I know that the following content might not be welcomed and I will lose lots of contribution, but I should write something about such a bunch of chaotic comments under there.
I may delete this tomorrow if I find my words useless.
What happened
Several months ago, Mike posted a blog about banning zh0ukangyang and more alts. Lots of participants, including myself, were angry because zh0ukangyang is such a talented coder and codeforces didn't treat the rule of single account seriously at that time. Then more and more alt accounts with high rating are reported, including mine.
But I know what you are thinking is how to detect the alts with lower rating. It's obvious that 10k alt accounts with 2100~2400 could be much more annoying. But detecting them is as hard as detecting cheaters!
So in the last round, Mike just banned some accounts. I heard that you will be banned if you login to both two accounts on the same computer and register for the last contest. Somebody complained that both of his accounts got banned, but he didn't participate with alt account anymore after the announcement!
Then the chaos appeared. Offensive comments are made. Meaningless comments are made. Mystifying comments(called Mo Zheng in Chinese, which I strongly hate) are made. In my opinion, those comments make no sense at all because they only scold Mike, without saying why they got angry. So that is why I want to write a blog about this.
Why participants use alts & my comments
In my investigation, there are 4 main usages of alt accounts.
- Create 2 accounts, always participate with the lower rating.
The advantage is that your maximum rating never decreases. I think that it is because codeforces has a huge jumping system: -100 for a blunder seems to be too much for me. When people are talking about rating, they always talk about the current rating, not the history maximum one. I think people are less willing to use alt in ATCoder because you lose less rating when having bad performance, and there is a Dan system(I messed up two contests in a row and losing ~50 rating) with the highest rating, which has more levels. I can still call myself a 6-Dan coder. So adjusting the rating system might be useful...?
- Create some new accounts and take the win of Div.2/3/4 easily.
Certainly, this should be banned.
- Create 1+1 accounts, one for participating and the other for hiding submissions/VCs.
I think this should not be banned. This could be the main point that people complain about.
- Create some new accounts for participating "unofficially".
This should be legalized. I hope that hacking phases will be removed soon and we can have "unrated register" option.
My thoughts
Codeforces is getting older and older. UI/Rules/Problems are changing year-by-year, so codeforces looked like an outdated website today. But currently it still has the most users, most contests, and the largest rating system. I think that holding traditions is OK, but removing the outdated modules can make the site better.
Cheaters, boosts and alts are impossible to detect. Indian cheating groups have made me upset for a long time. It must happen when the site is large and the rating is useful IRL(for jobs). What we can do is just follow the rules and protect our environment. I fell in love with coderforces 6 years ago, when I started doing CP. With so many ups and downs, codeforces is still a great online judge that I will suggest to every new comer. I hope everyone maintains a nice forum of competitive programming.
And for the Chinese coders, I hope that we should not write rude comments anymore... Discussing the rules is acceptable and may lead codeforces to a better platform of CP. Just shouting and attacking Mike makes you like a joker.
I've always thought that Codefores' rating change is a little too drastic and I'd prefer it to be like, halved. I'm not sure changing the other aspects of the system would work well though, because it can easily ruin the whole meaning of everyone's current rating and their history.
Rating is just a number, bro. No need to care about it.
Well, then the first 'usage' of alts mentioned in the blog is also useless :)
It's not, because people are stupid and continue caring about a number.
but color matters
just buy new pc for every account
The rule is clear: do not make/use duplicate accounts. Your rationale why people do that is mostly invalid. If you don't like Codeforces, don't use it.
"if you don't like _____, don't ___ it".
It's not an argument.
Let’s be honest here, if you look at the standings of any Div 2 round and open only the first page, you will find that more than half of them are grey. This happens in every round and even more in Div 3 rounds. While the experts or masters should be winning the rounds, instead you find some grey accounts who aced the whole round. And there are too many of them to be ignored. This makes the authors think: "Oh, there are 3,000 people who solved D, so it was an average problem," while actually 2,000 of them were just grandmasters' grey alt accounts.
There are only 630 active grandmasters on cf. It's very unlikely for 2000 grandmasters to be alting div2s. Sounds like cope to me
I think that was hyperbole. There are a lot of Masters+ alting. It really doesn't make sense for newbies to be solving 5 problems on their first try. You can make the argument that "oh, they came from another platform/they have experience", but it's not that many.
What about creating multiple accounts for having multiple personalties?
Recently, many problems related to codeforces have been raised.
I found 2 alternatives.
First, each contestant prepares a presentation for the competition.
This will be a live coding from the start of the competition to the end, and the entire 2-hour process will be filmed and sent to Mike.
If the contestant feels camera-shy, he/she can totally wear a mask or send only the keyboard and screen. The reason why only the screen cannot be filmed is because he/she can use a alt account using a different screen. Only the contestant who submitted the video will be rated.
How to check the video? The presentation video will appear on the standing and anyone can see it by just clicking, But here’s the catch—if you want to stay at the top of the leaderboard, uploading a fake video is as tempting as coding in assembly language: sure, it might seem like a fun idea, but you’ll regret it the moment you hit compile! Since codeforces is a school platform for CPers, the real videos will be used for educational purposes.
Second, just enjoy it.
If you understand the meaning of the Internet and online, and if you do CP as a sport, just enjoy it. No need to complain, cheat or do alt. This is not ICPC.
Do you think your rating is lowered because of cheaters? Take it as a bigger challenge. Cheaters will have their limits. The cheater group will be eliminated by reaching the group's max rating. Challenge that max rating. Do you think it's unfair? If you think the first idea I brought up is valid, strongly recommend it, and if not, there is only the second. What will you do?
This is not a comment to the main blog. I thought the LGM-blog's comments would be more noticeable than the main blog of mine. :)
Recording the contest is not practical and also needs to be watched by someone.
Then, do second. I just emphasized the second one.
Not sure you are serious writing this since it's non-practical and somewhat... stupid. With thousands of contestants each contest, it's impossible to check the videos manually. Not to mention the cost of database. And hey, what would happen if thousands of people upload... say 10GB of data simultaneously, would the server start to crack? And it would take days for those having weak internet connection to finish their upload.
Don't be serious. I hope you see the point.
The first one is non-practical and you can't call the second one an alternative since it's just your thought, not an actual solution. Anw, it's a constructive comment after all and I love that
Q: Why are alt accounts unacceptable currently?
A: In my opinion, it's because the current rating system is like a zero-sum game. The alt accounts actually "earn" ratings from those whose ranks are lower, which is unfair. For example, I may gain 80 rating on some contest, but since lots of grey and green are in front of me, I can only gain 60. So to some extent, using an alt account is as abominable as cheating.
Q: Can we allow alt accounts and avoid this problem?
A: An annoucement of Div. 3 or Div. 4 round reads that, Remember that only the trusted participants of the third division will be included in the official standings table. My thought is that this rule can also be utilized in the other contests. For example, one can declare if his account is an alt account, and if so it'll be excluded in the official standings table in any contest while his account can still be rated.
Q: What about not declared alt accounts or trusted alt accounts due to more than 3 participations?
It is indeed a gentleman's agreement, just like the action of cheating cannot be prohibited by cf itself. Nevertheless, it proves that Mike can detect alt accounts if he wants, so he can ban these undeclared alt account afterwards.
A: The declared alt account itself is weird. Prefer the unrated registration.
Several months ago, Mike posted a blog about banning zh0ukangyang and more alts. Lots of participants, including myself, were angry because zh0ukangyang is such a talented coder. There is no need to be angry because his main account didnt get ban. Basically he didn't get punished for violating the rules at all. I think codeforces should ban not only alt accounts but main account too. In other game platforms (like faceit), main accounts get a 2-6 months ban for smurfing.