Rounds, weeks and classes
What a series is called, what its four states show, and which of them accept a submission.
A series is a group of problems inside an activity. A contest calls one a round; a course calls one a week or a class.
Where the name comes from
The name you see — Round 1, Week 3 — is stored on the series, and whoever runs the activity may rename it. The activity type supplies the default when the series is created, and it decides one thing on your screen:
| Activity type | Beside the series heading |
|---|---|
contest@1 | the start, and a countdown to it while it is closed |
course@1 | the Deadline |
| anything else | both |
An activity with a single series is not split up. There is no heading and no grouping: the problems are simply listed.
The four states
What a series shows and what it accepts are two different questions, and the answer to the second is never the screen's — the Server decides, and a refusal the Client performed alone would not be a refusal at all.
| State | Problems | Submissions |
|---|---|---|
| upcoming | withheld | no |
| open | shown | yes |
| paused | shown, unless the manager took them away as they paused | no |
| ended | shown, for ever | no |
A pause is the only one of the four you come back from.
Two consequences worth stating:
- A round that has ended is still readable. It is over, not secret, and you can go back to what you were solving. An organiser reusing problems next year may close a finished round off, and then it withholds them like one that has not started — and the panel says which of the cases it is.
- The address of a statement does not get you past this. A link to a problem in a round that has not started, or in one whose statements a manager has just hidden, is refused like everything else.
What a closed round shows
A panel over the space where the problems would be, saying which of the cases it is:
- Not started yet — or, where the organiser allows the count to be shown,
Problems: 5, with blurred placeholder rows behind it. Those rows carry no names: there is nothing hidden behind the blur, because the problems are genuinely absent from what the Server sent. - The series is paused — a manager stopped it.
- The series has ended.
- Locked by … — a round that outranks this one is running.
Where the round has not started and it has a start time, the panel also shows that time and a live countdown. When the countdown reaches zero the page asks the Server again, so the problems appear without you reloading.
Being paused
A pause takes no submission and stops the clock. While one is on:
- the round carries an orange Paused badge on the problem list,
- the header clock says Paused instead of counting,
- the submit form disables its button and gives the reason.
Whether a pause also takes the statements away is decided by the manager at the moment of pausing.
The screen keeps up on its own
A round opening, closing, being paused, resumed or moved arrives as an event and the page redraws. So does your status on a problem. You do not have to sit reloading at the second a round begins.