ANNOUNCEMENT: Penn Bowl (Jan 28th, 2012)

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

Here's the announcement for the 2012 incarnation of Penn Bowl, to be held at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on 1/28/12.

There are a few changes this year. First, I, Eric Mukherjee, will be formally head-editing, and will be assisted by Saajid Moyen, Patrick Liao, and James Lasker, among others. Secondly, this tournament is submission-optional. We will be soliciting outside packets from teams with a known track record of good writing and editing irrespective of those teams' playing skill, and if you are not solicited you are encouraged to submit. If you would like to write a packet, you will receive our thanks and a -25$ discount. Please contact InfiniteStryker0 [AT] gmail [DOT] com if you would like to write a packet. If you do not get in contact with us by December 1st, we are assuming that you are not writing a packet and we will not use your packet.

We are aiming for 15 packets total, of regular difficulty (around MOO or MAGNI). Tossups will be 8 lines or less.

Distribution:
Please note this is slightly different from the usual ACF distribution.
5/5 Literature--1/1 British, 1/1 European 500 CE onwards, 1/1 American, 1/1 World (includes classical), 1/1 Your Choice
5/5 History--1/1 US, 1/1 World, 2/2 European, Canadian, Australian (should include 1 classical and no more than 1 Canadian or Australian), 1/1 Your Choice
5/5 Science--1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1 question Math/CS, 1 question Earth Sci/Astro, 1/1 Your Choice
3/3 Religion, Mythology and Philosophy--1/1 of each; should be different religions, mythologies, and philosophy time periods
3/3 Fine Arts--1/1 non-opera classical music, 1/1 painting, 1/1 other (opera, jazz, architecture, etc.)
2/2 Social science, geography--should include at least 1 question from each category (e.g. 2/1 ss, 0/1 geo or 1/1 ss, 1/1 geo but not 2/2 ss)
1/1 Trash, current events
Total: 24/24

If any clarification needs to be made on any of these, please e-mail me or post in this thread.

Registration fees and other discounts:
Base fee per team: $120
Functional buzzers: -$10 each
Competent moderators: -$15 each
Travel (per school): -$15 per 200 miles (one-way, determined by Mapquest)

Minimum fee per school (including packet discounts): $40

Any high school teams or teams with fewer than 3 players can e-mail me to arrange for further discounts. Any checks should be made out to "Eric Mukherjee" if possible. If personal checks are an issue, checks can be made out to "Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania".

Mirrors:
I am seeking mirrors in all regions as long as there wouldn't be significant field overlap with the main site at Penn. The mirror fee will be $35 per non-house team. Mirror hosts can submit packets to lower this fee but are not required to. All interested hosts should e-mail InfiniteStryker0 [AT] gmail [DOT] com (NOT padt@dolphin.upenn.edu as in the past--we have no way of seeing this if you send it here) to submit a bid.

FIELD:
OSU - 3
Yale - 1
Maryland - 2-3
UVA - 1
NYU - 1
Haverford - 1
Pitt - 1
Harvard - 1
GMU - 1
Dartmouth - 1
Columbia - 1
Rutgers - 1
Princeton - 1

Total: 17

[Cheynem]

I'm annoyed that this was announced like a couple months before its date! This isn't about packet writing, but rather a general grousing about the fact that teams need some advance time to organize their schedules.

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

Also to make it clear, this tournament is not open. If you want to play an open tournament come to MO next week.

[AlphaRasmus]

So is December 1 the packet submission deadline, or just the deadline for telling you we can write? And if it's the latter, when is the actual packet deadline?

[Black-throated Antshrike]

Delaware might be able to come to this provided there's enough people around during our winter break

[Red-necked Phalarope]

There's a nonzero chance Ohio State will be in attendance.

[MathMusic]

Just wanted to remind people that Buffalo is mirroring this event, viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12367

[Smuttynose Island]

Have any teams signed up for this?

[DumbJaques]

We're certainly coming with 2-3 teams; it's probably a good bet that this tournament is as well-attended as all the other Penn Bowls.

[Diocletian]

Haverford will definitely have one team.

[Alliance in the Alps]

Ohio State will be there with at least one team.

Can we have a field update?

[Tower Monarch]

Dartmouth is tentatively bringing 1 team pending some transportation/lodging details to be arranged. I'll let you know as soon as I do.

[bps16]

Pitt plans to bring 2-3 teams.

[1971 Hamilton Tiger-Cats season]

NYU will be bringing at least one team.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

Yale is bringing one team.

And seconding requests for that field update.

[Inkana7]

It's looking like OSU will have 3 teams.

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

Hey look a field update. Keep signing up! This means you, Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia, Doug Yetman, etc!

[Tower Monarch]

Hey look a field update. Keep signing up! This means you, Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia, Doug Yetman, etc!

Etc (ie Dartmouth) is bringing a team with a mostly functional buzzer set (we don't need the discount, so we'll just have it as backup).

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

We're currently at 16-18 teams. I'd really like to get this to a solid 18 or 21, for scheduling reasons, so keep signing up and/or telling me what the deal is with your teams.

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

Field updated; we're at 15-16 teams. Ideally I'd like to get to 18, so keep signing up.

[Diocletian]

When is this starting/where at Penn is it happening?

[Tower Monarch]

When is this starting/where at Penn is it happening?

Ditto. Also, parking info would be appreciated.

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

When is this starting/where at Penn is it happening?

Ditto. Also, parking info would be appreciated.

Be at Williams hall at 8:30 AM. There's parking info here: http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/visiting/directions.php

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

Also we're at 17 teams. The next team to sign up will play for free, including any team formed from the scrubs of other teams.

[marnold]

FYI, our Megabus arrives at 30th street station at 8:30 - we'll hustle to get there as soon as possible, but if things get stuck on 17 teams a first round bye for us might be appreciated. Various luminaries have my phone number if that becomes necessary

[Mike Bentley]

Hey if anyone reading this has the packets, can you please send them to me at uwquizbowl@gmail.com? Our mirror starts soon and we haven't received them yet.

[marnold]

Ell

Oh

Ell

[MathMusic]

It appears Penn is using the "Let's edit as we go" philosophy today, which is rather disappointing. We had to break early for lunch, due to a lack of edited packets.

[marnold]

Lololololol.

[marnold]

This is the mobius strip of tournaments.

[grapesmoker]

This is the mobius strip of tournaments.

Are you playing round 1 again or something?

[jonpin]

Uh oh. And here I was, telling some of my old students about my story of a Penn Bowl past, and I prefaced it with "...but as I understand, the tournament itself is run a lot better nowadays."

[marnold]

Penn Bowl 201x: Somehow You Fell For It Again.

[Bad Boy Bill]

Perhaps the tense of the verb of the first sentence, second paragraph in the history section of this page could use an update.

Here's hoping tomorrow's tournament will be just as much fun.

[Cheynem]

Hopefully the delays will be ported over to the later mirrors so we can have the total experience.

[Smuttynose Island]

UVA won the tournament undefeated by beating Yale in the last two games of the tournament. Harvard placed third and Maryland placed fourth I believe. Columbia and OSU A also made the "top" bracket.

[RyuAqua]

Warning: this is vent-y.

What the fuck did I just play???!!

The main site of Penn Bowl 2012 was a disgrace in all sorts of ways. This tournament was poorly-staffed, poorly-run and poorly-written, and I’m actually embarrassed for Penn that they put on that event, significantly setting back a reputation which seemed to be building towards a more stable, competent team.

This tournament had wildly fluctating difficulty (at a baseline significantly above "regular"), several definitional or extremely-famous first line clues (resulting in multiple actual three-way buzzer races in the finals), several uber-long tossups despite the claim that there’d be a line cap, and a general contempt for the (slow) moderators via a thorough sprinkling of grammatical wonkiness.

Perhaps this is because this tournament wasn't written when we got to Penn. By the time we were ready to start at 9:45, the moderating staff had two packets to read. Approximately every round or so, a flash drive would go around with a newly-completed packet, as the most competent moderators at the site literally wrote the tournament as it went along. To some extent, the moderator corps did as well as it could without Eric, Saajid, and Patrick, and for that I commend them, but that meant nine prelim rounds lasted until just after 6 PM. I mean, this whole "fuck it, i'm finishing this tournament before the tournament" thing has happened before, but I find it disappointing that I had to live through it when Penn had two and a half months to produce all the questions it needed, or get all the help it needed, and somehow that didn’t happen.

I find it thoroughly and completely inexcusable that this tournament had one fewer packet than it needed. Eric, Saajid, and Patrick stopped writing the set and began to moderate after round 9 as the playoffs began, saying "The set is done" as their justification for doing so. We later learned, GOING INTO THE FINALS, that there was only one finals packet available - with UVA having the advantage, they would win if they won the game played on Finals 1, and we would TIE and end the tournament right there with no other option if we won. Thankfully, UVA won, forestalling a tied tournament... I seriously floated the possibility of a partial refund, and I'm still not sure it's a bad idea. If you do not have enough packets to decide the champion of a tournament, it is compeletely fucking INEXCUSABLE for you to just go full steam ahead and run the tournament anyway. There are several things that could have happened here – the playoffs could have been reduced to two crossover games rather than three. That, or Penn could have fucking gotten the number of packets you need to decide the goddamn tournament. Or Penn could have canceled or rescheduled the tournament until such a time as a real full set could be possibly run -- not ideal, but an option nonetheless!!

I am not interested in hearing any excuses for the problems with this tournament. I am more interested in ensuring that the learning process of the newer members of Penn's team – an ostensible reason for the sheer quantity of editors’ packets – is carried to completion. It's clear that this tournament took on so many editors' packets in part to teach a new cadre of supporting players (Saajid, Patrick, James, etc.) how to write and edit pyramidal questions of reasonable difficulty. Insofar as the set came out as an amorphous blob of difficulties with rampant grammatical errors and no editorial structure, it fails at this goal in its current state. Though Quizbowl isn’t the Roman Republic or Warring States-era Japan; I take it the Penn team won't be falling on their swords any time soon, and there’s no reason for them to do so, it's important to earnestly acknowledge that this tournament does not reflect the kind of product that would adequately teach first-time editors what to produce.

I’m of this opinion, Penn: You have three weeks to revise - no, dissect and completely reconstruct - a good tournament out of this pile of sentences. I really do believe you guys are capable of doing this and turning the current tournament into not just a good event, but a fantastic one.

I eagerly await the establishment of a Penn Bowl subforum so I can do my part to help Penn in its reconstruction of the set over the next three weeks, by pointing out where I thought things went wrong and offering suggestions for improving the questions. I would advise that anyone signed up for future mirrors at Northwestern, WKU, and the like should look out for word from Eric that such a reconstruction has taken place, guaranteeing a reasonable set of consistent difficulty and consistent pyramidality for use elsewhere.


A NECESSARY POSTSCRIPT: The fact that tournament-playing members of Penn’s quizbowl team even considered writing questions for Penn Bowl Trash while the real tournament had gaping Swiss cheese-sized holes in it is utterly inexcusable on all levels, and everyone who actually went ahead and did so should apologize publicly for their dereliction of duty.

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

I take full responsibility for your (and everyone else's) terrible experience. We didn't have 13 packets because we decided to moderate. We had 13 packets because we were physically unable to write or edit any more questions without wanting to kill ourselves.

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

A NECESSARY POSTSCRIPT: The fact that tournament-playing members of Penn’s quizbowl team even considered writing questions for Penn Bowl Trash while the real tournament had gaping Swiss cheese-sized holes in it is utterly inexcusable on all levels, and everyone who actually went ahead and did so should apologize publicly for their dereliction of duty.

Huh? This didn't happen. At all. Ben and Joe are the only people working on Penn Bowl Trash, and they neither play tournaments nor helped with Penn Bowl in any way.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

We had 13 packets because we were physically unable to write or edit any more questions without wanting to kill ourselves.

Why did you decide to make packet submission optional? Editing a packet of decent to good quality submissions takes much less energy than than writing it from scratch.

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

We had 13 packets because we were physically unable to write or edit any more questions without wanting to kill ourselves.

Why did you decide to make packet submission optional? Editing a packet of decent to good quality submissions takes much less energy than than writing it from scratch.

It was the first of many stupid decisions. I freely admit it.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

My thanks to Penn for hosting this, and to Eric for head-editing this.

However, I do have significant complains against this set, which I'll bring up in a discussion sub-forum, once one is established.

I am thankful that Penn Bowl exists. It is wonderful to have a meeting between the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic fields midway through the year, on a difficulty below Nationals. And I'm grateful for the hard work Eric has put in over the years to keep this institution alive. However, if this year's tournament is evidence of the kind of work Penn produces, I don't think they should continue to try to edit a tournament by themselves, without outside assistance. This is not an insult. The majority of teams do not have good enough writer/editors in all categories to produce a genuinely good tournament by themselves. Every year I hear promises that Penn is going to be trained into some kind of great writing team; every year the results disprove this claim.

I hope Penn Bowl happens again next year. But I also hope a competent editing team is assembled that can produce a tournament that befits the field that it draws, since the consistently bad strength-of-field to quality-of-questions ratio (along with the ever-troubled logistics) remains a hallmark of this tournament.

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

And I'm grateful for the hard work Eric has put in over the years to keep this institution alive.

Not that this should change your opinion, but this is the first year I've put any significant effort into editing Penn Bowl.

[Gaterion]

When are stats going to be posted?

[Emily Krok]

Not to pile on or anything, but there were some significant problems with this tournament, some of which are a little different from the perspective of a less-than-elite team. I'll probably edit them in once I get some fucking sleep.

[Alliance in the Alps]

This tournament made me feel glad we brought a staffer (Lauren) along, aside from the fact that this was a good opportunity to play against teams we don't normally face until nationals. Our matches between the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast powers were at the very least entertaining, even if the questions were subpar.

Otherwise, this was, despite my rather low expectations, not a fun tournament, and had it not been for free housing, I would likely have asked for our money back.

[Masked Canadian History Bandit]

Stats for Prelims: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... s/prelims/
Playoffs will be up tomorrow afternoon.

[The Superfluous Man]

Could an administrator please set up a private discussion forum? thanks!

[Masked Canadian History Bandit]

All the stats can be found below. PM me if there are mistakes.

Prelims: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... s/prelims/
Playoffs: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... /playoffs/
Playoffs + Finals: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... us_finals/