Atoning for my Sins as a Test Hoarder

[whythelongface]

your welcome

you're*

sorry couldn't resist

That's thirty seconds of my life I'll never get back again, thanks to your drivel.

East's point, and the point of literally everybody opposed to this thread, was that although everyone supports the public release of tests, it would be nice to not have tournaments upset at our site as a whole for facilitating the exchange and release of tests, if their policies forbid it. Take it somewhere else.

You think words are cheap? When you have to write a test, as so many college students serving as Event Supervisors do, words suddenly don't seem so cheap anymore. Here's an idea to you, WhatScience?, and Random Human: why don't you get off your high horse, and gain the perspective needed to understand that it's not about you versus me, it's not about hypocrisy and not supporting the release of tests, it's about the consequences? You don't think about these things, do you? You don't consider the aftermath of your actions? To you, it's just fun and games, but I assure you that East and the other admin of this site that work day and night to ensure that the site remains up and running, are developing migraines trying to explain and cover for the potential consequences of the irresponsible actions of people in this thread.

Random, I implore you to get some common sense and realize that nobody wants tests to remain private. If you can't understand the justifications for people asking for caution before posting full sets, that's your problem, not East's. It's your kind of selfishness that makes invitationals such as MIT and GGSO watermark their tests.

EDIT: In addition, tests are created by people, and are administered by people, some of which would very much appreciate being asked before their intellectual property is bartered away by a few test-hoarding middle schoolers.

[Random Human]

your welcome

you're*

sorry couldn't resist

That's thirty seconds of my life I'll never get back again, thanks to your drivel.

East's point, and the point of literally everybody opposed to this thread, was that although everyone supports the public release of tests, it would be nice to not have tournaments upset at our site as a whole for facilitating the exchange and release of tests, if their policies forbid it. Take it somewhere else.

You think words are cheap? When you have to write a test, as so many college students serving as Event Supervisors do, words suddenly don't seem so cheap anymore. Here's an idea to you, WhatScience?, and Random Human: why don't you get off your high horse, and gain the perspective needed to understand that it's not about you versus me, it's not about hypocrisy and not supporting the release of tests, it's about the consequences? You don't think about these things, do you? You don't consider the aftermath of your actions? To you, it's just fun and games, but I assure you that East and the other admin of this site that work day and night to ensure that the site remains up and running, are developing migraines trying to explain and cover for the potential consequences of the irresponsible actions of people in this thread.

Random, I implore you to get some common sense and realize that nobody wants tests to remain private. If you can't understand the justifications for people asking for caution before posting full sets, that's your problem, not East's. It's your kind of selfishness that makes invitationals such as MIT and GGSO watermark their tests.

EDIT: In addition, tests are created by people, and are administered by people, some of which would very much appreciate being asked before their intellectual property is bartered away by a few test-hoarding middle schoolers.

i read that in ten seconds

if peeple want to keep tests private, watermark ples. if not its up to trade. so ya.... y not trade litterally all invites. exept watermarked cuz tourney directors dont give

[whythelongface]

if peeple want to keep tests private, watermark ples. if not its up to trade. so ya.... y not trade litterally all invites. exept watermarked cuz tourney directors dont give

That's quite honestly the most mind-numbingly dumb sentiment I've stumbled across today. You seem to feed straight into the "unthinking, irresponsible" category I was describing.

The reason so many tournament heads are now deciding to watermark their tests is because people insist on releasing them without their permission. Imagine a day when all of the major invites watermark their tests. Such a world is possible, if you continue to irresponsibly post full sets without their permission.

Do you not like, perhaps, think about the consequences of any of your actions? How difficult is it to understand that maybe you're contributing to the problem?

[Tesel]

I’ve written tests for 9 competitions (Whiting 2016, Northridge 2017, Wright State 2017, Purdue WL Regionals 2017 and 2018, MIT 2018, Princeton 2018, UMich 2018, and upcoming in a little over a week, Indiana’s State Tournament 2018) in my two years thus far as a Div D volunteer. Although I also support public release of tests, I cannot exactly publicly release all of the ones I’ve written myself unless those respective competitions themselves have chosen to allow their tests to be publicly released during the season following their tournaments. If the tournament officials don’t want their tests leaking out before they officially release them, then I abide by their rules, and they release my test when they decide to release their set. Or, in the case of the Regional and State tests I’ve written, I cannot publicly release them at all (granted, without tournament director permission) since Indiana’s policy is no return back to teams and no public release of Regional and State tests.

Long story short, speaking as a test writer, although it’d be nice to publicly post my tests so that people can have that as a useful study tool, from an ethical standpoint, I still have to abide by the policies of the tournaments I write for, and if those tournaments don’t want the tests being released at the time, then I don’t defy that.

Yeah, that's not what I'm trying to say, I was more talking about resources like SSSS and Captain's Tryouts where tests are completely public.

[foreverphysics]

This thread directly goes against copyright rules and tournament policies.
In addition, the argument has been going around in circles and every salient point has already been made.
While we understand that this is a topic that's important to a lot of people, and while we respect your right to have a civilized conversation, this thread has descended into trolling and insults and no new value is being added by keeping it open.

Please have a civilized conversation elsewhere or, if you'd like to pursue policy changes, convince officials and higher-ups to change their tournament policies.

This thread will now be locked and all linked tests in the thread will be removed.

Any further violation of these policies will result in a warning and, for repeated offences, a ban.

Thank you,
foreverphysics

EDIT: If any of those tests actually were allowed to be publicly shared by tournament policy, please either post them to the test exchange or message a WikiMod or me so we can put them up.

[EastStroudsburg13]

I know this is locked, but I'm going to use my admin privileges to bring up one point. Staff concerns about tournaments getting upset with us are not unfounded. Back when the Test Exchange was starting, we didn't have these concerns and just thought, yeah, if you have tests put them up! But eventually some tournaments found their tests on there (because we do get a lot of traffic from guests), and they said, 'whoa, we never gave you permission to use these. This is our property.' or something to that effect. This happened enough times that there was a possibility we would have to take down the exchange completely. Luckily, we were able to sort it out so that for the most part, only tests that had permission were getting uploaded.

We would love to be able to post as many tests as possible. But believe it or not, some of us have many years of experience and our concerns are borne out of that, and not pulled from thin air. It's something we take seriously.