Unsporting Behavior in Programming Challenges

This small instruction is about how people should not use CodeAbbey site (or other site with programming challenges, online course etc). And gives explanation on how decisions are made and what to do if the account is suspended.

What happens

Sometimes user account is suspended due to "Suspicious Activity or Unsporting Behavior". It gets red warning accross the user's profile page - and no submissions are accepted from it until the situation is resolved. It may look like this:

What it is about

Our site regards each problem as solved as soon as user uploads correct answer. It is also required that user's solution (code) is uploaded. Sometimes some people upload not their own code, but code found in internet or taken (stolen) from friends or classmates.

We do not judge such behavior from ethical point of view :)

But nevertheless it has undesirable effects:

• because our database is filled with copies of the same solutions and becomes less valuable for others to learn;
• because it may discourage other honest people from participation.

What we do

We do not take any actions immediately. For small tasks the code may be so small that it is hard to judge. However after user submits few dozen of solution, the cheating becomes hard to conceal. Such cases are analyzed manually but with help of small automated tools. If unsporting behavior is "quite obvious", account is suspended.

Here "quite obvious" means that there still could be some mistake. If you feel this happened to you - just write at forum and appeal for lifting suspension (just provide some explanations if any).

If there is no mistake

If your account is suspended and you really had uploaded solutions which were not your own - don't despair yet! You may write request to get it re-activated, supplying the list of solutions which should be removed. We shall clean them out and you can proceed solving tasks in more wise manner :)

Can I modify other's solutions

Some people really try to disguise copying other's solutions - for example, changing format, renaming variables.

Surely direct comparison won't find duplicates. But as we can usually recognize person even in clothes changed and, say, colors dyed - so it is not difficult still to recognize a copy of the code.

Suppose, if person have uploaded 20 solutions and for each of them we have 30% suspicion they are copied - it gives 1 - 0.3^20 = 0.99999999996 assurance of cheating :)

So creating elaborate disguise will really consume a lot of time from you - and often it is more time than you need to solve the problem yourself. Our problems are simple and after solving first few you get quite accustomed and solve others often in about 10 minutes.

So it really makes no sense: suppose you spent about same 10 minutes trying to rework each of solutions copied from internet - and after submitting about 50 problems get your account disabled. You spent 500 minutes - e.g. over 8 hours of your time in total - just to win shameful inscription in your profile :)

Conclusion:

That is why this approach is not recommended. Our site is for people who is interested in programming. If you don't like it much - it's no problem (we know people have various talents) - just probably try something else, don't waste your time on what you don't like!

P.S. Correct way of learning from other's code:

We all need to learn reading other's code to become professionals. So good idea is like this:

• if you can't solve problem, best idea is to ask for hints on algorithm etc.
• don't read other's code until you have your own solution :)
• but if you anyway prefer to look up code in the internet - read it thoroughly first...
• make sure you understand the idea, then close the page with example
• try writing your own solution using the idea, but not the code
• if there are mistakes - try to understand and fix them rather than look back to reference code.