Hello Codeforces,
With plagiarism and throwaway alt accounts remaining an ongoing headache in rated rounds, I've been thinking about the core incentive structure.
Right now, getting banned carries almost zero consequence. Creating a fresh handle takes two minutes and costs nothing, which makes burning disposable accounts effortless for cheaters.
What if creating a new Codeforces account required a tiny, symbolic registration fee (e.g., .50–$1.00)?
Why this could help:
- Removes the disposable account meta: Alt accounts wouldn't be free anymore.
- Adds real consequences to bans: Plagiarists would actually face a tangible penalty every time an account gets flagged.
- Low barrier for honest users: It remains cheap enough that genuine learners aren't heavily burdened, while creating friction for mass account abuse.
Do you think introducing a tiny financial friction would effectively curb throwaway cheating accounts, or would the drawbacks for honest newcomers outweigh the benefits?
Auto comment: topic has been updated by Najmul_Nahid (previous revision, new revision, compare).
yeah, your idea to block cheaters is good, but i think the cost can be higher because 0.50-1 usd is just nothing, but it limits the number of account creations by cheaters so codeforces wouldn't be queueforces again, its a good barrier, but certainly, its not enough!
but higher cost will make it harder for new comer and i think 0.50-1 usd is enough for a cheater to be discouraged .
Even if completely eliminating it isn't possible, adding a tiny charge might reduce it in a big margin. Though i am not sure how practical this is, but if it's reasonably feasible, Codeforces should consider it, even if it comes with some drawbacks !!!
I like the idea but really I think that itd slow down the growth of honest fresh users massively as well, because if i have my first encounter with competitive programming here and suddenly they want me to pay, i think id just drop the ball on it, at least switch sites yk