WHO is hacking now?

[ConnorNelson]

"3 people are hacking on this challenge now"

But who are they? Who are my rivals that I must beat?

And how long ago did they start working on this challenge?

[kpsroka]

Do I need to beat anybody?

[ConnorNelson]

Nope definitely not! But some people enjoy a bit of competitive spirit to push them just a little harder.

[ConnorNelson]

As maybe an even more exciting motivating example: right now there are probably several people that are less than a week away from earning their orange belt. Unfortunately with how pwn.college works, there’s not really a very great leaderboard position for those people (who like a little competition) to be fighting for, besides something like rank 750 or whatever (modulo us adding new challenges to a belt). And that makes sense, people may have earned their orange belt more than a year before that “competitor” even knew about pwn.college. It would be super cool to surface that “competition” that is lurking below the scenes, currently invisible. Of course those other “competitors” might not even be “competing”, and would rather just ignore this idea, learn what they can, and give pwn.college the 2 hours every Saturday afternoon they have allocated to learning time—that’s ok too! But this situation provides room for a little potential engagement and fun, that is hard to create in an asynchronous platform.