are some people like betlista ♦♦ answering only for goodies??

Some of his comments are not meaningful and not legitimate.
e.g. one on fombinatorial editorial page.

i think this must not be done just for sake of some goodies.(monthly goodies for contribution on discuss page).

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I disagree because if he hadn’t answered, i would have been stuck with the problem for days.

Maybe he just have some free time today and helping others out :slight_smile:

There are always exceptions !!! :slight_smile:

And I would have been stuck with this for ever! http://discuss.codechef.com/questions/40842/numfact-confusion

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This way even someone can accuse you of putting this question, so that you can get upvotes, for the sake of goodies. As far as i know betlista wudn’t do any such act. There are people who commit such sort of non-sense acts. But betlista, no…

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I can personally vouch that betlista is very helpful to beginners and deserves to be among the top contributers. It takes time and effort to put up statistcs (November-Stats) during the contest, which gave us some clue about the actual difficulty level of the problems. Helping out others is a really difficult job.

If you didn’t like any of his particular comment/answer, you can easily downvote it. No need of posting about it on the forum.

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In my opinion, @belista has made very significant contribution to codechef discuss.Which is clearly visible from his profile http://discuss.codechef.com/users/1169/betlista

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I won’t reopen the question just for this, but:

Critical levels of troll logic detected. Even assuming he did post for goodies (which, btw is a T-shirt and/or a USB drive that doesn’t include a “format before first use” note, so it’d be a high effort, low return action) , posting something that’s “not meaningful and not legitimate” obviously wouldn’t help towards that goal…

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So you’re somehow implying that “writing helpful posts still just for goodies” is easy? Why don’t you help others for goodies as well? People should be concerned in improving codechef community as a whole and not concerned on criticizing those who can devote more time in helping others in order to make this platform grow… Beltlista has possibly seen Codechef almost since its inception so, feeling the need to help and improve is normal and natural and he’s on its well-deserved top place.

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Hi @riths,

thank you for asking. I’m not angry you asked, opposite is the truth. You are with us for a while, so I understand you do not know me well.

When I started with CodeChef (almost 2 and half years ago), there were two users with higher karma - @admin and @anton_lunyov, first having something like ~3000 karma and second with ~2000 karma. Even when Anton was doing his best those days, not everything was answered and I know why - there are again and again same questions “What is the problem in my code” of all types - WA, TLE, RE, … I had two options - to complain or to help and I selected the second one - I started to answer the question, when I knew the answer or asking questions when I didn’t know the answers.

I know that in the beginning, when someone starts with competition programming, it is not easy, so I wanted make the life of newcommers easier… I “started” with competition programming in 2006 when I found some advertisement for TopCoder, but while I was not good in it I was not interested also. Later in 2009 great programmers Mimino and Delsius shown me how amazing the world of speed programming is. There my journey as a competitor started (see my TopCoder profile). I’m not as good programmer as those two mentioned, but I like to help others, not so experienced programmers - it’s kind of payback. I’m always opened to meat new people, virtually (via Facebook) or in person. In person I know few great coders from my region, like misof or fhlasek and there are others I do not know yet, but they have my respect, world-wide it is Egor, Petr or tourist, in my region great coder I do not know yet is Xellos0.

When I started on CodeChef we had no functionality like “show me which problems I solved already” during the contest, so I learned how to implement browser plugin and I created first plugin for CodeChef (nowadays there are others). When contest format was changed in NOV14 Long contest and the information about which problem is easy and which is now was kind of lost I found the way how to make this information visible, it’s not perfect yet, maybe we will have this online some day. You may think I did this for a goodie, but it is not so easy to get - I have one T-shirt from CodeChef, but I never complained, that I want more. Time to time, there are users cheating with karma (creating fake accounts and up voting their answers/questions), that’s why I think “The Goodies” is not a good thing, it motivates to be unfair.

Few times I was asked how to get admin privileges as I have and I told them, they simply gave those to me. When they recognized in CodeChef team, that I’m contributing a lot, they gave me those privileges, to be able delete post that share code during the contest and so on… I’m also afraid, that when someone asks admin for help, they think I’m the one, but I’m not, I have just higher privileges for the forum, but there are problems I’m not able to solve, like why it is not possible to submit in JS and JAR and there are other problems I was not able to answer.

Trust, me, sometimes I have some time to answer the questions, sometimes I do not have enough time for a long contest. I like when someone answers the question in good quality before I do, such answer (if I didn’t miss it) has automatically my up vote. It’s a shame when someone asks a question and then do not up vote the answer, but I’m not forcing anyone to do so, still I think this is polite behavior in out community.

You can also think, that I created How to ask for help? (which I’m linking a lot lately) question to get some karma, but the truth is, I do not want to repeat my-self again and again and also I want to teach how to write question correctly.

Regarding the mentioned answer for FOMBINATORIAL, I know how difficult it is to be not able some problem in 2, 3, 4 days. In other contests it is a matter of few hours, but it can be really frustrating for such a long time and I hope, when I write something like “Omg, this one was tough form me” it makes someone else feel better, in a “I’m not alone” way. Test cases are not visible as on other contest pages, so sharing few tricky ones can help others a lot.

I’m pretty sure I missed few thought I wanted to write, hopefully most of those I wrote are clear…

It’s too late, so good night.

PS: yes, I like to help, but all who knows me better knows, that I won’t help during the contest…

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Hahaha… lol This question is making me laugh badly!!

Hey @riths you must respect those who help others!!

And about @betlista, do you think a professional like him will participate in discussion forum only for the sake of goodies?

And out of 711 answers you are mentioning 1 answer(where he mentioned about his approach, go an see many contestants expresses their feelings in editorials mentioning about there approaches so whats wrong in his reply?) and you say that he’s writing meaningless!! Please stop posting such nonsense questions!!

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