Constructive, frustrated feedback to employees of the site:

1

I’m fairly new to this system, but there is already a clear flaw driving me away: the refusal to provide posted answers to common problems.

I’ve noticed more than a few threads where people sought help, attempted to post solutions, and were met with redactions.

I got my first job at 15 driving boats and teaching at a watersports camp. I got second job tutoring one of those families, whose child had autism. The process taught me that teachers need to be responsive to their students.

I completely understand that everyone has their own process, and that students need to be ready to ask for help, but when a student comes to his teacher for help and is instead met with an attitude that can only be described by the consequences it inspires: a week long period in which the student stops working, it’s a problem. It’s about as self-evident as a problem can get: the teacher drove the student away for a week, and the student didn’t learn for that week. An educational company that recognizes that its actions cause learners to disengage for weeks at a time, and yet does nothing, has failed, categorically.

A person posts asking for help; 7 days later they come back and say, “Thanks for trying guys. I didn’t understand what you meant, and it would have been much easier if I could have just worked through it myself, but I figured it out after a week.”

I’ve now wasted my entire night: 6 hours, trying to figure out a simple line of code that is probably correct.

This is a huge flaw in your system. Maybe I’m too new to understand how coding works. People are trying to learn new lives: educations, jobs, etc. Forcing them to postpone that process for a week because mods refuse to leave posted solutions anywhere is counter productive. We’re not working through dissertations in which lifting code could be considered plagiarism; we’re trying to put letters together letters to make words that might one day be sentences to convey thoughts.

Call me whatever. Deliberately removing proofs that would help students teach themselves is a tragedy; it’s censorship for no articulable reason. Do you think the week long breaks that I’ve seen, when people clearly stop all progress, make for better coders? Do you think that when students stop working for a week they gain more knowledge and skills? Do you think taking people’s money and censoring the proofs they need, postposing their lives for weeks on end, is a fair business or educational practice?

Seriously mods, this precedent of censorship may not be hurting the community, but it’s hurting me. I came here to learn. Period. I was unable to work for the entire afternoon because of this nonsense. You could post a folder titled, “absolute last resort, could not figure it out, have already wasted 7 days and would rather not make it 8.” You could charge students 100,000 gems for access to the folder, creating costs and incentive structures to avoid relying on that system, and forcing students to earn the gems necessary to purchase the files they needed.

This. Is. Nonsense. And I have to continue writing about it because I can’t continue working.

I wouldn’t be so annoyed, but in the threads I’ve read thus far, I’ve seen countless examples of censorship, or mods removing peoples work and stopping them from helping others. This isn’t the first email you’ve received like this, I’m sure. It won’t be the last. You’re not helping people; you’re selecting for those people willing and able to spend 7 days staring at a piece of code that doesn’t work.

This is a great way to lose a customer, and to drive a student away from coding.

I’m happy to provide examples of people on this site that stated that they stopped working for a week straight because of the idealistically driven censorship. But even that would be dedicating more time and effort towards something other than learning.

What do I want? Solutions or people capable of helping me understand my mistakes.

I will continue using this product for as long as it remains an efficient use of my resources.

2 Likes
2

I have to agree what you saying. If people post solution and you are a moderator you can delete the solution. If you see anything that is rude or bad you can flag their post by going down to the bottom of their post click on and then click on the flag. In your private email their should be a message that should help you. Also check the FAQ before posting any more. I hope this help you.:smiley::slightly_smiling_face:

3

As a regular, I have to admit, sometimes, I’m maybe a little too rigorous. This goes to other mods / regulars as well, everyone makes bad judgements here and there, which is understandable. Here’s my standard and what I feel is acceptable and what is not.

Do not post your “entire” code. I’ve faced tons of times people saying, can I have the code for this level? If you leave the entire solution there, people can just copy paste the code and complete the level without learning anything.

However, I do agree that if you give a person bits or parts to help move him / her in the right direction. For example, if someone was struggling to solve an issue about if and else statements you can tell the person here is the bug and what you can do to solve it, not just, here’s what I did.

But yes, you are correct, after all, coding is a learning process.

1 Like
4

Good point @_TD_RodYT but sometime when people post solutions the solution doesn’t work because the developer made a change to the level or the player don’t have the right equipment.

1 Like
5

Another 2 hours already this morning…

The main problem is that solutions aren’t even posted to critical levels. This level is essential to move on with the program.

6

As I said in my previous post, you won’t find solutions to levels here.

The levels are meant for you to figure out on your own. But if you have a question about why your code is working, you can create a new post and we will point out the problem and try to help you.

7

I understand @MarkG and the frustration discussed in this post, I really do. Yes, teachers do need to be responsive to their students. I don’t know the exact situation here or if it was handled in the best way or not.

Either way, as a middle school math teacher I wanted to throw in my two cents. A teacher has to avoid just giving solutions to their students. It is the same with math problems as it is with programming problems. If a student is given a solution they are likely to copy it without understanding it and that is the opposite of learning. From that point of view this kind of “helping” is the opposite of helping.

Directing a stuck student to a useful example is a good approach, and I see a lot of that in these forums. For example: “Go back to the previous level and look at how the _____ function works.” Helpers could try to do more of that.

There are tons of programming resources all over the internet. If one is unsure about how to use a for loop or define a function with parameters or whatever one can find thousands of video examples.

I love code combat, but when people get stuck part of the problem is that it is not very debug friendly at all. Try using hero.say() a lot to figure out if what you thought was happening is what is really happening.

1 Like
8

Can someone please provide the contact information for a mod or customer service line to process a refund.

9

Hello @MarkG,

If you do decide you want a refund, you can email @nick, a co-founder of CodeCombat.

Endercore79

12

What level are you stuck on? Perhaps we could help.

13

Sure! How!

I’m on backwoods standoff.

15

I just finished the code I’ve been stuck on for 35 hours.

The code was perfect; I needed a different helmet.

16

This forum is more like the community driven resource. If you need some support you can write at team@codecombat.com .
About solutions: in the classroom version all teachers have access to level solutions.

2 Likes
17

@Bryukh Right! While some of us are employees, most like me, are just coding hobbyists!

18

Oh my…

(20 characters)