Suggestion for fight against Plagiarism

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I read the blog published recently:
Our Measures Against Plagiarism

I was shocked to know that the SOME people who had been involved in Plagiarism 2 years before today, have still NOT been penalized. According to the blog,

we are currently in the process of dropping ratings for all users who have been found to have plagiarized in any contest between [AUG18] and [FEB20]

August 2018 to August 2020, that is 2 years. As much as I like CodeChef, this is simply not acceptable. But I am not here to blame CodeChef. I know you people work hard. You have a small team and you put your best efforts into this process. I am here to provide a suggestion. In the same blog I read,

As mentioned above, the whole process takes a lot of time, and we will also try and come up with ideas where we can take help of the community in some way to speed up the process.

As a member of that community, I feel even if I have an idea, whether it is vague or impractical, I must share it. So here it is:

To those familiar with CS:GO (those who aren’t, what are you really doing with life? Just kidding) you must know about the Overwatch system. My idea is similar, with some few modifications.

The Overwatch system can be summarized as below:

The Overwatch lets the CS:GO community regulate itself by allowing qualified and experienced members of the community (‘investigators‘) to review reports of disruptive behavior, determine whether those reports are valid, and apply temporary bans if appropriate.

Would it be such a bad idea to do the same for Long Challenges?
We, the community enjoy CodeChef and its contests with pleasure. There aren’t any annoying advertisements. Some websites have 20 advertisements on a page (one which doesn’t even pay the content writers and still monetizes it, I think you know which website I am talking about). I have never seen any advertisement on CodeChef, except of the certification it provides (which I believe it is completely justified to advertise).

So, do we, as the community have nothing to give back? I think we can contribute towards helping to punish cheaters, at least. And you are not required to. It shouldn’t be expected from anybody, but it should be a voluntary thing.

But how would this work? Are you telling the community to review lakhs of submissions every Long Challenge manually? Do you want to drive us insane?

No, I don’t propose that. AI and MOSS will obviously be the things which lift heavy/manual review work. I am talking about when the plagiarism is detected above a threshold and when CodeChef sends the email to the people who have allegedly cheated; for them to appeal. These cases which are “labelled” as positive can be reviewed by the community members itself.
One person shouldn’t have all the power, to decide whether anybody is guilty or not. Instead, the same case should be given to many trusted members of the community and after hearing the excuse/explanation of the person whose code is found plagiarized, they can make a decision. Not all of them have to agree whether someone is guilty or not. But collectively, a final decision should be made by these people. The decision should be weighted by their trust factor. Hence, a few experienced people would have more say than a lot of inexperienced people (with a lower trust factor).

People can volunteer to participate in this process. Maybe even provide them with small rewards such as Laddus or something. Although I think most of them would be happy just to be helping without anything in return (it is in the culture of Indians, after all).
People should only get cases in which the programming language is the same language as with which they are comfortable with.

Now, does any random person get to participate in this?
No, obviously not. Only experienced members. Those with a good reputation and a decent rating. New accounts made a few months ago should NEVER be allowed to participate in this kind of thing. Despite of whatever rating they have.

Although this might be too difficult to implement, I think in the long run it would prove to be useful. Specially considering how more and more people will be learning programming in the upcoming years.

This was my little suggestion. There would definitely be some flaws or loopholes, but if you think it has even a decent amount of potential to be implemented, please critique it and suggest better alternatives.

TLDR; CSGO Overwatch System (kind of)

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Everyone will take you Seriously but you should post this with original ID.
I mean whats the problem in that ??

"One person shouldn’t have all the power, to decide whether anybody is guilty or not. Instead, the same case should be given to many trusted members of the community and after hearing the excuse/explanation of the person whose code is found plagiarized, they can make a decision. Not all of them have to agree whether someone is guilty or not. But collectively, a final decision should be made by these people. The decision should be weighted by their trust factor."

Are you saying that if someone got plagiarized it may be possible that he may be not get punished ??
I don’t agree with this.

One more thing before giving such suggestions please think a bit that those who have formed community guidelines have already taken in account all practical measures they can, and they are not blind if an urge to update policy arises they will do it. So yeah, no one cares. Giving suggestion with a fake id is nothing more than a moron’s move.

Please come up with original ID to answer. :slightly_smiling_face:

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One more thing before giving such suggestions please think a bit that those who have formed community guidelines have already taken in account all practical measures they can, and they are not blind if an urge to update policy arises they will do it. So yeah, no one cares. Giving suggestion with a fake id is nothing more than a moron’s move.

I don’t see how giving suggestions with a fake id is ‘nothing more than a moron’s move’. Of course, I don’t understand why someone would post such a suggestion anonymously but that hardly makes it useless. I, for one, largely agree with the idea in the post (even though CSGO cheaters haven’t reduced much :stuck_out_tongue: , but the reasons for that are different).

Are you saying that if someone got plagiarized it may be possible that he may be not get punished ??
I don’t agree with this.

That is absolutely not what the post says. If anything, it is the opposite. 1 person reviewing a plagiarism case is more likely to give a wrong verdict as opposed to when 5 people are reviewing it and you take the majority decision. You can work it out. Assume the probability of default (i.e. the person reviewing the case gives a wrong verdict) to be 0.2-0.3 and you’ll see that when you take a majority decision from among 5 people, the probability of default will be much lesser than 0.2-0.3.

I think the idea being proposed is interesting and could bring about improvements with regard to plagiarism.