Not sure of that and moreover not sure at all that some guys are aware of that.
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For months (at least), many of us said that the contribution
validation process is clearly invalid. Most of the time, the
“validation” resumes, in particular for CoC but not only, to a rush
between crazy validators and rejectors. IMHO, this comes from at least
two main problems. First, we, for now, do not have any valid
guidelines but this is already discuss in another thread and I will
not address this problem here. Second, the validation/rejection
process itself is clearly not valid.
Now, to be validated/rejected the only thing asked to a
contribution is to obtain three vote (pro or cons) which can be given
by (almost) everyone from @eulerscheZahl (1st on XP at the moment I
write this post) to a teenager who have discovered the site 1 day ago
(more or less the time to get the 50 CoC or level 20 by copy/paste any
solution found on the web) and who is try to farm XP.
This post will present a set of alternatives validation process which
might be interesting. I must confess I have no idea about the amount
of work each of them should ask to CG to implement. Of course, you can
amend them or make counter proposal. The main goal of this post is to
launch the discussion and try to find a solution.
Validation time : IMHO, votes should be freeze for a certain period after the submission (something like 24 hours) in order to let people read correctly, make remark, and correct submission before any vote.
Validation process :
1- Simply change the number 3 to a bigger value (something like 10).
This will probably not really solve the problem but seems quite easy to implement since we used to have only two validator in the past.
2- Change the acceptance system : not asking three (or any other value) accepts/rejects but a differential of that number between accept/reject.
Seems a little better but will not solve the fact that some submission are validated/rejected in less than a minute for now.
3- Remark that, from coding point of view only, we are not all equal : this can lead to say that, as an example, Eulerschezahl vote is more important than my vote (only 19th on the XP leaderboard at this time 
) and that my vote is more imporant than the one of the last registered user which have not proved that he/she know what coding is and what a good, accurate and interesting problem is.
Many ways to take this remark into account can be imagined. One can, as an exemple again, say that to be validated (resp. rejected) a contribution must have a sum of user level equal to 100 (or any other thing) or n times the higher level present on the XP leaderboard, or n times the XP points of the first on the XP leaderboard (with n to be determined).
4- Have a look some concentric accpetancer/rejection systems : CG defines a series of sets from (nearly) anyone to a little set of users (let’s say the first k users in XP ranks). In this spirit, to be accepted a contribution must pass validation process of all the sets gradually one after the others.
This will probably allows to filter much better the contributions but has the drawback to slow the validation process.
There might be many others solutions but we can really do something to change the actual situation which is not reasonable.
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First of all our common goal is to get interesting contributions approved, while the bad ones shall get rejected.
In my opinion, the main reason, why a good contribution might not pass the approval process, is that the problem is complicated / hard to solve. Take neighbor-sum grids as an example: it’s a cool problem. I did not approve it, because I couldn’t verify the correctness of the solution easily (in the end I solved it, after it was accepted). The contribution needed 4 attempts to get approved within the 30 days timelimit.
Increasing the number of necessary approval votes will make it even harder for that kind of problem to pass.
On the other side, there are contributions with some serious deficites (incomplete statement, missing testcases, plain boring, …) that get approved.
To counter this, I like the idea to freeze approval for a day to avoid quick shots.
During the freeze I would like to see some possible actions against an approval already. That might be rejecting it or putting it in “work in progress” state. As the latter would allow a single user to block the approval process, it should be restricted more than voting on a contribution of course (be it a higher user level or a list of members, similar to chat moderators).
We’ve kind of drifted from just the CoC contribution system
Right. Maybe someone can split the thread just before my previous post.
I kind of disagree with your assessment of the situation but I do appreciate the effort to propose constructive ideas to solve the issue.
So, as I see it, over the past few months, some moderators have indeed voiced their concerns about the moderation process that, according to them leads to a moderation rush battle over XP.
I don’t believe this battle over XP really happens (it has happened in some cases). To me, it’s rather enthusiasm for some and lack of knowledge of the guidelines (or lack of proper guidelines) for the others that lead to some hasty approval decisions.
I agree that the current moderation process favors quick shallow reviews of contributions more than carefully reviewed ones. This is a shame indeed because some of you spend a lot of time to help creators improve their puzzles.
That’s why I have started to work on the guidelines two months ago (and asked everyone’s help on it). Meanwhile, we thought that the automatic rejecting bot will handle the already approved contributions that don’t get an approval from the players (according to their ratings).
Idea 1) doesn’t solve the problem indeed.
Idea 2) is interesting and I personally like it the most. Combined with a freezing of the approval process after a contribution is published, we could have a decent voting system.
Idea 3) is dangerous. It doesn’t seem healthy to me that some members’ votes could be valued more than some others’. I prefer to keep to having or not having the rights to moderate. In that sense, we could review the current criteria to become an approver.
Idea 4) seems complex to me.
Let me laugh please. How many time did we reported fake account created just to validate contributions ?
Nice maybe we can progress now ?
As already said in private, you cannot ask for that during summer holidays.
I agree on that point. Was only an easy to implement “solution” proposal.
Won’t really solve by itself the problem since if the vote are opened at 00:00 nothing prevent three pro votes in less than a minute.
This one only reflects the fact that we are not all equal from coding point of view. It’s not a matter of value but a mater of capacity.
Not so much. Just define 2 or more steps of validation/reject. That’s more or less what is done in many community project (especially in linux kernel).
Is this funny though?
You’ve reported a few accounts indeed. They didn’t end up gaining much XP though.
I’ve computed some stats since the beginning of the year. Let’s see:
Top 3 CodinGamers who gained the most XP from validating and refusing contributions in 2019:
- Boulet: 930 XP (62 contribs)
- Niako: 810 XP (54 contribs)
- dwarfie: 735 XP (49 contribs)
Top 3 CodinGamers who gained the most XP from creating contributions in 2019:
- deleted CodinGamer: 3250 XP (13 contribs)
- java_coffee_cup: 2000 XP (8 contribs)
- JBM: 1750 XP (7 contribs)
Where is this famous rush over XP?
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I like this idea. I would even go further to suggest the freezing period to be longer than 24 hours, e.g. 7 days.
- This gives more time for moderators to review contributions and also read others’ comments.
- This gives more time for authors to follow up comments.
- This may slightly reduce (will not eliminate, though) the possibility of rushed approvals/rejections.
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Or maybe a new contribution should have an automatic “veto” (nobody can approve), which can be removed only by a moderator (moderators can be the same as on discord or the old chat).
Actually there is a mechanism where an approved CoC does get removed if it doesn’t get enough positive feedback after a few months.
I know because one of mine was removed
The problem is that sometimes (it happened today and yesterday), some people (probably friends) make a contribution with things to fix, and rush to approve it among themselves without fixing anything.
When you’re quick enough to see it, you can prevent it by rejecting the contribution, but it’s still annoying and it would be nicer to have a chance to prevent a rush.
Exactly. The freezing period being suggested should be applicable to contributions “freshly” submitted and not yet approved or rejected.
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I agree with this idea. And it should apply to all contributions, not just CoC, imo.
@_CG_ClementHammel Some of us, including Thibaud, favour the idea of freezing the approval process after a contribution (clashes and other types) is published (see this link and the discussion that follows). Could you please take a look to see if it’s possible to implement a change? Hopefully it’s a small change, e.g. every time the status of a contribution is changed to “Ready”, no approval or rejection is allowed for the following 7 days, before the usual 30-day approval/rejection period. Thanks.
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OK, I’ll try tomorrow 
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I agree for this kind of system.
Too much new corrupted clashes are accepted for no reason (i.e: just because they are friends for certains countries (India and Marocco after all))
Asked, but no response. Maybe reminders from more people are needed…
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I suggested your idea on Discord, in a public channel (bug report). I hope I will get some support from the community.
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