Suggestion: tell the delay time to player
Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2021 2:52 pm
Hello, everyone! I would like to thank the team behind Project Euler for providing such an entertaining resource. The 'pure mathematics' style of most problems is what makes Project Euler stand out among online programming contest systems (this was the main reason for me to join).
I have a question/suggestion regarding the delay between sending answers into the system to validate them. I'm a new player, and in the course of a few days I have solved around 50 problems, so the waiting interval has increased for me to around forty minutes. Since I generally solve the problems sequentially, near this part of the archive I do it faster than I am able to send answers. The latter takes quite a lot of time and patience. I found a message on the forum that says that the delay will decrease after 24 hours of inactivity, and decided to stop sending the answers for now.
My question: is there a way for a regular user such as myself to find out the current delay without resetting it? Maybe there is some technical page with this information, and I just did not manage to find it. If this feature does not exist yet, I would like to ask the administration to introduce it, if possible. I think many users want to know clearly when they are allowed to send the answer, and when they are not. It is very inconvenient for an eager solver like me to send one solution, then wait e. g. 30 minutes (or even a few hours!) and retry only to find out that the delay just reset, since it had actually already raised to 32.
As for the reason the delay system was added: showing the delay on the page explicitly would also provide this information to a potential cheater's automated scripts, but currently a script can also obtain the delay time after the first unsuccessful attempt and adjust it later, so this feature won't make the cheaters' life any easier.
The information I would like to be shown is 1) the current maximum delay and 2) the current remaining delay (or its 'complement', the time that has already passed). Maybe there should also be 3) remaining time before the next maximum delay shortening. Example: "You can send your answer 22 min later. Total sending delay 37 min (next shortening in 23 h 45 min)." This could either be shown on every problem page, or maybe on the Account or Progress pages.
I think the suggested change would make sending the answer more convenient for many players, not only novices like me, but also more experienced ones who solve the problems often and in bulk. Please provide your thoughts on my suggestion.
I have a question/suggestion regarding the delay between sending answers into the system to validate them. I'm a new player, and in the course of a few days I have solved around 50 problems, so the waiting interval has increased for me to around forty minutes. Since I generally solve the problems sequentially, near this part of the archive I do it faster than I am able to send answers. The latter takes quite a lot of time and patience. I found a message on the forum that says that the delay will decrease after 24 hours of inactivity, and decided to stop sending the answers for now.
My question: is there a way for a regular user such as myself to find out the current delay without resetting it? Maybe there is some technical page with this information, and I just did not manage to find it. If this feature does not exist yet, I would like to ask the administration to introduce it, if possible. I think many users want to know clearly when they are allowed to send the answer, and when they are not. It is very inconvenient for an eager solver like me to send one solution, then wait e. g. 30 minutes (or even a few hours!) and retry only to find out that the delay just reset, since it had actually already raised to 32.
As for the reason the delay system was added: showing the delay on the page explicitly would also provide this information to a potential cheater's automated scripts, but currently a script can also obtain the delay time after the first unsuccessful attempt and adjust it later, so this feature won't make the cheaters' life any easier.
The information I would like to be shown is 1) the current maximum delay and 2) the current remaining delay (or its 'complement', the time that has already passed). Maybe there should also be 3) remaining time before the next maximum delay shortening. Example: "You can send your answer 22 min later. Total sending delay 37 min (next shortening in 23 h 45 min)." This could either be shown on every problem page, or maybe on the Account or Progress pages.
I think the suggested change would make sending the answer more convenient for many players, not only novices like me, but also more experienced ones who solve the problems often and in bulk. Please provide your thoughts on my suggestion.