A bit of context.

1. As others pointed out, this is not a full-blown exam but a simulation, in preparation for the exam that shall take place in June.

2. Cheating is not unheard of in Romania, in some places is common practice, sometimes with the aid of teachers. As the Ministry of Education is not striving too much to fix it, this is just a private initiative to spot it and hopefully put raise awareness / public pressure towards this phenomenon. Noteworthy, the uncommon volume of search on the terms that were present in the exam started even before the official start of the exam.

I was at first also thinking that they could've just hid the words and put up a notice for the regular users, but after thinking more about it, I think they're approach was optimal.

Sidenote, the guy[1] that started the project is an ex-googler[2], I trust he (& team) gave this some thought before choosing this approach.

[1] https://catalin.francu.com/

[2] https://catalin.francu.com/resume.txt

This was a mock exam held by the government.

The dictionary website is private, but very well known.

As it's a mock exam, nobody will get into trouble for it. But, if nothing else, it should make the students think twice before trying to cheat on the next exam.

Actually, the test is administered by the public education system and the dictionary is a volunteer job. I see no ethical issues with what they did, the ethics issues lie with the ones that tried to cheat.

> the dictionary is a volunteer job

So it would only be unethical if they were being paid? I'm not sure what the distinction is.

I merely pointed out that they are volunteers in order to underline that there is no connection between the state educational system and the private team of volunteers which provide the dictionary service.

This is a fairly well-known technique for spotting copycats (and I'm sure I've seen examples on HN for both cartographers and Trivial Pursuit).

But yeah, it is somewhat morally hazy in this instance, I agree.

Isn't trying to identify the cheaters a good way to catch them?

Identifying them by misinforming them seems counterproductive.

Imagine if a math site temporarily said "2 + 2 = 5" in order to catch cheaters on a math test. You've caught some cheaters, but then some of them will continue thinking that 2 + 2 really is 5.

There must be better ways to do this.

Why would the editors of an online dictionary want to catch cheaters to begin with?

I don't think they wanted to "catch" the cheaters. This was not a real examination to begin with, it was just a simulation in order for the pupils to get a feel for how things will happen. The real testing will happen on the 31st of March.

It was more of an experiment/eye opener from the team of volunteers behind the online dictionary project.

Morality?

Same question here.

Assuming I understand this correctly, the only way to catch them is that they misuse one of the three most commonly used words....

That doesn't seem like it will provide enough evidence to actually "catch" a cheater.

These aren't commonly-used words, these are very obscure words the students are being asked to define. If a bunch of students all settle on the same completely-wrong definition, it's a fair guess they were cheating.

With an astoundingly high false positive rate, assuming it's a multiple choice test.

The guys running the dictionary didn't even know what was on the test, judging by the fact that they had to guess them by looking at traffic logs. So it's highly unlikely they settled on a fake definition that just happened to match an alternative choice on a multiple choice test.