Please hold online playtesting mirrors on Sundays

[1.82]

Consider that the Venn diagram of people who might participate in an online quizbowl tournament and people who might staff a local tournament has significant overlap. If an online playtesting tournament happens on the same day as a real tournament, it will almost certainly cut into the pool of staffers for that real tournament. A good way to avoid this is to hold the online tournament on Sunday, a day when real tournaments rarely take place. By doing so, the online tournament will avoid impacting field caps for real tournaments and the effect on the whole community will be positive. Thanks!

[Mike Bentley]

Eh how much of a concern is this really? Online tournaments typically have like 5 staffers and they can be from across the country. And some of these tournaments are played by teams in places that aren't likely to have a local mirror. I don't think this is enough of a problem to have a categorical rule saying "don't ever host an online tournament on a Saturday."

[Bosa of York]

I think Naveed's point is that the players of online playtesting mirrors (of whom there are typically on the order of 20-40 depending on the mirror's size), who are typically out of college since those mirrors are usually open, may have chosen by playing that online mirror to not staff some other physical tournament (for example, anyone playing the SGI playtest on 9/29 won't be able to staff an EFT mirror on that day). While it is true that this doesn't matter as much for people in regions with few physical tournaments, it is at least conceivable (though I don't know if it's actually true) that out-of-college people playing online mirrors instead of staffing physical tournaments could result in those physical tournaments not having as much staff as would be preferable.

[UlyssesInvictus]

You know, now that this is being brought up, does anyone know why physical tournaments usually happen on Saturdays? Because schools usually only allow their buildings to be leased on Saturdays? Because of religious conflicts (i.e. Christian church; I know of Sabbath, but I apologize for not being very familiar with the scheduled religious obligations of other beliefs)? Because it's nice not to come home absolutely pooped the evening before work/school? Etc.? I assume there's some historical reasons in here as well.

I partially ask because some of those reasons are equally valid reasons not to have online tournaments on Sundays (e.g. the 2nd and 3rd above), and some wouldn't be (e.g. the 1st above).

[a bird]

You know, now that this is being brought up, does anyone know why physical tournaments usually happen on Saturdays?

A large factor must be travel time. Driving 2-4+ hours after a tournament is easier on Saturday than Sunday, when people have class, work, etc. on Monday.