How cheaters look like or Should CodeChef update their policy?

My solution from DEC19 Challenge was found to be similar to two other solutions.
Here is my solution and here are the other two solutions 1 2.
These are the cheaters 1 2.

When I started with competitions I was using ideone as I had no clue that the URL to these codes are publicly posted for anyone to access or that people actually take time to read through code to find one from an ongoing competition.

In December my code was caught in CodeForces plagiarism check.
Here is how CodeChef is handling it: all my submission are disqualified. They have explicitly stated to not write them back even if you have unknowingly violated the code of conduct and that doing so might also result in account block without any intimation.

Here is how CodeForces is handling it: they notified that my code is similar to other submission and that it is a violation of code of conduct but still, gave due points for my submission. The code that was submitted by others after my submission was penalized. I was given a fair warning that repetition of the behaviour would result in an account ban. Fair enough, I stopped using ideone and started using a local IDE. No issues, no loss of rating, no wrongful penalization.

Should they update the way they handle these issues?

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This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

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I completely agree with you. Such harsh steps and also lack of balanced contests (only 1 long which is too long according to some and 2 unbalanced short contests) are causing upcoming talents to refrain from CodeChef. Another dangerous trend I have found is that of making fake accounts to report plag and disturb Vijju and admin in this forum. All this is really sad.

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Perhaps they should change - but not in the direction you think or want.

I absolutely do not see anything wrong - a rule violation is a rule violation whether unknowingly or not. Codechef is not obliged to give any second chances and it doesn’t. Its harsh, but you cannot argue that its “wrong”. They fully have rights to do not give second chances.

Earlier the penalty was way worse - if you are caught more than once, your rating is reduced to 0, no matter how much it is. That was more or less like an account ban honestly, and I talked to them to change it to some fixed constant.

We cannot let cheaters go away with having points of their submission. Also, if they cheated in one problem, its fair to completely disqualify them - as I said, violation is violation and you cannot force anyone to take a lenient side of the matter.

That being said, I feel getting rid of appeal phase altogether would be great. I wanted to suggest that they can just undisqualify those users (i.e. as if user never gave that contest. No rating penalty), no appeals taken. But this will be a big issue for templates - and until that part is not worked upon I think we will continue with our system.

Another dangerous trend I have found is that of making fake accounts to report plag and disturb Vijju and admin in this forum. All this is really sad.

True - I really am amazed at how petty people can get. Thats just sad.

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The issue I was talking about is this: As most of the times people are not able to solve a problem during live contest they wait for the editorials. The Editorial Team works very hard and many times there are unofficial editorials too which help but all these get shadowed by these “just to report plag” accounts which make continuous spam posts reporting multiple accounts.

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Today around 03:34 AM code-chef mailed me that one of my solutions was found to be similar to the another user’s solutions and I know that can’t happen because I don’t cheat then I look at the solution of the other person to whom my code was found to be similar to and found out that the person has actually copied the whole code and I am like WTF! and solution was to the easiest problem Breaking Bricks and the guy is Shetty Nishan who copied the solution.

My Solution: CodeChef: Practical coding for everyone
Guy Solution: CodeChef: Practical coding for everyone

See I am not saying that you need to change your rules or policy (you can have a poll on that among the Code-Chef Community to decide on whether there should be a change in policy or not, I am pretty sure that you will be amazed by the result @vijju123 @admin).

What is not fair is to disqualify all of the solutions of the user (who have solved the problem on its own) which you did in my case just because you got one of my solution plagiarised which even though is not because look at the time of submission of the copied solution, it was on 2020-01-12 10:37:18 i.e. 12 Jan 2020 and I have already solved the problem on 2020-01-04 02:37:02 i.e. 4th Jan 2020.

Maybe by mistake, the code is leaked or something which was my bad but you should only disqualify the solution of that problem only or better you should not count the solution of that problem for ranking and update the ranking again and then reduce the rating after the updated rating, but what you did was to disqualify all of my solutions and reduced my score to zero without any evidence of my other codes where also leak, which is really not fair with me, @ninilo_97 and there will be several others also which are in the same situation also due to your rules.

Well I don’t know whether you are going to take the strict action ASAP against these people (a.k.a cheaters) who are being mentioned by me or @ninilo_97 or other people who are making post related to plagiarism, but I will say this, You guys (@vijju123 @admin) are shooting your foot by yourself because if you don’t change the policy, your discuss platform (the post which has the most likes much be at the top, and here I have a very hard time going through all the comments to find that and also what @kelvin273 mentioned ) and there are many other things which should be changed (well again you should have a poll on those changes openly among Code-Chef Community (because they are the backbone)), then in future (actually it’s happening), you are going to lose your coders & community (significantly) because all of them will migrate to Code-Forces, AtCoder, etc which are really better at dealing with these kinds of stuff and they have a good platform as far as problem statement is concerned, explanation of test-cases, etc.

Well, I don’t post these kinds of things because I am not into criticism and all that because every platform is good in some sense but the things which you did about disqualifying the solution really pissed me off.

It’s on you (@vijju123 @admin ) whether you want to change your platform seriously or make this post a flagged post or ignored content.

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We cannot let cheaters go away with having points of their submission.
Also, if they cheated in one problem, its fair to completely disqualify
them - as I said, violation is violation and you cannot force anyone to take
a lenient side of the matter.

I take full responsibility of leaked code, but I did not knowingly share my code. There is a subtle difference and this platform fails to acknowledge it.
What they could do instead :

  1. Instead of disqualifying all submissions, just disqualify the problems which were caught for plagiarism.
  2. Check which user submitted the solutions first? Disqualify the second similar solution?

Strict actions need to be taken against cheaters but this is not an excuse to disqualify non-cheaters who unknowingly violated the policy. If I’m caught again in plagiarism, sure, ban my account without any further notice. But how can they know on the first instance of policy violation that I deserve a penalty? Some leniency on the first instance is already in effect on CodeForces and it works great. It is better to pass ten cheaters than to catch one innocent.

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@ninilo_97 - I already addressed your concern - a violation is a violation. Failing to protect your code is a violation (because if its not, this loophole can be abused to intentionally cheat). For any violation, its totally upto codechef on if it wants to be on lenient side or harsh side. We cannot make any arguments here.

  1. Only disqualifying that submission is rejected. What if the pair copied in other problems as well but is not caught for whatsoever reasons? That loss of score post contest will also lead to rating loss whatsoever - and your rating graph will also get flagged for plagiarism for that contest. So I do not see any benefit. Its completely fair to disqualify all your submissions if you are found violating the rules - and even one submission is enough for that.
  2. We do not follow which user submitted first because its not necessary that the author always submits first. He might, say, take some time testing locally while cheater is submitting any code he finds. This suggestion was discussed and discarded, sorry.

Strict actions need to be taken against cheaters but this is not an excuse to disqualify non-cheaters who unknowingly violated the policy.

Sorry, but if Codechef is not sympathetical, we cannot force it to be. Codechef is very much correct in saying “You ought to read rules before giving contest.” and simply discard your plea. Just because Codeforces is giving leniency does not mean codechef should as well.

Codeforces holds short contests where plagiarism is less - in Codechef, its not the case. In div2 there is a non trivial amount of cheaters and any laxation in punishment is going to increase that number. Its a dicey situation.

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What is not fair is to disqualify all of the solutions of the user (who have solved the problem on its own) which you did in my case just because you got one of my solution plagiarised which even though is not because look at the time of submission of the copied solution

Look, Codechef sees “Do codes match?”. Yes they do. After that it simply doesn’t care who copied who. That will simply be unfeasible for a team to do because of huge volume of plagiarism happening.

Secondly - you got your code leaked, you did plagiarised. You are as much guilty as the other guy. Any relaxation here means people will start intentionally sharing codes thinking they will anyway get off later.

Also, I fail to see how disqualifying just one submission and keeping you in contest is any better? Look at it from a third perspective - you know a user cheated/violated-rules. Whats the most natural thing you do? You disqualify him. Entirely. Its no new concept. If codechef does not want to be lenient here, you cannot force it to.

Looking at time of submission argument is flawed as I explained in my answer above.

but what you did was to disqualify all of my solutions and reduced my score to zero without any evidence of my other codes where also leak

Thats the most natural thing to do. You violated rules? Disqualify and apply penalty. We want penalties to be fixed per contest, and your suggestion is actually worse where people are bound to get more penalty (loss of rating from contest + the fixed penalty). I fail to see why your suggested method is better - you need to provide more arguments.

You guys (@vijju123 @admin) are shooting your foot by yourself

I personally don’t care. The policy is right, we are taking feedback on any genuine suggestion. I already proved why your suggested policy is worse. I think we are doing good.

then in future (actually it’s happening), you are going to lose your coders & community (significantly) because all of them will migrate to Code-Forces, AtCoder, etc

Let me drill this into your head. Codechef is a NOT FOR PROFIT. We are here to help coders improve. Our chief aim is to help India improve in coding rather than amass a wide audience to gain big revenues. You feel others are better for you? Feel free to move on.

Also let me drill this into your head - most of the people, especially those who have basic sense to not make their codes public or at least read rules before contest, are simply not affected by our MOSS policies as they are never caught by MOSS. The only pain point is moss sometimes flagging a few people because of matching templates, but its immediately corrected as soon as they appeal.

but the things which you did about disqualifying the solution really pissed me off.

Again, nobody cares honestly. If you are pissed off on Codechef because you leaked your code and we refuse to be lenient, then thats your own problem. Thats how the world goes dear, no second chances is actually a thing.

It’s on you (@vijju123 @admin ) whether you want to change your platform seriously or make this post a flagged post or ignored content.

We don’t flag posts. Community does. IDK what impresses on you that we flag posts.

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Chef be like-

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You are giving example of codeforces?

  1. I don’t see anywhere explicitly wriiten rules on codeforces or how they handle plags. (except few lines on contest registration page).
  2. Codechef mentions very cleary its code of conduct, rules and possible mistake you may do on every contest page.
  3. If you not being lazy and scrolled a bit down on contest page you would see the mistake done by you explicitly mentioned there. Hence for codechef you did not violated rules unknowingly.
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Go to codeforces. Delete your codechef account. No one is stopping you.
Actually try posting these kind of things on their discuss forum and you will get tons of downvotes. Don’t use codechef discuss. Post on codeforces.

You too.

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Codechef cannot be blammed as they say protect your code in all possible circumstances and also who knows the real cheater… after plagiarism everyone says they are innocent and every thing just happened unknowingly. They take harsh steps because they dont have any other better option than this…

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According to me, if you knowingly or unknowingly done some mistake, rather than making a post about updating CC policy it’s better that you move on, perform better in the upcoming contests and gain your lost ratings back.

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Most of the people are already using codeforces and atcoder as well. Its not like migrating or something. We need question to solve. We don’t have issues with codechef because it rejects submission when caught cheating issues are mainly crashes in contest and crazy strict time limits (it’s a joke). Worst will be people won’t take codechef rating to much consideration but no one’s leaving codechef as it produces good questions.
*This is my opinion people may disagree

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I know it’s utopian, but I’d love to see the main discussion board completely empty of cheating / no cheating threads or claims to admin or to always well-disposed vijju. Almost half of the last unread threads on my profile are about the cheating thing. Is it completely impossible to have 2 different discussion forums, one for coding and CS topics and one for cheating / not cheating? I imagine the answer … it’s just an expression of desire.

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@abhishek_1401 see same problem like you

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Ideally, if you want to report that some users have cheated, or if you want to appeal against having been caught for plagiarism, you should only send an email to help@codechef.com , and wait for a few weeks to get a reply.

But despite this instruction, if you do feel that you need to say something publicly, like discussing the policies related to this, you can use this topic. Any other new topic that you start related to this will be closed.

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