How the standings, the penalty and the freeze work

Every contest has a rules page, linked from the contest's own page, that says which scoring format it uses and whether its scoreboard freezes. Read it before the round starts.

The penalty

In the ICPC format you are ranked by how many problems you solved, then by penalty time: the minute of each solve, plus a fixed penalty for each wrong submission on that problem before you solved it. Once you solve a problem, later attempts on it no longer count against you.

A compilation error, Run samples and Custom input never add a penalty.

Some contests use another format, such as points per test or a problem value that goes down with time and wrong submissions. The rules page names the format of each contest.

The freeze

In a contest that freezes, the public standings stop updating for the last stretch of the round. Your submissions still count and you still see your own verdicts. After the round ends the organizer unfreezes the board and the final standings appear. The frozen and the final standings both stay visible afterwards.

A contest that does not freeze updates its standings until the end, and its rules page says so.

A question about the standings? During the round, ask in Clarifications. After it, open a ticket in Contests and the Judge with the contest's link.