Making Long Challenges Unrated will demotivate us because Short contests will be a great exercise and it will surely help us to learn but most of them who learn CP by attending short contests lose ratings. They gain back it only by attending long challenge. The one who sincerely attend long challenge who are true to themself (I am not talking about those who create a second account after reaching division 1 just show of their skills against division 2 coders) find long challenge the most intresting.
The first 2 problems is solved by a 3* programmer within a day but for the next 9 days its the rest of the question that drives him. It highly motivates everyone.
I agree with the point that increasing short contests will make us learn a lot.
I disagree with the point that making long challenges unrated.
I disagree with this as I usually participate in long contests, I will prefer two have 2 longs replaced by short contests.
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As I am working I don’t get much time to sit for short contests as these are held usually at night and in weekends.
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As I am loosing touch in short contests, sitting for short contests once in 3 months doesn’t make sense as I won’t up solve.
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About cheating we can’t do much just report it to admin whenever you witness such practice. In Last Long challenge I reported one.
One has got to understand that no MOSS checker can substitute for honor code.
And the beauty of honor code is that it cannot be codified.
Let me give an example. Say I don’t know about Euler Tour, is it okay to consult geeksforgeeks? Yes! Is it okay to use exceptional search engine skills to somehow find what data structure/technique would work for a question? Yes.
Is it okay to ask “Hey do I select an edge to be removed to break graph into two graphs” to a friend? Probably yes or no.
Is it okay to ask “how do I solve this question?” Probably not. But doesnt it also depend on the person being asked? If my cousin who studies in class XI asks me this question, and if I reply “study up about DFS and look at entry and exit points and search cp-algorithms”, its probably fine. But I tell him to google “bridge code” - its probably unethical.
Ultimately it all depends on honour system. And honour is about being honest to oneself.
nopes, not happening.
You have got some good points but I don’t think it is a good idea.
The reason I love Long Challenges is because I like to code when I feel like coding not when the competition wants me to! So it gives me a window to participate.
This post make me comment for the first time in years, so you can understand how much I love long challenges 
I, for one, will quite vehemently argue that LC is actually good. A part of the reason is personal, that I’m far better at problems when I get a lot of time to think about them: for instance, I can do many med-hard problems in a day but many times even medium level problems take me a full hour to code. To someone like me LC is the highlight of the month.
But alright, I agree that’s not much of a reason. Let me come the the other reasons I have for LC to stay. The level of final few problems you’ll find on LC far exceeds most of the problems you find in other contests. This means that while in cook-off etc the solution mostly involves “standard” techniques which are “expected”, in the long challenge every time there’s some new lesser known techniques exhibited. This means that the learning is better in LC.
Furthermore, it is a long challenge: it’s expected some people will “cheat” on the challenge (I’m not justifying it, just saying it is inevitable). While I’m totally against a copy pasta type of cheating, I believe that if a person reads an editorial of some other problem and gets the idea to solve a problem in LC, it is not “exactly” cheating. As long as you aren’t copying someone else’s code you are learning something in the process. And in most cases, especially for the harder half of the LC, there arent many articles/blogs that immediately tell you how to solve it. For instance you may not be so fresh about segment trees and may read up something on it, but the fact the you realized you had to use segment trees was the major hurdle of the problem. This implies that unless you know what you want to do, you will not get any material online that helps you do it.
This of course, assumes you do not copy-paste the solution from someone else’s code. Those who do usually never make it to the top 100 or so, so the people who come to LC for competing don’t lose out much in the process.
To add to my above point, I will infact suggest that we increase the number of long challenges. This is because for people like me most of the time either I’m too tired by night to sit for 3 hours or I have a pile of work on my head. LC means I can do problems at my leisure, think about them over coffee, and so on. To me ,
- LC is to learn.
- SC is to show.
I do not agree that CC is just a platform for boasting. In all probability, if a person is 6/7 star on CC, he/she actually is a super talented fellow. I haven’t seen many (read: any) exceptions as such.
Respect Bro.
I just wanna say one thing.
How would you feel if Cricket is without Test Matches?
The basic art of problem solving comes from Long Challenges.
I can surely tell from my experience that the amount of knowledge the I’ve gained in this long challenges is incomparable and I can see my own growth so @andres96 I am totally with you.
What about this proposal: Where should I report about cheating going on during live contest? - #16 by hungrykoala ?
Dude @hblord787 , you have been literally caught in plagiarism in January and February long challenges, so I don’t think you should be the one saying this.
who the hell gives two shits to cheaters. do your job and be done with it.
Yup, I totally agree with aryanc403. This is one of the main reasons I hate circuits in hackerearth. Its quite exhausting to wait for the next set of problems to open. The problems open in increasing difficulty. So, one of the dilemmas that I have is attempting the challenge problem. I only attempt the challenge if I could see an opportunity of winning the contest (or atleast winning a prize 
). This remains a dilemma till the hardest problem of the set opens. And the time for solving that problem too is limited. Getting a good score for challenge requires hard work. It would be for nothing if I’m unable to solve the last problem.
Opening the problems in order of increasing difficulty would also have flaws. The beginners won’t be able to solve the problems for the initial coupe of days and may lose interest in continuing forward. And what would happen to those who have solved the difficult ones but fails to solve the easy ones due to other commitments in the ending phase of the contest ?
It bothers because they pull the rating of the people who are solving on their own
Good idea! 
I agree with you. I’m here almost solely because of long challenges. To be fair, I’m also concerned about mass cheating but I don’t think the solution is to make them unrated. It is like asking to remove marathon running from the Olympics on the assumption that it is easier to cheat there than at the 100 meter sprint. FYI, HackerEarth also hosts regular long challenges.
Greatly disagree…
Do you honestly think that the exact same skills are required for a long challenge, when one (me) sometimes works a weekend on a single hard problem, and for a 2 hours long contest where you have 20-30 minutes to come up with the idea, code, test, and debug?
Let me ask it in another way: Do you think marathon runners should participate in 100 meter sprints, as otherwise “nobody can trust them 100%”? After all, if they can run 42 km, they surely can run 100 meters…
Long contests usually have 15-20 problems give that now we have division 3, so how will they come up with 50-60 problems in a month?
I agree with your points, they make sense. It’s just that long and short contests are very different in terms of skills and mindset needed.