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Oh, you have no idea. Trust me.

I think the Lincoln-Way North team was a bit taken aback by my reading speed when I took over in the 2nd half of our match. Judging by the reactions of their girls standing behind me at the board keeping score, I think they've never had a moderator read like that before. The Kaneland and Leyden coaches made comments, too.

EDIT: No, they weren't negative about it. One (can't remember which) made a light-hearted comment when they took over to the effect of, "now, to slow things down..."

Kaneland had me as a moderator for several rounds at Kickoff and seemed to have no problem with my speed. Dentino mentioned it, but not negatively, and one of their players complimented it. They were also at Decemberist, where all the moderators were good and fast. Leyden was at NTV, where at least most of the moderators were good and fast. Thus...weird?

Woody Paige wrote:I think the Lincoln-Way North team was a bit taken aback by my reading speed when I took over in the 2nd half of our match. Judging by the reactions of their girls standing behind me at the board keeping score, I think they've never had a moderator read like that before. The Kaneland and Leyden coaches made comments, too.

EDIT: No, they weren't negative about it. One (can't remember which) made a light-hearted comment when they took over to the effect of, "now, to slow things down..."

That is exactly the same reaction I got when I read for Some team I will not mention at kickoffs, their coach was obviously insulted that I dare read so fast to her team. When Greg decided to be a F***ing moron and request she read for the second half, she preceded to pronounce multiple word incorrectly and basically be an awful reader. This is the exact opposite of Lisle, who I read for on multiple occasions before and were perfectly use to my reading style and speed (which, in retrospect was WAY too fast for a tournament like kickoffs). Overall I think that these teams that are starting to get involved with "better" quizbowl really just need to be thrown into the thick of things. As the players become accustomed to it faster than their sometimes brain dead coaches.

jonah wrote:Kaneland had me as a moderator for several rounds at Kickoff and seemed to have no problem with my speed. Dentino mentioned it, but not negatively, and one of their players complimented it. They were also at Decemberist, where all the moderators were good and fast. Leyden was at NTV, where at least most of the moderators were good and fast. Thus...weird?

I find all of this fascinating. Speaking in the TD role for a moment, it's very hard to find moderators that you know will do well.

At SHS, we had Laudermith for 3 rounds and everything was fine. The only time we had a problem was against Taylorville, where the moderator was reading so fast nobody in the room could understand. I mentioned something at halftime, asking politely if the speed could be brought down a touch, and that didn't seem to do much. Additionally, the 5 seconds allotted for bonus time seemed like about 3.9. One of my co-captains noticed this, and even said he watched the clock a couple of times during bonus timings and said that it was about 3 seconds. The moderator was the only official in the room for the match, with nobody doing timing or scorekeeping; this gentleman had to do it all. We finished that round in record time and then waited 20 minutes for our next opponent.

I was about to say something to Mr. Adkins, but decided against doing so. He was busy with other things on the day and I thought to myself, he had to cobble together 24 moderators for this tournament. My guess is that they probably won't all be great moderators, but the ones we had did a pretty good job.

Most TD's who are worth their salt will take time to build a stable of people who, first of all, WANT to moderate, and secondly, are willing to learn and want to do a good job. The other things can be fixed with some practice.

It's my opinion that good moderators keep the match moving in between questions, not during. Mr. Adkins and his moderators deserve a LOT of credit for the tournament finishing about 20 minutes behind what he had scheduled. For a 48-team, two division tournament, that was wonderful. Well done.

Moderators are definitely an issue, this is why I can't understand how Coach Palmer and others (Coach Barry in Georgia and Coach Huff in South Carolina) can continue to host such large tournaments year to year.

After the last couple of years, I can no longer rely on "volunteer" moderators. Too many logistical problems: reading speed and prononunciaton are often at issue, as are unfamiliarity with the rules, and moderators who are comfortable in IHSA format are often not comfortable in NAQT/ACF/HSAPQ format. Next year I may expand the field for Ultima/Davey and Goliath as my own teams will not play (since we will be using a house written set, at least for Ultima), and moderator training will be part of our practices. If I need additional moderators, I will ask the usual local suspects (Laudermith, Laird, Egan, Greenthal) and the U of I and Northwestern contingents as available.

Even with volunteer moderators, though, I believe that the moderators for the playoff--and especially the final consolation--rounds should be either a consensus of the involved teams or else the best moderators that are available. I've seen too many instances of untrained, untried moderators reading these rounds.

Can we get back to how a question set that included Religion: Computation, Driver's Ed: Multiple Choice, and roughly 40% computation is bad? Or are we just going to leave it at "It's a minor improvement over last year, so let's not be rip-roaring pissed about this"?

A couple weeks ago, I told Geringer to stay as far away from Fremd as possible. Now? Go forth and write, young man, because 100 teams aren't going to boycott this dreck. I doubt if we'll even get to 10.

As far as reading speed goes, I was a bit surprised at how people reacted to me at Auburn F/S. The one team that complained was Stevenson, though I saw plenty of argument between the players as to whether or not they liked me as a reader. I did receive some criticism from another team's coach, though her players insisted that it was fine. On the flip side, I received glowing reviews from Boylan's players, who went as far as to praise me weeks later at a NIC-10 conference meet. I think people just need to deal with it, with the exception of F/S, when there's some wiggle room. Think about it this way: do I ever tell outrageously slow readers to pick it up? No, I don't.

Oliver Ellsworth wrote:do I ever tell outrageously slow readers to pick it up? No, I don't.

Well, i mean you should. tournaments get behind because of them.

MoCity02 wrote:

Oliver Ellsworth wrote:do I ever tell outrageously slow readers to pick it up? No, I don't.

Well, i mean you should. tournaments get behind because of them.

This, and moderators who disrupt the flow of the game like that could potentially change the outcome of the match. Which isn't good.

[potential de-rail alert]
When talking of moderator speed with the Barrington varsity yesterday, Norman recalled a moderator at Fremd's regional 2 years ago costing them their match (vs. Carmel?) because he paused an extra beat before reading the final term of one of those "Complete this sequence" computation questions.

>_<

I am more interested if there were any particularly harrowing stories to be related about the in-house moderators which were invariably used for the playoffs at this tournament. Since "district employees" have to be given preference over outside moderators due to contractual issues with D211's union, there are usually laughably bad moderators who make equally laughable decisions during matches, sometimes even coming off as completely offensive towards coaches and players.

mlaird wrote:I am more interested if there were any particularly harrowing stories to be related about the in-house moderators which were invariably used for the playoffs at this tournament. Since "district employees" have to be given preference over outside moderators due to contractual issues with D211's union, there are usually laughably bad moderators who make equally laughable decisions during matches, sometimes even coming off as completely offensive towards coaches and players.

We didn't have a house moderator until our rematch against Stevenson. The only real issue I had, decision-wise, wasn't completely the moderator's fault. The answer line was "segment" but it told him to not accept any answer with the word "line" or "ray" in. Sure enough, my captain answered "line segment" and it was rejected. Fortunately, the Stevenson coach and players backed me and my protest, despite what the paper said, so he quickly ruled in my favor.

Yeah, Jeff, Mr. Sacks's questions are notorious for incredibly picky answer lines. Some samples from last year's H-F tournament:

ANSWER: Deviance [DO NOT ACCEPT: Deviant]
ANSWER: Ayn Rand [DO NOT ACCEPT: Ann rand, ACCEPT: reasonable phoenic [sic] pronounciation [sic] of "Ayn"…correctly pronounce INE rhyming with PINE]
This is what Oscar the Grouch loves the most. ANSWER: Trash [DO NOT ACCEPT: any synonyms]
Big Bird loves many things, but perhaps most is his best friend. Name him. ANSWER: Mr. (Aloysius) Snuffleupagus [Mr. required, PROMPT: just 'Snuffleupagus' or 'Snuffy']
ANSWER: Anorexia Nervosa [PROMPT: Anorexia]
ANSWER: Henry Ford [PROMPT: Ford]
ANSWER: Flo Rida [MUST BE PRONOUNCED: Flow Rida]

Seeking out technical reasons to rule someone wrong when they know the answer is a pretty consistent bad-quizbowl tradition.

mlaird wrote:I am more interested if there were any particularly harrowing stories to be related about the in-house moderators which were invariably used for the playoffs at this tournament. Since "district employees" have to be given preference over outside moderators due to contractual issues with D211's union, there are usually laughably bad moderators who make equally laughable decisions during matches, sometimes even coming off as completely offensive towards coaches and players.

Surprisingly, the 2 moderators we had in the playoffs were very good and, in my opinion, wouldn't be out of place at a good tournament in terms of speed and clarity. It was clear that they weren't associated with quizbowl but they weren't afraid to overrule the packet(which was important because there were at least 3 instances where answer on the paper was wrong in the playoffs alone) if both coaches agreed that the "correct" answer was wrong. They were also friendly after the matches.

I disliked the number of coaches who couldn't moderate well. I was captaining a fresh-soph team while the captain was with Varsity, and a coach/moderator refused to accept -6/5 as being equivalent to -1.2 (no preference was stated in the problem), actinides as being correct, 3/2 as being the same 1.5, forcing us to win on the very last toss-up.

blech. That's terrible. There was once a document on the IHSSBCA web site that outlined the protocol of moderating a match involving your own team. I'll boil it down for you; "When a decision on something questionable must be made, favor the other team. For your own team? Not so much."
Heck, I accepted a response of "Those Damn Yankees" for the musical in round 1. Why? It was given by the other team. Had Barrington given that, I'd have immediately said "incorrect."

Woody Paige wrote:blech. That's terrible. There was once a document on the IHSSBCA web site that outlined the protocol of moderating a match involving your own team. I'll boil it down for you; "When a decision on something questionable must be made, favor the other team. For your own team? Not so much."
Heck, I accepted a response of "Those Damn Yankees" for the musical in round 1. Why? It was given by the other team. Had Barrington given that, I'd have immediately said "incorrect."

"I will accept an answer given from one team that is incorrect, but if the other team gives that exact same answer I will correctly rule them incorrect" sounds like throwing a game to me.

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:

Woody Paige wrote:blech. That's terrible. There was once a document on the IHSSBCA web site that outlined the protocol of moderating a match involving your own team. I'll boil it down for you; "When a decision on something questionable must be made, favor the other team. For your own team? Not so much."
Heck, I accepted a response of "Those Damn Yankees" for the musical in round 1. Why? It was given by the other team. Had Barrington given that, I'd have immediately said "incorrect."

"I will accept an answer given from one team that is incorrect, but if the other team gives that exact same answer I will correctly rule them incorrect" sounds like throwing a game to me.

I wouldn't go that far, but I also would never accept "Those Damn Yankees"..."Those" isn't just a throwaway add on like "A" or "The"...it's just wrong.

Whatever Charlie wants, Charlie gets