Hi LeetCoders,

There have been many discussions and questions around contest fairness and LeetCode's actions on contest violations. We'd like to use this post to share the steps we've taken and our ongoing efforts.

We currently have an official plagiarism checker in place. As users who participate in contests may notice, it sometimes takes several days for the rankings to be updated. This thorough process is necessary because we review each cheating report flagged by our plagiarism detector one by one, with careful attention from human reviewers.

We are also experimenting with several techniques to improve efficiency. This process requires time to perfect, and we are constantly iterating to enhance our systems. During this period, we kindly ask for your patience while we finalize the ranking board, especially when there are two contests in a week, as this doubles the review time. We understand how much time and effort users invest in contests, and we want to take extra care not to accidentally affect innocent users. We will continue to develop more accurate checkers and enhancements to our internal tools and processes, which will help us address violations more accurately and promptly.

Lastly, we greatly appreciate our dedicated LeetCoders for submitting cheating reports. However, due to the high volume and our commitment to thoroughly reviewing each flagged case, we cannot address every report individually at this time. Thank you for your understanding and continued support.