Today we open a new project Codeforces::Gym, it will be started on January 19, 08:00AM. 30 minutes later, оn Thursday, January, 19, 2012 08:30 (UTC) the testing training contest will be started. The duration of the training is 3 hours. We invite you to join us! As all the trainings in Codeforces::Gym it will be held according ACM-ICPC rules.

As it will be a training, we will use problems from some programming contest (thank you, authors!). Please do not take part in the training, if you've seen these problems. Do not spoil training to other members. Thank you for your understanding.

Please use the official project tracker to report about bugs and feature requests.

Good day, friends!

UPD: Problem analysis

We've made it! Or in any case, we are at least very close to it.

On January 19, 2012 at 12:00 we open a sub-project called "Gym". In short, its goal is to enable the Codeforces coders not only to participate in competitions and discuss them, but also to train and coach easily.

In fact, despite the wide diversity of online judges in the world, a well thought-out training service system does not exist. So, the expectations from this system are:

1. Collection of online contests, composed mainly of the past official contests.
2. Opportunity to integrate the final standings of past contests in the online contests to be able to train "against" the official participants.
3. Opportunity to participate in the training at any time whatsoever, without fear that something breaks down and the server will fall. In short, reliability.
4. Opportunity to write virtual contests and to solve the problems in a practice mode.
5. Opportunity to participate both individually and as part of a team.
6. Opportunity to keep the team while changing the team members.
7. Opportunity to view various statistics and participation history, the possibility to compile and publish reports on selected participants/contest.
8. Opportunity for a coach to add an online contest by him/herself, if this contest still does not exist. The process should be simple, reliable and maximally automated. The opportunity to parse the final standings of the past contests. The opportunity to add the attempts of the official participants to an online contest.
9. Opportunity to view tests or other players' solutions for those who have solved the problem.
10. Opportunity to find the training to one's taste, i.e. selecting by parameters.

The Codeforces Project:: The training aims to meet all these requirements. Already, nearly everything of the above list is available and whatever is not, will be available.

Hi everybody.

This change will not probably be among the most popular ones but nevertheless, vote counting rules and voting rules in general are going to change. Why? There are several reasons. The main is that we decided to give up the +2/-1 strategy that used to favor authors. This balance worked fine in the Coderofces's initial stage of development. However, it now leads to overrating many uninformative posts. Moreover, such rating is not valid. Thus, a positive vote and a negative vote now have the same value and the total rating sign now represents the actual attitude of the community members to the post or a comment.

Also, as Codeforces is a professional community of those who is interested in sports programming, it was decided to consider the participants' professional achievements. Thus, the value of a participant's vote now is delapnds on the participant's authority and the authority is determined by the rating. At this point I have to mention that the participant's authority is not influenced by his/her contribution. The votes' values do not differ dramatically: despite the fact that the red participants are 15+ times less that the blue ones, their votes' values differ less than their numbers.

We've introduced additional fraud detection heuristics (some of them had been used on Codeforces). These new strategies make it impossible to cheat in various ways or carry out a grudge, they make reverse engineering systems more complicated and influence some other stuff now and then. The exact details of the vote counting rules are not disclosed but the main principles are given above.

Of course, the change in vote counting will trigger considerable changes in some participants' contributions. I guess that's the indicator of the character of the votes' distribution and the voters' authority. All votes will be recounted that will lead to change in contribution.

MikeMirzayanov

Hi there!

I'm the author of today's CF round.

During the round you'll again assist far away kingdom citizens in solving their everyday problems.

I want to thank Artem Rakhov for invaluable help during the round preparation, Maria Belova for translation of the problems, Mikhail Mirzayanov for excellent CF system and all participants for not leaving this event without your attention.

More AC verdicts and high rating to all of you! gl & hf

Dear friends!

The next competition - Codeforces Round 101 for participants Div2 will take place through a pair of hours, but the others can traditionally participate out of competition. It has been prepared by a small command of authors: me (NALP), Polina Bondarenko (Polichka) and Gerald Agapov (Gerald). There were Artem Rahov (RAD), Maria Belova (Delinur) and Michael Mirzayanov (MikeMirzayanov) with us as always.

It is a little bit about authors: all of us study at the Saratov State University at faculty of Computer Sciences and Information technology on 4th course. Now in free time from competitions and problems we pass the exams :) I’m a 1/3 part from command Saratov SU#2, and Gerald with Polina - 2/3 from Saratov SU#1. We would like our rounds became kind tradition on Codeforces and you have seen us among authors soon again.

We hope that this problems will be pleasant to all participants and everyone will take the deserved high place in the total table. Today you will help Santa Claus, Elf, Vasya and the other characters. All the similarities to real people are casual :)

The points on problems are distributed today in this way: 500-1000-2000-2000-2500

UPD: You can read the tutorial here.

Hello everybody!

I hope you have finished New Year celebrations, or you are ready to make a small break to take part in the anniversary Codeforces Round #100. Round will have place January 4 at 15:00 (UTC). There will be a common contest for participants of the both divisions with the same set of 6 problems. The top 100 participants of the contest receive prize t-shirts.

Score distribution: 500-1000-1500-2000-2500-3000 

Hello

We've scheduled Codeforces Testing Round #4 on January, 3 15:00 (UTC). It will be non-rated event, just to test system before important Codeforces Round #100. The round duration is 1 hour and it will contain just two problems. I do not promise something interesting and exciting, but as a small warm-up will be nice :)

I'll be glad to see you on the round,
MikeMirzayanov

The testing is successfully completed. Thank you for participation. I hope you like this sprint.

Codeforces project congratulates everybody who is into sport programming with New Year! A New Year is not just an increment of a year. Let this day be a starting point to your new achievements, accomplishments and success. Codeforces wishes you to find out by the end of 2012 that all your resolutions have been a success! We wish you to have interesting problems, nice solutions, correct code and more and more of beautiful green messages  Accepted.

As well as in the previous year, we enable handle change for ten days. The handle change is available from the "Settings → Handle" tab from your profile page. Handle change will be disabled on January 10, so don't lose the moment!

Happy New Year, Happy New Coding!
MikeMirzayanov

Hi everybody!

The calendar shows the end of December — the year 2011 is about to end. It was an eventful and exciting time for us. You can find pictures below summarizing 2011 in comparison to 2010. In a nutshell, we've made it! We have grown in all parameters! This result is the shared victory of the well-united team. My special thanks go to the VK (VKontakte) and specifically — to Pavel Durov. The programmers' community and its development really matters to them. I want to thank the authors of the problems: preparing contests is tough and you are a significant help to the Codeforces project and to the whole community.

So, comparing the ending 2011 year and the 2010 year in pictures goes like this:

Codeforces users' growth throughout the Codeforces history (by months)