First of all, Thank you so much cyclops (Mitch Schwartz ) for providing me information regarding login in Forums.
A new section where solutions are public, like the original problem. It sounds good for me.
This is a good idea, I am completely in support of the idea =D.A rewording of description, and a problem code that doesn't link immediately to a 'solution'. Sounds good too.
This might be difficult for people who want to upload the entire contests. Changing wording or solution in a single problem is easy, but in the entire contest problem set, it becomes quite a task. For a single problem, this is also a good idea.Change constraints to make a new problem, harder, so that public solutions won't pass. (sad for python users, but sounds quite good
Making constraints harder is a good idea, but again the thing is people will like to make their contest best at the first time itself, so they will try to come up problems
with as hard constraints as they can in the online contest itself. So it will be difficult for them to make constraints hard again for uploading on spoj only.Modify them as challenge problems, so 'public' solution will give few points, and good ones give real points. Sounds very good ; it's more work for psetter.
Quite a task for problem setter. Again not possible for somebody who wants to upload the contest.Do nothing. Seriously ?
Actually according to me, this is the best solution. Let me give reasons behind this. Firstly I assume that main premise behind the discussion is that problems with publicly viewable solutions should not be added due to cheating issues. If I am wrong in my premise, then please tell me correct one.
I really dont feel like cheating being a major issues in SPOJ. It depends on person to person, some person might say that decrement of only 3-4 ranking due to cheaters in my rating is bad, some dont care. Mainly people try to solve problems for learning purpose. Cheating in a online contest could be more serious issue.
- Benefits of having public solution*
In many cases having public solution is a good thing, Many of SPOJ problems have publicly viewable solution, I have myself learnt a lot from them. Having a publicly available solution with editorial is really a good problem set for learning.
Negative effects in upcoming days on SPOJ problem set
Number of problems to be added on spoj are going to be reduced due to the decision of moving problems into tutorial section. Spoj will miss a lot of good problem sets as people might not prefer to add them into tutorial section. If you see the current classical problem set, it contains almost all the problems which have publicly viewable solutions. Many people add problems from codechef, codeforces, ACM contests and other contests which have solution available. The problems usually are of very good quality. So applying this rule, will reduce the number of quality problems.
Will it work?
Now a really important point, are we really going to remove number of cheaters due to this decision. I believe NO. Many people still upload their solutions on blogs. You can almost find out solutions of many problems by just searching "problem_code spoj solution" on web. So it is not really easy to stop that.
Another possible solution and its shortcoming
Another good solution is to create another section with problem solution publicly available, but I think we should still reward points for that too, otherwise number of people trying those problems wont be too much. But I still believe that publicly available solutions deserve as much point value as other problems.
Few suggestions to problem setters
Few suggestions might be given to problem writers to check if somebody is submitting solutions directly or not. It is a tough thing to check, so nothing much can be done.
Summary
In summary, I would say that this step will do more BAD than good to SPOJ. Restrictive policies are generally not good for long time. We should not make rules simply to avoid some handful of cheaters. I believe that cheaters does not effect ranking as much this decision will hamper problem quality on SPOJ. Cheaters might do a more change in college ranking but individual ranking wont be affected much. So the tradeoff between the two situations is so distinct that I conclude that best decision will be to "DO NOTHING".
P.S. I would really appreciate if SPOJ would have done the discussion beforehand and implemented it later, They have implemented the decision for IOPC problems and discussion on the decision is going on here after its implementation. It has personally disappointed me as a SPOJ user. I think they should have let those problems go into classical section and discuss the issue here or they might have told the users already about such upcoming policy. Nevertheless I still respect the amount with which Editorial board have pursued this issue and having a public discussion is always great