For anyone following this story, we'd like to inform you that our lecturer/tutor for Collaborative Virtual Environments have changed the assessment criteria after our "griping". Here's an excerpt from the email we got this morning:

"In response to the concern of some students regarding the marking criteria for the tutorial activity yesterday (13th May 2009), we realize the current one might induce certain unfair competition among students. Thus, we decide to change the marking criteria as follows:

If you write your own three write-ups and successfully post them before 23rd May, you get 5 points. However, if they are deleted (e2 does not allow copy&pasted articles and other non-original writings) before 30th May (due date), you will lose 1/3 of the marks. The number of clicks and "c!" on your
write-ups will NOT be considered as part of your marking."

So I would like to thank our fellow griping students for their logical arguments against unfair lazy assessments and the E2 community for its support. I look forward to lurking for a while before posting my three write-ups (as I love writing I will attempt to make them as interesting as possible!) and trying to get the most out of this opportunity.