We try to keep the process of joining Mendicant University fun and light hearted through our use of PuzzleNode problems for our entrance exams. The neat thing about PuzzleNode is that it is designed to be accessible to anyone who wants to work on coding exercises, not just Mendicant University applicants. We've worked hard to make sure that PuzzleNode has its own look and feel, and doesn't directly associate itself with Mendicant University beyond acknowledging that it's one of our projects. While one group of folks are treating these puzzles as an entrance exam, others are just hacking on them for fun.

A side effect of this approach is that up until now, we've not had a policy on spoilers. We assumed our students would know not to look at other people's work or share their own solutions during an entrance exam, even if other people using PuzzleNode might be doing that. Unfortunately, that assumption was incorrect, because two of our applicants posted their solutions publicly within 24 hours of the exam opening. As a knee jerk reaction, I initially disqualified both of these applicants, without consulting the rest of the Mendicant University staff. This got me in trouble with Jia, who is not only my wife, but also one of Mendicant University co-founders. That lead to a staff meeting today to discuss what happened and figure out where to go from here.

First of all, we made a mistake by not making our assumptions clear to potential applicants about sharing solutions with others. Without communicating our wishes about that, it wasn't fair for me to simply disqualify people on the basis of an unwritten rule. But as we discussed the issue further, we contemplated two valid arguments about why posting your solutions after you have already submitted your application might not be so bad. The first argument is that if for example, someone puts their solutions on github but doesn't broadcast them to others, it's very likely that they just don't have a paid account for storing their code privately, or don't have the habit of doing so. In this situation, the person is not inviting others to view their solutions, that might just happen by accident. The second argument is that the honor system approach we take is still valid if we assume our students won't go looking for solutions before they submit their application.

Both of these arguments are reasonable, but something we'd still rather not have to think about. As the demand goes up for spots in Mendicant University courses, so too does the potential for gaming the system somehow. But we don't want to be reactive, a mistake I made last night, and we also don't want to get mired in policies about theoretical threats rather than actual problems. We're just not that beurocratic. So we've decided that rather than having a policy about this, we'll just exert a bit more social pressure discouraging people from sharing solutions before the admissions process is completed for any given set of problems.

Now when you visit any of the puzzles currently being used as an entrance exam problem, you will see the following message

Note: This problem is currently being used as part of a Mendicant University entrance exam. We'd appreciate if you don't share your solution with others until after August 18th.

We're hoping that just by asking nicely, this problem will go away. Also, we hope that by including a date in the message, that it's clear that it's not that we don't want folks to share, but that we just want them to wait a little while before doing so. We don't have a policy beyond this about disqualifying people for Mendicant University sessions, because we figure we can take it on a case by case basis from here.

Additionally, we've reversed our decision and apologized to the students that we disqualified as a result of my reactive, not-so-well-thought-out decision. One of the two students has already been accepted, and the other has had his solution sent back to the alumni network for review.

As a young organization, we fuck up sometimes. This was one of those times, and I'm sorry for the frustrations I caused our applicants and for the tone that this sort of harsh action sets. Hopefully our follow-up actions have set things back on a better course.