When Scores and Rankings May Be Discarded
If the PL/SQL Challenge is unavailable for more than four hours on any given day, all answers for that day will be ignored. They will not play a role in the ranking. That way, anyone who lives in a time zone for which the downtime made it difficult to answer the quiz will not be penalized.
The PL/SQL Challenge site was unavailable for the last 3.5 hours of 24 November. Up to that time, 1149 players took the quiz. This means that it is likely that several hundred players missed the opportunity to play.
It is very unfortunate that this happened, but the rules and the rules; the results for 24 November will be counted in rankings.
Of course, I very much hope and expect that this sort of thing will be a very rare occurrence. Having said that, it probably wouldn't hurt to get into the habit of setting aside two times during your day when you try to take the quiz. That way you have a "backup."
collective boo from the gallery
ReplyDeletewhat is this, the TSA? Do rules really override common sense?
Sorry, which part of "common sense" are you talking about here?
ReplyDeleteThe PL/SQL Challenge is a game. The game has rules. This is not a technicality. The game was available for 20.5 hours. Over 1100 people played the quiz.
I cannot arbitrarily change the rules and negate all of their effort because it was "close" to the 4 hour limit (wasn't all that close).
Or are you referring to something else?
SF