I've been reflecting on years of awful post-tournament discussion, and I've come to the conclusion that much of it can be avoided if question writers follow three rules concerning difficulty:
1. If you know something, that doesn't make it easy.
2. If you don't know something, that doesn't make it not worth asking about.
3. If you think something might be too hard, it probably is.
These rules should apply, of course, equally to post-tournament discussion, but I suppose asking people to keep those rules in mind when discussing a tournament could constitute "preemptive backseat modding," so I'll leave this as advice for writers.
Three Rules of Difficulty
Three Rules of Difficulty
Dwight Wynne
socalquizbowl.org
UC Irvine 2008-2013; UCLA 2004-2007; Capistrano Valley High School 2000-2003
"It's a competition, but it's not a sport. On a scale, if football is a 10, then rowing would be a two. One would be Quiz Bowl." --Matt Birk on rowing, SI On Campus, 10/21/03
"If you were my teammate, I would have tossed your ass out the door so fast you'd be emitting Cerenkov radiation, but I'm not classy like Dwight." --Jerry
socalquizbowl.org
UC Irvine 2008-2013; UCLA 2004-2007; Capistrano Valley High School 2000-2003
"It's a competition, but it's not a sport. On a scale, if football is a 10, then rowing would be a two. One would be Quiz Bowl." --Matt Birk on rowing, SI On Campus, 10/21/03
"If you were my teammate, I would have tossed your ass out the door so fast you'd be emitting Cerenkov radiation, but I'm not classy like Dwight." --Jerry