An interesting discussion I think I can contribute to!
I will split my experience into two parts - one for long contest and one for short.
For short contests, as far as I have seen, setter being editorialist had been never good. I can recall just one time (when the setter was also a renowned editorialist) that I liked the editorials, else the setter is usually not able to give time to editorials.
My experience was most of short contests had a single setter, I am not sure how short contests with multiple setters go, but given that there were a lot of last minute changes and problems getting ready on final day of contest - I feel its justified to say setter has very less time to frame editorials.
They can obviously write CF style editorials, but Codechef’s editorials are one of its unique selling points - because they want to make it as friendly and explanative as possible. So I get a feeling shifting to CF style editorials wont happen without a very solid reason, which I feel doesn’t exist right now.
And thats assuming that setter is comfortable with English and explaining things. AFAIR, setters are allowed to apply as editorialist (at least for short contest) if they want - but I never liked when that happened because I felt those editorials were too concise and didnt help me much.
For long contest, its a different story. With multiple setters, they DO have the time to write editorials - but we will need to still do something about those who couldn’t or dont wish to write. Perhaps tester can write for those cases, but there had been cases when neither tester nor setter were very fluent, or had time/will to write them.
Yes, thats an issue that for 11 problems, out of which almost half are >=medium, its very overwhelming to write explanative editorials. I remember when I first applied- HOLY SHIT it was SO much stress to write them all in time. I remember sleeping for just 4 hrs for three consecutive day to get them done. At one point during September long I finally snapped and decided I had enough of stress. I will write editorials because I enjoy them and will make sure others enjoy them - even if they get delayed.
So yeah, the stress is real sometimes.
Maybe a compensation for editorials (depending on difficulty) should be created in order to encourage setters to write editorials?
I am not sure if its possible on a large scale but it happened with me where a setter created his own editorial. And the decision was taken solely by contest admin to allow him to. So I feel contest admin has some power here - and perhaps can easily bargain for more.
Actually even the contestants can help writing editorials! many of us could like to hear the approaches of top scorers in the challenge problem.
That was an idea which occurred to me once, but it is a logistic nightmare. Like:
- First come first serve does not help. Someone who explains in depth will take more time than someone who writes editorials like quick explanation. We will have to decide by taking quality into account as well.
- Lets say some easy, or easy-med problem is left open. You are BOUND to get a LOT of submissions for it from community. Who is going to read all those, and decide which one to make official editorial? AFAIR this responsibility will directly goto contest admin because that is the most easy way out. But that simply over burdens them. I thought lets let them live in peace and cook some contests rather than asking them to read 30 versions of solutions to same problem XD. Delegating it to setter seemed counter-productive as well, because ultimately that will give unnecessary baggage to setter for editorialist’s fault and will discourage setting on codechef even more. And assigning this responsibility to editorialist…eh…the time he’d spend reading all those versions, he might be able to actually write editorial till then. Wasn’t shortage of his time the root cause of the incident?
- So yeah, I couldnt come up with a solution to implement it without burdening the existing resources.
@anon57048905
One more advantage of this…if every setter writes his/her own editorial, then editorials will come out early than usual.
I would highly suggest you to read some editorials written by setter and see the general picture before suggesting. Please don;t take my reply as offence - I just felt your statement is made without the necessary research. Have a look and see if what happens goes fine by you.
@l_returns
I would recommend to take a sample editorial from them in case they wanna write an editorial. Because knowing english is not enough for writing editorials. How to make editorials interesting is also required.
Ouch.
@ssjgz
I would :slight_smile:
Damnnn. Reminded me of a scene where the heroine goes “Ahh, who would love me” and the hero goes "I could ". HOLY XD
@infinitepro
so that the writing is completed faster and the editorialists can review each others work
Editorialists reviewing each others work? Sounds like hot waters to me :3
@adzo261
Thats an interesting suggestion. So basically we will get 2 versions of editorials - one from editorialist and another from contestants? That seems logistically feasible as well.