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Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

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Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#31

Post by throwaway_yy2Di »

blibble wrote: post #30
ZoFreX wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm British and I did things like this constantly throughout school and university. Then again, people do keep asking if I am American...

here in the UK the Education Act 1986 makes it a duty of a University to safeguard its members freedom of speech (within the law), and makes it unlawful for a University to do what Yale did here. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/61/section/43

I'm sure the Yale bureaucracy likewise has reams of paper scribbled with words like "academic freedom" and "free discourse". What's interesting is that people are actively defending these principles at personal cost -- not idly hoping for some high hallowed office to dole them out. That's the observation.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#32

Post by cpwright »

ritchiea wrote: post #16
scep12 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seems smart enough to get a good job regardless. The small win of publicity probably isn't worth the loss of a diploma, especially for a senior with (presumably) only one semester left. Given the time and money he's invested in his degree, I'm not sure he'd agree that it's a "win-win."

What is the meaningful difference between a Yale degree and 7 semesters of a Yale education? If your answer is "some employers wouldn't consider you as an applicant without the proper degree" do you want to work for that sort of employer?

The meaningful difference is that you have 7 semesters of sunk cost, and can't write that you graduated on your resume. In other words, you are a drop-out. A BS is a filter that you'll find for lots of jobs (or graduate school); and although there are places that will hire you, it makes things harder than they would have been otherwise.

If you want to get a bachelors degree from another school (1) it is likely to be somewhat harder to get into another school if you've been expelled from another, (2) other schools will have a residency requirement such that you'll need a couple of years to complete a degree even though you were only months away at the original institution.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#33

Post by cliveowen »

dasil003 wrote: post #29
cliveowen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could read it that way, or you could say that this miniscule altercation between a student and the dean of an Ivy League university, both part of an elite group that knows little about the real struggles the rest of the world faces on a daily basis, has been elevated to something important while its not and it's been given way too much attention than it deserves. How many college campuses and universities in the…

Taking that line of reasoning to its conclusion, there can only be one worst thing that happened to someone in the history of the world, and every other person's problems pale in comparison and are therefore inconsequential and should be brushed off as first-world problems.

Sure, taking things to the extremes has been proved to be the best way to start a discussion and the only sure way to show an unbiased view of the facts at hand.

I'm impressed by your incredible level-headedness, sir.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#34

Post by blibble »

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #31
blibble wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here in the UK the Education Act 1986 makes it a duty of a University to safeguard its members freedom of speech (within the law), and makes it unlawful for a University to do what Yale did here. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/61/section/43

I'm sure the Yale bureaucracy likewise has reams of paper scribbled with words like "academic freedom" and "free discourse". What's interesting is that people are actively defending these principles at personal cost -- not idly hoping for some high hallowed office to dole them out. That's the observation.

if you wish to be pedantic they seem to be working around the university using clever technical hacks, rather than fighting the underlying issue.

(note that it's the law in the UK, not some worthless university document)

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#35

Post by pdb123 »

lionhearted wrote: post #12

When I first left America, I disliked and felt disillusioned with the country. I've now spent more of my adult life outside the States than in the U.S., and I've also come to the opinion that the U.S. is one of the most amazing places in the world. Sometimes it's hard to point to exactly why America is so amazing. And the answer, maybe, is on display here. An undergraduate student at an elite university just innovati…

As another American, I completely agree that this is wonderful. We both like this behavior because it's in accordance with our culture and values. But the example of Asian culture that you bring up is interesting.

Japan (and to some extent China) are undeniably successful countries/cultures. Yet I'd guess that if a student acted this way there, he or she wouldn't be able to find a job. How do we know that having undue respect for hierarchy is objectively a bad thing?

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#36

Post by pistle »

ggchappell wrote: post #13

An interesting and apparently well executed effort. But, to be honest, your arguments reek of ignorance. > This is an unfortunate outcome, since Yale’s copyright assertion muddles the argument that Yale’s actions violate Peter and Harry’s freedom of speech. No it doesn't. Whatever Yale's responsibilities in the freedom-of-speech realm may be, they are entirely ethical in nature, as freedom of speech in the legal sens…

Ignorance, egotism, entitlement, etc. "Hey reddit, watch me fight the (wo)man!!" Maybe you could have inquired about or offered to help Yale's tool/product? Nah, I'll just jack it and cry foul because my little mash-up thing gets turned off.

It sure sounds like there is nearly a contractual obligation by Yale to provide data a certain way. Whatever agreement made this possible could get undermined. Then NO data will be made available and poor Yale students can go back to just lists of courses.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#37

Post by babs474 »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #28
babs474 wrote: post #19

Very cool, I love this approach as it is very similar to how my (now defunct) unedditreddit app worked and how a clever app called socialfixer for facebook works. Two thoughts. 1. You are not unblockable. My app was removed from the chrome app store after reddit complained, no review process, no appeals, good luck even communicating with google. Installing an app not from the appstore is almost impossible for a non-s…

I believe unedditreddit was removed due to trademark issues, but I could be wrong. As this extension does not have any of Yale's trademarks within and (demonstrably, based on source) does not impact the site, Yale should not have a leg to stand on. But your point about doing it in Firefox is a very good one. Firefox's extension addons site is much more democratic. And side-loading extensions within Firefox outside of…

That possibility probably didn't help, but eventually somebody from google told me they wouldn't bring the app back even if I changed the name.

You bring up another interesting point about impact to the yale site though. This app does impact the yale site, by having clients issue extra ajax requests. It not an unreasonable load but I wonder if that might muddle the issue again.

For unedditreddit I was able to completely prevent the app from creating extra load by distributing scraping among clients only already visiting the page. I wonder if the same idea could work for the evaluation data?

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#38

Post by shaufler »

ggchappell wrote: post #13

An interesting and apparently well executed effort. But, to be honest, your arguments reek of ignorance. > This is an unfortunate outcome, since Yale’s copyright assertion muddles the argument that Yale’s actions violate Peter and Harry’s freedom of speech. No it doesn't. Whatever Yale's responsibilities in the freedom-of-speech realm may be, they are entirely ethical in nature, as freedom of speech in the legal sens…

This is a semantic misunderstanding. When describing freedom of speech in the context of Yale, I meant it in a moral sense rather than a legal sense. Dean Mary Miller also used the term freedom of speech in her open letter to Yale, so I decided to use the same term. You're right though; saying 'academic freedom' would have been more clear.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#39

Post by raldi »

babs474 wrote: post #19

Very cool, I love this approach as it is very similar to how my (now defunct) unedditreddit app worked and how a clever app called socialfixer for facebook works. Two thoughts. 1. You are not unblockable. My app was removed from the chrome app store after reddit complained, no review process, no appeals, good luck even communicating with google. Installing an app not from the appstore is almost impossible for a non-s…

The difference is that in the Yale case, the creators of the data want it to be consumed.

Whereas UER was making a copy of and serving content against its authors' wishes.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#40

Post by the_french »

This is really awesome, we've been building similar solutions to our course websites at McGill. However, the administration does not seem to care yet (that might be due to the low adoption) about the different unofficial APIs and sites. The idea of adding course ratings / workload descriptions is really good we might have to implement a similar system on our end.
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