Automatic question reading?

[Chef Gourmand]

Maybe, in the not-too-distant future, all the questions could be pre-recorded, with the tape being stopped automatically after a buzz? A moderator would determine if the answer was right or wrong, and the end of power would be somehow indicated. There might also be an automated scorekeeper and scoreboard (the moderator would enter in the rules and the score from each question). This would eliminate most reading and scorekeeping errors.
-Alex

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

lack of moderators is a much more limiting problem for quizbowl than moderator error: you should be thinking about fully automating the moderator role

[Chef Gourmand]

The problem with that is that computer moderators could make incorrect judgements more often than humans do. It would be very hard to dictate answers to a computer by speaking, and spelling a word correctly after buzzing would be hard. Protobowl's algorithm parses answers fairly well, but it makes mistakes fairly often. Some of these are due to transcription errors (for example, "cosine" was written as "cos ine" in one question, presumably to indicate that "cos" was acceptable, but this meant that the algorithm rejected "cosine" as an answer) but some errors are hard to patch (reflection and refraction get mixed up).

[naan/steak-holding toll]

The problem with that is that computer moderators could make incorrect judgements more often than humans do. It would be very hard to dictate answers to a computer by speaking, and spelling a word correctly after buzzing would be hard. Protobowl's algorithm parses answers fairly well, but it makes mistakes fairly often. Some of these are due to transcription errors (for example, "cosine" was written as "cos ine" in one question, presumably to indicate that "cos" was acceptable, but this meant that the algorithm rejected "cosine" as an answer) but some errors are hard to patch (reflection and refraction get mixed up).

Not to mention that people who give answers in foreign languages would probably get screwed pretty often.