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One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud

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Re: One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud

#171

Post by NineStarPoint »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #28
topspin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has evolved a similar rigging for our privileged. We supply various obscure sports accolades that can be purchased for the children of wealthy families to obtain admission to our leading universities. Unfortunately our schemes have also been exposed and a number of people are being prosecuted. So for the moment one must resort to investing in rather costly facility construction or similar expansion projects wh…

It's even simpler than that, the US has a codified system of nepotism in place called legacy admissions, which has been in place for several decades [1]. > In a deposition, Rakesh Khurana, dean of the college, said a legacy preference can foster another kind of diversity: placing people with deep Harvard experience alongside those without it. They refer to nepotism as "deep Harvard experience", that's the only differ…

Hmmm, there probably is actually a benefit to the other students there, but not “Harvard Experience.” Assuming the child of a previous Harvard grad is more likely to have important social connections than the average applicant, them being at the school gives other people potential opportunity to make connections through them. And connections do of course matter a lot.

Regardless, the reason colleges actually do legacy admissions both seems obvious and isn’t something they’re likely to say. It makes Alumni happy, and keeping Alumni happy is how you get those fat $donations$.

Re: One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud

#172

Post by gersh »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #79
andreilys wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep I’m sure that their universities have no concept of letting in children of a major donor or political figure with influence.

I'm sure Donald trump and George bush got in on merit!

Trump's niece claims he cheated on the SAT.

Re: One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud

#173

Post by amluto »

elliekelly wrote: post #11
amluto wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that a fraud committed against the universities that the universities did not know about counts as a rigged system. Or are you talking about something else?

While I’m not so sure all of the universities were as blissfully ignorant as they claim, what does it matter? The system was still rigged in favor of wealthier applicants with or without the schools’ knowledge and awareness of the scheme.

Suppose you’re the president or another executive at a major university. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that you are entirely amoral. You find out that one of your employees is taking bribes, falsifying athletic recruit records, and personally pocketing the money. Do you:

(a) look the other way because you like rigging the system, or

(b) fire them and call the FBI.

I think (b) is the clear answer. Even if you want the children of the rich and powerful in your university, you want to know who they are, you want to collect any money that comes with it into the university’s coffers, and you do not want your employees enriching themselves at your university’s expense.

Add in the fact that most universities’ presidents are unlikely to be entirely amoral, and I think it’s pretty hard to conclude that this particular incident indicates corruption at the top levels.

(Sure, one might argue that the fact that athletic recruiting requests are considered at all for admissions is a problem, but the case in question wasn’t really about this.)

Re: One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud

#174

Post by leafboi »

dang wrote: post #131
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's really flamebait to make that observation. There genuinely are significant cultural differences regarding what's regarded as fair play between various regions in the world. That needs to be understood, particularly among readers of HN who, as a demographic, work with co-workers, contractors, or businesses across borders more often than the average population.

If you don't think it's flamebait, you haven't seen the flamewars that such comments lead to. It's our job to be the fire department here. If someone tosses off a lit match at a gas station, that's either arson or criminal negligence, and the fires burn the same either way. There are good reasons why the site guidelines say " Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive…

>"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." and "Eschew flamebait."

I mean, tbh, these are rather vague guidelines. You could say my comments are "thoughtful and substantive." I made an observation that the corruption in the article had many responsible parties and people from all walks of life participating in it, more than what would normally happen in the states. The fact that so many people participated does say something about the culture in general.

As for "eschew flamebait"... how much flame did this post cause? There's definitely a bit a flame, but I would say overall a flamewar didn't happen. So basically you're wrong. You use your "experience" to justify the warning but I would say your experience is wrong for this case... most of the sub threads aren't things that I would classify as flame.

I get where you come from though. It's hard to see from a distance whether a comment will cause a forrest fire.

Maybe put out the forest fire if you see one starting, but don't ban the use of matches all together.

Re: One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud

#175

Post by leafboi »

dang wrote: post #133
leafboi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wasn't flame bait. It was just an observation. Please realize that it was other people who decided to flame. Just because someone decides to have a bad attitude doesn't make my post flame bait. I made a general observation about corruption and culture, other people decided to respond to it in a bad way. If this type of comment isn't allowed on HN it's a form of censorship. Basically I can't say anything negative…

"It says a lot about the general attitude of Chinese people" in the context of a story about fraud is obvious flamebait. Please follow the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html You can call moderation 'censorship'—people mostly just mean by it that they don't like something. I don't see the similarity to the communist party myself, but have been accused of communism so often by now—invaria…

>"It says a lot about the general attitude of Chinese people" in the context of a story about fraud is obvious flamebait.

The context is fraud in China. The context involves multiple people from all walks of life and society in China contributing to the fraud. A stark contrast to how corruption occurs in the states. I don't think it's obvious flamebait at all. The definition of what is flamebait itself is rather vague..

A good way to definitively define flamebait is to call it any comment which starts a flamewar.

This means a definitive classification of flamebait can only be crystallized after the posting of the comment in question and observing the resulting aftermath...

In this case I see no flamewar, so I don't believe my comment constitutes as such.

Re: One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud

#176

Post by dghughes »

dghughes wrote: post #61

Sometimes it's no better here in the west. I know of a situation where a Chinese student fabricated every source for a paper. Completely made up everything. The professor saw right through it immediately and failed her. But the university big wigs told the professor to give the student a passing grade. The student graduated university.

Not in the US. Not a science degree. It was a few years ago.

Not a great situation but I can assure you no lives are at risk.

Re: One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud

#177

Post by dang »

oxAAAFFB wrote: post #153
dang wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't think it's flamebait, you haven't seen the flamewars that such comments lead to. It's our job to be the fire department here. If someone tosses off a lit match at a gas station, that's either arson or criminal negligence, and the fires burn the same either way. There are good reasons why the site guidelines say " Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive…

No dang, you’re wrong. This is like arresting a man who is walking down a dark alley with cash in his pocket for “robbery baiting,” which is insane. His comment is civil, polite and on topic. Censor people who actually flame. don’t punish people for saying what they think is true. Again, this guy hasn’t made any personal attacks or broken the rules in any way. Cmon.

It's absurd to say that slurring "the general attitude of Chinese people" was civil, polite, and on topic. If you say that, I can only imagine that you're not coming into contact with the very large numbers of people who would find such a comment to be the opposite of civil and polite. That's not our situation, and we have to take care of all HN users. Everyone has the right to come here and not see their country or race or ethnic background (or similar groupings they may belong to) put down in that way.

Perhaps you don't feel like this matters, but I can tell you for a fact that people have been hounded off this site by comments of this nature (e.g. China-related slurs), including extremely ugly personal attacks. I don't want to have anything to do with a site where that happens, and I don't believe that the vast majority of this community would either. None of us wants that community. But we can easily end up with it anyway, if we're not careful, because that's how group dynamics work.

Part of the problem here is that the forum feels like an intimate conversation, and in intimate conversation there is more latitude for talking in a grand and speculative way about this stuff, especially if you have high trust from previous interactions. But when you post to HN what you're actually doing is broadcasting to millions of people. Public broadcasting has to have different standards. Imagine what would result if a million people heard the things that you (or I, or any of us) said to your friends, without any mitigating context.

Re: One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud

#178

Post by dang »

leafboi wrote: post #174
dang wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't think it's flamebait, you haven't seen the flamewars that such comments lead to. It's our job to be the fire department here. If someone tosses off a lit match at a gas station, that's either arson or criminal negligence, and the fires burn the same either way. There are good reasons why the site guidelines say " Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive…

>"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." and "Eschew flamebait." I mean, tbh, these are rather vague guidelines. You could say my comments are "thoughtful and substantive." I made an observation that the corruption in the article had many responsible parties and people from all walks of life participating in it, more than what would normally happen in the states…

"It only started a bit of a fire in this case" is obviously not a good argument, especially when the fire department showed up to contain it.

I'm sorry, but I have to pull rank about this, based on years of experience and god knows how many thousands of cases of dealing with this. The issue is the expected value of the subthread: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

If you're going to comment on a topic this inflammatory, you need to include way more flame retardant in your comment. Two helpful ways to do that are (1) be clear and explicit about your intent, and (2) speak about your own personal experience.

Re: One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud

#179

Post by godelski »

randycupertino wrote: post #111
godelski wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think we should criticize others and call them out for their bad behavior I do want to stress that it is very important to hold ourselves to a high standard. This is an essential part of a democracy. There is always room to improve. We are trying to form a more perfect union. Criticize others to learn from their mistakes. Criticize ourselves so we fix ours. (I do think think self criticism is common in the we…

I don't think it's just rampant in non-democratic vs democratic societies. A colleagues wife had him sit and take her entire online pharmacy class for her, sitting online as her for the entire course. He is a physician and had to actually take the classes themselves because when he tried to sit just for the exam for her he didn't get a high enough score. Other than checking IDs in person for exams, I'm not sure how t…

I don't think you meant to respond to me. I was talking about being critical of your state and others. I think you meant to respond to the more generalized discussion of cheating. This discussion diverted a little from that.

Re: One woman's stolen identity exposed a system of exam fraud

#180

Post by leafboi »

dang wrote: post #178
leafboi wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." and "Eschew flamebait." I mean, tbh, these are rather vague guidelines. You could say my comments are "thoughtful and substantive." I made an observation that the corruption in the article had many responsible parties and people from all walks of life participating in it, more than what would normally happen in the states…

"It only started a bit of a fire in this case" is obviously not a good argument, especially when the fire department showed up to contain it. I'm sorry, but I have to pull rank about this, based on years of experience and god knows how many thousands of cases of dealing with this. The issue is the expected value of the subthread: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... If you're going to comme…

>"It only started a bit of a fire in this case" is obviously not a good argument, especially when the fire department showed up to contain it.

You didn't contain anything. You didn't even respond to the subthread where people were were actually starting fires. You just threw a warning at me after most of the conversation already played out. Not only did a fire not happen, you showed up after most people left the premises.

>I'm sorry, but I have to pull rank about this,

Go ahead and pull rank man. You can even ban me if you wanted to, it's your right. I'm not trying to say anything to the contrary. The servers are based in the states, but they're private property so you are 100% in your rights to do whatever you want.

>The issue is the expected value of the subthread

No offense, but your "years of experience" or "expected value" is equivalent to your "biased opinion" because, as other people in this thread and I have shown, we had another "biased opinion" on what that probability distribution for the expected value looked like. To me it doesn't look like flame bait and it looks like their's plenty of flame retardant as well. Either way, none of these predictions or opinions really matter in the face of what actually occurred.

The expected value of a post is a moving target that eventually coalesces into the actual demonstrated value of the post.

The actual value of this post demonstrates that no flamewar occurred. So you were wrong while other people and I were right.

Whatever... if you want me to add more "flame retardant" next time I'll add it. It doesn't change the fact that for this thread you showed up onsite with a firehose to put out a fire that never occurred.

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