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"The public tables currently show…" vs "You are the nth person…"
Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2026 4:45 am
by drassont
Upon solving problem 201, I saw, "The public tables currently show that this problem has been solved by 3193 members." I should have expected to see "You are the 3193rd member to have solved this problem" as I did in all the previous problems (including ~3 today).
What is the difference (if any) between these two messages?
Re: "The public tables currently show…" vs "You are the nth person…"
Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2026 12:35 pm
by euler
That message always appears for untrusted account as their data is processed minimally (they have no impact on difficulty metrics) and cached values are used instead. However, for trusted accounts it could be anything from the server being suspicious about the speed at which you solved that particular problem to there being a temporary glitch obtaining the exact data and it was forced to display the cached value.
So given the potential for misinterpretation I've changed both to show the same, "You are the ___ person to have solved this problem" message.