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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

#661

Post by m463 »

GrantMoyer wrote: post #88
jdkaim wrote: post #7

Update: I immediately took down my class project site after receiving yesterday’s ultimatum. I still don’t think the simple demo site violated the letter or spirit of the registration rules, but I took it down because I always want to operate in good faith. They followed up today to thank me for doing it, but also indicated that they were putting a hold on my account anyway. As a result, I am not going to be able to…

> I am not planning to get a lawyer involved as I have faith that UW leadership will make it right in the end. All evidence so far indicates they will not make it right, but instead they may make it even worse. Your faith is wildly misplaced. Seriously, talk to a lawyer. Keep in mind, just because you seek advice from a lawyer doesn't mean you need to take legal action against the school. Talking to a lawyer is not a…

Just another case of a business gradually feeling little respect for their customers.

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

#662

Post by grues-dinner »

zonkerdonker wrote: post #27
jdkaim wrote: post #7

Update: I immediately took down my class project site after receiving yesterday’s ultimatum. I still don’t think the simple demo site violated the letter or spirit of the registration rules, but I took it down because I always want to operate in good faith. They followed up today to thank me for doing it, but also indicated that they were putting a hold on my account anyway. As a result, I am not going to be able to…

If you had managed to build this system during my time at UW, I know for a fact that I and dozens of other students would have happily paid hundreds of dollars to use your project. The class and reservation system there was (and presumably is?) incredibly broken. I remember literally the only way to get a spot reserved in some /mandatory/ courses was to find an upper classman with prioritized registration dates and a…

That system sounds so incredibly broken and exploitative. I'm sure it's a complete accident that the upshot is that some number of students have to spend tens of thousands extending their studies.

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

#663

Post by croemer »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #565
dekhn wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, let me give some perspective here. There's somebody in the registrar's office whose job is to be responsible for the production process of registration. They are minimally staffed and given just enough resources to run that process. Likely at some point their leadership told them they had to make an API so that they could integrate with other systems. Due to poor funding and lack of skills, just doing that is a…

> They lack knowledge and context about how to build production systems that handle the load during the registration crush and also don't cause undue load on the backend API servers. That sounds like a cop-out. Sure, students may not know about all this, but they're also not building Google . Many people run businesses without caring about such things just fine. Most things don't require six nines of reliability and…

I got their code to run and it's not good. It's unusable as is and could be created from scratch in a better way in a day. It lacks all integrations with the University API, that part was never written.

The existing matching of swap requests is poorly done and requires much further work.

There's nothing of value here that OP had to scuttle.

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

#664

Post by croemer »

ANewFormation wrote: post #527
dzdt wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lawyer is NOT the right next step. As soon as you engage a lawyer the school will switch from treating this as a student policy matter (which will be resolved in a timeline of days) to a legal matter (which will only be resolved in a timeline of years). The timeline question is of no concern to the courts or the school but makes a huge difference to you. It does seem like you need someone on your side. A list of pe…

Having been on both sides of the fence here, this is highly contrary to my experience. Large institutions are more than happy, in many cases, to bully anybody when it benefits them. But as soon as possible legal/media issues emerge they're going to suddenly be your best friend looking to make things right as quickly and cleanly as possible. The ombudsman is definitely not a bad idea, but in most cases the mere hint o…

Hard disagree. It doesn't harm to try to solve it with the help of a trusted intermediary. One doesn't lose anything but a bit of time. Instead it shows good faith. You can always escalate to the lawyer afterwards.

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

#665

Post by croemer »

caseysoftware wrote: post #469
GrantMoyer wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not planning to get a lawyer involved as I have faith that UW leadership will make it right in the end. All evidence so far indicates they will not make it right, but instead they may make it even worse. Your faith is wildly misplaced. Seriously, talk to a lawyer. Keep in mind, just because you seek advice from a lawyer doesn't mean you need to take legal action against the school. Talking to a lawyer is not a…

^ This. You need a trusted advisor on your side who can look at it with a calm mind and perspective on what is normal, acceptable, and legal. You're young and have been slapped around, seemingly inappropriately. If you were in physical pain, you'd talk to a doctor to assess and get recommendations before treatment. Do the same here.

Trusted advisor doesn't need to be lawyer. Can be trusted professor.

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

#666

Post by encoderer »

digging wrote: post #627
encoderer wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re being downvoted for poor critical thinking in this case, which led you to write a comment that doesn’t add to the conversation. Of course the father is “heavily invested” in his son. That comes from decades of raising him, diapers, dinners, driving and him around, and probably also sharing 50% of his genes.

It's absolutely a mistake and a lack of critical thinking to believe that any given father would go out of his way and put his own reputation at risk for his son. Some would. I don't know if it's even a majority. But plenty of fathers would not, even if they're present in their son's life. Edited for clarity.

Not in western culture.

Sure, there are no absolutes, but as a rule you can count on parents being partial to their children. It’s definitely a majority — not even close.

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

#667

Post by girvo »

mmooss wrote: post #643
phibz wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their response on face value doesn't make sense. But if I had to guess, you inadvertently made someone in the registrar's office look bad. They probably had to answer to "why didn't you think of this?" If that is the case then it makes a lot more sense and is retaliatory behavior. You can't undo their insecurity and loss of face. Therefore you should not expect a reasonable response. Act accordingly. Educate yourself…

> And if you have to walk away it won't hurt you too much in the long term. After about 5 years in industry nearly all companies stop caring about credentials. That is very wrong, in my experience. Many jobs require college degrees; much status in life requires college degrees. I know people who are smart, successful, and eternally embarrassed when that comes up. Also, you did the work, you deserve the degree - a col…

> That is very wrong, in my experience

It's right in my experience, but I'm also aware that its 2025, not 2007 when I got away with this.

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

#668

Post by dekhn »

mrmanner wrote: post #617
dekhn wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but as we know, the best way to make a project that is late/slow/unreliable even later, slower, and more unreliable is to add inexperienced devs to the project. Which is (from the perspective of the university) what they are trying to avoid.

well except they allegedly asked said allegedly inexperienced developer to develop the thing for them, for free

Yes, I think this post has established that whomever created the response to the original ToS violation (rather, just a plan to violate the ToS) wasn't being very thoughtful (assuming everything is being described correctly). I would assume that at this point, the discussion has been moved above the original employee who responded and is being dealt with at the dean level (with the goal to be avoiding UW appearing in a bad light in the press).

I've seen hundreds of "administration outrage" articles and I guess I've kind of learned that the backstory is usually more complicated, nuanced, and reasonable than the original poster implied. But the internet mobs proceed anyway.

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

#669

Post by dekhn »

tiahura wrote: post #425
nothrabannosir wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not planning to get a lawyer involved as I have faith that UW leadership will make it right in the end. An officious word for lawyer is counsel , because that’s what they’re for: they offer legal counsel. You don’t technically “talk” to a lawyer , instead you ask them questions. They answer. That’s why client-attorney privilege exists at all: so you can feel free to seek counsel, ie ask questions , without fea…

As a lawyer, your post is almost entirely incorrect. Privilege in no way depends on whether the communication involves questions. It cracks me up. As a lawyer, I would never post on HN to argue about pointer arithmetic or inference optimization, yet the law seems to be fair game for amateur hour.

I'm a software engineer who has had to explain the law (HIPAA) to lawyers before. It's probably best to assume that in a population there are people who are both an expert/professional of X, who can say intelligent things about Y.

I want to elaborate on what the GP said. The best way to use a lawyer in most circumstances is to ask them questions about actions you can take through the legal system and listen to their answers, treating them as a counsellor.

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