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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

#451

Post by nlawalker »

IshKebab wrote: post #340
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…

If they didn't want people trading registrations why not just... not allow them to trade reservations? I can't trade plane tickets, and that isn't because of some implied threat.

The "trading" is all out of band, the system only sees one person drop their registration and another person fill the slot.

When someone drops a class, the opening becomes available immediately, so you coordinate a time well after the registration rush has died down for one person to click "drop" and the other to refresh the page and click "register". At least that's how it worked when I did it 20 years ago. It was relatively common in the Greek system not to "trade" a class for a class but rather a class for a few beers or the like: prior to registration, if you were an underclassman who really needed to get into a class next quarter that you knew filled up quickly, you'd find an upperclassman (who get access to the system earlier) who was eligible for the class you needed and wasn't full on credits to grab a slot, then a couple days before classes started, you'd have them drop and then grab it for yourself.

At that time (early 2000s), polling bots weren't common, but there were rumors, so people doing this got more careful and actually sat next to each other with their laptops to coordinate the drop and add instead of just picking a time or date.

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

#452

Post by 93po »

IshKebab wrote: post #340
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…

If they didn't want people trading registrations why not just... not allow them to trade reservations? I can't trade plane tickets, and that isn't because of some implied threat.

or you know, offer more of the desirably classes, or charge extra for them, or give people "fun bucks" to register for classes and the more desirable ones cost more fun bucks

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

#453

Post by lupire »

uwthrowaway wrote: post #63
gowld wrote: post #29

He wasn't disciplined for building an app or fetching data. He was disciplined for blatantly trying to "hack" (in the YC sense, in UW's view) the registration process: https://registrar.washington.edu/winter-2025-registration-ch... "Know that trading, selling, or buying open spots is a breach of the Registration Tampering Abuse Policy. Consequences include referral to the Student Code of Conduct process, a Registrar’…

I'm a uw cs student, it is made pretty clear that you're not supposed to trade spots or otherwise automate any part of the registration. Students typically know not to talk about this stuff. While well-intentioned, if this was commonly used it would mess registration up even more by making the "constrained" classes valuable and would be filled up quickly by people who wouldn't take them.

Can you explain when this horrific behavior (seat trading) is explicitly supported by UW, when they could simply NOT accept requests for trading seats?

I sign up for a class. I am on the roster. How is it possible for me to put your name on the class roster, for credit, transcript, and diploma, without the university going out of their way to help?

These aren't anonymous concert tickets or XBoxes. They are personally identifiable registrations.

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

#454

Post by pc86 »

gorgoiler wrote: post #283
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 reli…

The idea of transferring registration from one student to another without input from the university is bananas to me. But only slightly more stupid than not having waitlists which is the only reason that exists in the first place.

My alma mater let people register in descending order of number of completed credits with a C or better (e.g. 2.0), and then GPA, in waves. Same with dorm sign ups which were required for everyone but seniors. It worked out great and professors always had enough slack to let special cases in if they felt compelled to.

Making it random seems like a bad idea to me. It's "fair" only insofar as randomness is fair. For high-demand classes isn't it more "fair" that people who will graduate sooner and/or have done better in their classes thus far should have the first opportunity to get those classes?

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

#456

Post by pc86 »

IshKebab wrote: post #340
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…

If they didn't want people trading registrations why not just... not allow them to trade reservations? I can't trade plane tickets, and that isn't because of some implied threat.

It's an unintended consequence of the system being so laughably out of date and so poorly designed it doesn't support waitlists.

Allowing infinitely large waitlists for a given class - which even in the most convoluted legacy system imaginable is not that big of a challenge - and trading disappears overnight.

It's not a problem for the university directly, and fixing it would cost money, so there's no incentive to do it. Gotta make sure there's enough money to keep paying the president $76,000 every month, after all.

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

#458

Post by alistairSH »

Symbiote wrote: post #375
glaugh wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know very little about lawyering, but I could imagine a UW-alum or Seattle-area lawyer advising pro bono bc of generosity or good publicity on a very newsworthy case Anyone on here friends with a UW-alum or Seattle-area lawyer who might be interested but doesn’t read HN?

Do American university students belong to unions? It's very common in the UK. The most visible part of the unions is running social activities, often bars and events, but they can also provide legal advice to their members.

Not undergraduates. The "student union" in this context is 100% a social entity.

Graduate students sometimes are part of unions, but usually only if they're also employed by the university (somebody paying full tuition for an MBA probably isn't in a union, but a doctoral student teaching or doing research might be).

Undergrads doing part-time work at the university to pay bills (dining hall, bookstore, etc) could be, in theory, but probably aren't.

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

#459

Post by rtkwe »

rocqua wrote: post #395
grumple wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it weird how universities are so hostile towards their students? Some professors are genuinely interested in developing students and are great, but many faculty and administrators - and the overall tone of the schools - are draconian.

Research universities have plenty of professors who are there to do research. But they often still have a teaching responsibility. For those professors, teaching students is a mandatory thing they only do so they can keep their job doing what they actually want: research. Those professors aren't great teachers, and I think we shouldn't blame them for it. Instead we should blame the system that forces them to do somet…

This is a problem but it's not really related to the issue of the harsh reaction of college administrations to exposing problems, the examples mentioned in this thread and in the original article are all capital A Administration responses, a group completely separate from the professors. Some professors are involved in admin work but the vast majority of admin work is done by employees who neither teach nor research.

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

#460

Post by pc86 »

93po wrote: post #452
IshKebab wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they didn't want people trading registrations why not just... not allow them to trade reservations? I can't trade plane tickets, and that isn't because of some implied threat.

or you know, offer more of the desirably classes, or charge extra for them, or give people "fun bucks" to register for classes and the more desirable ones cost more fun bucks

High-demand classes are bi-modal. The left side of the distribution is the low-level intro and survey courses. I went to a very heavily pre-med undergrad with a total enrollment of about 1,500 where the intro Chemistry course had two 100-150-person survey courses with multiple TAs. Charging more for these is pretty stupid. The answer is to offer more of them if you have the physical space, the professor(s), and the TA(s) to do it, which you don't always have.

The right side is the 5- or 6-person high level classes offered every other year or something. Usually, but not always, these are in demand because professors are not fungible at this level and they're probably taught by a popular or famous professor. I took one of these at my school taught by a former cabinet secretary, just four of us seniors and him talking about politics for 4 hours every week. You can't just offer more of these; if you're teaching one class every other Spring you're unlikely to seriously consider changing that to two Fall and two Spring classes every year.

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