that probably hasn't been changed since the 2000s, has a sufficiently comprehensive rules page that can be accessed in the relatively simple "Details/FAQ -> CTRL-F for 'rules' link" pathway. And get this — it's all listed in one HTML page! Truly revolutionary technology, am I right?

The point of all this is, why doesn't Codeforces have an easy-to-read, official rules documentation for any question a new user could ask? Regardless of your stance on the nuances of what behavior is acceptable or how moderators should deal with rule-breakers, it's ridiculous that this website doesn't have what should be a bare minimum for any competitive platform in the modern year of 2026. And I'm sure everyone will be happy that they don't have to read (or write) blog posts about Codeforces rules that should be obvious to anyone using the platform. The barrier to entry for using Codeforces shouldn't be sifting through decade-old blog posts to get a clarification on a single question you might have about the scoring system.

Please, if anyone at Codeforces HQ is reading this, just set aside a day (or week, or month, or however long it takes — as long as it covers everything and is correct) to add a neat little "RULES" tab to that navigation bar at the top, and have it link to a single page that lists everything a new user might need to know! The userbase will thank you.