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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

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rule is "Template engine websites, tools, and sites that generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files ... are NOT permitted." and goes on to mention an inexhaustive list of examples which names Github among others. That is abundantly clear you cannot use Github. If you didn't read the rules, that's ignorance. If you read the rules and knowingly violate them, that's arrogance. If you unintentionally violate…

> The rule is "Template engine websites, tools, and sites that generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files ... are NOT permitted." and goes on to mention an inexhaustive list of examples which names Github among others. > That is abundantly clear you cannot use Github. This would be like calling someone ignorant and arrogant because they were browsing hackernews at school and a clueless administrator thought i…

> This would be like calling someone ignorant and arrogant because they were browsing hackernews at school and a clueless administrator thought it was a criminal website.

Well if the school specifically forbid Hackernews, and mentioned it by name in the list of forbidden sites ....

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

#172
Credit to those kids. School should be ashamed of themselves for that teacher’s inability to understand the nuance of the rule and more importantly work with and advocate for those kids. The teachers role never should be adversarial.

That being said, the cynic in me sees the “Technology Students Association” as a massive grift that would make the College Board blush and these competitions are simply college app padding, with enough categories and regional levels that everyone gets a line item (well I guess except these kids.) It’s disappointing and frustrating but ultimately of little importance.

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

#173
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> their response is "it's stupid" > You're going to need to cite a source for that one, skipper. This comes pretty close: making fun of the person who enforced the rule that GitHub is not allowed: > You heard it here first folks, GitHub IS NOT the industry standard for hosting code collaboration and version control through Git, an expected tool for anyone entering the industry and a priceless skill for any aspiring…

That's not a quote. Where can the words "it's stupid" be found? Here, let me show you a quote: > > lecturing everyone "No, you really want to have 0 risk, you fools" > On HN, please don't use quotation marks that make it look like you're quoting someone when you're not. It may seem a minor point, but we've found that it's important for clarity and respect. > Also, "lecturing everyone" is borderline name-calling, whic…

> See? That's how quotes work.

See, if you're going to make fun of someone because you think that they are ignorant of some piece of tech, then people are going to point out that you're no smarter, when you were ignorant of the rules.

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

#174
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> their response is "it's stupid" > You're going to need to cite a source for that one, skipper. This comes pretty close: making fun of the person who enforced the rule that GitHub is not allowed: > You heard it here first folks, GitHub IS NOT the industry standard for hosting code collaboration and version control through Git, an expected tool for anyone entering the industry and a priceless skill for any aspiring…

That's not a quote. Where can the words "it's stupid" be found? Here, let me show you a quote: > > lecturing everyone "No, you really want to have 0 risk, you fools" > On HN, please don't use quotation marks that make it look like you're quoting someone when you're not. It may seem a minor point, but we've found that it's important for clarity and respect. > Also, "lecturing everyone" is borderline name-calling, whic…

Do you know what paraphrasing is?

I'll quote rules and other such things verbatim for accuracy, but I'm not going to quote entire paragraphs of some random writing verbatim since it's not worth my time.

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

#175
post #151
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they used github just for git. If they hadn't mentioned github, nobody could have known. Or cared.

So using GitLab for the exact same thing would be OK?

I would expect so, yes.

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

#176
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's not the lesson, the lesson is not to become someone like the person who disqualified them down the line. People who have rules instead of brains don't really belong in civil society!

Thank god these people and their ardent supporters aren’t cops. Can you imagine if some clown ticketed you for one of those anachronistic or nonsense laws that are still on the books in some places, like the infamous “ice cream” laws.

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's relevant. The article has a sarcastic section asserting that GitHub is an industry standard and job requirement. What I don't like seeing is a new generation thinking DVCS implies Microsoft GitHub.

> What I don't like seeing is a new generation thinking DVCS implies Microsoft GitHub It does. GitHub won. Git and GitHub are synonymous now.

No it's not. Every time they have an outage more folks jump to other Git hosting alternatives. The biggest free software projects like Freedesktop, GNOME, KDE, are all self-hosting GitLab. Folks concerned with their data and the idea of US sanctions and corporate control look at projects like Codeberg. and Folks tired of slow UIs and ‘social’ moved to SourceHut and cgit. The thing that keeps replenishing the proprietary platform is new developers being told they need to put their projects on Microsoft GitHub.

Arguing decentralized version control, like Git, should have a centralized home is antithetical to the tool.

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

#178
To all the commenters that I see here writing comments among the lines of "rules are rules and must be followed to the letter", I strongly suggest you to read the book "Law for Computer Scientists and Other Folk" [1]. In one of the first chapters, it clearly explains that rules must be interpreted, and in doing so, one must take into account the specific situation a rule is being applied to. In this case, it seems quite clear to me that the intent of the rule was to prevent participants from using a tool that generates code for them, not to prevent them from using a version control system. So the real question to ask would be not if they used GitHub or not, but if they used it to generate HTML for their site or if they used it only for version control. In the former case, they deserve to be disqualified. In the latter, the rule doesn't apply.

I think that the real lesson here is that if a rule is too subjective to interpretation, is better to discuss it beforehand, because even if you're right the person responsible for enforcing it could still get it wrong.

[1] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/law-for-computer-sci...

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

#179
post #114
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I notice from your blog that you have links to a number of commercial services including Keybase... Blog has been under redesign-rebuild for a long time--other priorities. Said services were planning on being removed and replaced with alternatives as mentioned. Blender is a better option I agree.

They always are the last to be updated (mine also). We don't disagree in principle about open tools being better. I do however think that there isn't a viable alternative to GitHub at this point. The same could have been said about ExpertExchange at one point, and while StackOverflow isn't perfect, they do at make everything Creative Commons. Tackling GitHub would require building a platform where all of the other to…

Truth. Vendor lock-in is a concern when it comes to platforms. One thing that can help is writing shell scripts (or Nix building those scripts) for CIs to run minimally. With the merge request model having issues scaling, I'm curious how long til we push to a different model, or a different tool like darts/Pijul.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You only use the template engine if you go through github.io That's where the site was deployed...

GitHub pages also deploys straight HTML if available, which is what they did. They did not use the template engine functionality.

>also deploys straight HTML if available

~~Technically is still processed via Jekyll. To bypass Jekyll you need to add `.nojekyll` on root. Something the authors found out themselves after someone on reddit told them about it. (Not that it would change anything.)~~

edit: On second thought that's probably wrong.

>They did not use the template engine functionality.

Regardless the rule was clear. "No Github." Yes, it's bullshit*. But this should be argued before making the submission.

*Rule also includes Replit. What's even funnier? "Frameworks, such as Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress" are allowed. So using a template engine is bad but using a CMS is fine.

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