Ask HN: I am in a David vs. Goliath fight and I need some advice

I will do some research on how I can find some representation. Any tips, or experience with who I might get in contact with? Am I looking for some sort of technology or competition specialist?

I certainly agree with that part of your statement.

I have a hard time thinking about moving on to a new competition, this one has left such a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe time will change my mind, but certainly not happening any time soon.

When the offer was made, I was really surprised because it seemed unethical and unfair - both the the other competitors as well as the sponsor.

Just curious what other, non-Kaggle competitor opinions are on this topic.

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In reading Anthony response, this seems less about a "bug" but more about you not being happy with the results and blaming the complexity of the submission and selection process.

This part of his response seems fairly clear:

"The submission page stated: “Note: You can select up to 1 submission that will be used to calculate your final leaderboard score. If you do not select them, up to 1 entry will be chosen for you based on your most recent submissions. Your final score will not be based on the same exact subset data as the public leaderboard, but rather a different private data subset of your full submission. Your public score is only a rough indication of what your final score might be. You should choose an entry that will most likely be best overall, and not necessarily just on the public subset.”

During the course of the competition, you made 23 submissions of which 3 were selected for leaderboard scoring. First you selected submission 242748 on January 7, 2013 (all times UTC). You unselected that submission on January 24, 2013 and selected submission 250852. You unselected that submission on January 26, 2013 and selected submission 252143. You did not revise that selection at the time of your final submission. It seems logical to conclude that you understood the process of selecting submissions. Three of the other winners selected their final submission for scoring. The two that did not select the final submission had not previously made a manual selection or had unchecked prior submissions and the software worked as designed and selected the final submission. One participant (but not a winner) made 3 final submissions and selected one for scoring - which was the case the software for selecting a response was intended to handle. There was no bug in the software. "

While unfortunate for you, it is worth noting that all of the competitors had to follow the same set of submission guidelines to be considered. Your response becomes a debate on how you “feel” the submission process should work, as opposed to indicating a “bug” in the software.

“What on earth is a checkbox doing on the submission screen of a two phase competition? There is no ambiguity - there is only a single file type that is valid for the final leaderboard file. Why on earth is your software not smart enough to figure that out?

Also - why didn't the default selection logic kick in? Because only final leaderboard files are valid for the final submission, why didn't your software pick the only valid option?”

The 23 entries that were submitted are for the public leaderboard set. The purpose of this set is so over the duration of the competition, competitors can see how they are performing relative to each other. These 23 submissions have no impact on the final prize winners.

A different data set, called the final data set is what actually determines the final prize winners. I submitted this file exactly one time. It was processed and scored by Kaggle and I followed the directions exactly as the competition admin stated. I did not check a checkbox because I did not believe it applied - I only submitted a single file and I recieved the 'all zeros' response from Kaggle's system as it said it would.

Also, the text Anthony quoted is not applicable to the Flight Quest competition either. This is the text that is used for the single phase competitions, not a two phase competition like Flight Quest.

If you haven't competed before I know the difference might not be clear. But if you read the response from the other competitors in the forum, you can see there is general agreement that the submission page is faulty for a two phase competition.