Finalize results

Finalizing declares a contest's results final. It fixes the standings, freezes the medals each participant holds, issues certificates where certification is configured, and sends the result notification where that was enabled. From then on the console stops offering any edit that would move an official participant's result.

It is one-way. There is no un-finalize, no undo and no support request that reverses it.

Finalize appears in the contest header only once the contest's status is Complete — the contest has to be over, either because its end time passed or because you used Stop. You need permission to write contests. If the button isn't there, check the status first; it is much more often that than a permission.

Before you finalize

Everything in this list is impossible afterwards, so work through it while the contest is Complete:

1. Finish rejudging. Retest any problem whose tests or checker were wrong, and rejudge individual submissions that need it. See Contest problems and Rejudge submissions.

2. Review violations. Run the check, confirm or dismiss every case in the queue. See Violations.

3. Take the disqualification decisions that follow from those cases, on the Participants tab.

4. Award the medals. They are set one participant at a time and cannot be changed for official participants afterwards. See Medals.

5. Configure certificates, if the contest issues them — the institution name and the signers are part of what finalizing bakes in.

6. Rebuild the scoreboard and read it. A standing that has drifted from its submissions is the one thing worth checking twice. See Contest scoreboard.

Finalize the contest

1. Open the contest. Confirm the status shown is Complete.

2. Choose Finalize in the contest header.

3. Confirm.

The status changes to Finalized. Certificates are generated for the participants at that moment and appear on the contest's landing page for them, and if the contest is rated, ratings are recalculated.

What finalizing disables

The console stops offering these once a contest is finalized:

Settings

• Format

• Schedule

• Participation mode (virtual) and duration

• Tie breaker

• Attempt penalty

• Scoreboard freezing time

• Rating settings

• Certificate settings

Problems

• Adding, editing, reordering and removing problems

• Rejudging a problem

Submissions

• Rejudging, deleting and restoring submissions

Participants — every edit to an official participant, including:

• Disqualifying and undisqualifying

• Marking official or unofficial

• Awarding or changing a medal

• Granting extra time

• Enabling, disabling and deleting the participant

Unofficial participants stay editable after finalization; only official results are frozen. That is the one piece of room left, and it is not much.

What still works

Finalizing does not hide the contest or stop it being read. The scoreboard, the submissions, the participant pages and the violations are all still there, and the contest can still be copied if you want to run it again next year.