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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

#311

Post by eternalban »

Bean0_0 wrote: post #308
eternalban wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Lesson here (and I hope OP and teammates read this) in my opinion is precisely this: 1 Spec conflates "github" and "templates". 2 Students take spec to teacher (who ended up being the judge!) and inform them of the error. 3 Spec is changed OR restriction (however boneheaded -- remember, clients) remains in place. 4 Team knows exactly what is what. 5 No article on HN. The end.

We should have bought this to our TSA advisor, but the judge was a different teacher at our school. The problem we had was that we had to reach out to find out that we were disqualified and the appeal period was already passed. It would have been so simple to move to netlify hosting as can be seen in the github repo. It all stems from the fact that we misinterpreted the rules and had no ability to appeal in the short…

> It all stems from the fact that we misinterpreted the rules and had no ability to appeal in the short period allotted.

Those running this have dropped the ball at various places here, that's clear. I was thinking maybe a preliminary step can be added to the contest to sanity check review a project (and thus allow for addressing cases like yours.)

But regardless, I hope this has turned out to be a fairly generous silver lining for you and your team. The site looks great. Next step, get investors and get those tourist up in the air. /g

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

#312

Post by fiscalnonsense »

synunlimited wrote: post #19

As a former student that competed in both National and State TSA events from 2006 to 2012 (and won multiple trophies across events including the "webmaster" competition) I'm not really surprised by this outcome. That doesn't mean that its the right outcome but just a result of how these competitions are run. The judges are all volunteers that may or may not have a background in the actual event they are there to grad…

I had something similar with a TSA event in the late 90s. My buddy and I took second place in the nationals for Computer Construction. We asked "why didn't we get first place?" and the response was "because your inventory had serial numbers listed. No one does that."... which was jaw dropping, because both of us had receipts from recent purchases at computer shops were every serial was tracked. Near the end of the event we found out that the judge of the computer construction contest was a teacher at the same school as the winner. Our teacher did nothing to contest it as we had a flight to catch. -sigh-

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

#313

Post by yencabulator »

the_only_law wrote: post #176
LightHugger wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe if they did follow rules, I wouldn't have gotten a ticket for "failing to display a front license plate" on a vehicle that had a front license plate...

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

#314

Post by johnklos »

jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #289
johnklos wrote: post #243

It's extremely frustrating when people CHOOSE to not understand something. On the other hand, it's bad to assume that because "everyone uses it", it's OK. Having dealt with people who send code as HTML email with quotes replaced with "smart quotes", having been sent links to files / tarballs that don't actually link to those file / tarballs but to a web page instead, having been sent to sites that require knowing how…

The judges don't have to use Github. OP was disqualified because the judge noticed either the Github banner on the page or github in the url. > GitHub ... is extremely browser centric. This is a strange criticism if we're talking about a website competition.

I have no idea why you think the opposite, but it makes perfect sense that web-centric things be disallowed in a website competition. The contest is about content, not about tools.

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

#315

Post by skeaker »

lelanthran wrote: post #212
richbell wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's childish and immature, in a competition, to question the rules only after you have been caught breaking them. How is it childish and immature? They were clearly following the spirit of the competition. Furthermore there is no indication anywhere, unless I missed it, that they were cognizant of that specific rule prior to the competition. Perhaps they saw "no template generators" and didn't pay attention to the…

> Even if they specifically knew that GitHub was mentioned, they could have reasonably assumed that the rule specifically referred to its tenplating features and that they were fine. You cannot claim it's a reasonable interpretation when no other competitor, nor the person who wrote that rule, nor the person who adjudicated that rule ... thought that. Sure, to you and me, we know what the intent must have been , but…

I'm more than okay with a little unfairness if it means stupid garbage rules like that can be removed, even retroactively. If I had to suffer through emailing source code back and forth with my collaborators because version control was banned, I would be beyond caring. Taking a competition so seriously that you prioritize "unfairness" over such blatant stupidity is far more childish than anything in the article.

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

#316

Post by skeaker »

machinawhite wrote: post #182
bitwize wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As a young person my takeaway was the opposite and your post only inspired me to break some rules just to spite you :-)

Glad to see that the kids are alright

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

#317

Post by HowTheStoryEnds »

paulluuk wrote: post #103
Dalewyn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good that students learn this lesson now than later. Right now they get to learn these lessons with no skin off their backs. They're kids, most of the stuff they do is of no consequence one way or another. Once they enter the real world and the workforce, they get to learn these lessons with prices ranging from reprimands to terminations. Hardly a fun thing to go through.

People have been using this argument against me since I was a child: "this is good for you because the big bad world will crush you", but frankly I thought it was nonsense back then and I still do. The world is not filled with teacher-type people who will crush you for breaking rules. The world is filled with people who want to get things done, and know that the rules are only there to facilitate getting things done.…

Depends on the work bubble you're in, I've definitely seen places where following asinine rules tempted getting shit done because of the power of gave the enforcer and the disconnect they had themselves from the results of success.

Mostly.gov but some private places that are big enough without true oversight as well

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

#318

Post by HowTheStoryEnds »

anaganisk wrote: post #9
cratermoon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jekyll is a static site generator along the lines of hugo or next.js edit: it doesn't seem to use jekyll, though.

Yeah, Im aware of that, but why is it on the same rank of Weevly and WIX? It's not a template generator. Im talking about the list of banned things they can't use.

Probably because they googled 'list of html template creators ' and this was that which came out as a result on some random site they got presented as the first link.

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

#319

Post by mcv »

brk wrote: post #262
mcv wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. The rule and enforcement of the rule are entirely stupid, but the rule does explicitly mention Github, and that does make this disqualification strictly according to the letter of the law, despite the fact that it makes no sense whatsoever. It's busibody bureaucrats exerting power over something they don't understand.

I disagree. It bans templating engines and gives some examples of sites but I do not believe those are 100% inclusive examples. Microsoft also has some web template code. Should that disqualify all use of any Microsoft product?

"Microsoft" is not listed as banned, "Github" is. Like I said, it's stupid, it's unreasonable, it's unfair, it makes no sense, but Github is listed as banned. Clearly by someone who doesn't understand it, and the judge who didn't understand it either just blindly disqualified them for explicitly using Github.

I'm not saying any of this is good; it obviously isn't. But the stupid ruling is entirely justifiable by the letter of the stupid rules. Github was explicitly listed as banned. Stupid, but that's the way it is.

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

#320

Post by mopsi »

johnklos wrote: post #243

It's extremely frustrating when people CHOOSE to not understand something. On the other hand, it's bad to assume that because "everyone uses it", it's OK. Having dealt with people who send code as HTML email with quotes replaced with "smart quotes", having been sent links to files / tarballs that don't actually link to those file / tarballs but to a web page instead, having been sent to sites that require knowing how…

> It's extremely frustrating when people CHOOSE to not understand something.

Indeed. From context it's obvious that site generators were banned, so that participants would have to actually code a solution and not just install Wordpress with a handful of plugins. Too bad retards who can't tell the difference between Wordpress and Github somehow ended up mentoring kids.

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