SNCKEL17 Replay: What happened to CodeChef's plagiarism detectors?

In case you don’t know yet, there was a Replay contest for SnackDown 2017 Elimination Round on 4th June. The contest was abruptly suspended following this announcement:

2321 hrs IST: Hello Everyone, We noticed that we have missed making the solutions of the elimination round private. Now we are already half way through the contest and the damage is done. Keeping into consideration of the series of events and the spirit of the competition, we are calling back the prizes that were announced earlier. We shall be more diligent in our future events and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. Thank you for bearing with us.

It was a bit slacky for CodeChef I think. Basically what happened is most people copied solutions from the actual Elimination Round.

My question is, why the submissions weren’t run against plagiarism detector? Because if the solutions were just copy-pasted, the anti plagiarism software will detect that and eliminate the participant before the end of Elimination, right? :wink:

Even if people simply understood the logic of someone else’s solution and re-implemented in their own way, it still counts as cheating and plagiarism detectors have no way of knowing that.

i think they did not run plag_ test against the main round submissions, while our witty contestants copied diff solutions and submitted them within 5 mins,
It’s hilarious , sibaitr(rank 1) just did it in 29 mins, while main round competitors took 4.5 hrs:)

My question is, why the submissions weren’t run against plagiarism detector? Because if the solutions were just copy-pasted, the anti plagiarism software will detect that and eliminate the participant before the end of Elimination, right? :wink:

Because, since half the contest had already passed, its possible that there was ‘mass-cheating’ which took place. You can punish a few guys, but when more than half the participants cheated, then its better to call off the contest.

We need to consider things from their PoV too. Punishing/Banning more than half the crowd who takes part in contest will deal a big blow to them.

It would be different if codechef actually protected it, and then those people made a breach and cheated. Then, punishment is absolutely correct.

But when even they were also (even if partially) lacking from their part, they cannot give mass punishment. Points would be raised, blames would be put and it would be a different mess altogether. Its much cleaner way to call off the contest to deal with it.

Another thing you may come up with is, “Disqualify those caught in plagiarism and then go on as normal.”
We need to remember that plagiarism catches BOTH the guys, the one whose solution is copied, and the one who copied someone else’s solution. Codechef punishes BOTH, cheater for copying, and other for not keeping his solution protected. It doesnt actually tell who copied whose code, so they wouldnt be able to tell which person among the two is a cheater. Also, since it was a problem from their part (that they were not able to keep submitted solutions private), they cannot risk punishing the innocent guy. Its a 100% safe choice to simply cancel the contest, instead of going on with punishing (with risk of some innocent getting punished)

2 Likes

Biggest mistake done by codechef is making those submissions public and those who just copied and submitted should realise that they are fools and there is no advatage doing that except getting a T-shirt.It is like becoming father without doing anything.

yaar koi upvote kardo .
questions wagera post karna hai

3 Likes

People had a whole day to edit old solutions. Enough time to fool a plagiarism detector.

1 Like

its really sad that codechef puts so much effort so people get to learn programming, and then people do such activities :frowning:

Agreed 100%

1 Like

no karma?no problem you can ask your question over here

https://discuss.codechef.com/questions/97820/i-want-to-ask-a-question-ask-them-all-here

2 Likes

Earn your upvotes. There is a separate thread where 1 karma users can ask question. Please abide by the forum rules.

BTW, thanks @hruday968

Yeah, but as most of the people got AC, its more likely that they just simply copied the solution.

“Becoming father without doing anything” was epic sarcasm.