Most people know that if you don't submit anything in a codeforces round, the round is not rated for you. So if you are taking too long to come up with a solution for problem A, maybe you should not submit anything at all. Should you hate on someone that has this strategy? No! Hate the game, not the player.
In past rounds, I believe that the number of participants in greatly correlated with the difficulty of problem A. Is that the kind of behavior we want to foster? Is it intended that the rating should be a metric of your skill only among the rounds that you want to participate? Or should it be a metric of your skill among all rounds?
So I humbly suggest that if you enter the round, it should be rated for you, even if you don't make any submissions. The registration phase could remain the same, not being definitive, but if you click enter in the round between the let's say the 20 minutes window, starting 10 minutes before the round, the round should be rated for you. And late registrations should be unrated, otherwise this proposal makes no sense, because you would be able to check the problems in an alt account and only register late in the round if you think that you will perform well. Maybe you should also be able to register in the round without it being rated for you, but you need to decide that before.
Let me know your opinions!
I want to second this. Under current rules, it is nessecary to read B before submitting A, deciding if it makes sense to participate or not at all. Which is annoying.
It does not make contests better to have some wired tactical options like not submitting at all. People should be honored for submitting solutions, not for acting cowardish.
I value my time, so I obviously disagree
If you do not agree with some of the choices of codeforces organizers, that is fair, but then you should not care about your rating too. Do you think that it is appropriate that someone in ranked better just because they can judge bette which contests they will perform well?
If you don't care about rating, then there is no point of this post.
If you do care about rating, then you can also learn to choose better contests to maximize rating (I am not stating this works, this is what you implied). Viewing problems is not the only way to decide whether to give a contest. There are other ways as well — for example there are contests based off VK Cup, Olympiads etc. — and these frequently turn out to be harder than usual.
If Div1A/2A is too hard, then it's probably an indication that the rest of the contest is unbalanced. If you care about your rating, take the hint and leave the round.
Also reading Div1A or Div2A is not very beneficial in deciding whether to give the contest or not — you need to at least read Div1B/2B as well — and I think the penalty system (sum of all submission times, as opposed to only last submission time) of Codeforces is enough to make this behavior not very helpful.
Do you realise that this is lead to increase of more fake accounts, who will first check the problems and then decide whether to take part or not.
You can check the contest in your main account, but you need to decide in the first 5 or 10 minutes whether you want to participate in it rated or not. The fact that you only have a short amount of time to register for being rated is so that it makes no sense to create another account to check the problems, you would not have enough time to decide.
Even if you do that there are other ways to skip registered contests. You enter the contest with another account to check the problems. If they were solvable, enter with your main account and submit. In my opinion there is actually no way to stop “rating protective” people. Just enjoy problem solving and don’t care about them!
You can check the contest in your main account, but you need to decide in the first 5 or 10 minutes whether you want to participate in it rated or not. The fact that you only have a short amount of time to register for being rated is so that it makes no sense to create another account to check the problems, you would not have enough time to decide.
Again it is not good for div2 participants to have 5 minutes to decide about participation. Cause problem A is important for the people with lower ratings. I mean it would still have some sort of problems like the one you mentioned for normal mode.
I don't agree with you as the participants could have faced other problems & as a consequence he/she would not be able to submit the solutions.For example,in many Asian countries power cut is still a common incident.So,it'll not be possible to access the internet at that time.So,I think it'll not fair to all participants.
This would still affect the participants that have already submitted and lost power. I do agree that it would not be fair, but in my opinion, your concern is very minor. I believe that many more people will decide to skip the contest in the current rules, when compared to the number of people that will lose power in the middle of the contest before submitting the first solution.
I disagree.
Convenience > rating
I agree that many more other things are more relevant than your codeforces rating, but this does not mean that we should have rules that value coward strategies to maximize your rating. If something happens and you decide to skip the contest, that is fine, just dont mind your rating loss too much and recover it in the next round.
In the latest contest I got pretest 1 failed. I remember a rule saying the first pretest failing isn't gonna affect the rating, but I took a hard -98 even though I opted out of the contest with 1 failed pretest 1? Can someone clarify the rules, am I mistaken or something.
The first pretest failing does not reduce that contest's score.
On the other hand, your rating changes if you have submitted code at least once.
It won't count against you for -50 points, but because you submitted something you are now officially a participant.
A better solution would be to make A such that almost everyone in div1 solves div1A quickly and almost everyone in div2 solves div2A quickly. Most people don't intend to use such dirty tricks for rating intentionally but since they are not able to solve anything, they are not in leaderboard and this affects others' ratings.
This would be better than the current rules too, it would trick people into participating, but what I suggested is more appropriate imo.
Agree with you.
print(A+B)I guess you are just missing leetcode rounds!
What if I didn’t want to participate in the round at all but still wanted to think about the problems? I’ve done this before in school and in general anyone in a position where they can’t guarantee focus on the contest might want to do this. Registration doesn’t account for this because I might have registered and then realized that I couldn’t do the contest.
You should be able to see the problems at all times, registered or not. But if you want it to be rated for you, you need to decide that before the round begins.
I want to skip cancer rounds.
I participated in my first contest where I submit first solution which was accepted (time taken to solve 01:05hr) but i cannot get rank and i summission shoe in queue. What is means? Why I cannot get rank for correct submission?
Hi anyone tell me please I am avail to do 3 question out of 7 in yesterday contest but in my profile show Unrated why ? , I am new and 1st attend yesterday contest, In codechef after contest next day rating are show but in codeforce are not showing why ?