Ability to remove my solution

[crackosok]

I accidentally submitted 2 duplicate solutions, it would be nice to have a possibility to remove one.

┆Issue is synchronized with this Clickup by Unito

[jhoffner]

I wouldnt worry too much about it. Solutions should be grouped together anyway, and you are always encouraged to retrain on kata you have already completed, even if you end up with the same solution each time.

[ktonga]

Why is not possible to just remove a solution? I tried only one kata with a PL that now I dont like and would like to remove it so it does not pollute my stats.

[pochmann]

I want to remove solutions as well. I keep finding improvements, so currently I'm polluting the solution space with obsolete suboptimal solutions just because I can't remove them :-(

[Voileexperiments]

Adding the ability to remove own solutions is a bad, bad idea when there are cheaters running about (typically at the rate of 1 per 1-2 weeks) and a certain person even posted an article online on how to cheat all Codewars katas.

In fact, if you don't submit final your solution won't even show up in the solutions page, which is incredibly annoying because for some katas there are significantly fewer solutions shown than the "number of solves" metric (mostly https://www.codewars.com/kata/tap-into-mr-mxyzinjins-brain), and I know lots of cheater have copied my solution and didn't submit final (so they aren't shown) because I once caught one of them.

[pochmann]

I don't know Codewars enough to see how that could be abused. I want people who look at my solutions to look at my best solutions, not obsolete less good ones. I do try to show good/interesting solutions (it's why I'm top-voted at LeetCode), and having obsolete solutions floating around hurts that effort. It also hurts others when my obsolete solutions pointlessly take screen space that could be better used for their solutions.

Could we maybe find some middle ground? Like, instead of completely deleting my obsolete solutions, let me mark them as obsolete. And show them in a section for obsolete solutions like the already existing section for invalidated "solutions". Or let me specify which of my current solutions made it obsolete, and add a "show obsolete versions" button under that solution. Might even be beneficial to see the evolution that way.

That would solve my issue of obsolete solutions polluting the space. Would it be a problem, helping cheaters?

Or instead of "obsolete", a more general "uninteresting" section, then I could also mark my solutions as such when I see other people's solutions that are better or equivalent. At LeetCode this is less of a problem because I check out other people's solutions before posting mine (and I don't post if I see a better or equivalent one already there), but at Codewars I apparently have to post mine before I can read others.

P.S. How do you know lots of people copied you just because you caught one?

[pochmann]

@Voileexperiments Fantastic. I just solved your "Tap Into Mr. Mxyzinjin's Brain" problem, but while still polishing my solution, I once accidentally hit the "submit" button because it's at the same frigging place as the "attempt" button. Now I have an ugly premature solution posted. And can't remove it. This is just awesome. I hate Codewars right now.

[DonaldKellett]

@pochmann FYI to avoid submitting final after you've clicked "Attempt" and passed all tests, you can press cmd-s instead on Mac (and probably ctrl-s on Windows but I can't verify that personally so take that with a pinch of salt) which re-runs the Submit tests against your (revised or otherwise) solution.

[pochmann]

@DonaldKellett Thanks, ctrl-s works for me on Windows. Always runs "attempt" even when the "submit" button is shown.

[dinglemouse2250]

After you've regretted pressing "Submit" a few dozen times you will learn to take more care to refine your solution before pressing that button. You will get into the habit of proof-reading and optimising and refactoring and you will press the button once and be happy with it.

Being methodical and careful with code instead of rashly pushing buttons is good practice for real life :-)

[pochmann]

@dinglemouse2250 I do that already. But that doesn't help if I keep finding further improvements or press the button accidentally.

[DanL12186]

If you're refactoring a second time you can always copy and paste the full test suite into the sample test area and do it that way.

I get why it's a bad idea to let people immediately delete their solution (re: cheating), but might it make sense to unlock the ability delete a solution after, say, a week or a month?