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Question For Moderators

 
Greenhorn
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Is there any stated law that, exam questions should not be
discussed on internet ? Or is it just one of your ethical
and moral rules ?
 
Ranch Hand
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Hi Shalini
Perhaps they don't want everything on their site.Others too must be given an opportunity.
What you think? :-)
anjan
anjan@anjan.org
[This message has been edited by anjan bhushan (edited December 28, 2000).]
 
Ranch Hand
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Shalini,
When you take the exam you agree not to reveal the questions. If you click 'don't agree' your session ends and you cannot complete the exam without contacting Sun and getting a new voucher.
Sun has made this a legal requirement of certification. In large part it is done for everyone's protection; if the questions were widely available on the net what value would the certification have? Next to none!
Numerous people have put alot of time and effort into studying and learning the language; why let other's acquire credit for the same skills when all they needed to do was memorize some answers?
It's fine to discuss the objectives and pose various questions but bottom line ... if we find you or anyone else posting real exam questions; we'll delete them.
------------------
Jane
The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity.
-- Dorothy Parker
[This message has been edited by Jane Griscti (edited December 29, 2000).]
 
Shalini Gopalan
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If the value of a certification depends on the test takers not
revealing the questions, then i do not know what to say.
Another thing, how do you know the posted questions are from
the real exam or not (Unless the posters tell you that ) ?
 
Shalini Gopalan
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Hi Anjan,
I think they are just scared of legal problems with Sun.
Otherwise, which site wouldn't want getting more hits ?

[This message has been edited by Shalini Gopalan (edited December 29, 2000).]
 
Ranch Hand
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Developing exam questions must be very difficult. I don't know what the actual process that Sun (or anyone else) uses to put together the questions for a standardized exam that will be taken by so many people, but I imagine the questions must go through a lot of studies to make sure they are fair, un-ambiguous, and that the difficulty level is acceptable. Thus the supply of questions is not infinite, and it is unfortunately important to keep the actual questions out of the public domain; otherwise the tests may no longer reflect the level of Java knowledge they are supposed to: A significant number of people would, for the purposes of getting jobs in the industry, memorize the answers to questions instead of mastering the material. Eventually the tests would lose credibility in the industry and the certification would not have any value. It's analogous to cutting a short-cut against a nice well-tended lawn. If one person does it, there is no harm done. If many people do it all day long, it will ruin the lawn. So stop trying to take short cuts people! The exam is quite fair; it's not designed to trick you or confuse you. If you develop a decent knowledge of Java fundamentals, and use some of the books out there designed to help you with certification, there is no question in my mind that you will pass, and this will be better both for you and for everyone else concerned.
Good luck,
Vlad
 
Desperado
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Shalini:
You posted:
"If the value of a certification depends on the test takers not revealing the questions, then i do not know what to say."

Then you can say this: The value of certification depends on how much you know about Java and not in how much cheating there was by people just posting the questions on the Net (which is illegal) so that everybody knew them BEFOREHAND.
That's the way it works. Again: Do you see ANY flaw in that?
If you do, write to Sun Microsystems.
 
Tony Alicea
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"...I think they are just scared of legal problems with Sun. Otherwise, which site wouldn't want getting more hits?"


I can't believe what I'm reading!!!
XXX pornographic sites are an example of the type of site that would like to get as many hits, no matter what.


JavaRanch.com is not one of them and I resent the implicit comparison. We are much better than that and we look out for the integrity of what Certification means for the following reason, among others: We SCPJ2's don't want our Certification value to be diminished by idiots and/or slackers who don't have the talent or don't want to spend the time studying like the rest of us did (I got a score of 98% and it helped me A LOT).


If this type of attitude is what's populating this forum these days, then I'm glad I'm no longer a moderator here (I was the original moderator together with Jim.Y.)


Obviously I'm upset that this nonsense was posted but I won't delete it as an example to others.
 
Ranch Hand
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And to answer your question as to how we know if a question is from the real exam or not. Well a lot of the moderators have taken the exam ... the others will be taking it soon so we will know. Also there are a lot of very good people out there who have taken the exam who understand how important it is that real exam questions aren't posted, and they e-mail us and let us know so we can get rid of real questions very quickly!
Certification shouldn't be underestimated. It should be considered on a par with any exam you would take at school or university ... and I'm sure you would never agree to real questions from those exams being posted on the Internet. Anyway I don't know about you but I would never feel any pride in passing an exam that I had not worked hard for. Cheaters never prosper!
 
Sheriff
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Is there any stated law that, exam questions should not be discussed on internet?
YES International Copyright laws. While it isn't illegal to write about the general content, to write the exact question and allow it to be published on a website is illegal as well as unethical. Any webpage even a forum discussion is a form of publication so...
 
Ranch Hand
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NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) when you take the tst, you must agree to this. It simply means, that you cannot reval the questions on the exam.
 
Greenhorn
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Hey Shalini,
don't u realise that laws apart, there wouldn't much fun in preparing for something that, I quote "idiots and/or slackers who don't have the talent or don't want to spend the time studying" if questions were available for all to download.
 
Ranch Hand
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If somebody does not care ethics at all, no matter what you say, it is just not going to work to him/her from my many experiences. :-(
Unless he/she wants to change...
Sorry to say this at the New Year�s Eve, actually, new century's eve.
Roseanne
[This message has been edited by Roseanne Zhang (edited December 31, 2000).]
 
Angela Poynton
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I'm sorry but I'm totally with Tony on this one. I had hoped that the people in this forum would have enough integrity to not even question why we don't allow CURRENT exam questions to be posted.
Past Exam questions are a different issue ... but I don't believe that is what was origionally being refered to. We now allow questions from the actual exam before the change in Sept 2000, but for obvious reasons which have been emphasised in this discussion we cannot allow questions from the current exam.
 
Enthuware Software Support
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I don't think the original post was an object for so much anger and I think there is abolutely no integrity issue with asking such a question.
I agree that posting a real exam question is not good but to ask the reason for not allowing to post such question is not a crime!! Couldn't it be ignorance?
There is a simple answer that it is illegal and it gives unfair advantage to new candidates. That's it.
Why do people have to get angry and question the integrity of the person asking a simple question???
-Paul.
------------------
Get Certified, Guaranteed!
(Now Revised for the new Pattern)
www.enthuware.com/jqplus
 
Sheriff
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Paul,
I agree with you, but I think we didnot overreact. Eventhough the "ignorance" was quite evident in the initial question posted by the author, it suddenly assumed a tone of apprehension and confrontation. I was particularly disturbed to read comments such as

"
I think they are just scared of legal problems with Sun.
Otherwise, which site wouldn't want getting more hits ?
"
These comments were totally inappropriate and immature, especially when they were expressed after reading our explanation about why we don't encourage sharing real questions.
We think we are doing a good job here, and anytime there is a questionable guesture from one of the participants, we just jump in and clarify to avoid further damage. That's exactly what happened.
Ajith
[This message has been edited by Ajith Kallambella (edited January 02, 2001).]
 
Paul Anilprem
Enthuware Software Support
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I guess, you are right
Probably putting the reason besides the message that is shown ("...do not post questions from actual exam...") would help.
You are doing a great job. No question about that.
-Paul.
------------------
Get Certified, Guaranteed!
(Now Revised for the new Pattern)
www.enthuware.com/jqplus

[This message has been edited by Paul Anil (edited January 02, 2001).]
 
Shalini Gopalan
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Thanks for taking me so seriously. I am grateful.
I could still argue from my viewpoint. But I do not want to
waste any one's time here.
Probably, i can just use a one-liner here.
"Sincerity is such an easy thing to fake".
By the way, Happy New Year.
Shalini Gopalan.
 
Greenhorn
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Shalini, what viewpoint ??? argue with Sun if you have to,
but there is a law in place, and we follow the law, there is nothing to fake here.
Ironically, I have my own complaints against this site itself,
it allows people to ask qstns from other members, and then there
were couple of messages that gave away the qstns though indirectly,
I sent a mail to Sun, if that kind of posting was legal, and they said it was not, and they asked for the website's name,
...... I had been intending to fwd the mail to Paul Wheaton but
keep forgetting.
You remove people's id if they do not have proper name format,
should you not at least be just as strict on this, only in the
recent times I see some warnings,
I still like this site, it is the actions of a few people that
brings discredit to it, and I think that is where all the sheriffs and moderators come into picture,
 
Ajith Kallambella
Sheriff
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Srinivas,
Thank you for your encouraging comments. Discussing actual questions is never considered legal and one can get into serious trouble if one is caught doing so.
You may want to read the warning messages Marcus Green( yes, the famous Marcus ) has posted on his site -
http://www.jchq.net/discus/legal.htm
http://www.jchq.net/discus/caution.htm
JavaRanch also shares the same opinion as Marcus and violators will be dealt with seriously. Afterall, nobody wants great sites like JavaRanch or JCHQ.net to get shutdown because of legal problems.
As for your question about warning people about consequences of asking real questions, be assured we do it diligently. We usually send out personal emails to the authors and that might be the reason why you don't see such warning messages here in the forum.
Thanks again,
Ajith
 
Ranch Hand
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Some types of certification exams have the exam on specified dates and then change the questions for each exam. In those exams it is usually legal and a great study tool to work questions that have been posted on prior tests, because they are new questions on the next tests, plus the testers allow this.
The CPA is an example where every May and November you can sit for a two day test of about 250 questions in total. Most study aides give you questions from prior tests to help you learn.
However, with tests that do not change thier questions like Java's Certification, you can't use the real questions, because they are in the database and will obviously make the test easier for someone who got the questions ahead of time. If many people know the questions ahead of time it screws with the accuracy and reliability of the test.
I think the majority of people would agree that taking the test and getting 60% would be more gratifing than getting the answers ahead of time and getting 100%.
Bill
 
Ranch Hand
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Hi Vlad:
Your logic is convincing. But the fact is that human DNA analysis says that it does not understand ethics. Factually the entire world dances with the dance of DNA. We may debate for 1000 years, but exam questions will (not would) be revealed to others for business or loved reasons - the reality. My best advice for the Sun is to modify exam questions routinely - there is no other way!
My best wishes for the world of 2001 and beyond that everyone showers himself or herself with the rain of ethics and morality.
Regards,
mondal

 
Ajith Kallambella
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Resurrecting an old thread for the benefit of new Ranchers. Please pay attention to our concerns here.
 
Author & Gold Digger
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Resurrecting it too
 
Consider Paul's rocket mass heater.
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