Matt Weiner wrote:Look, certainly it's within Harvard's rights to create a difficult tournament, and there may be a niche served by an event where lots of top national teams can come together and play a difficult tournament. The problems are:
1) Harvard seemingly insisting that all tournaments should look like this and the other 95% of teams can go copulate themselves - Ted calling HSAPQ tournaments "illegitimate" as discriminators between top teams, etc
2) The notion that this tournament is written this way for some grand reason other than "no one at Harvard has the interest or ability to write questions at the correct difficulty level for high school quizbowl"
3) The crazy self-evaluation problem that plagues quizbowl in general. This is something that Harvard did not invent but is only participating in. Every year we get subpar tournaments where the random unqualified editors of said events assure us that they personally made sure the questions were good (Fall Novice, anyone?) In this case, Stephen Liu is getting all indignant that we're not taking his word for it when he assures us he made HFT a good event. Stephen, who are you besides some guy who was pretty good as a player in high school and is now pretty good as a player in college? Where did you learn to write or edit? Who taught you? What have you worked on before? Are you relying on anything to establish your credibility besides your skill as a player and the fact that you go to Harvard? Neither of those things mean that you are even a competent editor, let alone someone who is such a great editor that you can simply assert this tournament was well-edited and expect us to believe you without question.
4) Short memories about terrible ideas. Ted seems unaware that the idea of creating an "easy" version of HFT where none of the answers changed but the first couple of lines were removed from every tossup was already tried. This is strange, since it was done for HFT 2008, a tournament he participated in creating. I for one did not have a good time reading the shortened "easy" version of tossups on the Euler totient function to the VCU field.
5) The missed opportunity for growing high school quizbowl in New England. While it's not necessarily any obligation of Harvard to do more than what they do right now to attract Massachusetts teams (which, as best I can tell from the outside, is literally nothing, combined with giving them questions that will have a questionable impact at best on interest in quizbowl at any school that does show up), people who are interested in growing participation need to find a better way to do it. This tournament is not equipped to do outreach of any kind, nor is it interested. Any strategy that involves sending more new teams to HFT is going to be counterproductive.
6) The usual lack of care shown to making a tournament readable/playable by people not steeped in quizbowlese and typo-tongue. I certainly remember the problems with mirroring HFT down here, particularly in 2009 when the packets only technically qualified as English. I don't care who the audience of your tournament is, this needs to stop.
I think this year marked the end of the "everyone in every corner of the country should run a local mirror of our difficult tournament for top teams who already flew to Harvard to play it" trend, so that's progress at least.
This is going to be a hard tournament where people not in line for the top two brackets at NSC are not going to be able to answer a good deal of the questions. That's a fact. If other teams, fully aware of that, still want to play it, good for them. But let's not pretend that this isn't the case, or that high school quizbowl can survive any more tournaments turning to this model.
Matt Weiner wrote:Look, certainly it's within Harvard's rights to create a difficult tournament, and there may be a niche served by an event where lots of top national teams can come together and play a difficult tournament. The problems are:
1) Harvard seemingly insisting that all tournaments should look like this and the other 95% of teams can go copulate themselves - Ted calling HSAPQ tournaments "illegitimate" as discriminators between top teams, etc
2) The notion that this tournament is written this way for some grand reason other than "no one at Harvard has the interest or ability to write questions at the correct difficulty level for high school quizbowl"
3) The crazy self-evaluation problem that plagues quizbowl in general. This is something that Harvard did not invent but is only participating in. Every year we get subpar tournaments where the random unqualified editors of said events assure us that they personally made sure the questions were good (Fall Novice, anyone?) In this case, Stephen Liu is getting all indignant that we're not taking his word for it when he assures us he made HFT a good event. Stephen, who are you besides some guy who was pretty good as a player in high school and is now pretty good as a player in college? Where did you learn to write or edit? Who taught you? What have you worked on before? Are you relying on anything to establish your credibility besides your skill as a player and the fact that you go to Harvard? Neither of those things mean that you are even a competent editor, let alone someone who is such a great editor that you can simply assert this tournament was well-edited and expect us to believe you without question.
4) Short memories about terrible ideas. Ted seems unaware that the idea of creating an "easy" version of HFT where none of the answers changed but the first couple of lines were removed from every tossup was already tried. This is strange, since it was done for HFT 2008, a tournament he participated in creating. I for one did not have a good time reading the shortened "easy" version of tossups on the Euler totient function to the VCU field.
5) The missed opportunity for growing high school quizbowl in New England. While it's not necessarily any obligation of Harvard to do more than what they do right now to attract Massachusetts teams (which, as best I can tell from the outside, is literally nothing, combined with giving them questions that will have a questionable impact at best on interest in quizbowl at any school that does show up), people who are interested in growing participation need to find a better way to do it. This tournament is not equipped to do outreach of any kind, nor is it interested. Any strategy that involves sending more new teams to HFT is going to be counterproductive.
6) The usual lack of care shown to making a tournament readable/playable by people not steeped in quizbowlese and typo-tongue. I certainly remember the problems with mirroring HFT down here, particularly in 2009 when the packets only technically qualified as English. I don't care who the audience of your tournament is, this needs to stop.
I think this year marked the end of the "everyone in every corner of the country should run a local mirror of our difficult tournament for top teams who already flew to Harvard to play it" trend, so that's progress at least.
This is going to be a hard tournament where people not in line for the top two brackets at NSC are not going to be able to answer a good deal of the questions. That's a fact. If other teams, fully aware of that, still want to play it, good for them. But let's not pretend that this isn't the case, or that high school quizbowl can survive any more tournaments turning to this model.
I don't think anybody is saying that HSAPQ is somehow illegitimate at distinguishing top teams, but wouldn't you agree though that somewhat harder questions do a better job at distinguishing top teams?
A lot of the frustration also comes from Harvard continually lying about the difficulty of their tournament, leaving TDs at mirror sites in a very uncomfortable position.College Park Spyders wrote:I think part of the reason so many people have expressed frustration at HFT's difficulty is not inherently because it's harder than usual, but because it's part of a frustratingly large group of tournaments that have been harder than usual in the recent past, and because of the proliferation of HFT mirrors.
SirT wrote:A lot of the frustration also comes from Harvard continually lying about the difficulty of their tournament, leaving TDs at mirror sites in a very uncomfortable position.College Park Spyders wrote:I think part of the reason so many people have expressed frustration at HFT's difficulty is not inherently because it's harder than usual, but because it's part of a frustratingly large group of tournaments that have been harder than usual in the recent past, and because of the proliferation of HFT mirrors.
Leucippe and Clitophon wrote:You are comparing AP courses that are designed to be first year courses in a field to AP courses that are designed to be second or third year courses in a field. There are about 4,000,000 high school seniors each year, and they all have taken history at some point during high school.
Coldblueberry wrote:...As I said, there's no way to see the popularity of high-school courses other than AP/IB stats or some massive highschool website digging...
You have your experiences at a very good school in a very affluent county. Not everyone is lucky enough to go to one of the top 100 schools in America, so you should probably refrain from trying to generalize your experience to the uncountably numerous students who haven't been afforded the same advantages you have.Coldblueberry wrote:You have your experiences and I have mine. I don't really understand what you're trying to say with your post. FYI, history is usually 4/4, compared to SS's 1/1.
AP subject population doesn't reflect the popularity of certain regular courses at all. At least in Virginia, US History is a required course (along with Government) of every single high school student. Biology, while not strictly required as you only have to take two (three if you get an advanced diploma) of earth science, biology, chemistry and physics, is still taken by almost every single high school student (if not all. It's very common to skip Earth Science but I'm not aware of anyone not taking Bio). However, 3 times as many people take the APUSH exam as the Biology one, which clearly reflects how common it is for US History to be offered as an AP course vs Biology and has nothing to do at all with whether people are actually taking US History or Biology. In fact, even though Calculus isn't even required to be taught (and certainly wasn't at my high school), one and a half as many people took the AP Calc exam as the AP Biology exam, which you can't honestly expect me to believe actually reflects the distribution of what classes are taught in high school.Coldblueberry wrote:As I said, there's no way to see the popularity of high-school courses other than AP/IB stats or some massive highschool website digging. AP subject population should at least sufficiently reflect the popularity of certain regular courses: U.S. History and English are popular no matter what (math doesn't count because only Calc is available) and Music Theory and Italian are popular in neither AP nor regular courses...
DrCongo wrote:I wouldn't use Michigan stats as a good gauge for the difficulty of a tournament because as a whole Michigan quiz bowl isn't all that strong. MSU probably should have chosen an easier house write.
Matt Weiner wrote:Look, certainly it's within Harvard's rights to create a difficult tournament, and there may be a niche served by an event where lots of top national teams can come together and play a difficult tournament. The problems are:
1) Harvard seemingly insisting that all tournaments should look like this and the other 95% of teams can go copulate themselves - Ted calling HSAPQ tournaments "illegitimate" as discriminators between top teams, etc
2) The notion that this tournament is written this way for some grand reason other than "no one at Harvard has the interest or ability to write questions at the correct difficulty level for high school quizbowl"
3) The crazy self-evaluation problem that plagues quizbowl in general. This is something that Harvard did not invent but is only participating in. Every year we get subpar tournaments where the random unqualified editors of said events assure us that they personally made sure the questions were good (Fall Novice, anyone?) In this case, Stephen Liu is getting all indignant that we're not taking his word for it when he assures us he made HFT a good event. Stephen, who are you besides some guy who was pretty good as a player in high school and is now pretty good as a player in college? Where did you learn to write or edit? Who taught you? What have you worked on before? Are you relying on anything to establish your credibility besides your skill as a player and the fact that you go to Harvard? Neither of those things mean that you are even a competent editor, let alone someone who is such a great editor that you can simply assert this tournament was well-edited and expect us to believe you without question.
4) Short memories about terrible ideas. Ted seems unaware that the idea of creating an "easy" version of HFT where none of the answers changed but the first couple of lines were removed from every tossup was already tried. This is strange, since it was done for HFT 2008, a tournament he participated in creating. I for one did not have a good time reading the shorten "easy" version of tossups on the Euler totient function to the VCU field.
5) The missed opportunity for growing high school quizbowl in New England. While it's not necessarily any obligation of Harvard to do more than what they do right now to attract Massachusetts teams (which, as best I can tell from the outside, is literally nothing, combined with giving them questions that will have a questionable impact at best on interest in quizbowl at any school that does show up), people who are interested in growing participation need to find a better way to do it. This tournament is not equipped to do outreach of any kind, nor is it interested. Any strategy that involves sending more new teams to HFT is going to be counterproductive.
6) The usual lack of care shown to making a tournament readable/playable by people not steeped in quizbowlese and typo-tongue. I certainly remember the problems with mirroring HFT down here, particularly in 2009 when the packets only technically qualified as English. I don't care who the audience of your tournament is, this needs to stop.
I think this year marked the end of the "everyone in every corner of the country should run a local mirror of our difficult tournament for top teams who already flew to Harvard to play it" trend, so that's progress at least.
This is going to be a hard tournament where people not in line for the top two brackets at NSC are not going to be able to answer a good deal of the questions. That's a fact. If other teams, fully aware of that, still want to play it, good for them. But let's not pretend that this isn't the case, or that high school quizbowl can survive any more tournaments turning to this model.
Matt Weiner wrote:Look, certainly it's within Harvard's rights to create a difficult tournament, and there may be a niche served by an event where lots of top national teams can come together and play a difficult tournament. The problems are:
1) Harvard seemingly insisting that all tournaments should look like this and the other 95% of teams can go copulate themselves - Ted calling HSAPQ tournaments "illegitimate" as discriminators between top teams, etc
2) The notion that this tournament is written this way for some grand reason other than "no one at Harvard has the interest or ability to write questions at the correct difficulty level for high school quizbowl"
3) The crazy self-evaluation problem that plagues quizbowl in general. This is something that Harvard did not invent but is only participating in. Every year we get subpar tournaments where the random unqualified editors of said events assure us that they personally made sure the questions were good (Fall Novice, anyone?) In this case, Stephen Liu is getting all indignant that we're not taking his word for it when he assures us he made HFT a good event. Stephen, who are you besides some guy who was pretty good as a player in high school and is now pretty good as a player in college? Where did you learn to write or edit? Who taught you? What have you worked on before? Are you relying on anything to establish your credibility besides your skill as a player and the fact that you go to Harvard? Neither of those things mean that you are even a competent editor, let alone someone who is such a great editor that you can simply assert this tournament was well-edited and expect us to believe you without question.
4) Short memories about terrible ideas. Ted seems unaware that the idea of creating an "easy" version of HFT where none of the answers changed but the first couple of lines were removed from every tossup was already tried. This is strange, since it was done for HFT 2008, a tournament he participated in creating. I for one did not have a good time reading the shortened "easy" version of tossups on the Euler totient function to the VCU field.
5) The missed opportunity for growing high school quizbowl in New England. While it's not necessarily any obligation of Harvard to do more than what they do right now to attract Massachusetts teams (which, as best I can tell from the outside, is literally nothing, combined with giving them questions that will have a questionable impact at best on interest in quizbowl at any school that does show up), people who are interested in growing participation need to find a better way to do it. This tournament is not equipped to do outreach of any kind, nor is it interested. Any strategy that involves sending more new teams to HFT is going to be counterproductive.
6) The usual lack of care shown to making a tournament readable/playable by people not steeped in quizbowlese and typo-tongue. I certainly remember the problems with mirroring HFT down here, particularly in 2009 when the packets only technically qualified as English. I don't care who the audience of your tournament is, this needs to stop.
I think this year marked the end of the "everyone in every corner of the country should run a local mirror of our difficult tournament for top teams who already flew to Harvard to play it" trend, so that's progress at least.
This is going to be a hard tournament where people not in line for the top two brackets at NSC are not going to be able to answer a good deal of the questions. That's a fact. If other teams, fully aware of that, still want to play it, good for them. But let's not pretend that this isn't the case, or that high school quizbowl can survive any more tournaments turning to this model.
Matt Weiner wrote:5) The missed opportunity for growing high school quizbowl in New England. While it's not necessarily any obligation of Harvard to do more than what they do right now to attract Massachusetts teams (which, as best I can tell from the outside, is literally nothing, combined with giving them questions that will have a questionable impact at best on interest in quizbowl at any school that does show up), people who are interested in growing participation need to find a better way to do it. This tournament is not equipped to do outreach of any kind, nor is it interested. Any strategy that involves sending more new teams to HFT is going to be counterproductive.
Magister Ludi wrote:the opportunity cost of making those parts as easy as an HSAPQ set is that HFT will be invalid for making distinctions between the top teams.
Magister Ludi wrote:There are many self-important New England prep schools that could easily be more responsive to the glitz and glam of the Harvard name than playing the easiest possible tournament.
Magister Ludi wrote:In reality, HSAPQ isn't a very valid way to determine the differences in skill between best teams, which is why we don't use HSAPQ difficulty at the NSC and the HSNCT.
Magister Ludi wrote:I knew nothing when I was an ignorant freshman in high school playing the PACE NSC as my first tournament. According to Fred Morlan this should have been a horribly alienating experience that should have driven me from quizbowl forever, but it played out differently.
Nick wrote:What makes ZERO sense to me is that people are suggesting that the difficultly of the set is what contributed to only having TWO in-state schools compete at this tournament; which is what I believe Madden was originally addressing (i.e. that the Harvard tournament could and should be much much bigger). Why do people seem to think that the other 300+ schools in Massachusetts know what quizbowl is, knew the Harvard tournament existed, had the resources to attend, but decided against it b/c they know the set is harder than usual. Or similarly those teams attended Harvard before (when it was also too difficult) and decided not to return? REALLY!?!?
Magister Ludi wrote:I haven't read most of the posts in this thread
1- This is an example of Matt's primary arguing technique of presenting a caricature of someone's argument and then making that caricature the argument he responds to rather than the real argument. I'm not saying 95% of the country should "suck it" as Matt claims.
HSAPQ isn't a very valid way to determine the differences in skill between best teams
So the choice is to systemically switch every easy part way down so Michigan County D will get 5-6 more easy parts and the swath of easy teams have slightly higher points per bonus, but the opportunity cost of making those parts as easy as an HSAPQ set is that HFT will be invalid for making distinctions between the top teams.
So we are not writing a tournament geared towards the top teams per se, but rather one of the few high school tournaments of the year in which we can tell top high school teams that they can expect a meaningful tournament for someone of their skill.
2- This comment is just a pointless jab at our writing team. Moreover, Stephen is a perfectly good writer and from my personal evaluation would be in the upper half of the writing staffs of HSAPQ and NAQT if he joined.
3- Stop berating us for alienating teams with the difficulty of the tournament-- WHEN THOSE TEAMS LIKED THE TOURNAMENT! Every year the internet demagogues treat this tournament as their ideological whipping boy to further their own ideas about difficulty, but it would be great to hear from the actual teams who played.
You in fact are guilty of evaluation bias yourself when you assume the bonus conversion rate of the bottom ten teams is the only factor we should use when evaluating whether a set is successful when you haven't even seen the questions. We had the most overwhelmingly positive reception to HFT this year that we have ever had, and we will value the responses of the coaches survey about what they would like to see changed much more than the typical board posters who criticize this tournament every year regardless.
I was perfectly aware of the problems with the 2008 HFT, but in fact you are the one who is "unaware" of the distinction I was trying to make. As I said earlier, it wouldn't take any extra work to produce a version of the set with slightly longer version of the set for the top bracket that better approximates nationals questions because most people write their questions longer anyway. To take a hypothetical example, that Tess of the D'Urbervilles tossup would be 7 lines long like you would see in the NSC rather than 5 lines. This suggestion was something that might improve the experience of the top teams, which I understand is something you don't care about so I would expect you to dismiss this idea immediately.
Nick wrote:What makes ZERO sense to me is that people are suggesting that the difficultly of the set is what contributed to only having TWO in-state schools compete at this tournament; which is what I believe Madden was originally addressing (i.e. that the Harvard tournament could and should be much much bigger). Why do people seem to think that the other 300+ schools in Massachusetts know what quizbowl is, knew the Harvard tournament existed, had the resources to attend, but decided against it b/c they know the set is harder than usual. Or similarly those teams attended Harvard before (when it was also too difficult) and decided not to return? REALLY!?!?
gyre and gimble wrote:My lack of knowledge of the Kentucky circuit gives me reservations about predicting how the set will run there, but I think a mirror site serving the Ohio-Kentucky area is also perfectly reasonable.
Matt Weiner wrote:Perhaps he is. Having examined the HFT packets, my chief issues remain the difficulty (in the mirror contexts) and the garbage excuse for English. Structurally, the questions are sound. But the point is not to claim that Stephen is a bad editor, it's to remind him that he needs to establish his bona fides as good editor the way everyone else does, by producing a tournament on which knowledgeable people evaluate him, not by asserting on the Internet based on nothing relevant that he's a good editor.
Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:I think the reason that New England schools don't come to HFT is because New England schools are not particularly good at quizbowl, and HFT has generally been on the harder side of the high school difficulty spectrum,....
Cheynem wrote:I agree with David that more outreach is necessary. I think this is not done by artificially increasing a field size or raising registration fees, but through the age old means of producing a solid, accessible set, doing work on the ground to promote a circuit and tournaments, etc.
Fred wrote:Well, if you're trying to appeal to new teams and grow the game, I would have to advise against designing your tournament to appeal exclusively to the top 20-30 teams.
Fred wrote:I agree with your points on team recruitment - quiz bowl is very flawed in this regard, and needs to do a lot better work at it. But Harvard Fall Tournament as it is has recently been produced, and as early statistics indicate, was produced this year, is not the way to go about it.
College Park Spyders wrote:I also think it would be necessary for people to abandon all hope of HFT being the catalyst to create the Massachussetts circuit. On this path, the only way Harvard could really be effective would be for them to host some other, much easier tournament that's geared explicitly towards local teams, similar to Yale's FACT.
Nick wrote:This tournament is/was not a “catalyst for New England quizbowl” but not because of set difficulty. It has nothing to do with Bruce Arthur’s original plan for HFT vs. Ted Gioia’s contemporary vision of HFT vs. Stephen Liu’s ability to edit HFT. Its because of a host of other reasons preventing quizbowl growth, like high schools “not knowing quizbowl exists,” and “not knowing Harvard is having a tournament.” But those issues don’t seem to be getting as much attention.
Fred wrote:Magister Ludi wrote:I knew nothing when I was an ignorant freshman in high school playing the PACE NSC as my first tournament. According to Fred Morlan this should have been a horribly alienating experience that should have driven me from quizbowl forever, but it played out differently.
The closest I came to saying anything like this was "I think it's actually harmful to the game if a quiz bowl team's first exposure to the game is a set that is quite a bit harder than what is being produced as "introductory" or "regular" difficulty.". At no point did I claim that hard tournaments were impossible to be enjoyed by players that weren't very good. I do believe that it's more likely that if someone starts out as a poor player, they won't enjoy the game as much as if they did well. As a result, I do believe that introducing new players to the game in a manner that makes it more likely that they will perform well will do more to grow the game.You did point to yourself as an example of someone who was introduced to the game at a high level and weren't scared away. I believe that you were referring to the 2005 NSC, right?
I'd have to say I wouldn't consider someone who put up 38.57 ppg in the '05 NSC prelims or someone who improved that number to 44.00 ppg in the same tournament's top tier of playoffs to be a poor player.
Edit: I dug a little deeper and found that Ted's first NSC was 2004, at which he scored 2 ppg for a Gonzaga team that finished 3rd in the consolation bracket. I should note that I also think that the argument of "I, as a person who did poorly at my first tournament, was not turned off of quiz bowl; therefore, anyone else who does poorly at their first tournament won't be turned off of quiz bowl" is a pretty awful one.
Magister Ludi wrote:Fred wrote:Magister Ludi wrote:I knew nothing when I was an ignorant freshman in high school playing the PACE NSC as my first tournament. According to Fred Morlan this should have been a horribly alienating experience that should have driven me from quizbowl forever, but it played out differently.
The closest I came to saying anything like this was "I think it's actually harmful to the game if a quiz bowl team's first exposure to the game is a set that is quite a bit harder than what is being produced as "introductory" or "regular" difficulty.". At no point did I claim that hard tournaments were impossible to be enjoyed by players that weren't very good. I do believe that it's more likely that if someone starts out as a poor player, they won't enjoy the game as much as if they did well. As a result, I do believe that introducing new players to the game in a manner that makes it more likely that they will perform well will do more to grow the game.You did point to yourself as an example of someone who was introduced to the game at a high level and weren't scared away. I believe that you were referring to the 2005 NSC, right?
I'd have to say I wouldn't consider someone who put up 38.57 ppg in the '05 NSC prelims or someone who improved that number to 44.00 ppg in the same tournament's top tier of playoffs to be a poor player.
Edit: I dug a little deeper and found that Ted's first NSC was 2004, at which he scored 2 ppg for a Gonzaga team that finished 3rd in the consolation bracket. I should note that I also think that the argument of "I, as a person who did poorly at my first tournament, was not turned off of quiz bowl; therefore, anyone else who does poorly at their first tournament won't be turned off of quiz bowl" is a pretty awful one.
Please don't misrepresent me. I expect to be attacked by Matt Weiner, but lets keep it to attacking me for things I actually said. I said there are a variety of methods that attract people to quizbowl. If you actually read my post instead of caricaturing my argument, I said different people are attracted to quizbowl through different means. Accordingly, I said there are some programs that might be attracted to things different than easy questions such as prestige. I NEVER SAID THIS SHOULD BE THE UNIVERSAL APPROACH TO RECRUITMENT. I specifically made a point to not make a causal link between my experience and the claim "therefore: anyone else who does poorly at their first tournament won't be turned off." I specifically tried to make that clear so you and Charlie Dees wouldn't accuse me of exactly the thing you accused me of. I simply said you shouldn't discount the incredible allure of official, prestigious sounding things like Harvard or national championships.
Remember-the-Alamo-Remember-Goliad wrote: blah blah blah then the warrant for the slow death of Academic Qiuz Bowl has already been written. blah blah blah
gyre and gimble wrote:I apologize to the MSU folks for handing them a set that wasn't appropriate for their audience, since I get the feeling that the Fall Novice set or something like that would have suited those teams better (please yell at me if I'm being condescending here, as that's not my intention).
Pszczew wrote:I'm more concerned with the fact that Western Michigan is another country that is more or less void of good quizbowl, than the fact that schools from Detroit and Lansing choose only to play IS sets and HSNCT.
Matt Weiner wrote: Again, directly stating that other tournaments are not "meaningful" for top teams. But don't quote Ted Gioia in context saying what he actually said! That's the sort of unfair gotcha journalism that victimized people like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain in the past!
Matt Weiner wrote: Yes, if you only produce questions that a certain kind of team is interested in playing, only those teams will play them, and they will probably like them. So what? How is this any different from the "well, my team had lots of fun playing Chip Beall, so stop criticizing it!" argument that we've seen so many times?
Matt's quizbowl resume written with a couple extra expletives thrown in for the high school students
And by the way, I actually consider the real long-term interests of "top teams" as a whole, not just the Internet crowd. Like Ryan Westbrook, you choose to pick the low-hanging fruit by impressing people who will sign on to any statement of "quizbowl should be harder" because they think being an Internet tough guy about difficulty is easier than actually demonstrating their skill at good questions. The pathology of people who have to overcompensate for their own lack of self-esteem has come to be the defining motivation of a substantial number of quizbowl tournaments and the rhetoric surrounding same.
Post was sanitized by the capybara. --mgmt
Magister Ludi wrote:Matt Weiner wrote: Yes, if you only produce questions that a certain kind of team is interested in playing, only those teams will play them, and they will probably like them. So what? How is this any different from the "well, my team had lots of fun playing Chip Beall, so stop criticizing it!" argument that we've seen so many times?
Because coaches of teams such as Kellenberg and Ridgewood, who had sub 10 ppb (and several other coaches in person at the tournament) who you claim dislike the set have come forward saying they enjoyed the set.
I'm doing exactly what you were doing in this year's VCU Open thread. The same way you put your foot down and said that tournament was pretty good and didn't deserve the level of vitriol directed at it, I'm saying this tournament was pretty good and doesn't deserve to be demonizing for mistakes made in the past by people like you.
This wasn't the greatest high school set ever, but it was pretty darn good--a solid 8 out of 10. Its only major flaw was bonus parts that were a little too hard and that flaw does not merit the level of criticism you've aimed at it, not does it mean the set will only be meaningful for the top 15 teams in the country.
This paragraph is the least comprehensible and most embarrassingly childish thing I've ever seen you post. I understand you are trying to discredit me by throwing around fancy sounding phrases such as "overcompensat[ing] for their own lack of self-esteem" as though I put any personal stock in the success of a tournament in which I wrote less than ten percent of the questions. These silly ad-hominem are unworthy of you and represent the worst form of internet argumentation in which you caricature my argument with a half-asked Neo-Freudian interpretation of my posts. You've nailed it, I'm trying to impress Brother Nigel and Fred Morlan with my skills as a player because I apparently prefer to be an "Internet tough guy about difficulty" in an attempt to avoid "actually demonstrating [my] skill at good questions." Especially considering I've been a staunch advocate of easier, more canonical questions in the college game, this accusation comes across as particularly hollow. Come on, Matt you're better than this.
Matt Weiner wrote:I don't think you're doing HSAPQ any favors by being "coy" about your desire for HSAPQ and all other sub-HFT-level events to cease existing because they are so illegitimate. Furthermore:
The Hub (Gainesville, Florida) wrote: Our field isn't quite as strong as what we anticipated when we first announced (we thought for sure that more top Tennessee teams would come) but it's still quite strong and if the median PPB is below 10 I'll be shocked. However considering what is going on in this thread, I'm going to come up with a survey for coaches to fill out about various things related to our tournament, especially the questions.
The Hub (Gainesville, Florida) wrote:We were told this week that Harvard was copy editing the set more before they could send it to us. While I don't know how much actually changed, there were still a large number of mistakes in the set.
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