destiny team mailing list archive

[Doug Shook <dsshook@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone.  After our little mini-discussion about peer reviews in the
hall after class I felt that we didn't quite get everything across the best
way possible.  This email is primarily intended to justify why I (and I'm
only speaking for myself) gave out peer reviews in the way that I did, and
what can be done for those who wish to improve.  I'm sending this to the
whole mailing list so that we can get everyone's feedback and hopefully
decide on a solution as a team.

Tom, last semester you were criticized for your lack of communication, and
it continued even after I brought it to your attention.  I remember one
point last semester when I had fixed some bugs in your avatar code.  You
then committed over them after we had told you so many times to always
update before you make any changes.  I sent an (understandably upset) email
to you about what you did and didn't receive any reply.  I have to say that
your behavior in that situation pretty much turned me off to ever trying to
help you again.  I've seen some attempts on your part to rectify the
communication issue but they always seem half hearted.  Sending me an email
that your assignment won't be done until a few hours before its due doesn't
really do much good at all, especially when you had over a week to do it.

Andy, last time I wrote out an email like this I brought up the fact that
you were assigned to write a hashing function, which didn't get finished.
Afterwards you did finish the hashing function, but it wasn't helpful to us
at all.  There was no way it would've worked with the Login Window that we
had, and in fact after a few minutes of inspection it was pretty clear to
see that you ripped a huge chunk of code you found from google and added a
few lines to it.  Something similar happened with the unit tests, which you
blatantly copied from my own unit tests.  Its not so much the code
"borrowing" that I mind as it is that you couldn't even take the time to
figure out how to adapt the code you borrowed so that it actually did what
it was supposed to.  I wouldn't have even minded THAT so much if you
would've found me or Zach or anyone and asked us how to do it correctly
instead of just hoping that it would since it worked for something else.

Finally, I'd like to discuss the assigned tasks given to the two of you.
The only reason any tasks were assigned to the two of you in the first place
is because of the fear that myself and others have had about what would
happen if you attempted to work on certain parts of the project.  Given the
above behaviors I don't think that you could blame anyone for not trusting
you to do things properly, and on a project such as this that's REALLY
important.  If you want one of us to keep telling you what to work on I can
continue to do so, but no one ever tells me what to work on.  I've been
keeping up with this project since day one and I know what has and hasn't
been finished.  If for some reason I'm not sure then I'll ask someone, or
just check it myself.  As senior computer science students I don't think
that this is too much to ask.

I'm truly sorry to have to be writing another one of these emails.  Its just
as unpleasant for me as I'm sure it is for you, and I hope that neither of
you take it personally.  I also hope that you weren't truly surprised at the
grades you got, however, and if you were then I ask you this: how much stuff
on the repo can you honestly say you contributed to?  I, for one, am proud
of my work, and I don't think it would be right to give equal credit to
those who contributed less, period.

All of that being said, I am willing to ignore everything that has occurred
in the past and start anew.  There is still so much work to be done and it
will be much easier if we have your help.  So please....help us!