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Someone who doesn’t know the difference between hosting a git repo and generating a static site with GitHub is unqualified to judge this project. The real lesson for these students is that there are people in this field who don’t really know what they are doing.
How? The competitors who adhere to the rules are necessarily disadvantaged compared to the rule-breakers.
How do you now fairly judge a competition when you change the rules after the game has ended? There is no other way to resolve a breaking of a rule other than by disqualification, because if you remove that rule after the game has ended then all the other competitors have worked harder (because they avoided breaking that rule) and will be judged next to the rule-breaker who worked less.
You're looking at it from the PoV of the rule-breakers, and saying "This is clearly a stupid rule". Look at it from the PoV of those competitors who had to do without github - they are saying "well, it's unfair that those people can win when we had to work harder because we did not use github".
And to be even more clear: the stupidity is in complaining about a rule after the game has ended.
Nowhere is this acceptable behaviour - you can complain about the rules before starting the game, you can try to get it changed, you can boycott the game, you can spread awareness ... but when you complain only when you were caught out, then that disqualification is soundly deserved.
You're right, it isn't fair if students were denied the use of industry-standard tools because of the technical incompetence of the competitions administrators falsely believing GitHub is a website generator. Sure, the students are obviously miffed that they were disqualified, but they were obviously following the spirit of the competition.
I hope this rule is amended and further clarified so that it's fair in the future. As it stands, it's very clear that the rule was written by someone who doesn't know what GitHub is and not by someone who doesn't want version control to be used.
) We were finally able to talk to our school's CTE(Career and Technology) director and explain our situation. I told her about our website and how we were accused of cheating, even though we provided a public GitHub repo containing the history of the project. She then revealed that she had actually judged our project and explained that it was disqualified for using "GitHub, the templating engine"(Yes, she called GitHub a templating engine). She then pointed me to this rule: ...
https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/119j8o4/part_2_disq...
I would understand this point if they were leveraging Actions or something, but that isn’t mentioned so I’ll assume that is not the case. Their usage of GitHub does not appear to have been anything more than a convenient repository host.
If there was no advantage, then the students looked at the rules and said "Yup, those don't apply to us" and proceeded to break them?
It's a competition!
ALL the rules in competition are more or less artificial; that doesn't mean that competitors should expect to break them with no penalty.
> I would understand this point if they were leveraging Actions or something, but that isn’t mentioned so I’ll assume that is not the case. Their usage of GitHub does not appear to have been anything more than a convenient repository host.
If it gave them no advantage then they shouldn't have risked their entry being disqualified by using github.
It was a pointless risk for no gain, from the way you say it.
That's being ignorant of the rules, and being arrogant when you are told to abide them next time.
I actually learned the opposite of what you're preaching in school. I struggled to shorten a report to meet requirements. A friend of mine was 10 pages over the limit and went on to win a laptop with his report.
Some rules are more akin to guidelines, turns out. It's not unreasonable to interpret this instances' rule as "no templates" rather than "no GitHub".
Followed by an inexhaustive list of examples: "such as Webs, Wix, Weebly, GitHub, Jekyll, and Replit ... "
Finally closing off with a strongly emphasized: " ... are NOT permitted."
No matter the interpretation, you're not supposed to use something that can automagically generate HTML, which Github absolutely is one such example. Whether you "only" use Github as a file repository is irrelevant, you are not allowed to use Github, nor all the others, nor examples not named.
For what it's worth, I will point out that Rule G (permits use of "state-of-the-art web-based applications") and Rule H (permits selective use of Wordpress, Joomla, et al.) are in conflict with Rule I (this rule) because such tools and underlying tools like PHP and JavaScript are "tools that generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files". If rules should be reconsidered, they are Rules G and H.
I doubt the original intent of the rule was to disallow GitHub as a collaboration tool since it's the largest coding collaboration tool out there. It's even its primary use case .
Interpreting the rule as what it meant to be seems appropriate to me. The world isn't as rigid as you paint it to be.
If you were to really code a website without tools capable of generating html from text you'd find yourself coding with pen and paper.
Did you actually read the rules?
"Template engine websites, tools, and sites that generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files, such as Webs, Wix, Weebly, GitHub, Jekyll, and Replit, are NOT permitted."
That rule is NOT clear; it implies that Github is forbidden specifically as a "site that generates HTML". There's no reason to interpret it as meaning that you can't even link to a service that happens to provide templating and HTML generation, and which you are actually using only as a SCCS.
I would certainly interpret that rule as meaning that you can't use template engines or HTML generators. Which they didn't. I would not interpret it as meaning that you can't use anything provided by a service that ALSO supports templating and code generation. The teacher was a dick.
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 rules but rebuff fair judgments as stupid, that's also arrogance. If you argue pedantics to try and find loopholes, you're an asshole.
It boggles the mind why "no Github" is such a controversial point.
> 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 it was a criminal website.
Well if the school specifically forbid Hackernews, and mentioned it by name in the list of forbidden sites ....
It's childish and immature, in a competition, to question the rules only after you have been caught breaking them.
I never said rules should not be questioned, I said that you should question them before agreeing to them, not after you have been caught.
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 examples. 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 you cannot change the rules after the competition has ended because that is unfair to all the other competitors who abided by the rules.
You're just throwing around blind speculation. The students didn't even know they were disqualified until they reached out to the regional coordinator, how would you (an uninvolved third party) know if anyone else was disqualified or the thoughts of any of the staff?
Edit: we also don't know what the person who wrote the rule meant because the students were only allowed to talk to the person who graded their submission and made the mistake in the first place. It's possible the person who wrote the rules meant "template generation features on GitHub" but just wrote it poorly. The rule in question is within the context of template generation, not VCS or anything else.
) H. Framework systems, such as Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, Bootstrap, or other current technologies may be used; however, pre-built templates and themes for these sites are not permissible. If a framework system is used, a statement affirming that the template or theme used on the framework was built by the team must be posted on an “About” section or page.
) I. Template engine websites, tools, and sites that generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files, such as Webs, Wix, Weebly, GitHub, Jekyll, and Replit, are NOT permitted.
The rule gives a list of examples that are not allowed because they generate HTML.
It seems clear to me that you shouldn’t use these tools for HTML generation.
This is the spirit of the rule, if not the letter.
No reasonable person would interpret this to mean that you cannot use Github to host your source, because it has no bearing on the competition whatsoever.
You're going to need to cite a source for that one, skipper.
On the (what appears at this point to be the not unreasonable) chance that you just made that up, and on the topic of what not to do: false quotes on HN.
> 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 developer.
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, which the site guidelines ask you not to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
(From one of my earlier links.)
See? That's how quotes work. Someone actually said those things.
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.
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.
Please do not use quotes for things that are not quotes.
Please do not engage in name-calling.
To call out someone's behaviour is not name-calling as defined in the HN Guidelines[1]. Did I call the author an idiot or a moron or anything to that effect? No, I called out his behaviour as ignorant and arrogant, and called him a kid because he is a high school student which I presume to be less than 21 years old.
On that note, the HN Guidelines state: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."[1]
As such, please interpret "Template engine websites, tools, and sites that generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files, such as Webs, Wix, Weebly, GitHub, Jekyll, and Replit, are NOT permitted." in the strongest way possible: That using Github and other examples named and not named are not permitted.
No, but they do appear in the two links I gave—which describe the sort of behavior that HNers are expected to observe, regardless of whether it's written in a mod comment or on a mod-controlled page titled "Hacker News Guidelines".
If you think that's an inappropriate standard, then bring it up before just going ahead and doing it anyway, or leave for greener pastures. You succeed by being knowledgeable, considerate, cooperative, and also knowing where to draw your line in the sand—versus digging in (to defend the use of made up quotes and name-calling).
PS: They're not unstated. I just linked to them; they can be read, ergo, they are stated.
Very ironic that the organizers lacked all 3.
You owe me a new keyboard son.