Thoughts on NHBB & IHBB Question Writing
Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2015 9:21 am
First off, thanks again to the dozens of writers and editors who stepped in on a moment's notice to make the A Set happen last month, and to all those who contributed to our National Championships set as well. I'd like to particularly thank Matt Jackson and Eric Mukherjee for heading up the coordination and editing side of these efforts, which has been efficient, on-time, and very well-managed.
With dozens of NHBB/IHBB tournaments going on around the USA and across Europe and Asia as well over the past five weeks, I have not had time until now to write up my thoughts on exactly what led to the breakdown with Matt Weiner, and I don't wish to go over that in any greater detail than is necessary. On the other hand, people have raised the legitimate question of why this actually happened, or at least, why I acted in the way I did here. So a few words on those points:
To make two things clear from the start, the arrangement of Matt Weiner writing all of NHBB's questions this year was Matt's idea, which he approached me with last spring. Matt made the point that as a full-time writer, he could do well financially, and that the volume of questions which needed to be written confirmed that. At the same time, when parceled out over the course of a full year, the number of questions was not so high that it was not in any way overwhelming, particularly for a full-time writer of Matt's caliber and experience. The notion that this was a burdensome task or that it was unfair or irrational to ever expect one person alone to handle is simply not true. It would not have necessitated 80+ hour weeks or anywhere near that, and because it was meant to be a full-time job, it made no more sense to say this was overwhelming than to say that it's overwhelming to be a full-time writer in any other capacity (which is how thousands of people make their living).
Once Matt and I contractually agreed to this, along with significant penalties for late and non-completed sets, in light of the 2013 College History Bowl meltdown, I then reached out to add additional writers who would write questions for NHBB in reserve so that we would have a backup system in place. Roughly 15 people have been writing for NHBB in this capacity since last summer. We do in fact have hundreds of questions now in reserve, though these have by and large not been edited, are of various degrees of quality, include questions written by current high schoolers that are getting stockpiled, and contain repeats within the database. These are also maintained by Bob Borders, a part-time helper for NHBB who has a full time job and was not immediately available when Matt broke the news of his departure (hence the particular need to scramble).
The arrangement with Matt was difficult from the outset - there were many concerns regarding late sets, though the quality of the questions was very good, and it in some ways was helpful to only have to deal with one person. As the year went on with sets being delivered late, my concern increased, and on at least two occasions, I basically bailed Matt out with an amendment to our contract so that he'd be able to continue working while not being personally overwhelmed by late fees. At the same time, until the A Set broke down, while the relationship was problematic and was going to require a change in approach after the school year, the sets always did arrive in time for first usage, basically in good form. This fit a pattern going back five years with Matt, for which College History Bowl 2013 was the one exception where things didn't come through at all (and even there, there was at least a week or so of notice). The notion that Matt would up and leave not only NHBB but also quizbowl, with no more than 20% of a set completed less than 48 hours before it was to be used, seemed fanciful until it happened. This was not at all in keeping with Matt's track record and commitment to quizbowl over the past 15 years, and neither I nor anyone else to the best of my knowledge, saw this coming.
In hindsight, I of course should have pressed for more oversight of the sets as they were being written. At times, I tried to do this, which led largely to Matt either telling me to stop bugging him and that things would be done in time, or alternatively, Matt would send me sets as they were being written for a time, only to eventually stop. Given my busy schedule, and that I preferred an approach that was more delegated, I assumed that ultimately, Matt would come through. Even up until 2 days before he quit, Matt had guaranteed me "100%" that the A Set would be done by Wednesday morning. When it was not forthcoming, and I demanded then to see in what shape it existed, that was what then led to Matt submitting his resignation.
I still never got a full explanation as to, when given far more than enough time for any writer to complete the set, what Matt was doing with his time that prevented him from having enough time to write, and obviously at this stage, that's a moot point. Nor have I heard a word from Matt since the email when he said he was leaving. Despite the fact that his departure and lack of timely set production was incredibly harmful to our ability to run our operations this year, I have no personal animus towards Matt, and I hope that he is doing well and figuring out what path he wants to pursue in life. Aside from quitting NHBB, Matt also said he was quitting quizbowl in his resignation letter - I do not know if that will indefinitely be true, though certainly I have not heard of any quizbowl-related activities he has done since.
Given Matt's past contributions to the game, and given that he remains an excellent, if unreliable, writer, reader, and director, I in fact hope that Matt eventually will return to quizbowl. I find it hard to believe that an activity can be so much of a person's life for nearly 20 years, and then that person would go cold turkey and never come back. If and when Matt does return, certainly I would harbor no lingering ill-will towards him, nor, despite repeated contract violations, do I intend on pressing a lawsuit against Matt that would be costly in time and resources for both of us.
The only thing I am going to absolutely insist on here from Matt is the following. The financial harm and fallout from Matt's contract violations conservatively speaking exceeds $10,000 based on late fee payments, penalties for unwritten sets, and all the financial costs of hiring writers and editors on short notice to fill in the shortfall. If Matt never returns to quizbowl, then so be it. But if he does, he has a debt here that he owes NHBB that he needs to repay before I can consider him a member of the community in good standing. If Matt wants to become involved in quizbowl again, then he either needs to write 2000 tossups and/or pay off what he contractually owes NHBB before he should take on any other major project, and he needs to make a sizable dent in that (at least a quarter) before being involved at any tournament or with any other quizbowl activity. If he has any time or room for quizbowl in his life, then he has room to do this. This may sound like a lot, but as he has proven in the past, Matt could write 500 tossups within a week if it really mattered to him, and he could write enough tossups to pay off the debt in full within a few months even while holding down another job. Seen in the context of everything that Matt has done for quizbowl, and could do again for quizbowl if he were so inclined, this is not a monumental task. Moreover, knowing the thousands of hours that Matt put into quizbowl over the years as a volunteer, this is well within his capabilities if quizbowl still means anything to him.
If Matt does get back into quizbowl without doing this, though, I will have a major-league problem with Matt, will consult my attorneys and consider legal action, and will also have a huge problem with any person, team, or organization with whom Matt would be working and/or volunteering. As quizbowl becomes more inclined towards professionalism, a trend that has certainly been welcome over the past five years, the notion that someone of Matt's stature could blow off a major commitment, leave thousands of students in the lurch, require dozens of people to pick up the mess, and suffer no consequences for it while remaining active in the community is one that is both risible and damaging, if it is allowed to gain traction.
But my hope is that things never come to that, that Matt is doing well, and that he'll eventually come back. Despite my difficulties in dealing with him, I am grateful to his efforts, particularly with HSAPQ, to help improve our questions and our tournaments over the past four years. I know that Matt is capable of great things in life, and hope that he will at some point when it makes sense for him, come back and pay off his debt, and once again do great things for quizbowl.
*************************
In terms of how NHBB will deal with question writing going forward, this will largely remain an open question until after our National Championships in two weeks for obvious reasons. Most of the writing for our middle school National Championships is being overseen by Eric Huff and Nick Clusserath, while I will handle oversight of a portion of the rest in the four weeks between high school and middle school nationals. I will probably draw on our stockpile for a good amount of this, but if people are interested in contributing to this effort, they should contact me to let me know. Likewise, for the International History Olympiad, we already have one writer who is devoting a lot of time to this and within the past ten days completed the first of many sets that we need written. He will handle at least a few more, though if people are interested in writing for that, they should contact me too. With all the other National Championships coming up though, I realize that a good chunk of the Olympiad is likely to be written during the first 3 weeks of June - in any event, I am not worried at all about our ability to get it done and give the players who will be playing it a great experience.
As for our international championships sets, those will be crafted out of the US high school and middle school Nationals sets, along with our A Set, and various other regional/country specific contributions where needed to augment the distribution (e.g. commissioning extra Canadian history questions for our Canadian championships, etc.). As such, neither A Set nor our Nationals sets will be posted publicly, nor available for public comment this year - we regret the inconvenience. We will post our C Set by this coming Monday after our last IHBB Europe regional concludes in Barcelona - B Set will be posted after our Singapore Championships in May (the last tournament using a set based largely off that).
As for next year, it will be a few months before we finalize our plans since there is a lot that remains unresolved at this point, including who and how many people will be working for NHBB full-time and part-time next year, our exact question needs, and who is interested in writing/editing who is not working for NHBB in a continuous official capacity. The only things that I feel confident in saying at this point are that I myself wish to have as little to do with question production next year as possible (though I will continue to edit sets where needed) and that the writing will not rest on any one person's shoulders - a group of 5-15 writers and 2-4 editors is probably best.
In any case, despite our difficulties with question writing, NHBB and IHBB have had a great year with lots of growth and thousands of teams and students competing around the USA and around the world. We will continue to grow, develop, and improve our offerings for decades to come and envision a much smoother question writing process to be in place for the 2015-16 season. Details on this will be posted in due course. Thanks again to all our writers, editors, and participating teams and players for your continued support.
With dozens of NHBB/IHBB tournaments going on around the USA and across Europe and Asia as well over the past five weeks, I have not had time until now to write up my thoughts on exactly what led to the breakdown with Matt Weiner, and I don't wish to go over that in any greater detail than is necessary. On the other hand, people have raised the legitimate question of why this actually happened, or at least, why I acted in the way I did here. So a few words on those points:
To make two things clear from the start, the arrangement of Matt Weiner writing all of NHBB's questions this year was Matt's idea, which he approached me with last spring. Matt made the point that as a full-time writer, he could do well financially, and that the volume of questions which needed to be written confirmed that. At the same time, when parceled out over the course of a full year, the number of questions was not so high that it was not in any way overwhelming, particularly for a full-time writer of Matt's caliber and experience. The notion that this was a burdensome task or that it was unfair or irrational to ever expect one person alone to handle is simply not true. It would not have necessitated 80+ hour weeks or anywhere near that, and because it was meant to be a full-time job, it made no more sense to say this was overwhelming than to say that it's overwhelming to be a full-time writer in any other capacity (which is how thousands of people make their living).
Once Matt and I contractually agreed to this, along with significant penalties for late and non-completed sets, in light of the 2013 College History Bowl meltdown, I then reached out to add additional writers who would write questions for NHBB in reserve so that we would have a backup system in place. Roughly 15 people have been writing for NHBB in this capacity since last summer. We do in fact have hundreds of questions now in reserve, though these have by and large not been edited, are of various degrees of quality, include questions written by current high schoolers that are getting stockpiled, and contain repeats within the database. These are also maintained by Bob Borders, a part-time helper for NHBB who has a full time job and was not immediately available when Matt broke the news of his departure (hence the particular need to scramble).
The arrangement with Matt was difficult from the outset - there were many concerns regarding late sets, though the quality of the questions was very good, and it in some ways was helpful to only have to deal with one person. As the year went on with sets being delivered late, my concern increased, and on at least two occasions, I basically bailed Matt out with an amendment to our contract so that he'd be able to continue working while not being personally overwhelmed by late fees. At the same time, until the A Set broke down, while the relationship was problematic and was going to require a change in approach after the school year, the sets always did arrive in time for first usage, basically in good form. This fit a pattern going back five years with Matt, for which College History Bowl 2013 was the one exception where things didn't come through at all (and even there, there was at least a week or so of notice). The notion that Matt would up and leave not only NHBB but also quizbowl, with no more than 20% of a set completed less than 48 hours before it was to be used, seemed fanciful until it happened. This was not at all in keeping with Matt's track record and commitment to quizbowl over the past 15 years, and neither I nor anyone else to the best of my knowledge, saw this coming.
In hindsight, I of course should have pressed for more oversight of the sets as they were being written. At times, I tried to do this, which led largely to Matt either telling me to stop bugging him and that things would be done in time, or alternatively, Matt would send me sets as they were being written for a time, only to eventually stop. Given my busy schedule, and that I preferred an approach that was more delegated, I assumed that ultimately, Matt would come through. Even up until 2 days before he quit, Matt had guaranteed me "100%" that the A Set would be done by Wednesday morning. When it was not forthcoming, and I demanded then to see in what shape it existed, that was what then led to Matt submitting his resignation.
I still never got a full explanation as to, when given far more than enough time for any writer to complete the set, what Matt was doing with his time that prevented him from having enough time to write, and obviously at this stage, that's a moot point. Nor have I heard a word from Matt since the email when he said he was leaving. Despite the fact that his departure and lack of timely set production was incredibly harmful to our ability to run our operations this year, I have no personal animus towards Matt, and I hope that he is doing well and figuring out what path he wants to pursue in life. Aside from quitting NHBB, Matt also said he was quitting quizbowl in his resignation letter - I do not know if that will indefinitely be true, though certainly I have not heard of any quizbowl-related activities he has done since.
Given Matt's past contributions to the game, and given that he remains an excellent, if unreliable, writer, reader, and director, I in fact hope that Matt eventually will return to quizbowl. I find it hard to believe that an activity can be so much of a person's life for nearly 20 years, and then that person would go cold turkey and never come back. If and when Matt does return, certainly I would harbor no lingering ill-will towards him, nor, despite repeated contract violations, do I intend on pressing a lawsuit against Matt that would be costly in time and resources for both of us.
The only thing I am going to absolutely insist on here from Matt is the following. The financial harm and fallout from Matt's contract violations conservatively speaking exceeds $10,000 based on late fee payments, penalties for unwritten sets, and all the financial costs of hiring writers and editors on short notice to fill in the shortfall. If Matt never returns to quizbowl, then so be it. But if he does, he has a debt here that he owes NHBB that he needs to repay before I can consider him a member of the community in good standing. If Matt wants to become involved in quizbowl again, then he either needs to write 2000 tossups and/or pay off what he contractually owes NHBB before he should take on any other major project, and he needs to make a sizable dent in that (at least a quarter) before being involved at any tournament or with any other quizbowl activity. If he has any time or room for quizbowl in his life, then he has room to do this. This may sound like a lot, but as he has proven in the past, Matt could write 500 tossups within a week if it really mattered to him, and he could write enough tossups to pay off the debt in full within a few months even while holding down another job. Seen in the context of everything that Matt has done for quizbowl, and could do again for quizbowl if he were so inclined, this is not a monumental task. Moreover, knowing the thousands of hours that Matt put into quizbowl over the years as a volunteer, this is well within his capabilities if quizbowl still means anything to him.
If Matt does get back into quizbowl without doing this, though, I will have a major-league problem with Matt, will consult my attorneys and consider legal action, and will also have a huge problem with any person, team, or organization with whom Matt would be working and/or volunteering. As quizbowl becomes more inclined towards professionalism, a trend that has certainly been welcome over the past five years, the notion that someone of Matt's stature could blow off a major commitment, leave thousands of students in the lurch, require dozens of people to pick up the mess, and suffer no consequences for it while remaining active in the community is one that is both risible and damaging, if it is allowed to gain traction.
But my hope is that things never come to that, that Matt is doing well, and that he'll eventually come back. Despite my difficulties in dealing with him, I am grateful to his efforts, particularly with HSAPQ, to help improve our questions and our tournaments over the past four years. I know that Matt is capable of great things in life, and hope that he will at some point when it makes sense for him, come back and pay off his debt, and once again do great things for quizbowl.
*************************
In terms of how NHBB will deal with question writing going forward, this will largely remain an open question until after our National Championships in two weeks for obvious reasons. Most of the writing for our middle school National Championships is being overseen by Eric Huff and Nick Clusserath, while I will handle oversight of a portion of the rest in the four weeks between high school and middle school nationals. I will probably draw on our stockpile for a good amount of this, but if people are interested in contributing to this effort, they should contact me to let me know. Likewise, for the International History Olympiad, we already have one writer who is devoting a lot of time to this and within the past ten days completed the first of many sets that we need written. He will handle at least a few more, though if people are interested in writing for that, they should contact me too. With all the other National Championships coming up though, I realize that a good chunk of the Olympiad is likely to be written during the first 3 weeks of June - in any event, I am not worried at all about our ability to get it done and give the players who will be playing it a great experience.
As for our international championships sets, those will be crafted out of the US high school and middle school Nationals sets, along with our A Set, and various other regional/country specific contributions where needed to augment the distribution (e.g. commissioning extra Canadian history questions for our Canadian championships, etc.). As such, neither A Set nor our Nationals sets will be posted publicly, nor available for public comment this year - we regret the inconvenience. We will post our C Set by this coming Monday after our last IHBB Europe regional concludes in Barcelona - B Set will be posted after our Singapore Championships in May (the last tournament using a set based largely off that).
As for next year, it will be a few months before we finalize our plans since there is a lot that remains unresolved at this point, including who and how many people will be working for NHBB full-time and part-time next year, our exact question needs, and who is interested in writing/editing who is not working for NHBB in a continuous official capacity. The only things that I feel confident in saying at this point are that I myself wish to have as little to do with question production next year as possible (though I will continue to edit sets where needed) and that the writing will not rest on any one person's shoulders - a group of 5-15 writers and 2-4 editors is probably best.
In any case, despite our difficulties with question writing, NHBB and IHBB have had a great year with lots of growth and thousands of teams and students competing around the USA and around the world. We will continue to grow, develop, and improve our offerings for decades to come and envision a much smoother question writing process to be in place for the 2015-16 season. Details on this will be posted in due course. Thanks again to all our writers, editors, and participating teams and players for your continued support.