I prefer the simpler language:

DEMO - YOU SHOULD MAKE A SIMILAR PROJECT WITH DIFFERENT CONTENT

Sounds good to me. I think wordsmithing to something simple that communicates the intent is ideal, especially with how multilingual our audience is.

yeah, I agree with the change.
Hopefully that will clear up the misunderstanding on having to replicate the projects

I think
DEMO : YOU SHOULD MAKE A SIMILAR PROJECT WITH DIFFERENT CONTENT

Can we not have all caps, we can make it bold or italic if we needed the campers to pay extra attention.

I thought I saw something similar to that warning on those projects.

There's already

Fulfill the user stories and pass all the tests below to complete this project. Give it your own personal style. Happy Coding!

I'm surprised campers are getting confused by this. I mean it's nice to have extra warnings but what was the original malfunction?

The 'original malfunction' is that people still regularly exactly clone the projects. That makes it harder to tell at a glance between copying and making their own projects.

Sorry Jeremy. I wanted to know why campers thought it was acceptable to completely clone the projects. I wanted to know if it was them not reading that instruction or if the wording was too ambiguous; and to try to offer my own two cents on a possible solution.

Ah, I misinterpreted 'original malfunction' as 'problem' but I think perhaps you are meaning what I would call 'root cause'?

I think the message isn't clear and direct and obvious enough.

Yes

Thanks, all. @jeremylt is correct here. The main thing is people don't read.

We should go with this exact notice. Its terse, clear, and specific:

DEMO - YOU SHOULD MAKE A SIMILAR PROJECT WITH DIFFERENT CONTENT

Sorry for coming in late, but I guess similar is the word that confusing campers. I think in some culture, it sounds like as though you need to replicate the original as closely as you can.

So I would rather prefer the first option:

DEMO - YOU SHOULD NOT EXACTLY REPLICATE THIS DEMO PROJECT

or even shorter:
Demo - Do not copy this project.

Also, I’d suggest not using all caps. I remember we ask campers to not overuse all-caps in our forum or Discord, then we shouldn’t do that ourselves.

I mostly used all caps because I forget that bold is an option. I'm all for any emphasis technique.

Just a curiosity @jeremylt (or anyone), are we sure campers are confused and not deliberately cloning the project? I presume you had a forum discussion with someone that was confused, so I should probably just take your word for it - but there may be some that deliberately clone the project because they don't want to come up with something else.

I have seen a lot of campers who think that they need to duplicate the project, not create their own.

Its not super infrequent (and usually with someone who appears to have english as a second language) that I run into a camper that's surprised when I tell them they can make the project about anything they want and it only has to match functional requirements.

I agree

I can confirm! When I followed the course I had the impression that we should try replicate the demo. I am surprised to find out😲

My first thought is to always replicate the project. If I can make a suggestion, maybe something that combines both sentences.

Try not to replicate this demo project and create a similar project with your own content.

I'm always an advocate for smaller, simpler sentences whenever possible.

Its not super infrequent (and usually with someone who appears to have english as a second language) that I run into a camper that's surprised when I tell them they can make the project about anything they want and it only has to match functional requirements.

I was under the impression that we should try to replicate the demo, but I’m surprised to learn that we shouldn’t..
if I can make a suggestion then :-
No need to copy, Make a similar project, Get Creative!

I think actually want to say 'do not copy' instead of 'sometimes copy'

I am going to go ahead and close this since it looks like a PR was merged a while back to resolve the issue.