Hello again!
We’ve been getting positive feedback about this blog, and we would like to thank you. We really appreciate it. One of the goals we set for it is to be able to create a more regular schedule to avoid big delays and to let us go into more detail about changes. To do so, we’ve added a new team member. Please welcome Alon Luski.
Let’s stop talking about us, and start talking about the good stuff…
Exams
Being the main focus for the last couple of months, and one of the most important areas in the judge program, exams are getting the spotlight yet again. If you missed the announcement, the most exciting news is that L1 practice and certification exams, as well as the preliminary L3 exam, are now live! Several GPs during the month of January offered L1 testing using the exams created on JudgeApps, and we’re starting to get dozens of new judges via this exam, as well as feedback from test takers. More test types are in the works, and should be available soon.
We have also added some quality of life features, both for exam takers and exam admins (that is, the team in charge of a specific exam type). As an exam taker, you will now get a warning if you try to leave an exam without submitting it. This should prevent losing all your progress unintentionally. (If you choose to leave anyway, your answers will be deleted, but the timer doesn’t pause and will eventually run out, so you shouldn’t start an exam you don’t intend to finish.) Exam admins can now get some statistics so they have a better idea on the performance of the exams (and questions) they’re managing. Exams can also be shared with RCs and admins for review in case of a suspected problem with the exam.
Question translations got some attention as well: until this point, translation didn’t support cards with no rules text. Now, all cards will be translated, regardless of if they have rules text or not (they still have a name 😉 ). In addition, we’ve added Simplified Chinese to the list of languages where citations for rules and policy can link to localized resources.
Exam-related bug fixes:
- The implementation of randomizing questions’ answer order allowed, in rare cases, for the answers to be ordered differently in the online and printed versions of the same exam, causing correct answers to be marked incorrect once entered. This was fixed.
- Creating several exams of the same type without opening them allowed people bypass the cooldown. This is no longer the case.
- The black background on the answer key wasn’t always aligned with the answers on the other side of the page once printed. It is now.
Hidden Location Improvements
We’ve been reviewing our policies around user privacy. While we can’t share everything we’ve been working on, we wanted to share two security-related improvements:
- When searching for judges, users with a hidden location will now be sorted after all other users who match the same search parameters, to prevent their locations from being easily inferred (if, for example, Jane Doe appears between two users from New York, NY, United States, it would have been easy to conclude where she’s from). We thank Joe Klopchic
for noticing this.
- Previously, users’ locations were always listed in CSV files that event admins can export from JudgeApps, even if that user had chosen to hide their location. We’ve decided to now hide this information in the exported file as well. (The region will still be shown, but no city, state, and country.)
Personal information is one of our major concerns, and we’re always looking for more ways to keep it safe.
If you have any questions, problems or great ideas, remember: the feedback form is only one click away!