Another Example of Biased Judging - TVNZ Webchallenge 2007
lmao
Biased/Unfair? You decide.
Unique way to start a blog entry eh? Well earlier this year, I entered in the TVNZ Netguide Webchallenge 2007. I had taken a break last year but decided to enter this year as a Secondary Individual entry.
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Like every other year I decide to enter, I was pressured against the Webchallenge’s deadlines. I really should start these a lot earlier. But usually I’m missing the ‘motivation’ and that only comes when there are only a few days left 
This year I decided to do it on Japan and it’s culture. Why? Those who know me should know why. I’m a Japanese fanatic.
If you really want to see my entry, you can take a look here.
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From previous years’ experiences, I have noticed this year’s organisation any good at all. The web entries weren’t released to the public to view and nervous web-designers can’t check out the other websites they are competing against. To the point? IT SUCKED.
I don’t see why they should make the entries private this year. I mean, it was customary for web-designers to check out each others’ websites so they can get a rough approximate of how good their own websites were. This year? We have no idea what is going on. We can’t even see if the judging is fair. (A few of us like me actually check all the entries in the category I enter). I don’t even know how many people entered.
So here we are, the placings were released today. I haven’t seen ALL THE ENTRIES, I to be honest I cannot give a fair judgement on the level web-design/content entered this year.
I’m sure for this year’s competition, there must have been some awesome entries. Again I can’t see them. Why? I HAVE NO IDEA. BAD MANAGEMENT MAYBE? *Hint hint* I have to live with these results/placings because I cannot see if it was fair, cannot see the worthy websites and the public cannot see the entries for their own viewing pleasure.
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Biased Judging? A BIG NO-NO
Apparently, Secondary Team Entry Placing 3rd, http://www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/Ch3w0nTh1s/, is nothing but plagurism. Why? This is an email a friend of mine (fellow web-designer) sent to TVNZ Netguide Webchallenge Staff.
To whomever it may concern,
I am writing in regard of plagiarism within this year’s third place winner of secondary team entry. I am greatly disappointed at the incompetence your staff had shown at tracing down plagiarisms and have completely lost faith in your competition for such a trivial and yet important negligence. Here are some of the plagiarisms that I’ve found within this year’s secondary team - third place winner:
- http://www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/Ch3w0nTh1s/healthy_eating.html ,
http://www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/Ch3w0nTh1s/carbohydrates.html ,
http://www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/Ch3w0nTh1s/fats.html
http://www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/Ch3w0nTh1s/proteins.htmldirect copy of http://www.brianmac.co.uk/nutrit.htm
- http://www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/Ch3w0nTh1s/fun_exercise.html - no. 10 and 14
direct copy of http://www.freetobethin.com/article_4waystoexercisewithoutexercising.html- no. 5 and 15
direct copy of http://womenshealth.about.com/od/fitnessandhealth/a/exercisefun.htm- no. 1-4, 6-8, 10-13 (inclusive, which is pretty much the rest of the page)
direct copy of http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0846/is_8_22/ai_98594243These are trivial to trace down, and yet despite of all the rules it had been made third place. I seriously urge you to take action at improving the judging process; if the judges or your staff involved don’t know about using quotation marks around a sentence to find exact copies of that sentence on Google, then they shouldn’t be involved in this competition at the first place.
I give you all my best regards, even if you have just awarded a fraudster,
Robin Liang
PS: Can you please fix your server, so that it redirects to index.php if it exists, so that you wouldn’t need the meta refresh place holder at http://tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/site/index.htm , or even just move the meta refresh tag within the <head> section as per the HTML4 or XHTML standards.
THIS IS WHEN I SAY:
PWNT
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Isn’t it a bit ironic when you are hosting a web-design competition and can’t code your own website correctly? Talk about setting a good example. 
They had the same website as last year, and on various pages, there was even still ‘2006′ as the year instead of the CURRENT YEAR ‘2007′ (In the page titles). WHAT YEAR ARE WE LIVING IN PEOPLE?
It shows how organised this year’s competition was. It was apparently led by Alana. I received a few comments on the effort from a few friends, people who entered and the public, and I’ve heard nothing but negative remarks.
Here was one of the comments I received from a friend (who also entered):
It takes a lot of knowledge to run a successful campaign and I personally don’t think that Alana is up for it.
I could not have said any better.
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Heh, I’m such a loser, I complain when I lose. But, from the way New Zealanders complained about All Blacks, losing to France, I guess I am just a typical New Zealander. I hate it when I lose. Period.
I DON’T EVEN THINK I AM GOING TO ENTER NEXT YEAR. LOST MY TRUST ON THIS ONE.
PS: I love http://www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/nihon1/, Joel Edwards, if you are reading this send me a comment! I’d love to get more people interested in Japan!
This entry is to criticize the organisation and unfair judging of this year’s event Those who want to add more please post a comment or something, so we can get in touch.
Oh, and TVNZ / Netguide Team, and Alana, might want to give me a comment as well. I’d love to hear your side of the story. Again, this is just my opinion on the whole situation. If you want to contact me further please post a comment so we can discuss 
. After all, we are all humans, and everyone makes mistakes. Though some people make them more frequently than others.
UPDATE: AS OF TODAY (08:07 26/09/2008),
MY FRIEND HAS NOT RECEIVED AN REPLY FROM HIS EMAIL REGARDING THE COPY/PASTERS. TVNZ NETGUIDE WEBCHALLENGE STAFF EMBARRASSED TO COMMENT?
ITÂ HASÂ ALREADY NEARLY A YEAR! Might as well give up then xD
Cleaned and tidied the entry a little. Hope it helps =/
Heh still no reply, maybe I will send them a paper copy through snail mail?
I am a computing teacher and a few years ago my students submitted their sites to the webchallange, (netguide) which it was called back then.
We were in a poor school so didn’t have dreamweaver nor flash, but we made excellent CSS based SEO’ed websites that would be very successful on the internet, with cutting edge styles from the kids hard work. They were really good, they had real webmaster skills.
However the top winning sites were all won by dreamweaver / flash sites. The sites would have died on the internet, some not even having metatags, let alone indexable text for the search engine.
Who won? Schools that had the most expensive software for their children, who produced sites of glitz and bling.
We never entered again.
aaa, I totally agree with you. Back in the day, when the webchallenge first started, it was fun to get into a team and just write everything we learnt from a confused teacher on why we needed so much time in the ICT labs out of class.
That year we came first. Teacher was still a bit surprised.
Now? It’s all about getting the cool flash, which someone could rip off a template and insert their own stuff. Webchallenge guys? Design a website. If I wanted to see a template and content ripped website, I’d pay some indian outsourcer $5 to do it for my viewing pleasure.
Again, gnail is the friend who emailed TVNZ. Still no reply. Eh, TVNZ Netguide team is a bunch who get bloated corporate giants to support them, with their own intentions.
Eh, I bet over 60% of all websites created in this competition is designed with PIRATED software. Eh, Microsoft nice way of trying to get people to buy Web Expression.
Judges? Computer-illiterate judges who like flashy stuff. Take a look at the content for once, for goodness sake. Reply if you got guts. Maybe content and code was so 2006?
Now, where’s that petition…
Absolutely agree. I noticed some examples of plagiarism last year and it really ticked me off. I hard code most of my sites, and I put in hours of work to get everything looking right and original… only to see outright COPIES of other sites.
I truly doubt whether tvnznetguidewebchallenge organisers will reply. It’s shoddy. They’re basically saying it’s OK to steal other site’s content.
Anyhoo..
Heh 100% open sourced software for me (except the Flash thing that I had to make for browsers that don´t support SVG+JS), I was actually quite surprised last year that I won 2nd place (again) even though Microsoft was a sponsor and I preached Linux on there.
I agree with you here, the bias judging and lack of organization within this competition has made me think whether or not spending so much time designing my OWN original style and template was worth it. I do admit that it is hard to tell whether or not a template is custom made or not but the content copied straight from a website for the third place shows how illiterate the judges are. Everyone uses Google and it doesn’t take a lot of work to copy paste a few sentences to see whether or not the content had been copied.
This is no longer a design competition, the judging guides already judge mainly on content and yet it could not have been executed right by the organizer Alana. She/he lacks the competency to organize such a high profile competition.
$50K worth of prices was donated kindly by the sponsors, why couldn’t they have atleast used some of that to ask a proper professional in web design to maintain the TVNZ Netguide Webchallenge website.
Well I am a noob in web design but I think that this years intermediate team website quality is FARRRRRR worse than last years. You should check out the 3rd place for intermediate team they are from my school but I think they SUCK. The judges need to be way more professional they need to know how to check the source code and decide wheather or not it’s a template or not. Transisco did not use a template.
Bear in mind that flash-only website is a very bad practice, and though things moving are nice, completely unnecessary eye candy will only hinder usability.
I think they would be embarrassed, they even invited Helen Clarke to the presentations. Such a prestigious competition going down the drain would definitely be embarrassing to Alana and the team
Most of these rich schools who uses dreamweaver and flash to ‘make’ their site, still came up with ugly results that looks completely dishevelled on FireFox, and takes forever to load for dial-up users. Using expensive design tools when you can’t even design properly, that’s embarrassing. Contents for the winning sites this year is also underpar in comparison to previous years. I may suck, but they suck more.
Maybe Alana hasn’t reply because she got fired? Just a guess.
O yea Helen Clarke was there! Hmmmm how about a letter to the prime minister regarding her sponorship of plagiarism…
Well I’ve submitted a request to Campbell Live. Maybe they will publish a story about it?
Still no reply as of yet. But I posted that on Friday, so I can wait since nobody works 7 days a week. I’ll give it a few more days for him to reply.
For everybody’s reference, I’ve posted a link to this article on the following websites:
PC World Chat Forums
The-Hub.tv (TVNZ)
Geekzone Forums
Netguide Netvillage Forums - STILL IGNORED/UNVERIFIED
I have also submitted a email to the following websites hoping that they will publish an article about the whole situation:
Scoop.co.nz News - No reply as of yet
Campbell Live - TV3 - No reply as of yet
A friend of mine has submitted a formal email to:
TVNZ Netguide Webchallenge Team’s email (found on the homepage) - STILL IGNORED
I’m sure someone from TVNZ/Netguide has seen at least one of these posts… Or just ignoring us?
Thanks for the support guys!
Excuse me but http://www.brianmac.co.uk/nutrit.htm is nothing at all like http://www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/Ch3w0nTh1s/healthy_eating.html
Am I missing something here?
I guess the information are the same, but the web design/code are so different. I don’t know much about this web challenge, but isn’t it a web design/coding challenge? So I’m guessing the information isn’t as important as the web site design/coding?
Also the website is standard compliant according to Firefox.
*** THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN EDITED BY THE ADMINISTRATOR **
Cash Advance, please stop spamming. It’s annoying and will get you nowhere.
Thanks
*** THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN EDITED BY THE ADMINISTRATOR ***
http://www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/Ch3w0nTh1s/carbohydrates.html
Apart from the h3 tags inside the li, the quality of the HTML of this site is pretty good, so I don’t think it’s fair to generalize that *all* the winning sites were sloppily coded in Dreamweaver.
The blatant acceptance of plagiarised content is disconcerting however. I think it sends out a terrible message to younger students about how design works and devalues the importance of copywriting and content, which is often the most important aspect of a successful website.
Perhaps it is judging ignorance rather than bias. I can appreciate that you and your friends are feeling frustrated and upset, but i think that it would be much better for you to focus on the general issue of plagiarism and setting a bad standard, rather than blanket accusing the judges of bias.
If there is no explicit clause in the rules for next year that forbids the use of plagiarised content, you should encourage as many secondary students as possible to make the issue known and boycott the competition.
You’ve got spam!
On other news, I’ve just phoned TVNZ since there are no phone contact details whatsoever on Netguide or Webchallenge website, and the guy say the only way to contact them is through email, and that if I wait I will get a reply. Heh, right. Maybe I should try ACPmedia (who owns Netguide) instead?
Well just got off of the phone with one of the Netguide editors and they say there’s nothing they can do about it now. They do not judge the sites but rather people from the ministry of education and Microsoft do. Heh so rules don’t really apply any more do they?
Yes I agree it’s a horrible message they are sending out, that simply copying others’ work can win you glory and prizes, neither of which you deserve. Their rules, and most of their website hadn’t changed at all since 2006 but it’s clearly in their rules, rule 7, that plagiarism will mean automatic disqualification, which means not able to win anything.
There will certainly be bias with the judges, especially if they are from commercial interest (Yes I’m anti-Microsoft), but awarding a plagiarised site is a new low from this competition. I guess there aren’t much to be done now, since it’s all over; but then we never knew the winners until it’s all over, and so whoever they say wins, no matter what their site contains, will win regardless of rules.
First spam message lol.
It’s the first sign that this website is getting some decent views.
To be honest, a few of the winners are good website designers/content writers and I can accept the fact the I lost to them.
But losing to someone who looks like they overused the Ctrl + C/V just irritates me.
There are no contact details for the Webchallenge team in case there were appeals such as these, and the two ‘governing’ companies in charge are doing nothing about it. (Pointing at you, TVNZ and Netguide).
If they actually do care, they should at least do something about it, such as send a email to me or gnail. BUT NO, they ignore us. I bet the Webchallenge email is no longer being monitored.
If they are going to not do anything, don’t include it in the rules. For some of us actually follow them, to make it fair for the other competitors.
@ Sid
Content is more important than webdesign and Webchallenge rules states no plagurism or else you will be disqualified. The main idea of the competition is to ‘teach your peers about a subject or idea’.
Theortically, a winning site should have very good content, but if there were two websites of similar quality, then that’s when they should look at the webdesign.
This is a very interesting thing. I was told about this blog by a friend, who was very discontented with the webchallenge. I have sent an e-mail in support of your claims to the webchallenge team. It true that it is against the rules of the competition to plagiarise material. Good on you for bringing this very serious issue out
Entries with plagiarised content, offensive material, and pages that were not done by the students will become invalid. Students must do the research, and writing, and be involved in the creation of their Web sites. Web sites must be based on current school curriculum subjects that the students have learnt or are learning this year.
Source:http://www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/site/rules.htm
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Example of Biased Judging - TVNZ Webchallenge 2007 at Sentimental Bliss, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
Hi there,
I was very interested in this topic when I googled it, and as you may know, I won the individual secondary category (http://www.netguidewebchallenge.co.nz/samh0gg). My feelings about the webchallenge are obviously different to yours though, having recieved over $13k in prizes. I, however DID write all of my own content, so I am not in the same “bunch” as these plaguarism. I feel sorry for you, Gnail and Admin. What are the URL’s of your sites?
Cheers,
Sam
http://faramine.info/cialis/buy-cialis-in-uk.php
Hi Guys,
I was part of the team which won the secondary team category (www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/goldcharge3). I believe strongly in clean, valid markup and styling so when I took a peek at the source of some sites I was disgusted to say the least. Apart from the obvious reasons, horrible markup is inaccessible which was a big goal in creating our site. The judges really need to focus on well-built sites which are usable by everyone regardless of disability, browser or computer (and good styling) rather than trashy flash and dreamweaver content.
William
Hey,
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Joel Edwards here…
ジョï¼ã‚¨ãƒ‰ãƒ¯ã‚¹ã§ã™ã€‚。。
I know its over almost a year since this post was put up but Ive only just read it.
Funny to see William L (above) who also goes to the same school as me and travelled to the awards ceremony with me has also posted here! *HI WILLIAM!*.
I was very shocked/kind of surprised to see:
“PS: I love http://www.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz/nihon1/, Joel Edwards, if you are reading this send me a comment! I’d love to get more people interested in Japan!”
Well i’m here and sending you a comment
I too am a Japanese fanatic… thats why I made my website on Japan!
Went there in 2006. SO MUCH FUN!
Im making another website for the challenge this year… however I havnt started yet… really should get onto it while its the school holidays though.
On your other comments about plagerism and unfairness, I too think the webchallenge could be made alot fairer and more about good websites. I was shocked at how many students used templates last year! Thats not making a website! Thats just filling in the gaps! Even William above (whos team got 1st place) used a template, I must note that they did edit the template a fair amount, and wrote their own content, BUT STILL! I made my website totally from scratch and Im proud of that.
Lets hope this years web challenge is better than previous years!
Would be very interested to get in contact with you (email me or use the contact form here > http://www.nihon.co.nr/other.html
ã•ã‚ˆã†ãªã‚‰
~Joel
Sam Hogg.. “I, however DID write all of my own content”
Does ALL? include the template available from (http://www.oswd.org/design/preview/id/3126)???? Read the rules: “and pages that were not done by the students will become invalid.”
William Leith.. “I believe strongly in clean, valid markup and styling so when I took a peek at the source of some sites I was disgusted to say the least.”
Maybe you should check this out then..(http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tvnznetguidewebchallenge.co.nz%2Fsite%2Fwinners07%2Fgoldcharge3%2F&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0)
Ch3w0nTh1s…
there are no word to describe you….?
?????/ i Have no clue….
Haha, it’s been about a year since this was published. Looks like we have the 2008 competition closing soon. Let’s hope that this year they can get some decent judges (which I suggest should be normal students, because THEY ARE TEACHING STUDENTS after all) and hope the half-assed guys from last year aren’t in is this time.
Instead of bashing each other through the comments, just get along and stand together! We all don’t want copy/pasters winning these competitions when some of us worked all month/year on it.
For the record: I have not registered this year.
[...] too! I’m quite interested in looking at this year’s entries, especially since how the 2007 competition failed in pretty much all aspects of judging, organisation and promotion (cheers [...]
The blatant plagiarism in some of last years winners is worrying. I hope this year the judging is a little more competent as me and a few mates have entered the secondary team category.
@”N/A”
In Sams defense it states in the FAQ that you can use templates, though I wouldn’t; it doesn’t take too much more effort to make a decent design. And that design is pretty badly made, if you ask me. The background image in particular, it doesn’t seem like the most elegant way of making it, especially seeing that at my resolution the background image is not long enough, and I get these two big white stripes down either side of the page.
And at William Leith, lol.
I also must mention I disagree with the whole dreamweaver bashing in the first few comments here. I own a copy of dreamweaver and use it all the time, only the code tab though. I don’t think this makes me any less skilled of a web designing… I could make the site in notepad. Dreamweaver is a great tool as long as you are not relying on the design area, no what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor can truly match a decent designer.
Although I have to say when you give some one with little knowledge a WYSIWYG editor they can make a decent site, with the worst mark-up possible, it will look fine in what browser they built it for, but you open up Firefox it turns to shit. A good example of this is my year 11 IT class at school. Our teacher decided that instead of teaching us html/css he would teach us frontpage. He even started calling the html internal we were doing a ‘frontpage internal’… The results were embracing, in my opinion, everybody passed with alright looking websites, but out of interest I looked at the sources of some of my friends… there were people who had used 10 by 10 tables to layout their site, elements weren’t nested properly, etc.
Hi guys…
I have yet had the same problem as I entered last year with top design and original content but another team won because they copied and pasted strait from wikipedia!! I was outraged and sent nasty emails to the webchallenge team and spent weeks trying to track them down. I then got a reply to my email saying they were sorry and couldn’t change anything. They also said the next year judges have more experience and much more accurate decisions.
Thank You