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Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

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Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#301

Post by notfed »

Animats wrote: post #45

These people are now better known among people likely to hire webmasters than whomever won the competition. The students did not violate the rules. The rules say that template sites like Wix, GitHub, etc. may not be used. They did not say "such as" GitHub. There's a difference. GitHub is merely illustrative of the template site concept, in this case incorrectly. The controlling requirement is that it be a "template s…

Official rule is: "Template engine websites, tools, and sites that generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files, such as Webs, Wix, Weebly, GitHub, Jekyll, and Replit, are NOT permitted."

I still don't think this blanket bans GitHub; only in the context of using it as a tool for generating HTML from text, which the kids did not do.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#302

Post by toastal »

mschaef wrote: post #265
DocTomoe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never, in 20 years in the business world - and that includes long years working closely with people in controlling - see anyone do something in Excel that could not be achieved in LibreOffice with similar effort. Yes, there is no 100% feature parity. But there is feature parity in the things that people actually use.

> - see anyone do something in Excel that could not be achieved in LibreOffice with similar effort. > Yes, there is no 100% feature parity. But there is feature parity in the things that people actually use. It's not close to being wholly about the capability of the product itself. Excel has the incumbency advantage - more people are familiar with it and more people already have it. Switching to LibreOffice therefore…

To not deal with those headwinds because it is difficult to pick-up a new tool—especially if you haven’t in a long time or aren't interested in the tool/technology—we should priortize kids learning FOSS tools. Especially if it's not often used, I think most folks we be happy with both meanings of ‘free’ as something to pick up every once in a while. Most of the differences matter only once you're a power user. I use LibreOffice for the reason because I open up a document once a month, not my daily work.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#303

Post by ruszki »

LanceH wrote: post #258
butterfi wrote: post #245

It’s disappointing how many comments here focus on the trees and not the forest. Regardless of the intent of the GitHub rule, this is supposed to drive interest in web development among young people, and instead it’s an exercise in bureaucracy and semantics.

The rule is ambiguous and can be read two ways. Tools which pull code from places like ...github...are not allowed. # Github as a tool doesn't generate code. Tool like ...github... which generate code are not allowed. # Github is certainly a repository from which code templates are pulled. Love the "results are final". No flexibility from people running things is a great quality to prepare youth for the real world of…

It’s an interesting aspect that in my professional career definitely nothing is final. But customer service can really be inflexible, even when there is no risk, or it would be even better for the company.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#304

Post by goto11 »

peterkelly wrote: post #28

This is one of those important events in life where you realise that sometimes those who hold seniority over you aren't necessarily as smart as you are. This experience will help you to cultivate a healthy disrespect for authority. We all go through something like this at some point. The best thing to do is to find some sort of constructive way to channel your experience. One path I would suggest is to consider launc…

Maybe the lesson is just that competitions tends to have arbitrary rules and limitations. If you think the rules are stupid, don't participate in the competition.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#305

Post by jallen_dot_dev »

bena wrote: post #298
jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GitHub parses this into that little blurb you see below the repo. This is technically a violation of the rules. Part of your project is technically generated by GitHub. No, that's Github interpreting markdown for display on Github.com. That's not generating any part of the project that they submitted.

You can't use a site that takes markdown and generates HTML. It is a file in the project. By the letter, it counts. And the reason stuff like this happens is because of people who like to bend the rules on technicalities. Where they hold to the letter but violate the spirit. You have to draw lines somewhere in a competition.

No, not really. Their project solution was a collection of webpages. Github didn't generate any HTML or code that went into those pages.

Visiting github.com to look at the pretty-formatted readme was not part of the project.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#306

Post by sacrosancty »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #163
newaccount74 wrote: post #7

Ah... student competitions... that brings up memories... When I was 15 or so, I took part in a tech competition for under 19 year olds. I designed and programmed a website for "grading" your teachers, complete with an admin interface for generating anonymous 1 time use codes for students. The goal was to make it easy for schools to allow students to provide anonymous, private feedback to their teachers. I didn't win…

I have a feeling you could of sued for copyright.

[dead]

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#307

Post by richbell »

JoeyBananas wrote: post #286

> Template engine websites, tools, and sites that generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files, such as Webs, Wix, Weebly, GitHub, Jekyll, and Replit, are NOT permitted. LOL. It's like a muskets-only shooting competition.

Sounds like an gentlemanly duel to me!

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#308

Post by Bean0_0 »

eternalban wrote: post #295
pksebben wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if the spec uses it's terminology accurately and is unambiguous, but... > Template engine websites, tools, and sites that > generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files, > such as Webs, Wix, Weebly, GitHub, Jekyll, and Replit, > are NOT permitted. Github is certainly not a template engine website. One could make the argument that it falls on the engineer to discuss the spec with the client - but these are…

Exactly. Lesson here (and I hope OP and teammates read this) in my opinion is precisely this: 1 Spec conflates "github" and "templates". 2 Students take spec to teacher (who ended up being the judge!) and inform them of the error. 3 Spec is changed OR restriction (however boneheaded -- remember, clients) remains in place. 4 Team knows exactly what is what. 5 No article on HN. The end.

We should have bought this to our TSA advisor, but the judge was a different teacher at our school. The problem we had was that we had to reach out to find out that we were disqualified and the appeal period was already passed. It would have been so simple to move to netlify hosting as can be seen in the github repo. It all stems from the fact that we misinterpreted the rules and had no ability to appeal in the short period allotted.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#309

Post by Arrath »

prepend wrote: post #267
peterkelly wrote: post #28

This is one of those important events in life where you realise that sometimes those who hold seniority over you aren't necessarily as smart as you are. This experience will help you to cultivate a healthy disrespect for authority. We all go through something like this at some point. The best thing to do is to find some sort of constructive way to channel your experience. One path I would suggest is to consider launc…

I like this approach and is one reason I’m cynical about organizations that run these types of events where the staff have no practical knowledge. There’s an industry of consultants who run challenges and hackathons and I’ve been surprised when organizations spend $100k on consultants to give our $1k in prizes or something. The fact that this challenge doesn’t have a decision maker who knows that GitHub can host as w…

> There’s an industry of consultants who run challenges and hackathons and I’ve been surprised when organizations spend $100k on consultants to give our $1k in prizes or something.

Ah yes the "Thanks for the record breaking quarter everyone, enjoy these 4 $5 Hot n Ready pizzas and two bottles of Coke" event.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#310

Post by HWR_14 »

alickz wrote: post #260
HWR_14 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. And I think you can host your own HTML/CSS/JS on Wix too. It's reasonable to blacklist a whole range of solutions that contain the ability to be used as template engines and then insist the students use something else.

I don't think it's reasonable to blacklist the most popular VCS website used among developers. It's a competition for devs, they _should_ be using version control. All it would take is a cursory glance by another dev to know if they used templating or not, which I would consider baseline for a developer contest. The article says their teacher just seen it was on GitHub and disqualified them off the bat. Unreasonable…

They hosted it on GitHub. Not stored the source there. Hosted it.

Besides, I would say that teaching people how to use version control is good. But there are lots of non-GitHub solutions. Prefer those for students! Teach them the fundamentals.

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