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QBDB thread

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:03 pm
by grapesmoker
I recently found a little bit of spare time, so I've been working on adding more tournaments to the database. I'd like this thread to be stickied as a running list of which tournaments are up. You can and should also post in this thread to request a particular tournament. You are welcome to bring any mistakes in the entry to my attention in this thread, but it would be better if you just emailed me with the text [QBDB] in the subject line. That's also a good place to make feature suggestions, though right now I'm solely focused on adding more content; additional features will come later. Finally, you can email me if you would like to help with the project. At the moment, I have password-protected the upload page but if you are interested in helping me, I'll make an account for you so you can upload stuff. You are much more likely to see some particular tournament entered into the database if you volunteer to help. Distributed workloads mean that if everyone formats just one set, we'll soon have every tournament ever played. I'll outline what you can do to help in the next post.

With that in mind, here is the list, sorted by year:
  • 2009
  • ACF Nationals
  • The Emergency
  • Early Fall Tournament
  • Lederberg Memorial Science
  • Chicago Open
  • 2008
  • Penn Bowl
  • ACF Regionals
  • MLK/Terrapin
  • ACF Nationals
  • Cardinal Classic
  • Chicago Open
  • EFT
  • FEUERBACH
  • Gaddis
  • Minnesota Open
  • July Crisis
  • Chicago Open Lit Doubles
  • T-Party
  • Illinois Open
  • Zot Bowl
  • 2007
  • Michigan MLK
  • Maryland Terrapin
  • ACF Nationals
  • ACF Fall
  • Penn Bowl
  • Florida Sunshine State Invitational
  • Chicago Open
  • Literature Doubles
  • 2006
  • ACF Fall
  • ACF Regionals
  • Aztlan Cup

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:08 pm
by grapesmoker
What to do to help:

Format packets according to the ACF formatting guidelines. That means that tossups should look like this (thanks Andrew Hart):

Its creator lists "RETURN 2 DA PIT" as a personal favorite, and it is followed by Jared McGrath's "Jambalaya of the World's Cities and Soundscapes." Its first iteration featured a discussion about the Generation of 98 that culminated with an Antonio Machado poem being read by "Andrew from Minnesota," while the second version saw "Matt from Virginia's" discussion of Henrik Ibsen interrupted by a girl who apologized for being late for the next slot. For 10 points, name this "show about learning," hosted by a certain literature-loving Maryland quizbowler.
ANSWER: Unnamed Show 621 [accept Jonathan Magin's unnamed radio show or equivalents; prompt on Jonathan Magin]

And bonuses like this:

A sacred text of this religion centers on the fifteen tasks undergone by Jerry to make himself fiercer, including entering Steinhice's "Bowl of Swords." For 10 points each:
[10] Name this religion that worships Eric from Brown.
ANSWER: Mukherjudaism [accept Mukherjew]
[10] Typically depicted as a turbaned, mustachioed imp, this trickster god of Mukherjudaism rides the Bactrian camel Harvona and trained the talking raven Negbash.
ANSWER: Meigs [do not accept "Charles Meigs"; prompt on "the deceiver," "the lie-monger," "lattavosh," "he who plays with Chris Ray," or "he who loves Jonathan Magin"
[10] This is the sacred jar of Mukherjudaism, a venerated object in which Eric carries additional excellence.
ANSWER: the kumbha

The file should be saved in standard Word format, devoid of any special formatting or characters. The name of the file should be given as <year> - <tournament name> - <author>.doc. Example: 2007 - ACF Nationals - Brown.doc.

If you're interested in working on a particular set, coordinate with me to make sure no one else is working on it.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:10 pm
by Matt Weiner
2008 Penn Bowl, 2008 Regionals, 2008 Nationals, and 2007 Titanomachy should all be in ACF format already, so you can import their currently circulating versions.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:20 pm
by grapesmoker
Matt Weiner wrote:2008 Penn Bowl, 2008 Regionals, 2008 Nationals, and 2007 Titanomachy should all be in ACF format already, so you can import their currently circulating versions.
Great, thank you.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:51 pm
by grapesmoker
Other things not to put into packets: any text like "Extra tossups" or "sudden death tiebreakers." I assume anyone familiar with quizbowl understands the purpose of tossups 21 and up. This really screws up the parsing.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 11:13 am
by Mike Bentley
Hey Jerry, the questions used on scobowl are all formatted in a standard way so they should be easily importable into your database. Let me know if you're interested. The only caveat is that they're tossup only, but tossup are probably better than nothing.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 12:37 pm
by grapesmoker
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:Hey Jerry, the questions used on scobowl are all formatted in a standard way so they should be easily importable into your database. Let me know if you're interested. The only caveat is that they're tossup only, but tossup are probably better than nothing.
Tossup only is not a problem. Send them my way.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 5:29 pm
by fleurdelivre
I do not have any packet libraries of my own but am happy to format. If you have tournaments you'd like added but don't have time to clean them up, feel free to send them to kathryn dot e dot peters at gmail.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 6:07 pm
by Skepticism and Animal Feed
Hilarious search result:
[10] Considered the greatest Tang emperor, this second emperor of the dynasty encouraged his father to overthrow the Sui (pron. approx.: Sway) and ruled from 626 to 649, a reign considered exemplary by later writers.
Answer: Edward Sapir

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 7:05 pm
by grapesmoker
DJ Shadow wrote:Hilarious search result:
[10] Considered the greatest Tang emperor, this second emperor of the dynasty encouraged his father to overthrow the Sui (pron. approx.: Sway) and ruled from 626 to 649, a reign considered exemplary by later writers.
Answer: Edward Sapir
If it's in the database, it must be true!

I know some of the entries have come out wacky and I know why, so I will be tracking them down. Thanks.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 10:43 am
by Skepticism and Animal Feed
So I just realized that nothing in this thread actually links to the QBDB. This should perhaps be fixed?

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:26 pm
by grapesmoker
DJ Shadow wrote:So I just realized that nothing in this thread actually links to the QBDB. This should perhaps be fixed?
http://www.grapesmoker.com/qbdb

Server is down right now because the power is out in our physics building. Should be back up on Monday.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 3:17 pm
by Blackboard Monitor Vimes
This database is pretty cool, but I can't get the links for the bonuses to work. Any suggestions? (I use Safari, if that matters)

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 3:35 pm
by grapesmoker
MLWGS-Gir wrote:This database is pretty cool, but I can't get the links for the bonuses to work. Any suggestions? (I use Safari, if that matters)
Can you give me an exact description of the problem? What happens when you click on a bonus questions link?

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 3:39 pm
by Blackboard Monitor Vimes
grapesmoker wrote:
MLWGS-Gir wrote:This database is pretty cool, but I can't get the links for the bonuses to work. Any suggestions? (I use Safari, if that matters)
Can you give me an exact description of the problem? What happens when you click on a bonus questions link?
Absolutely nothing. The link changes color when my cursor's over it. That's all.

Edit: If I try double-clicking it highlights whichever word I'm closest to.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 5:51 pm
by grapesmoker
MLWGS-Gir wrote: Absolutely nothing. The link changes color when my cursor's over it. That's all.

Edit: If I try double-clicking it highlights whichever word I'm closest to.
I'm somewhat confused by where you are on the page. If you go to http://www.grapesmoker.com/qbdb you should wind up at the main page; you can navigate by choosing a tournament from the menu on the left, and there is no option for displaying bonuses separately from tossups. If you can explain to me where you encountered this link, I'll try to fix the problem, but I'm pretty sure there shouldn't be any such links on the page.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 6:06 pm
by Blackboard Monitor Vimes
grapesmoker wrote:
MLWGS-Gir wrote: Absolutely nothing. The link changes color when my cursor's over it. That's all.

Edit: If I try double-clicking it highlights whichever word I'm closest to.
I'm somewhat confused by where you are on the page. If you go to http://www.grapesmoker.com/qbdb you should wind up at the main page; you can navigate by choosing a tournament from the menu on the left, and there is no option for displaying bonuses separately from tossups. If you can explain to me where you encountered this link, I'll try to fix the problem, but I'm pretty sure there shouldn't be any such links on the page.
At the bottom of each toss-up round. It's not on the main page. The one I'm looking at now says "2007 Literature Doubles Bonuses by Packet 11." It's in a little box that changes color when I moved my cursor over it. I've only seen a few pages (not all of them from the same tournament, though), but all of them have had that box and none of the boxes have done anything...

Upon further inspection, the Toss-up box at the top also changes color, and that doesn't look like a link...I also just found another page that has the bonuses under the toss-ups, so it could be that there aren't bonuses for those packets and I'm merely being confused by a template...

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 11:30 pm
by grapesmoker
Oh yeah, those boxes that change colors are not links. They are just mouseover effects that highlight a section.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 5:59 pm
by Blackboard Monitor Vimes
grapesmoker wrote:Oh yeah, those boxes that change colors are not links. They are just mouseover effects that highlight a section.
Good to know. Thanks.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 9:18 pm
by Skepticism and Animal Feed
Is anyone else not getting tossups as results when they search this?

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 9:30 pm
by Mechanical Beasts
DJ Shadow wrote:Is anyone else not getting tossups as results when they search this?
I bet there just aren't any tossups with the name "James" in them.

Nah, I think this might be a bug.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 10:58 pm
by Kyle
everyday847 wrote:I bet there just aren't any tossups with the name "James" in them.

Nah, I think this might be a bug.
At the very least, with that search you should get literature tossups on James and the Giant Peach and science biography tossups on James Watt, the steaming Scot.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:28 am
by grapesmoker
Errors?! In my code?!

Fixed. Also, sorry that I haven't updated in some time; work has been kicking my ass but I do have a bunch of updates that will go up soon.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2008 3:53 pm
by at your pleasure
I can't seem to acess the database. Is there a issue or is it just my computer?

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2008 3:54 pm
by grapesmoker
Anti-Climacus wrote:I can't seem to acess the database. Is there a issue or is it just my computer?
Hmm, power might have gone out in the building and the server didn't turn back on. I'll go flip the switch.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2008 6:13 pm
by at your pleasure
It's back up.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2008 6:17 pm
by grapesmoker
Anti-Climacus wrote:It's back up.
Sometimes the facilities managers power-cycle things without telling us. Looks like things are back to normal.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 6:58 pm
by grapesmoker
I've been trapped in a boring meeting for the last two days so I decided to do some updates. Cardinal Classic and ACF Nationals are up, and most things from 2008 will be up soon as well.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 11:26 pm
by grapesmoker
I have implemented categorizing and rating abilities for QBDB. To use them, you must first register for an account, which you can do by clicking a link at the top left that invites you to register. Then you can log in and navigate to any packet and change the categories or rate the question by either quality or difficulty. The updating is handled seamlessly through the power of AJAX! The "Overall:" field contains the average result of everyone's votes; everyone has one vote that they can change at any time. In addition, anyone can currently change the category to which a question belongs; please don't abuse this function.

I would invite you all to take a look at this new feature and see if you can spot any bugs. Don't get too wild with the categorizing just yet because some of the questions may have to be reuploaded and this will cause your efforts to be lost. But do play with it and see if it works like it should. One thing to note is that I have not yet implemented cookies that keep you logged in, so your session will just expire after some time.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 5:34 am
by Tower Monarch
Wow, this seems like it could be really useful. Any suggestions on what difficulty rankings should mean? (i.e., is there some kind of scale we can apply to ACF Fall and Penn Bowl alike?)

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 11:52 am
by grapesmoker
Tower Monarch wrote:Wow, this seems like it could be really useful. Any suggestions on what difficulty rankings should mean? (i.e., is there some kind of scale we can apply to ACF Fall and Penn Bowl alike?)
This is a feature which I believe Matt Weiner suggested to me at one point, and I didn't have the time to implement it until now. I should explain that the difficulty and quality rankings are, as you can see, on a 6-point scale. The inspiration is Jonathan Magin's difficulty scale, which I suggest using to rate questions (I will put up a link at some point that helps explain this scale, but basically 1 is easiest and 6 is hardest). Likewise for the quality: 1 is very bad, 6 is superlative. Using your example, I would say ACF Fall should probably end up with a score of between 1 and 2 and Penn Bowl should be in the vicinity of 3. The nice thing about this is that once a lot of people sign up and start rating things, the aggregate numbers should provide a nice way of quantifying how hard this or that tournament was.

edit: by the way, if you are not logged in, the page should still display the difficulty and quality ratings of the question as well as the category, if those values exist. You just won't be able to modify them.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 12:26 pm
by grapesmoker
Now is a good time to say that if you are a CSS wizard and are good at design, I would like to hear from you if you can spend an hour of your time to design some pretty stylesheets for QBDB. I want to keep the same 3-column + header layout, but I'm aware that my color schemes leave something to be desired. I've been relying on CSS floating menus in the past and I don't mind staying with it, but perhaps someone who is better at design than me could make them look prettier.

Also, I have received a couple of requests for source code, so I am making it available here. It's a largeish tarball because it includes a lot of crap like uploaded packets and lots of other garbage, but if you unzip it, the root folder contains most of the code. You should be able to divine the SQL structure from this if you care.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 3:13 pm
by fleurdelivre
The links from your root page are broken - they tack on the entire www.grapesmoker.com/x instead of merely /x.

Also, if no one's taken your bait by mid-January, I'd love to tinker with the stylesheets...I just won't be able to get to them until then.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 3:24 pm
by grapesmoker
fleurdelivre wrote:The links from your root page are broken - they tack on the entire http://www.grapesmoker.com/x instead of merely /x.

Also, if no one's taken your bait by mid-January, I'd love to tinker with the stylesheets...I just won't be able to get to them until then.
Fixed the links.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:02 am
by grapesmoker
I also want to remind people that if they would like to help out, they can join this spreadsheet and sign up to format tournaments. I'm getting all the raw tournaments off Christian Carter's archive. You can refer to the 2008 ACF Nationals set as an example of a properly formatted tournament.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 8:09 pm
by Skepticism and Animal Feed
The spreadsheet appears to be invite-only.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 10:18 pm
by grapesmoker
Whig's Boson wrote:The spreadsheet appears to be invite-only.
Hmm, I hit the button that says "publish to the world," which I assumed would allow anyone to use it. Perhaps you need a Google account for this?

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 1:00 pm
by fleurdelivre
grapesmoker wrote:
Whig's Boson wrote:The spreadsheet appears to be invite-only.
Hmm, I hit the button that says "publish to the world," which I assumed would allow anyone to use it. Perhaps you need a Google account for this?
Yes, google accounts are required for access to google documents. however, I was logged in with my google account and still got a page asking me to request access first. I did so; did you receive a notification of some sort?

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 2:57 pm
by grapesmoker
fleurdelivre wrote:
grapesmoker wrote:
Whig's Boson wrote:The spreadsheet appears to be invite-only.
Hmm, I hit the button that says "publish to the world," which I assumed would allow anyone to use it. Perhaps you need a Google account for this?
Yes, google accounts are required for access to google documents. however, I was logged in with my google account and still got a page asking me to request access first. I did so; did you receive a notification of some sort?
Yeah, I see now that I did receive it. I guess I still have to approve editors for access to the spreadsheet.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 5:35 pm
by cvdwightw
Jerry, there should be a way to invite everyone as a viewer and restrict collaborators/editors, as that is what I'm doing with the Fantasy Quizbowl spreadsheet, I think.

My packet archive got mostly wiped out in a computer crash last summer, but I'm willing to format other things. I also have printouts at home of several things that UCLA didn't want when I left, so if I feel really bored over the break I can retype some of those into ACF-formatted documents.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:51 am
by Tower Monarch
Something seems off with the categorization for bonuses. Specifically, I was categorizing the first three packets of 2006 Atzlan Cup and the TUs worked but none of the bonuses show a category...

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 12:43 pm
by grapesmoker
Tower Monarch wrote:Something seems off with the categorization for bonuses. Specifically, I was categorizing the first three packets of 2006 Atzlan Cup and the TUs worked but none of the bonuses show a category...
Thanks for letting me know, I will look into it.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 5:48 am
by grapesmoker
grapesmoker wrote:
Tower Monarch wrote:Something seems off with the categorization for bonuses. Specifically, I was categorizing the first three packets of 2006 Atzlan Cup and the TUs worked but none of the bonuses show a category...
Thanks for letting me know, I will look into it.
So it looks like I just forgot to implement the bonus categorization before; it should work just fine now. In general, anything from 2008 is good to be categorized and rated except for Penn Bowl (I'm having a few problems with it). Go wild.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 12:44 am
by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
Jerry, did you get the CO 2006 I formatted a while back? I may not be doing it right but I don't see it up there, so if you want me to resend it let me know.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 12:46 am
by grapesmoker
Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:Jerry, did you get the CO 2006 I formatted a while back? I may not be doing it right but I don't see it up there, so if you want me to resend it let me know.
Oh yeah, let me find that and upload it.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 12:20 am
by Mechanical Beasts
I've requested access to the tournament formatting google doc; in the meantime, I will confirm the formatting of ACF Regionals 2007.

EDIT: Also, Jerry--I'm working on a project and would be eternally grateful if I could check out your packet import script. One of my regexes isn't working and I've zero idea why.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 2:24 pm
by grapesmoker
The power supply on the QBDB server has developed a horrible grinding noise, so I'm taking the server offline for a few days until I can either fix the problem or replace the PSU. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 5:16 pm
by grapesmoker
grapesmoker wrote:The power supply on the QBDB server has developed a horrible grinding noise, so I'm taking the server offline for a few days until I can either fix the problem or replace the PSU. Sorry for any inconvenience.
I have replaced the fan and the server is now back online.

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:17 pm
by at your pleasure
Is the database down again or is my computer being annoying?

Re: QBDB thread

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 10:09 pm
by grapesmoker
Anti-Climacus wrote:Is the database down again or is my computer being annoying?
I'm not sure what's going on. I'll look into it tomorrow.