@CyberLemonade, your Java solution was copied and used by O... to finish 3xN Tiling.
My respected @JBM, your perl solution was copied and used by .H.. to finish Goro Want Chocolate
The talented @Niako, your Python3 solution was copied and used by ..E. to finish Photo Booth Transformation.
Your Python3 solution was stolen too, for finishing Cloudy Weather.
@Wei-1, your Scala solution was copied and used by ...R to finish Basic Decision Tree2
@LaurentBouvier, your Python3 solution was copied and used by .{4} to finsih Nonogram Inversor
Math master @Nicola, your Python3 solution was copied and used by [A-Z]{4} to finish Factorials of Primes Decomposition.
@VilBoub, your Python3 solution was copied and used by ^O.* to finish Squares Order.
@Alain-Delpuch, your Javascript solution was copied and used by .*R$ to finish The Total is Right - Weird Edition
Even the honorable @player_oneâs C# solution was copied and used to finish Breakout.
Do I need to list more?
I donât mind knowledge sharing but strictly hate Plagiarism.
Yes, there are a lot of cases like that. It is so easy to click on âview contributionâ to copy / paste the authorâs solution just to have more XP and satisfy their ego, without having to do any effort to find a solution themselves ⌠but they just learn absolutely nothing.
Well apparently the person you point out has done that with almost all my other puzzles in the last few weeks. Heâs not the only one though, I had already noticed a few other high-level people publishing my solution on my puzzles. I guess they donât really care about copy-pasting as there is no ranking involved and 50 xp is not that much at these levels⌠I also guess they are auto-publishing these solutions and there might be a few more people doing the same silently.
Anyway this can only be done by level 29+ people â most of them certainly donât do it â and I donât think itâs a huge concern for CG (puzzles are in the Practice section after all).
If youâre worried about plagiarism, then take a look at this, or thisâŚ
After the recent changes to rewarding points by approving/disapproving submissions, it seems people are getting harder to create âfreeâ points easily, so induced some people to cheat points by stealing codes, in a large scale, programmatically.
One day it will become possible to type in a puzzle name + âsolutionâ in google to discover my own code. That will seriously discourage contribution. According to the license term I agreed to allow my contribution to be published, but that should not include my testing solution also be published transparently.
CG have a reason to block this loophole before permanent damage is done.
Farming XP with puzzle moderation was harmful because it means very bad puzzles for CodinGame.
Farming XP by copy/pasting a solution means just a bigger level for someone. But since this codingamer is already a moderator, a higher level means nothing. And no one care about the level.
âReputationâ is the keyword, the reason for CG to fix loopholes.
Would CG like to see that:
More training classes or U courses use CG puzzles/games as assignments, so that students get to know the name of CG and when they graduate and to seek a job they will remember CG?
At the same time more serious members or recruiters will be willing to contribute high quality puzzles/games to CG as their training materials, and also enhances CGâs repository quality?
More and more job seekers write in their resume: âObtained Level XX in CG, username as XX, with such and such accomplishmentâŚâ with some proofs, and more and more employers recognize CG accomplishment is a good indicator of a candidateâs IT skill as well as social skill, teaming skill, leading skill, mentorship skill, documentation skill, etc?
Congrets to CG, these trends were starting to grow in the last year.
But if CG allows or passively encourage cheating, it washes its own reputation away. Mentioning an untruthful CG in resume? Do you think anyone would do it any more?
If a company take a CG account level as a proof of skill, well, i just hope iâll never works for this company.
You can cheat your level in many ways. Just by copy/pasting solutions on github for every official solo puzzles. According to some people, you can reach top 20 (legend league) in every official multiplayer puzzles by copy/pasting a solution in the first page of google (i never tried, but just looking at some puzzle, i found a working solution of the top 3 contest, so i suppose it can reach top 20 on the multiplayer puzzle easily).
So yes, a moderator can have free XP by copy/pasting contribution solutions. But this is clearly not the worst issue with the XP system.
We can argue that this is bad for codingame reputation. But so it is for HackerRank since a top ranked just wrote an article of how he just googled every exercices.
Agree to it very much. CG achievement is something not worth mentioning - because CGâs reputation is too low? Wondering why CG feels no pain about this comment, and have no desire to fix it.
Achievement on record is just a starting point to catch the eyes of recruiters, a handle for candidates to âleadâ the recruiters to talk more about certain topics. If done well, it can give additional impression scores besides the regular interviewing and coding tests.
hello all, and thank you @java_coffee_cup for bringing up this issue.
tl, dr: I donât see it as a big issue. Itâs part of a bigger question of how we handle the XP system vs the solution system. Iâll work on it.
Letâs look into this calmly.
Some CodinGame members seem indeed to have used the solutions of authors in community puzzles and published them (either automatically or intentionally).
I donât like so much to assume peopleâs intentions but Iâd say these members do it for two main reasons:
break or win âthe gameâ just because itâs possible
boost their profile for personal ego or a recruitment process
Iâm sure some players also use the solutions to learn from the authors or just pass a puzzle they blocked on. Anyway, letâs look at the impact it has forâŚ
the other players: a feeling of injustice perhaps for those who are aware of it and care about it (some players do @Magus ). However, there is no competition about the level on CodinGame, there is not even a XP-based leaderboard, itâs mainly for personal motivation. I suggest checking out this nice blog article/slideshare about gamification
the authors: maybe the biggest issue here. While they indeed agreed to share their solution while publishing the contribution, itâs not cool to see them also published by others next to theirs.
CodinGame. If recruiters trust the CG profile as they would trust a resume, theyâre just bad recruiters. Also, CodinGame is not a tool for recruiters to evaluate developersâ skills, CodinGame for Work, our assessment platform, is. (We have an anti-cheat system there)
I agree that the solutions system on CodinGame has many flaws. I also think that by choosing to hide solutions to most players, we underestimate the value of knowledge-sharing and how helpful it could be for a lot of people. Iâve been thinking about this for a while and it could be interesting to improve the solutions system this year or next year.
However, there is no competition about the level on CodinGame, there is not even a XP-based leaderboard, itâs mainly for personal motivation.
Well, there is an unofficial one at https://chadok.info/codingame/leaderboard_xp.html which I regularly check (but yes, mainly for âpersonal motivationâ ) But I agree, that XP is much more about sedulity (or how much time you invest) while CP is much more about coding excellence. (No matter how much time I would invest, I donât think I could get into Top3 in any multi, while I think I could do almost all solo puzzles (well, at least I did 80% in one year already, and not with the copy paste methodâŚ))
Note: even if it is an XP leaderboard, you are left out if you never did it to the CP Top1000. But without touching the multiplayer games, there is a hard XP limit around Level 39-40 (or 40k XP), so the XP leaderboard is more or less accurate. Notably missing: @java_coffee_cup
What I could think of have already been under consideration by Thibaud. I do not have further concrete suggestions. But anyone is free to provide ideas.
Thibaud promised an action and a rough timeline. The community got alerted of this issue and have a chance to discuss it. These have fulfilled my expectation. Thibaud knows the playground best. It is his mission to balance the players interest and the CGâs interest. Iâd trust on him.
Though said I do have not many concrete suggestions, there are still some:
âCopy-and-paste expertsâ know how to hide evidence of their acts. But it cannot hide staffâs monitoring.
CG can make bots to scan playersâ first successful submission to a puzzle, to check against the authorâs solution. High similarity should raise alert for human check.
There are plenty of algorithms for text similarity comparison and are not too hard to implement. I do not need to go into details here.
Another bot scanning is abnormal frequency and intensity of submission. There is the gotcha machine for CoC. I guess it is also covering puzzles/games but the config should be different.
In somewhere in FAQ or Rules, CG should explicitly state its policy and attitude towards âcode theftâ acts.
For a very easy puzzle, the first succesful submission of everyone will be pretty much the same as the author solution (if they use the same langage, of course).
I trust CG developers know how to set a reasonable boundary in different cases. The detection result does not need to cause immediate reaction, but should alert staff to review. When they got too much false-alarm they know how to adjust it again.
Besides, for a player to accumulate enough xp to become moderator, he should have already passed most easy puzzles by his own work. Perhaps not much to farm in Easy or onboarding area.
But you assume CodinGame will spend time for that. Checking alarm (false or not), compare with the author solution, compare with other published solutions. What if someone just gives his own code to a friend ? Thatâs also cheating.
I donât see how CodinGame can detect all the case, sit down, analyse the situation and do something (if thereâs something to do). And i donât think CodinGame will pay someone for that but i can be wrong.
In my opinion, a better solution already used on CodinGame is the auto-moderation by the community itself. Just add a report option on published solutions and take an automatic action with enough reports. But this solution wonât prevent cheater to just solve a puzzle and never publish their code.
) But I agree, that XP is much more about sedulity (or how much time you invest) while CP is much more about coding excellence. (No matter how much time I would invest, I donât think I could get into Top3 in any multi, while I think I could do almost all solo puzzles (well, at least I did 80% in one year already, and not with the copy paste methodâŚ))