It is really great to spend holyday usefully. During the Victory Day I not only visited the Victory Park with family, congratulated people closed to me, watch the Victory Day Salute, but also I've started to get rid from codeforces.ru
Yes, it is not a mistake. We are moving forward to use the only domain codeforces.com. It will make many thing better: better navigation, better page statistics, better pagerank and other metrics.
Of course, all links to codeforces.ru is redirecting to the appropriate page on codeforces.com now. In addition, for now it applies only to GET-requests.
Observant visitors have noticed that recently changed how we deal with images. Now, if you insert a link to image into the text of a post/comment, then when you save it predownloaded and stored on Codeforces, and link is replaced by to use our domain. This solves several problems: missing or spoofed pictures in old posts/comments, the restriction on the number of views in original image server, we resize too large images to smaller size, now we be sure to use https for images, which means we are closer to use https.
Congratulations! After many years you decided too do this :D
When will be the next contest? :((
Is it intended that it returns 302 Moved temporarily. not 301 Moved Permanently?
BTW, Shouldn't it redirect for HEAD queries too?
We are not 100% sure about correct work of such migration, so we use 302 to suggest browser/client that redirect is not permananent for now. Once we decide that redirect is permanent, it will be switched to send 301.
Redirection on HEAD has been added.
I think now that you are doing this, There shouldn't be possible to post a blog or comment in russian (As far as I know when you choose In Russian it will be posted just to codeforces.ru)
Well, I hope this feature won't be disabled, because it's much easier for everyone to communicate using their native language(don't think that I'm acting selfish, but the web-site was created on Russian first of all, so that's how it was born). There are two possible versions of the site, you can switch between them using pictures of flags in the upper-right corner. So I really hope Codeforces team is going to find a way not to remove the opportunity for russian-speaking guys to communicate using Russian language.
Does that mean that we won't have many interested discussions in Russian only, well written Russian statements badly translated to English, Russian editorials much faster than English ones and nice girls posted in Russian homepage only ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ?? That's kinda like one of my dreams :P.
Yes, instead we will have:
many interesting discussions in Russian only => no interesting discussions
well written Russian statements badly translated to English => only badly translated English statements
Russian editorials much faster than English ones => late English editorials
nice girls posted in Russian homepage only => nothing
Jokes aside, I don't see why people think that getting rid of .ru domain should affect functionality in any way in terms of languages supported by the site.
I would definitely argue with all of those points, moreover "well written Russian statements badly translated to English => only badly translated English statements" would be in fact very good change. I don't think that all Russians getting question right and many nonrussians getting something wrong or needing to go through whole statement three times is something nice. What is more, if there was only one version of statement then more attention would be paid to it and it would be better.
For me it doesn't matter which language I use (of course, English and Polish are only possibilites, Russian not included ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)). Only difference is that I probably make many more mistakes in English than in Polish, but still many more people would understand my English posts than Polish posts :P. I don't think that restriction to use English only will significantly affect people's activity. Personally, I find it offensive that so much content of this site is available in language I do not understand, whereas using English only would not harm anybody.
My version of events is: many interesting discussions in Russian only => many interesting discussion in English well written Russian statements badly translated to English => well translated English statements Russian editorials much faster than English ones => fast English editorials
Come on, we are in XXI century, everyone knows English, at least on a level allowing to easily communicate with others. I can imagine that restriction of writing in English could be a barrier for some really young people (but I think we won't find many of them here), but when someone capable of using English posts some general blog entry (not directed to Russians for some reason) in Russian I consider it harsh.
To sum up in a humorous manner, I once encountered one meme in 9gag that complained about large amount of people from Poland and Russia in one game (LOL or CS, nevermind). It mentioned that difference between those nationalities is that when Poles hear someone using English then they will switch to English while Russians will still speak in Russian. Seeing what is happening in Codeforces I think that this is in fact very possible.
Frankly saying, that was a post I was really hoping for an answer — why so many Russians selfishly choose to communicate in Russian in matters which can be discussed in international part of Codeforces in a language that everybody understands. I suppose English is no obstacle nowadays.
Sorry, I have almost nothing to tell you on the topic. My personal opinion is that there is significant (not necessarily majority) part of the community whose English level (or confidence in their English) is not good enough for them to choose English when there is a Russian option. That's just a personal opinion, I can't back it up with any data.
And yes, I agree with you that there is such a problem that Russian people sometimes tend to speak Russian even knowing that some people around who might want to join the discussion but are unable to do so because of the chosen language.
If you're using .ru site, it offers commenting/blog posting in Russian by default, you have to make a conscious effort to switch to English. Then, if you're answering to a comment in Russian, it's kind of weird to switch to English.
But mainly, most people can understand English, but expressing thoughts in a foreign language as freely and quickly as in your own one is not something everybody can do even after years of practice. I've noticed multiple times that when I'm playing laser tag with a team of both my Russian-speaking friends and English-speaking people whom I don't know, shouting in Russian comes naturally to me and is very fast, while saying the same thing in English requires extra effort and extra time and is not something I'm always willing to focus on in the heat of the battle. I'm not saying that communication at Codeforces is quite as intense, of course :-)
Russian is a language of swag overlords like Dostoyevsky, Pushkin and Gogol. English is a language of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. I think the choice is obvious. All hail almighty russian overlords! Ура!
Hm, English is a language of Shakespeare and Russian is a language of Lenin, Stalin, Putin and Bredor :P?
What's wrong with Lenin, Stalin, Putin and Bredor?
Just wondering what if Bredor will be the next? o_0
No, because his name does not end with 'in'. Bredin will be more successful in his rise to power.
You are not serious, are you? I do not want to start political discussion, so I will stick to just Lenin and Stalin and I will keep it short. You either should have got worse mark than the worst possible from high school history courses or Russian history books are "special".
Political discussion detected.
Even with Lenin and Stalin there are different views embraced by different people so it's a good idea to leave it as it is.
For the discussions itself — I try to use English more often at CF, unless my message is specifically aimed at Russian speaking population (which happened a few times, but it didn't contain anything useful for world of competitive programming).
Well, considering that only 15% of Russians know any foreign language, this is not surprising at all. Also, even if you know a foreign language, writing in it is significantly harder than writing in your native language (especially if you don't do it often), and people don't want to make an additional effort.
?locale=ruis enough to run 2 different language version in 1 domain. Isn't it? ;-)