[aurbano]

We should foster a world full of people who use their brains to interpret rules.

If we're going to blindly do something because "it's the exact rule written here" then we might as well replace all decision makers with an AI that never interprets anything.

Their teacher was wrong for not interpreting the rules correctly - everyone's aware of that. On top of that the people writing those rules were wrong as well for either assuming that teachers would interpret them correctly, or not being more explicit when writing them.

It's a competition that includes writing code as a team: one of the main things you'd want them to do is to use git and thus a website like Github.

[lelanthran]

> We should foster a world full of people who use their brains to interpret rules.

It's a competition. Competitions have rules, some of which are simply artificial barriers because of "competition". You can work to change the rules before agreeing to them.

If you disagree that a rule makes sense, provide your disagreement before entering.

Waiting until after you have found to have broken the rules you agreed to, to whine is simply unsporting and childish.

If the rule-breaker is not disqualified, it's unfair to the other participants who worked under those onerous rules to compete only to find out that one participant did less work by breaking a rule.

[brookst]

It’s not that easy. The problem with letting enforcers use judgment is it leads to selective enforcement, where the criteria becomes “who broke the rules” as much as “were rules broken.”

It opens the door to all sorts of bad outcomes. For instance, being a good debater/lawyer becomes at least as important as being a good coder.

I’m not saying judgment has no place, just that it’s not a panacea. It has its own unfairness.

[Dalewyn]

>or not being more explicit when writing them.

You really can't get anymore explicit than "sites that generate HTML from text ... such as ... GitHub ... are NOT permitted."

They even emphasized the "NOT" in "NOT permitted" to try and drive the point home for the particularly dense: You are not allowed to use Github, and all the others, period.

Is excluding Github okay? If you ask me, that question is irrelevant. The contest is about making a website by hand, nothing more and nothing less. This is an artificial environment and situation, and you either accept the rules and play by them or don't accept them and go elsewhere.

Incidentally, if you really, really want to use Github in spite of the rules forbidding you: You can just as easily do all your work on Github, even get Github to generate the HTML for you, then take all the results and upload it onto some web hosting server and just not mention you used Github anywhere.

Nobody would be the wiser and you successfully broke the rules you found so objectional (read: cheated, but nobody will know).

[richbell]

> You really can't get anymore explicit than "sites that generate HTML from text ... such as ... GitHub ... are NOT permitted."

> Is excluding Github okay? If you ask me, that question is irrelevant. The contest is about making a website by hand, nothing more and nothing less. This is an artificial environment and situation, and you either accept the rules and play by them or don't accept them and go elsewhere.

It's not irrelevant: it's the crux of the issue. The rule was clearly written by someone that lacks in-depth technical skills and is nonsensical. Ask yourself: would they have been disqualified if they used GitLab?

Saying "oh well that's the rules" is an awful attitude and does not prepare people for the "real world". The real world is full of people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing and like to swing around their authority. If you aren't able or willing to correct demands from people who are blatantly incompetent in a low stakes high-school competition, you're not going to have a valuable or fulfilling career.

[lelanthran]

> It's not irrelevant: it's the crux of the issue. The rule was clearly written by someone that lacks in-depth technical skills and is nonsensical.

That's irrelevant - all the other competitors had to labour under the burden of the rules, allowing one of the competitors to violate the rules gives that competitor an unfair advantage.

If you want to remove a rule that is nonsensical, you do it before you compete, you don't try to get it removed after you have gotten an unfair advantage by breaking it, because they it is too late for the other competitors to get the same advantage.

[ironchest]

it is kind of irrelevant, because we don't know anything about the process that led to GitHub being included on the list. Could be lack of technical knowledge as you pointed out, but could as easily be an admin problem, or any other operational problems with clearing submissions, or something else.

[richbell]

> it is kind of irrelevant, because we don't know anything about the process that led to GitHub being included on the list.

The inclusion of GitHub, as written, is clearly either a mistake or the product of ignorance.

The students revealed that they spoke to the person who'd judged their submission, and that the judge doubled-double that they thought GitHub was a solely a temptation engine.

> 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...

[Dalewyn]

The inclusion of Github is not a mistake, because Github[1] cites Jekyll[2] (another named example) as a feature and provides features (web hosting and design tools) similar to another example named: Webs[3].

Would it be more prudent to list "Github Pages" as the named example instead of Github? Possibly, being more specific is never a bad thing. However, the organizers deemed it appropriate to just prohibit all of Github for one reason or another, perhaps for sake of brevity since they only have so much time to judge all the entries.

Whatever the reasoning, the question is ultimately irrelevant. This is a contest, with rules to simulate an artificial environment under which the contestants agree to compete. If the organizers say "no Github", then no Github it shall be; if you don't like it you don't have to enter and compete.

[1]: https://pages.github.com/

[2]: https://youtu.be/2MsN8gpT6jY

[3]: https://www.webs.com/

[richbell]

> The inclusion of Github is not a mistake, because Github[1] cites Jekyll[2] (another named example) as a feature and provides features (web hosting and design tools) similar to another example named: Webs[3].

> Would it be more prudent to list "Github Pages" as the named example instead of Github?

It is a mistake because GitHub is first and foremost a platform for hosting code and collaborating. Jekyll is an optional feature in a tiny portion of GitHub's product catalog. Even if they specifically said "GitHub Pages" (which they didn't, so your argument is moot), that would still ignore the fact that Pages <> template generation. The page you link even references that you can use a generator but do not have to:

) Ready to get started? Build your own site from scratch or generate one for your project.

So better written rules would say "template generators like Wix or GitHub Pages using Jekyll are NOT permitted" Do you acknowledge how significantly that changes the interpretation of the rules and how poorly written they are in their current form?

‐--------

Edit: not to mention that the rule is explicitly in the context of template generation. Nowhere do they say "no GitHub (the VCS platform)" as you keep falsely claiming, the rules say "no GitHub (the temptation site)" which is a very different thing.

) 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.

[Dalewyn]

>Ask yourself: would they have been disqualified if they used GitLab?

Does Gitlab generate HTML from text files of some description like Github (eg: README.md -> HTML-formatted presentation)?

If so, yes. If not, no.

Github is only named as one of many potential examples of "Template engine websites, tools, and sites that generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files". Ergo, anything that automagically generates HTML is "NOT permitted".

>If you aren't able or willing to correct demands from people who are blatantly incompetent in a low stakes high-school competition, you're not going to have a valuable or fulfilling career.

Two problems:

1. Kids are still learning. By definition they have no idea nor standing to judge what is competent and what isn't; they flat out /don't know yet/. You need real world experience under your belt if you want to go around declaring rights and wrongs.

2. The students completely missed their mark in how to bring about their objections. They should have read the rules beforehand and brought up questions and objections with the staff before the contest began. You don't complain about this long after the fact, and going off on tangents only worsens your standing.