[Edit] No extension request granted

Dear participants,

We hope you're doing well and making good progress in the challenge.

We wanted to reach out and inform you that, based on the requests we've received from many participants, we have decided to extend the training phase. The original end date of July 14 has been pushed to July 21, 11:59 PM UTC. We understand that some participants may have already exhausted all their submission opportunities. To address this, each participant will be granted three additional submission chances.

In addition, we want to remind you that the testing phase will remain open until July 28 at 11:59 PM UTC. There will be no further extensions for either the training or testing phase. Therefore, we kindly request that you submit your algorithms and supplementary documents before the deadline to ensure their inclusion in the evaluation. You can find detailed submission instructions at this link.

Thank you for your understanding and continued participation in the challenge. We appreciate your dedicated efforts and wish you the best of luck as you continue to develop and refine your algorithms.

Best regards,

Dear Organizer,

You said that you had received applications for Extending Training Phase from many participants. How many? Can you give the statistical data?

Most of the submissions in the last week are from South Korea. If you want South Korea to be the 1st winner, just let them win. Or you can extend the Submission Deadline to the next year.

Best regards,

Thank you for your response. We would like to acknowledge that we understand the concerns raised in your complaint, and we take them seriously. After carefully considering your feedback, we have decided to revert our previous decision regarding the deadline extension.

Our initial intention in extending the deadline was to encourage as many participants as possible, regardless of their specific country. However, upon further reflection, we recognize that this extension could potentially affect fairness in the challenge.

Given that no participants have submitted any further contributions during the extended training phase, we believe it is best to adhere to the original dates and close the training phase accordingly.

Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention, and we apologize to all participants for any problems that may have been caused during the process.

Best regards,

I'll give you my opinion.

1. Was the termination of the training session announced in advance on the timeline? -> No

2. Is the number of submissions fixed for all users and teams in the training session? -> Yes

3. Is it appropriate to say that it was open for 12 hours and I should have submitted in the meantime? -> No, we need more time to prepare to submit.

4. Does asking for an extension of the training phase have an unfair effect on the final test run decision?

Finally, we believe that it is not fair to listen to and reverse the words of the first place in the training phase.

The primary objective of the training phase was to allow participants to familiarize themselves with the submission system and its functionalities. Additionally, since the scores obtained during this phase do not directly contribute to the final evaluation, we initially considered it acceptable to extend the training phase.

However, we understand and acknowledge the valid concerns raised by participants regarding fairness. We highly value your opinions, and it is essential for us to take them seriously. The closing date for the training phase was stated on the training submission page. Therefore, considering the feedback received, we have made the decision to maintain the closure of the training phase as originally scheduled.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused as a result of this situation.