The Quizbowl Resource Center

Howard

But I think you're missing the point a little. The statement was meant to serve as a general premise. Even if we're expanding nationally, we still need to be observant of local declines (and national when they happen) and be open to addressing the issues causing the decline, no matter what they are...

Howard

"They bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into. I say, let 'em crash!" I think it's our moral duty as supporters of good quiz bowl to try to prevent teams from getting fleeced by charlatans. Fair enough. For what it's worth, I agree with this, although I think the board...

Howard

What will it take to get you to drop the ridiculous "if people feel like it, then it's OK" stream of bull :capybara: you can't stop yourself from spouting even when you know other people are right? Anybody who's actually put in the effort to run, say, a high quality 24 team tournament tha...

Howard

To say that the NAC runs well because the "rounds run on time" is to miss the issue completely. This is about the only thing I disagree with in the whole post, and at that only because it's a matter of individual/team opinion what facets of the tournament are the most important. Maybe the...

Howard

Can someone send me contact info for whoever runs It's Ac so I can reach out to them about 4/26? Hopefully they might be slightly more rational about things than the haughty science bowl overlords. It's Academic needs to work around something almost no other tournament needs to work around: televis...

Howard

There have always been four tapings in one day, and this schedule supports that scenario with 81 teams. As such: -- The February 1 and February 8 tapings will each have 3 first round and 1 quarterfinal match. -- March 1, March 8, April 5, and April 12 will be more quarterfinals. And I'm in agreement...

Howard

No entries a month prior to a tournament isn't uncommon any more. Once upon a time, we entered and sent checks via snail mail, and entering a month in advance was normal. Now, I have trouble figuring out who can attend an event even a week before it occurs. I expect you'll have a better idea how man...

Howard

Would you guys consider moving the date at all? I think some DC area teams are hesitant of signing up for this because of the possibility of being in the It's Academic final on that day. I know that it may be too late to change the date and that your school may not allow this to run on another day,...

Howard

This is a good time to say that PPB isn't a good tool to use as a tiebreaker for a tournament. Intrabracket PPG is better and fairer. Is this what you mean? Within a bracket, PPG is a better tiebreaker because it better represents actual average performance in a game. Between brackets, PPB is a bet...

Howard

Howard wrote:Unless things change, we're prepared to bring 1 team, 2 buzzers, and one moderator.

Scratch this for now. I've just been notified my students seem to have difficulty separating December 8 and December 15 into separate time entities.

Sorry for any confusion.

Howard

Upon attempting to enter, the website reports that the field has been filled. No waitlist option is given.

Unless things change, we're prepared to bring 1 team, 2 buzzers, and one moderator.

Howard

I tried to e-mail my team's roster to the Centennial coach but was unable to. I believe something may have been wrong with the return address. Is registering our roster necessary prior to the competition, because I if so then I'd need another way of sending the info to Centennial's coach? I think t...

Howard

I don't really know if either of those ever leads to a material advantage in practice, but they feel like possible advantages regardless of however much a moderator strives for impartiality. I think it matters if the teams are very closely matched. I've read in several tournaments where the coaches...

Howard

To John Gilbert, the whole thing is that, like, my post to Dave Madden didn't violate the rules, as best as I know, so there was no reason to warn me in the first place. You seem to have a lot of trouble comprehending that, among many other things. No, I don't. I posted as much in the facebook disc...

Howard

A major drawback of the forum is that there are numerous documented instances of members getting into heated arguments. I know of coaches who have nipped this in the bud by banning players from joining the site. There are documented instances of people refusing to participate in discussions on the ...

Howard

Do you REALLY want to talk about "ad hominem attacks" and morally questionable behavior after repeatedly aligning yourself with the bad quizbowl side? I don't think a sober accounting of such incidents is going to end up in your favor. I would like people who are participating in this dis...

Howard

Pyramidal quizbowl already incorporates those reasoning skills. Most posters on this forum object to non-pyramidal formats because they add an additional element of: which team rings in fastest? The buzzer-race element, which is effectively random in many cases, detracts from any skill-based evalua...

Howard

It's illegitimate in terms of actual quizbowl, which is what I think what most people mean by using the term. If I am good at playing I dunno, wiffleball, those wiffleball skills are illegitimate in talking about baseball. Obviously if I am very good at wiffleball, I probably have decent athleticis...

Howard

Supporting It's Academic and Chip ARE attacks on pyramidal quizbowl. If we lived in a perfect world in which schools has infinity budgets and schedules were infinity long, then it doesn't matter if schools play It's Academic or Chip. However, in this world, time and resources spent on those activit...

Howard

People on the board were calling me and my players illegitimate because we were playing "bad quizbowl" and not "good quizbowl". There's a real problem with the term "illegitimate." The problem is that it isn't accurate. Teams that do well at other formats do well at th...

Howard

Why do we want to "welcome" people whose agenda is to harm good quizbowl? What is the benefit of the years and years of running around in circles with It's Academic fanboys, diehard Chip players, and people like Kay Li and Raynell Cooper who seem to hang on in quizbowl for no other purpos...

Howard

Horned Screamer wrote:I've enjoyed episode 5,034 of the thrilling Quiz Bowl Network's new reality show "John Gilbert Has No Effing Clue What He's Talking About."

Care to point out what I said in this thread that you think was incorrect, or are we just going to go around saying meaningless things?

Howard

For example, Charlie has been banned six times and warned an additional nineteen, so that seems to give the lie to the notion that he is, for some reason, exempt from the rules. So, here's the bigger question. Was Charlie warned for the post that started this discussion in the first place? And woul...

Howard

This is because the rules of the board evolved out of a process of Matt Weiner arguing with his enemies, and banning the rhetorical flourishes they used. Matt Weiner may no longer be the chief admin, and post hoc justifications (and even an overarching ideology) may have been developed to explain t...

Howard

I'll just remind people that the purpose of the no-tone-policing rule is to foster legitimate discussion. We don't, as a board staff, endorse the idea that quizbowl discussion must be abrasive. But we do think it's counterproductive to delve into irrelevant issues every time a contentious discussio...

Howard

Do you realize that [the previous thread --Mgmt.] is about areas that don't have good tournaments and that the DC Area has good tournaments? Do you realize that the problems in DC can be solved by a small number of the many great people in the area reaching out to teams, while the problems in many ...

Howard

"Stop having some teams be better than other teams in this competitive activity where we keep score! Every team should win every tournament! That is definitely the problem here!" Arguing against a silly idea that wasn't presented does nothing to dispute the presented hypothesis. More seri...

Howard

I'd made a post in this thread pointing out, among other things, that even some areas (such as DC) which are considered active, still have embarrassingly low numbers of teams at quizbowl tournaments. This post was split to another thread. Andrew Watkins pointed out that the post regarded a different...

Howard

I'd like to suggest everyone go back and read one of Isaac's posts: http://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=11668&p=219609#p219609 . I had intended to comment on this at the time, but it somewhat slipped away. I can't say I agree with all the conclusions of the post, but the end se...

Howard

After conversing with my students yesterday, I am pleased (and surprised) to say we'll be attending! E-mail to be sent momentarily.

Howard

Hanover High has done the KMO for well over a decade. For a while now, I've recognized the numerous issues with the tournament. At this point I'm wondering if it's time to finally stop playing the KMO. Can anyone provide a reason why the KMO is a good thing? This year, it really didn't help my team...

Howard

Disappointingly, we're not going to be able to do this. Sounds like it would have been an excellent event for us, too.

Howard

Although teams not showing up is becoming less common with the shrinking size of quiz tournaments, it's still largely been my experience that it's nearly futile to try to make an accurate schedule prior to all teams being registered.

Howard

Sadly, we won't be able to attend this one. Hope you guys have a great event.

Howard

Nevermind. This tournament was cancelled about a half hour ago with no prior notification or notice. Let's hope we get our money back for the bus we had to charter. Tournament cancellations less than a week prior to the event are not acceptable. This causes teams to try to change plans with only a ...

Howard

Unless something unexpected occurs over the next 36 hours, we're going to have a mediocre two-person team. If combining with another team works out for the benefit of the tournament, we'd be willing to do that.

Howard

Maggie Walker would like to reserve April 7 for a tournament on a set to be determined. Because of difficulties with reserving the building, Maggie Walker is rescheduling its tournament for May 12. The tournament will be a mirror of Centennial's ATTACK set. Bumping to note that this is not reflecte...

Howard

(the tournament host is not responding to repeated e-mails and we have zero details...) This is a very bad sign. In most cases, it means the event will not happen. In most of the few remaining, it means the total number of teams present will be so low as to have the tournament almost not be worthwh...

Howard

RyuAqua wrote:Yesterday the idea of using the DII SCT was floated. Centennial's ATTACK should be available as well.

I don't know if this is still the case, but I recall in the past that DII SCT shared questions with an IS set.

Howard

Yeah, we discussed this point after the tournament, and there was no reason why we couldn't have used our second buzzer system. That was an oversight on our part, and I apologize to CR for having to wait. This is the entirely correct attitude about the buzzer situation. I can't speak as to the actu...

Howard

We've had difficulty committing much more than a week in advance. If we're going to attend tournaments around spring break, that'll obviously need to change.

Howard

I thought coaching quiz bowl was a volunteer type of thing. Do people really get paid to coach quiz bowl? I have no idea how it works in other states, but that's certainly the case in Missouri, as coaches tend to be faculty members or employees of the district. I am talking about additional money t...

Howard

OM is interested, depending on if we can get people to go. I'm still waiting on a couple replies from students and may not have answers for another few days. I'd be willing to consider a combined team and or trip, but there are a number of things that would need to be discussed prior to doing such ...

Howard

The one thing that people really have trouble understanding regarding conferring is when the other team has negged or when the question is over. In my experiences reading, I rarely see teams begin conferring as soon as I start reading, but it frequently happens after a neg or the question ends. It ...

Howard

Howard wrote:This is unfortunately a bad date for us. Several of my students have reported conflicts, including SAT. This may be the first year we miss both the Delaware (insert season) Open and the Blue Hen.

So, it turns out we may be able to do this. Still awaiting one more confirmation.

Howard

This is unfortunately a bad date for us. Several of my students have reported conflicts, including SAT. This may be the first year we miss both the Delaware (insert season) Open and the Blue Hen.

Howard

I've just requested entry for one team. And I'll be happy to moderate.

Howard

There used to be 64-team tournaments in the DC area on Sundays all the time. Every devout Christian quizbowler I've ever known of has played Sunday tournaments and made arrangements that make it possible. We shouldn't rule out the possibility because of theoretical concerns that have proven less th...

Howard

In the Baltimore/DC area, Sunday tournaments are roughly as successful as Saturday tournaments. I'd be cautious about extrapolating this to other places, though. There's a great amount of religious and cultural diversity here, and the community is large enough that even if we take ten or twenty perc...

Howard

I disagree that this is a primary or even secondary reason why teams aren't showing up as often, since it's a thing that happens so much more rarely now than in the past. Rather, I think (as I've said elsewhere) that a lack of outreach to It's Ac-focused teams and middling teams is the main reason ...

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