For the past several weeks, I have posted entries on this blog regarding plans to make adjustments to scores and rankings for players who answer in an amount of time that is far faster than even I can answer my own questions.
Today, I applied my "very fast answer" algorithm, and as a consequence you will see changes in the rankings of players.
Some players moved up, some moved down.
I will now apply this algorithm on a regular basis (likely every two weeks). It is driven by the amount of time it takes me to take the quiz; I will not be publishing these numbers, but rest assured that these times are going to be much faster than players can generally answer the quizzes - if you read the question and answers carefully (and do not log in multiple times to view the quiz).
So I once again offer all players the following advice:
Take your time, read the question carefully and thoroughly. If you answer too quickly (that is, unbelievably too quickly), it does not necessarily mean that you are cheating, but it does mean that I cannot distinguish your pattern of playing from someone who is cheating.
To protect the credibility of the PL/SQL Challenge and to keep all players excited about taking these quizzes every day, I have no choice but to take action.
Warm regards,
Steven Feuerstein
The PL/SQL Challenge (www.plsqlchallenge.com) offers a daily quiz on the PL/SQL language, through which thousands of Oracle technologists demonstrate and deepen their knowledge of PL/SQL. This blog contains posts by the PL/SQL Challenge founder, Steven Feuerstein, as well as comments from players.
Steven said:
ReplyDelete"To protect the credibility of the PL/SQL Challenge and to keep all players excited about taking these quizzes every day, I have no choice but to take action."
Sad that it should be necessary (I mean, we are all professional gentleman coders helping each other and competing in a friendly fashion, right :-) but alas it probably is necessary.
Personally I find it hard to believe a fella getting 100% right for all of week 31 averaging 9 seconds per question. Perhaps he is very fast? Perhaps not. It is difficult to know for sure.
Thanks, Steven, for attempting to protect the credibility. I sincerely hope it will work and weed out the non-gentlemen (or gentlewomen) among us :-)