@likecs - I was about to raise this issue too. Even I noticed some guys were recklessly upvoting each other’s answers. I too saw just how many upvotes inovation123 got in such a few time. I remember seeing some more handles like that.
I cannot say much about @prakhariitd. He is a personal friend of mine, and I really don’t think he is indulging in such activities.
@vijju123 lol I am not trying to give free karma points to my friends! You can see my timeline - I have become active on Codechef Discuss quite recently (until now I was just into solving problems), and have started to read the answers of my college mates. I saw some of @prakhariitd’s answers and I liked them. I didn’t realize that I triggered some sort of ‘warning flag’ in that process. If it really matters I will limit the number of upvotes I give to someone.
@admin This could in fact be a nice solution to this problem. Why not limit the number of upvotes a user can give on one day?
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@likecs is right. Codechef should perform plagiarism before awarding laddus to top Contributors. Some guys are really misusing this discussion session(I will not mention their names as all you are aware of that).
The point of @waterbreak is absolutely right. Some guys like @rashedcs ask questions here which can easily be found on google, geeksforgeek, stackoverflow or math.stackexhange like websites.
I don’t know about the intention of that guy so i would like to request all such guys specially @rashedcs to please search your query at google first and try to mingle with it for sometime, after that if you could not got the satisfactory answer after crawling through all other websites then you are free to ask here.
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To find out fake IDs codechef can use the IP of users.
Also, the upvoting privilege can be restricted to users having Rating >= K.
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@prakhariitd That will not be enough. Weeding out fake IDs alone won’t make the cut. What if two genuine users decide to get mutual benefit by giving regular upvotes to each other to get more karma points?
Some sort of plagiarism test is fine. But, the question is how will the judge which case is genuine?
Ok so I am the hot topic right now for not so good reason which is a pity. Now I am not here to defend myself but I do accept that something wrong has happened. I am just here to put my views on what I am feeling right now. I do not blame anyone nor do I expect sympathy but I would just ask to spare some time to understand my viewpoint before jumping onto conclusions. Before I start, I will just like to share why I became active on this community recently.
Firstly, I would like to make it loud and clear that though I am coding for a while but I used to refrain myself from writing blogs, answering questions and all and used to focus only on coding for which I feel sorry for myself. I may sound arrogant or proudy but I firmly believe that I am a beginner and I confess that most of the people out here are far better than me.
Now question arises “Why am I here?” for being in Top 5 contributor ? for getting some laddus ? Well, few days back I was told to take few Algorithms and Competitive Programming classes for school and college students in my city and this incident truly changed my perception. I thought that I was not paid for taking the classes then why did I felt happy. I interacted with people, gave some of my Knowledge units and learnt a lot. I never felt that joy after getting a green tick. This motivated me and I decided that I will exchange knowledge and thus I came to this community and tried my level best to contribute to the best of my ability. My experience has been amazing and my hunger of exchanging knowledge has just increased by leaps and bounds and I will continue to share knowledge.
Now let me tell you what happened today. My friend also got motivated when I shared my story with him and he came to contribute here. He gave very ordinary answers and I was bit biased for he was my friend so I upvoted his answer. He was not knowing that I am in top 5 or something and upvoted some of my answers. Now there is a mistake that I was bit lenient towards him and he unknowingly upvoted my answers and now when I saw this I also got shocked.
Now I do not know if I have made any contribution to this community or not, that I leave it to you to decide but I have learnt a lot from this community in a short period so kudos to all you amazing people out here. Now you may think this as my excuse or some kind of story so you can yourself think if someone wants to do Karma farming, will he flood up votes in short period to get trapped. I don’t think if someone becomes determined to be in top 5 by hook or by crook then a person would be so foolish to commit such a blunder to create new fake account and flood up votes to be in top 5 to leave nothing to imagination to others to be assumed to be a culprit.
Now I have said a lot and now I leave it to you to judge. I would gracefully accept community’s decision. Also I would I would request admins to debarred me from being in Top 5 ever in future and I am totally OK with it. Yes up votes and prizes are tokens of appreciation and motivation but these incentives are never gonna prompt me to indulge in such activities.
So now signing off and I leave it to you all to judge and trust me whatever the community will decide I will gracefully accept.
Thank You for teaching me so much in such short span of time and hope to contribute to the community.
Haoppy Coding
@admin make the rule that anyone in top 5 must have at least 5000 rating in long challenge and same for cook-off rounds also and
…for the users who upvotes must have participated in at least 3 long challenges with sufficient rating.
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In addition to this, there are users who ask standard programming questions that when searched on Google result in multiple links, possibly even on CodeChef and are awarded karma when someone upvotes them. Totally unfair on a lot of users of this forum in my opinion.
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Yes buddy, that’s what we should do. I had mailed them an hour ago too (when I saw innovation suddenly sky-rocketing from 180 to 260…and upvoter was some random new guy…who just received 20 karma by innovation’s upvotes…I mean wew. Things are clear to naked eye…)
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Wow. That’s the best proof so far. “Detective only4” has already got the most crucial proof. Hahah XD. But seriously bud, wow…just wow…
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Your suggestion is nice.
I believe you bro, that’s why I said that I feel that prakhar’s case is genuine. Even I liked many of his answers!!
The only reason I wrote about it in ym answer is that, if you look at his karma history, you would see your and prakhar_26’s name continuously in a row…and I am afraid that may make some people suspicious. That’s all. Idk, I am not able to express myself clearly atm…but please know I have no ‘bad intention’. I just tried to point out what some person may feel from neutral view…I have no intention that you limit upvoting good answers
Yeah I realized that. In fact looking at how many karma points I got within such a short span of time, even I may look suspicious!
All I wanted to convey was that people might find that thing suspicious, (because admins straight ban such people-that might be too late to warn).
And I asked admin to have a look because, if he says that “No, he is not karma farming” then it means he is not. Then nobody can actually point out finger at him or you or anyone. That’s all. Please don’t misinterpret me, I really don’t want to sound demeaning or disrespectful to anybody… 
I believe @rashedcs isn’t doing this on purpose, since he personally sent me a message on FB (when I answered one of his questions) asking “How to become good at programming?” However, yes he must at least try searching about stuff on his own.
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I too agree with utkarsh. I feel he is genuine guy, he asks for help when he isn’t able to get things. Yes, I too feel he doesn’t search on google…but I feel its alright…because we are a discussing community…(but again, that’s strictly my opinion and others’ opinion may vary). All in all, I don’t want that any geniune guy gets discouraged from asking Q…that’s all dear
They are actually quite quick in this thing. The last guy got banned overnight- before I could feel suspicious of him indulging in karma farming.
Yup, that’s the real problem. The line is thin, and punishment too harsh. Cant risk having an innocent guy getting permanently banned.
All that is fine. But I hope that some genuine user doesn’t get caught up in all of this confusion.
You both misinterpreted my answer. My intention was not that this guy asking question here because of karma points. My point was that why is he continuously asking such question that can easily be found on google.
I believe placing a cap on the number of upvotes can be a good alternative.
“If you cannot control the situation at the end of the month, just start controlling it right from the beginning”.
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Lol. True, most of these guys emerge at end of month.