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I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

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Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#281

Post by eviks »

jdkaim wrote: post #7

Update: I immediately took down my class project site after receiving yesterday’s ultimatum. I still don’t think the simple demo site violated the letter or spirit of the registration rules, but I took it down because I always want to operate in good faith. They followed up today to thank me for doing it, but also indicated that they were putting a hold on my account anyway. As a result, I am not going to be able to…

> and I am not planning to get a lawyer involved as I have faith that UW leadership will make it right in the end.

They've already demonstrated that they won't, so faith is misplaced

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#282

Post by buildbot »

hirvi74 wrote: post #213
buildbot wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an EE student and worked for UW CSE back in the day, someone tried to do this back then as well and got very in trouble. There may have been some browser automation scripts about… I wouldn’t know.

How were said student(s) even caught? I am assuming someone spoke too loudly or shared too much, but I'd be lying if I said I was not hoping for some kind of technical solution.

Not sure, but UW IT isn’t incapable of noticing repeated requests from the same IP or something, I assume most students are not setting up systems that go over residential proxies.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#283

Post by gorgoiler »

simonbw wrote: post #91

I went to UW a decade ago, and back then it was pretty common knowledge that you don't fuck with software and the class registration system. Registering for classes was really competitive and they were really strict about making sure that no one had an edge over anyone else by being able to write code. There were plenty of rumors of people being expelled for using scripts to try to get the classes they wanted right w…

Non-transferable class registrations decided by lottery would solve this. Publicly visible, physical random number generation is important of course.

With pre-registration you can also get an idea of demand in advance, instead of having to post-hoc schedule additional classes (or concert tour dates, or airline flights, or PS5 units, or… etc.)

Non-transferability means the lottery is continuous. As soon as anyone relinquishes their class, the lottery will have to run again to reallocate. You could do this daily.

This is a technical solution that works but it overlooks the cultural side of a resource allocator wanting their resource to generate hype and demand, build up to the Big Event, and then sell out in “record time”. I can understand that a big part of University marketing is to try to seem as popular and oversubscribed as possible, even if I don’t agree with it.

Finally of course, the public RNG bit feels like the most interesting. A giant continuous dice tumbler in the middle of UW’s Red Square? The tumbler feels easy, but how would you make a physical ledger to record the dice rolls automatically?

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#284

Post by LAC-Tech »

nayuki wrote: post #43

As a non-student, I received an overzealous takedown request from the University of Washington a decade ago. https://github.com/nayuki/Reference-Huffman-coding/issues/1 Also related: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/295420/how-to-cope-...

You are so much more polite than I am. Admirable.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#286

Post by croemer »

joe5150 wrote: post #258
croemer wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, really? So you just pay for a year instead of 4 years? Why do people not do that more?

You can double up on a lot in high school (AP, IB, dual enrollment) or CLEP out of a good number of GenEd classes, but not everybody has the access and support they need to pull that off. There's potential value in going to college (as in _being in college_) that isn't strictly measured in credit hours as well.

Oh absolutely, most of the value is being there not in the credit hours. At Cambridge Uni you can't just condense the time for a BA, no matter how brilliant you are. You spend time 3y on learning. If you're fast, you just learn more.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#287

Post by TechDebtDevin »

GordonGaffs wrote: post #276
theturtletalks wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a huge story and if it goes viral, it could put a lot of heat on UW. Write a detailed post on your LinkedIn, Twitter, anywhere that could get the attention of media. Better yet, link your post here and I'd gladly help spread the word. What UW is doing is extortion especially for their fuck-up. Be polite in your post and just write down the facts.

[flagged]

You're making a lot of assumptions, unless you actually have facts, I don't see how you can justify those statements.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#288

Post by emacsen »

colanderman wrote: post #266
phibz wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their response on face value doesn't make sense. But if I had to guess, you inadvertently made someone in the registrar's office look bad. They probably had to answer to "why didn't you think of this?" If that is the case then it makes a lot more sense and is retaliatory behavior. You can't undo their insecurity and loss of face. Therefore you should not expect a reasonable response. Act accordingly. Educate yourself…

Seconding this. It's entirely likely the registrar is this petty and boneheaded. It's less likely that their boss is though, this is a really bad look for the university. Personally I would find a way to contact the president of the university (possibly through university PR, who also care about public image) and simply state, "The registrar is asking me for quid pro quo, that I develop software for them in exchange…

A +1 to everyone else who has said get a lawyer.

I'll add another angle: financial.

You have invested years of time and presumably thousands of dollars into your schooling. Their threat that they will not allow you to graduate unless you give them unpaid labor without a clear boundary condition is a threat. While I haven't seen the correspondence, from what you said it appears they're doing the moral equivalent of one of those sitcom situations where someone is compelled to do what the other person wants under a threat, and even when they've done it, the threatening person keeps the threat.

A good lawyer (and not all lawyers are good) will help you understand your rights and your position.

As others have said, this is not an escalation of aggression, and not only don't you have to tell them whether you've seen a lawyer, unless the lawyer is speaking on your behalf- you don't have to tell them anything, and you shouldn't tell them, or tell us (in case they read this, which they likely will).

A lawyer in this case is more of a scholarly resource, telling you what your options are.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#289

Post by dylan604 »

sethherr wrote: post #257
dylan604 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it ends up being successful or not while still having to pay the lawyer is how the lawyer always win. This is not the gotcha you think it is

Hmmmm. Yes but, if I hire a programmer to build me an app and no one ever uses it, I still have to pay the programmer. This is exactly the gotcha. You paid for a service. The outcome isn’t guaranteed.

Did you need to use a tractor to move those goal posts?

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#290

Post by onepointsixC »

cvoss wrote: post #272

The comments here are almost entirely of one voice: UW bad. Student innocent. It is not hard to find the policy in question. I quote from the UW Registrar's website, their policy on tampering and abuse of the registration system, as cited in the subject of the email the student received: > The registration system is provided for the sole express purpose for students to register themselves into sections. Any use of th…

Except the policy in question was never actually abused as the student did not receive an API key as requested. A proportional response would be a simple denial for API key and reminder of policy. Not preventing a student from graduating. Unless the student is lying here, this is an outrageous response on the part of UW.
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