On Mar 1, 2008, at 5:23 AM, Otheus (aka Timothy J. Shelling) wrote:
Cert exams are like Fight Club, you never, ever talk about the
questions, and particularly not in a public format.
First, I "scrubbed" the questions; my posting omitted key
information that might be used be someone to reconstruct the exam.
Not nearly enough, you included more than enough detail to potentially
give away some of those questions.
Second, exactly what is the purpose of this mailing list? It's
called "exam development". How would a group of people discuss the
development of an exam without talking about the questions? The
existence of the group invalidates your rationale.
No "rationale" needed, there are rules for exam development, including
not discussing the gory details of questions on a public list.
Perusing the archives of this list will show frequent debates about
exam types, update cycles, new and updated objectives and many other
topics, but never details of published exams.
I would suggest getting involved in the exam development process,
often times the noticing of a problem is an indication that you're
supposed to help fix it, at least in my experience.
What do you think I'm doing?
Coming across as combative. I think my advice was reasonably and
kindly stated, and your initial post could be seen as somewhat
insulting to a group of great professionals who typically bend over
backwards to hear other points of view.
At the very least, you should fill out the comments on the
questions, and at the very most you should contact the director of
exam development with your concerns, not post them to the public list.
Ah, yes, the "comments". My computerized exam made no indication of
what would happen to those comments. Why waste my exam time with
something that would be thrown away?
What if your debut email to the list you had simply asked what
happened to the insightful feedback that you had spent valuable and
scarce exam time typing in, and asked who you could talk to about some
questions that seemed to be less than ideal? Then we wouldn't be
having this impromptu manners consultation, and certainly you'd have
gotten better answers to your questions.
Keep in mind that if a certain number of questions are compromised,
it can mean the republishing of an exam, which is not an
inconsiderable expense.
There are at least 7 questions which are inherently bogus. Where was
the quality control on this thing? How many years of Linux
experience did the exam developers have. I wonder.
The tone here is a problem, you masterfully in a single sentence trash
the people who write exam questions, denigrate the quality of said
exams and seem to doubt the exam developers have the experience
necessary. Didn't you know -- we all just switched over from being
windows apps users and began writing exam items for LPI, it's easier
than reloading XP again... (BTW, you'll find a lot of us have many
more than 10 years of experience.)
Seriously, you have some valid points, and I'm sure you'll become a
valuable member of the exam development group in due time, but try to
be a tad more diplomatic. It's traditional to get to know people a
little before you call their professionalism and competence into
question.
Ross
--
Otheus
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