Project Euler Forum

ProjectEuler has long kept the problem author's information confidential. I'd like to ask why the author's name isn't public. Publishing the author's name would help clarify certain issues.

I always feel like some people are doing something sneaky. For example, someone might provide a problem using a different account and then solve it using his real account. Since he knows the answer in advance, he is guaranteed to place highly (like second place or third place). Shouldn't the author's name be made public to prevent these shady practices? The guy who does this, you know I'm talking about you! If it weren't for the author's privilege, you wouldn't be able to get second place.

By the Way
@hk
You sent me a private message asking who I was talking about? But then you blocked my reply. What's going on?

Just my two cents. If you actually have evidence then someone is cheating, then sure, a private message to the admin team is warranted. But I don't think these types of public posts making vague accusations of cheating are particularly helpful. At best, it just causes unnecessary drama. At worst, you accuse an innocent user of cheating in a public manner.

I get it. Cheaters suck. But try not to let it ruin your experience of an otherwise amazing website.

Problem author accounts are automatically excluded from leaderboards, at least in more recent problem releases. This just feels a little paranoid. Yes, people are cheating (in various ways!), but I've never once been suspicious of a problem setter for making a secret second account to game the leaderboard. If you have some specific person in mind here then I'm sure you've already told PE staff, in which case it should be dealt with, and if they say they don't believe you then I guess you're just out of luck.

Apart from this cheating idea, I did actually think it could be nice to see problem author names in the problem details. Sometimes the problem is developed by the team (maybe it would be credited as PE Team or something) but I'm always curious who wrote a problem. Occasionally we find out in the forums though, which is fun, or I hear from the problem setter themselves

My unsolicited 2 cents: the main reason anyone should be at Project Euler is to have a good time learning some math and computing in a fun-n-relaxed manner. How does it matter if someone is gaming the leaderboard, to be blunt: why should anyone care about the leaderboard? The only thing that should matter is the problems themselves. If it was not for solution threads, projecteuler.info should be sufficient.