Talk:October 2011 Coding Challenge/Rules

Who judges?

Prize winner(s) will be selected by a panel of judges composed of members of WMF

Can we say "chosen by WMF" instead? Let's at least allow for the possibility of having nonstaff on the judging team. Sumanah 20:27, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I like it. Change made. --Gregdek 21:36, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

WHAT'S WITH THE SHOUTING?

Is someone trying to be intentionally obnoxious? Fix the headers, please. --MZMcBride 22:54, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Implemented a temporary fix. Someone ought to properly fix the headers and any other shouting at some point. The <h1>s should be <h2>s, as well. --MZMcBride 21:08, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

See [1] for an explanation why this is typically done by lawyers.--Eloquence 02:29, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Age restrictions?

"Contest is open to anyone over the age of 18 anywhere in the world (except for certain countries listed below)."

As a point of interest, we've made initial volunteer-dev contact with a lot of our current generation of bright young staff & contract programmers before they were 18. Restricting high-school-age and young college-age students from participating may keep them out of the track we want them on. --brion 20:21, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, age restrictions suck. Liability issues, parental consent requirements etc. make this a bit hairy, but we'll sort it out next time.--Eloquence 02:29, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Country restrictions?

"Residents of Cuba, Sudan, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and any other countries and Specially Designated Nationals listed by the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control..."

Kinda lame. I suppose it's probably difficult as a practical matter to hire or contract folks from those countries, but it's the kind of restriction that irks, especially for Wikimedia! Improved Farsi support for instance is something we'd always like to see. If this is legal boilerplate that's required in some way, care should be taken to explain why we can't allow people to submit contest code from those countries but will happily accept their Wikipedia contributions, site JS code, and MediaWiki patches. --brion 20:24, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Teams

• Are we allowed to work in teams and submit a single entry for multiple people?

Translation ?

• French :Je pense qu'il serait intéressant de traduire cette page, et les autres relatives au concours et appel à projet, au moins dans les langues les plus couramment parlées. Est-ce prévu ? Peut-on aider ? et si oui, comment ?}}
• English : I think it would be interesting to translate this page and other related to call for proposals, at least in the languages ​​most commonly spoken in the world. Is this expected ? Can we help you ? and if so, how?}}

--Lamiot 19:14, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Indemnification

This seems a little draconian:

"In addition, you represent and warrant that your Entry (i) does not infringe, misappropriate or violate any third party's copyright, patent, trademark, literary, trade secret, privacy, proprietary, publicity, contractual or other right...YOU AGREE TO INDEMNIFY, RELEASE, DEFEND, AND HOLD HARMLESS WMF AND THEIR RESPECTIVE SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATES, PARTNERS, AGENCIES, AGENTS AND REPRESENTATIVES AND THE OFFICERS, DIRECTORS AND EMPLOYEES OF EACH FROM ANY AND ALL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIMS, CHARGES, INJURIES, LOSSES OR DAMAGES OF ANY KIND CAUSED BY, RESULTING FROM OR ARISING OUT OF (A) YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE CONTEST, (B) WMF’S USE OF THE ENTRY, OR ANY PORTION THEREOF, (C) YOUR ACCEPTANCE, POSSESSION, USE OR MISUSE OF ANY PRIZE, (D) ANY BREACH BY YOU OR ANY OF THE WARRANTIES OR REPRESENTATIONS SET FORTH IN THESE RULES, (E) ANY VIOLATION OR CLAIMED VIOLATION OF A THIRD PARTY'S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OR OTHER RIGHTS RESULTING IN WHOLE OR IN PART FROM THE USE OF YOUR ENTRY, AND/OR (F) A DETERMINATION BY A COURT OR AGENCY THAT YOU ARE AN AGENT OF WMF."

So as I read this (IANAL, etc...), by entering the contest, you're basically agreeing to indemnify WMF against all possible IP claims resulting from your entry. In other words, if you create a fantastic mobile photo upload application that winds up being widely distributed and WMF, or even one of its partners, is sued for patent infringement (perhaps somewhat unlikely, but not inconceivable given the number of mobile imaging and geotagging-related patents out there), you're on the hook to defend the Foundation. For that matter, reading the rules literally, you could be on the hook to defend WMF against a claim of defamation arising from a random user's (ab)use of your contest entry.

I realize the intent is to protect the Foundation against obvious abuses (like someone submitting their employer's proprietary code without permission), but I question why the contest needs to impose such an onerous condition when normal MediaWiki contributors have no such policy (as I understand it). Zachlipton 02:05, 27 October 2011 (UTC)