
Romania dictionary altered to thwart exam cheats - DanBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-39291279
======
apetresc
I feel like the Hacker News hive mind is short-circuiting here, the "anti-
censorship" impulse is overriding rationality. This isn't some Orwellian
conspiracy to compromise language, it was a three-hour redefinition of a small
handful of obscure words.

Obviously schools already try to curtail cheating, it's not useful to just say
"be more vigilant instead". This is a clever way to identify cheats from an
unexpected angle; and obviously if they're cheating on one section of the
test, they're likely to be cheating on others.

~~~
Wonderdonkey
Cheating is such a fluid concept anyway, and it's inconsistently applied. Some
schools will suspend students for using calculators on a math test; some force
students to bring calculators to their tests. Some give out the questions
before a test, while others expel students for distributing test questions.
Some require students to collaborate or use online sources; some forbid it.
It's arbitrary.

Punishment for cheating also presumes the validity of 20th century-style
academic testing, which is debatable.

What is the purpose? To ensure I'm qualified for a job? A job where I am free
to look up words in a dictionary whenever I want?

I'd also add this: The internet is developing quickly into a literal extension
of the human mind. I don't think it will be all that long before we're
connected much more intimately to the internet than we are right now with just
our eyeballs and fingertips. And that means we need to reevaluate what it
means to learn information versus to find information.

~~~
apetresc
> Cheating is such a fluid concept anyway, and it's inconsistently applied.
> Some schools will suspend students for using calculators on a math test;
> some force students to bring calculators to their tests. Some give out the
> questions before a test, while others expel students for distributing test
> questions. Some require students to collaborate or use online sources; some
> forbid it. It's arbitrary.

These are students sneaking cell phones into an exam, and going out of their
way to surreptitiously look up answers with them. There's no moral ambiguity
here.

> Punishment for cheating also presumes the validity of 20th century-style
> academic testing.

No it doesn't.

> What is the purpose? To ensure I'm qualified for a job? A job where I am
> free to look up words in a dictionary whenever I want?

These are primary school-children. There's nothing wrong with asking them to
learn basic skills like literacy or numeracy (or, say, basic integrity) even
if they're disconnected from "jobs".

> I don't think it will be all that long before we're connected much more
> intimately to the internet than we are right now with just our eyeballs and
> fingertips. And that means we need to reevaluate what it means to learn
> information versus to find information.

Sure, and there will be tests for _that_ set of skills where accessing the
internet during the exam won't be considered cheating. But in this situation
it is.

------
lettergram
Does anyone else find this somewhat wrong?

They are literally changing the definition of words (albeit momentarily) to
try to identify cheating. This is likely a private institution administering
the test and a government dictionary. Even if both were governmental
(dictionary and test), it still seems silly to do this, as opposed to trying
to catch the cheaters.

~~~
maxerickson
Isn't trying to identify the cheaters a good way to catch them?

~~~
rnhmjoj
Why would the editors of an online dictionary want to catch cheaters to begin
with?

~~~
deevious
I don't think they wanted to "catch" the cheaters. This was not a real
examination to begin with, it was just a simulation in order for the pupils to
get a feel for how things will happen. The real testing will happen on the
31st of March.

It was more of an experiment/eye opener from the team of volunteers behind the
online dictionary project.

------
sschueller
If I was using that dictionary I would stop using it. Way to loose any
credibility irregardless of what you are trying to do.

Also, story seems made up.

~~~
stephengillie
Indeed, something smells fishy.

First, the words "Everywhere, [to] spot" seem too simple to need to be
researched - are these words so uncommon in Romanian that students need to
look them up?

Second, they impacted ALL users to their site, merely because they saw an
increase in use that coincided with the test? Did they even check their
website logs to see where the source IPs were geo-located? They laugh off the
impact caused to a blogger's readers with their replacement of "treachery"'s
meaning.

~~~
pricechild
> There were only nine searches for those two words in the hour before the
> exam started, but the number soon began to soar. In the final hour of the
> test there were 989 requests for their meaning

The article suggests you could likely count the number of innocent users
affected on fingers & toes?

~~~
stephengillie
The article suggests many readers of a popular author's blog were impacted.

> _The DEX editors assumed it was and changed its definition, but later
> discovered that it had been used by a well-known Romanian author in a blog
> post that morning, something they call an "unfortunate coincidence"._

~~~
pricechild
Apologies, thanks.

------
emiliobumachar
> The third word that appeared abnormally popular, "treachery", wasn't
> actually on the test. The DEX editors assumed it was and changed its
> definition, but later discovered that it had been used by a well-known
> Romanian author in a blog post that morning, something they call an
> "unfortunate coincidence".

I'm all for punishing cheaters, but this measure has just too much collateral
damage. Legitimate dictionary users are being mislead. It's a bad idea, and it
would shatter my trust in any dictionary.

~~~
GoToRO
"Legitimate dictionary users are being mislead"

They replaced the words with similar sounding words that have no link with the
original words. Anybody could easily spot the change.

------
mgberlin
Why would the owners of an online dictionary feel compelled to thwart cheating
on tests? It's their job to provide accurate information, not justice to
cheats.

~~~
PMan74
It's a volunteer project. What they decide to do with their free time is
probably their own business. If they want to temporarily alter some
definitions to validate a hypothesis then more power to them

~~~
pavel_lishin
What they do is their own business, of course, but how would you feel if the
folks running npm temporarily altered some of the javascript packages they
served?

------
tantalor
It would be far less harmful if the exam asked the students to define a
fictitious word which appeared only in the dictionary. Only cheaters would get
it "right".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry)

~~~
rootlocus
The exam and the dictionary are completely unrelated. The exam is devised and
organized by the state, while the dictionary is an online service run by a
group of volunteers.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> The exam and the dictionary are completely unrelated.

No, this article is specifically about them working together.

~~~
denulu
Nope, it's about the dictionary admins noticing cheaters during last year's
exam and deciding to do something about it -- without any coordination with
the exam organizers.

------
Aardwolf
What kind of exam asks for the meaning of the word "everywhere"? Doesn't
_every_ one know that when you have an age where you can participate in an
exam?

It says it's for Romanian students and is in the Romanian language, so it
doesn't look like it's a foreign language to them but their native language.

~~~
ubernostrum
In English, a lot of standardized exams look for knowledge of lesser-known
synonyms or variants of words; it's quite possible we're getting an article
here which translates the words to a more common English variant for easier
understanding.

For example, a similar article translated to Romanian might claim English-
language students were tested on knowing a word for "rural" (simplified
translation) but the exam actually used "bucolic" (a word which I know has
been part of the GRE vocabulary in the past).

~~~
ilogik
The actual words are archaic, lesser known synonyms.

------
petre
Some context:

Cheating at exams and plagiarism is rampant in Romania. Multiple gov't
officials, MPs and even a former prime minister nicknamed _copy /paste_ were
accused of plagiarism in the last few years. They tried to subordinate
comitees that analyze PhD thesis just to get away with it and even succeeded
in doing so.

National exams use cameras to twart cheaters.

Dexonline.ro is a volunteer effort and assumes no responsability for the
correctness of its content.

------
cooper12
Sigh, I understand this was done with good intentions, but a dictionary is one
of the last things whose integrity should be compromised. They call the
searches for "treachery" an "unfortunate coincidence", but it's really a
betrayal of people searching for authoritative definitions. When you're
deliberately falsifying the definition of words, you've failed as a
dictionary. Instead, the schools giving the test should have sought other
solutions: make proctors be more vigilant, collect student cellphones, or even
reach out to dictionary websites beforehand so they could omit, rather than
modify, the definitions of any words on the test day.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Or proxy the dictionary entry in the ISP DNS at the test site. No need to
corrupt the dictionary for everybody.

~~~
catalinme
The test is taken in schools national-wide. You should basically ban the
entire country of Romania from accessing the dictionary.

~~~
petre
That's actually censorship.

------
sauronlord
Administrators want to catch people cheating at exams. So what do they do?

They cheat the public by spreading misinformation and lying.

Quote at end of article:

"The third word that appeared abnormally popular, "treachery", wasn't actually
on the test. The DEX editors assumed it was and changed its definition, but
later discovered that it had been used by a well-known Romanian author in a
blog post that morning, something they call an "unfortunate coincidence"."

They fucked over a bunch of unrelated innocent people with their fake
news/fake definition and simply call it "unfortunate".

Talk about the irony and double standards here. What a pathetic bunch of sorry
human beings.

------
adamnemecek
This seems somewhat Ludditic. Technology makes the format of the test
obsolete, why counteract that?

~~~
rootlocus
Because there has to be a point where you start using your own brain and
memory. Just like a muscle you need to train and use them in order to keep
them efficient. In a normal conversation you don't have time to access a word
in a dictionary. How many words are you willing to memorize? How much offline
knowledge is required for you to "survive"? If we offload all cognitive
efforts to machines, what is left except meat and bones?

Where exactly is that point? I don't know.

~~~
adamnemecek
> In a normal conversation you don't have time to access a word in a
> dictionary.

If you haven't the heard the word up until that points, odds are pretty good
that you might not have needed it.

~~~
rootlocus
Coupled with the question "how many words are you willing to memorize" I was
trying to offer a sense of scale to the absurd.

If looking up words in dictionaries is sufficient, how many words should you
memorize offline? If everyone agrees learning words is outdated, what will
they use to speak? Orwell's newspeak?

Most communication, as opposed to art for instance, works both ways. You
listen and read, but also speak and write. Dictionaries help you with the
first part, but you'll need a little more effort with the second.

------
gumby
I'm fascinated by this HN discussion! Personally I consider it an excellent
hack, but it's good to learn why people think otherwise. (And it's great that
the article even describes one of unfortunate side effects.)

I can imagine a MITM product for schools to help here, perhaps not though if
everyone is using LTE instead of the school's network.

------
ilogik
here's the pull request for the feature :)

[https://github.com/dexonline/dexonline/commit/1f67d663d8a8d5...](https://github.com/dexonline/dexonline/commit/1f67d663d8a8d568704c70f739f646b3ee9dcf5d)

------
DarkKomunalec
Shows the superiority of offline dictionaries.

Edit: And not-needlessly-online software in general.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I agree, offline dictionaries have a certain _esquivalience_ about them.

------
cryptarch
The dictionnary in question: www.dexonline.ro

------
grangerg
They should just hire a psychometrician. They have PhDs specifically for this
sort of analysis.

