# Tag Info

47

Why do we have a policy? First and foremost: we believe that the responsibility for the integrity of an exam, contest, competition, etc. ultimately falls on the shoulders of the organizers. That said, the Mathematics Stack Exchange community is not an island unto itself: rather we exist within a larger macrocosm of people who do or are interested by ...

31

In the past we agreed on a policy to not allow questions from on-going contests. This is enforced. With zeal. Personally, I shoot first (=lock/delete), and interrogate survivors afterwards. The one piece of advice I want to give is Flag it for moderator attention. Explain the problem. Ideally with a link to the website of the contest (more often than not ...

20

Consider the following extract from our contest question policy: What is a contest question? For the purpose of this discussion, a contest question refers to a question that is originally published by a third party, for the purpose of inviting submission of solutions: this could be an actual competition where a prize of some sort is given, or this could be ...

18

The current policy is good and works. There are many people diligently looking at the contest problems and once a candidate is identified it isEDIT its answers are quickly (soft-)deleted. Let us consider the thought of extending this to deleting the post altogether (so including the question itself).This means that the post does not show up in many lists ...

18

Unfortunately, OP’s concerns are right about the first link. I have written the Euclid contest yesterday. Today, after looking at the title of the first link posted by the OP, I remembered the question immediately. After a quick check on the website, there are at least 3 more questions from the contest (I suspect there are more, but they might have been ...

16

This is just a transcription of the questions from the 2015-16 USAMTS Round 1 problem set. As last year, your benevolent overlords moderators request your help in finding them when they appear on the main site so that they can be locked as per our policy on contest questions. Fill in the spaces of the grid to the right with positive integers so that ...

15

Do these guys have no shame asking ongoing competition qustions? Some people simply don't. Whatever it takes to get ahead, I guess. Cheating has always been a thing in any form of competition - athletic, academic, what-have-you. Really not surprising when you think about it. Do they just think SE as a problem-solver? Some people do indeed treat MSE as ...

15

Here is what I post as an answer sometimes, if I see a question quickly enough for it to make the slightest difference. I have learned to post it CW and not to reply to comments, the people who want help here for these questions want what they want and are unpleasant. Meanwhile, one may claim separation of church and state, nothing I can do about that, but ...

14

As I am the moderator who dealt with those questions, let me address this issue: first and foremost, let me note that, as an instructor myself, I am sympathetic to the desire to prevent cheating. It offends me when students attempt to use Math SE to cheat on exams or competitions. That being said, the goals and policies of Math SE are orthogonal to these ...

13

I have other reasons not to upvote that question, but I would not downvote or vote to close it either. The official reason for closing many a question is "off-topic -> missing context". Some users mistakenly equate "missing context" with "missing work/effort shown". The linked question gives context on the first line - it is from an Iranian math contest. I ...

12

While it is indeed despicable if someone takes part in a contest and cheats in this way, I am surprised everyone seems to agree that questions should be closed and accounts should be blocked. But calm down. When I look at https://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic I don't see a regulation that says: don't post contest questions if it is not allowed by the ...

11

Is it unfair to post a live journal problem? Yes. Don't do that.

10

In general for seemingly hard problems without a reference, looking like C&P you can (in addition to voting to close once you're at 3k rep) check google if a contest comes up. As user7530 also noted, questions including a current data (year, for example) often come from contests (or past contests). You should ask the OP directly if the question comes ...

9

Added: I tweaked the wording slightly to make the rendering a bit more tidy, but for the most part it is what was suggested above. Reminder: you can search currently-locked questions.

9

While "it is likely impossible that [you] have time to look at each question on the ongoing contest," I recommend picking the Questions you choose to invest in with consideration of the following: (1) Assigned exercises (and contest problems in particular) are likely to be mathematically sound and interesting (they are intended to be challenging, at least ...

9

So please enlighten me as to why we (or perhaps more specifically our moderators) should be expending any effort enforcing CodeChef's rules. All that the contest problem policy requests from moderators in particular is to handle questions from contest problems which are reported by flags. In particular (and I quote the contest problem policy): moderators ...

8

There's no harm in drawing more attention on such contests. The meta post you link says that "This contest has attracted attempts to cheat in past months." Those programming challenges are very related to mathematics and therefore it would not be surprising that people may attempt to ask questions on MSE. The comment given by Alexander Gruber states that "...

7

Here is the stuff I put at such questions, when I notice them. The important part is a letter (email) from one of the P.E. people; two kids had posted P.E. problems on MO the same day they were asked. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/06/how-i-failed-failed-and-finally-succeeded-at-learning-how-to-code/239855/ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-...

6

This might all become mostly become moot when we introduce a site-specific "contest question" post message. Until then a couple thoughts. Editing out these "Moderator's Notes" is often something that doesn't require moderator involvement, so please feel free to do so when appropriate. (As a rough guide, if you can edit it out — so that the question is ...

6

You don't appear to be explicitly asking a question, but I assume that the final paragraph is the implicit question which you want answered. I think that math SE contest problem policy will answer that satisfactorily.

5

I vote: No, do not ask questions form Project Euler on Math.se. Instead, follow the rules of Project Euler. But Math.se will not stop you from asking. Of course, Math.se will also not stop our users from closing such questions. As noted in a comment, the Project Euler copyright license requires that you attribute the problem to them when you post it here. ...

5

5

One way for the asker to show effort on a taxing contest question is to Work out a simple(r) case This is also good advice towards solving the question (straight out of Polya's How to solve it). A question often has a parameter, and sometimes checking what happens when the parameter has a fixed (smallish) value will be much easier than the general case. ...

5

To answer the titular question:   The likelihood that a question with 2021 is from a current contest is $1-\dfrac1{2021}$. Well, we all know that this likelihood was already quite high even before Math SE came around, and it only increases over time for questions on Math SE, since cheaters have found (empirically) that they can get away with a large fraction ...

4

There are variations when the person posting the question is lying. People are aware of ongoing contests. This is one reason I ask for a source of the problem. At least once, some kid posted a problem from a long list of proposed questions, one that was not chosen since the desired conclusion was wrong. There are ongoing programming contests. About lying, ...

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