Freecodecamp: Users can use the same project link on all challenges and claim the cert, in regards to responsive design cert

[JonDevOps]

Describe your problem and how to reproduce it:

Users can use the same project on all challenges and claim the cert, in regards to responsive design cert.
Add a Link to the page with the problem:
All responsive design projects.

Tell us about your browser and operating system:

• Browser Name:
• Browser Version:
• Operating System:

If possible, add a screenshot here (you can drag and drop, png, jpg, gif, etc. in this box):

[raisedadead]

fCC uses an honor based academic honesty policy. The user profile has to be public, for certs to be visible.

This can hence be verified and reported back for dishonest work. We take such reports very seriously and ban the profiles, and the certs.

Now coming to the specific use case of same URLs being used to abuse the system should be fixed. Thanks for the report.

[co16353sidak]

Firstly I think there are 3 ways in which this act becomes really pointless when it comes to freeCodeCamp's online learning environment:

1. Copying the certificate will be clearly visible to anyone who visits the person's profile page.
2. No employer or hiring individual will give you work on the basis of just your certifications but by checking out your projects which you would have done, copying those projects in the examples itself would actually be pointless as it won't be leading to any sort of gain both in learning or in hiring capability.
3. Also lastly, as this isn't a competition based curriculum, so the antics of one won't affect another's learning process.

[JonDevOps]

I just reported this because i saw my buddy do it.

[raisedadead]

Thanks @JonDevOps please ask them to remedy it to prevent getting flagged. Also, you can report such cases to [email protected]

[Ronkiro]

Dupe of #34763

It's a problem of all challenges there, not only the Responsive Design ones.

I also posted a solution there, that may help to not really solve, but to fix and add steps to help one's learning.

[raisedadead]

Quoting @Ronkiro 's proposal from another thread here:

As a way to solve this, i think that creating basic questions and/or challenges that can acknowledge that you did it would be nice. It's just a step more to get the exercise completed, and can also help making one learn/consolidating what he learnt.

[raisedadead]

Requesting feedback from @freeCodeCamp/moderators

[lynxlynxlynx]

How about checking the URLs are unique when claiming the cert?

[ArielLeslie]

The fact that a user can lie and cheat comes up fairly frequently. The way I see it, the way that FCC is set up means that users are on the honor system. Yes, we could add a check that they aren't putting in the exact same URL for multiple projects, but they can also just put in www.IAmCheating.com and their input will be accepted because FCC allows campers to host their project in whatever way works best for them. If we took that away and required a CodePen link then people could submit empty pens. The rabbit hole of trying to police academic honesty quickly becomes something that is restrictive to students and onerous to FCC.

Counterpoint on the specific issue of repeated links: It's not uncommon for a camper to accidentally paste their link into the wrong project box. Right now we tell them not to worry about it, but just to put the link in the correct box and then update the incorrect one when they finish that project.

[fabiotp91]

I think a fair solution would be to make moderators check projects, but that would be insanely time consuming and people could still cheat by copying projects from other people.

Checking the url's vs others that have been used before would be a good way to keep basic cheating away, of course there's always a way to cheat, but I think we should always keep FCC as open as possible without making the experience to the user too restrictive with a ton of rules.

Keeping people from cheating will always be a battle that can end making things too restrictive and punish the "good" users.

[co16353sidak]

Exactly, Efforts shouldn't be on trying to prevent cheating, but more on the emphasis on how it is detrimental to the person doing it.
The effort should be to make it easier to learn and to aid someone looking to actually learn something as much as possible instead of looking to prevent cheaters.

[tbushman]

We are nearing the means to test the submitted projects thanks to the recent update from @ValeraS at freeCodeCamp/testable-projects-fcc . @raisedadead The gulpfile has the capability of pre-compiling jsx, sass, etc. We could bring that over to the main repo to build student html / css/ js and then link to the bundle.js for tests.

[raisedadead]

Hi, @tbushman

I think that may not be of help. The testable projects tests are for testing codepen projects, that we recommend. But we do not mandate (by design) that codepen projects be necessary for the certification itself.

I think all we need here is an interactive way of confirming for genuine submissions like @Ronkiro proposed. And also URLs are unique for projects, which is a deterrent to spam as well.

[Bouncey]

There could be more social accountability where we pull in a screenshot of the url for GUI projects, not sure how we would handle api projects with this though.

[raisedadead]

There could be more social accountability where we pull in a screenshot of the url for GUI projects

Yep. That'd be a great way to catch abuse.

[cmccormack]

The cert itself is the concern right? Can we include a link or image (similar to the codepen preview) of the final project(s) in the public cert so duplicated URLs will be completely obvious? Just an idea.

[JonDevOps]

@raisedadead I agree and I might add to your point that codepen is not mandatory by saying, I had trouble for awhile understanding codepen for months. Since there was no head or body tags i ended up being extremely confused on how to use it, and even to ths day still opt out and instead favor github and gh-pages because it's more comfortable, for me, to write code with every line of code being there. Though i do know how to use codepen now, and i know plenty of beginners who actually ONLY know how to use codepen,I agree allowng people to submit projects not limited from just codepen is beneficial.

[QuincyLarson]

I agree with most of the people in this thread that there's not much we can do to prevent people from cheating.

Instead, we should focus on detecting cheating. We need a crawler of sorts that goes through people's submitted projects and automatically flags ones it thinks need human attention.

This can be open source and we can openly discuss ways to detect cheating. Since we would be continuously refining our cheating detection, cheating would be a losing battle (cheating results in permanent "flagged as cheater" status - even if we detect it months or years after the fact).

Would any of you be interested in helping with such a cheating detection project?

[JonDevOps]

I would love to. I'm currently going through basic JS so I know I wouldn't be the best of help but I want to keep track of this and this can be my first dive intomore advanced topics than html and css. Also I have a learning group and a cohort group Mr. Larson with hundreds of people ...and we start tomorrow :) can i get them on this somehow? We have data scientist js devs, etc. Can I zoom with you and show you that stats and get your opinion on how we can mobilize their efforts? I would like to learn as we go but some of the others would probably be up to par. Let me know I want to learn, help, and help others learn. BTW all my members are freeCodeCamp students and lovers to the core. Alot came from the fCC reddit, twitter, or my other socials.

TL;DR I'm in I only know html and css but i planned on starting javascript with my learning group tomorrow anyway. My build to learn team members also need something to do so this would be a nice project for whoever has the skills already. Everyone wants to learn and loves FCC :)
[EDIT] P.S. I'm the facilitator of the cohorts and JS learning groups.

[QuincyLarson]

I'm closing this issue in favor of a dedicated discussion around these tools: https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/freeCodeCamp/issues/35054

[QuincyLarson]

@JonDevOps Regarding hopping on a Zoom call - I'm in China but if we can get the time to line up OK I would be interested in catching up and meeting some of the students! Shoot me an email at [email protected] and we can work out the details there 👍