Moderator speed?

[leapfrog314]

In both timed and untimed formats, I mean.

Personally, I like moderators to read kinda fast. I think I actually do better when they read faster, maybe because it makes me think faster or something. Of course, when I say fast, I assume that you can understand what the moderator is saying, or at least, almost all of it.

At the UIUC Earlybird this year, Sudheer commented that the northern Illinois teams tended to like the fast moderating, and the more southern ones kept telling him to slow down. In their defense, Sudheer and Sorice were quite fast. (Though I didn't mind.)

[insaneindian]

I like fast becasue im slow on the buzzer. i think when they read slow, people can get into buzzer races on certain clues, but when they read fast, not so much. For instance, at Princeton last year, the guy in pink (anybody know his name? He was shooting a documentary at Nationals) read rather fast, and one round with him reading i got 110 (my highest round ever, by 50. I was amazed, but the other team sucked, and my next best team member was deaf, so he didnt like the fast reading.) in comparison, on that team i normally got 45 ppg.

[Tegan]

I think this is a matter of relative description...last year my team was in a match that lasted 13 minutes (that was all the toss-ups, and I would say about three-fourths were answered. I have a student who is fluent in French ("5" on the AP French test), and couldn't translate a simple phrase because she didn't understand what the moderator was saying (I could barely make out the words myself).

I don't like slow reading, but lightning fast reading is just as bad (in my opinion). I think that a quick clip with a good rhythm in reading the questions is a great goal. I tend to read at a quick clip (at least compared to most non-college moderators that I have seen), and since moderating at NAQT and PACE last year have tried to even "speed it up" a bit more (I learned quickly that at my pace at NAQT, we were lucky to get through 20 questions in the alotted time, and that was unacceptable to me...by my fourth round, I was finishing the packet, even with 80-90% of the question getting answered).

I have read for many downstate schools, and they have never complained that I read too fast, though this is usually at the state tournament, so they are generally the better teams anyway. The downstate teams who come north tournaments are usually pretty fine.

But if schoolas like Auburn are saying "you're too fast.....you might be too fast." (For the record, Sudheer had excellent pronunciation, and while he was fast, I would personally have not put him in the "too fast" category (though in my opinion, he was close).

[Howard]

There's a trade-off to be had here. Moderators need to read fast enough to keep the tournament to a reasonable schedule, but slow enough that the players can understand the words and aren't trying to figure out what was said ten words ago.

[First Chairman]

I think it's too simplistic to say that a reader is "fast" or "slow." Compared to most readers, I guess I'm "fast" but I don't necessarily think that killing packets with 4 minutes left on the clock is always a good thing if it sacrifices the quality of delivery.

For me I always try to make sure my reading speed varies. Not everyone likes games that go at one speed, as much as people don't like hearing Johnny Machita for 30 minutes. What you do want is to keep the game moving, and make sure everyone feels like the game is moving. The slowest step in reading is usually the transitions between reading tossup questions and reading bonus questions or the reverse. If people can learn to navigate that transition, we can save up a lot of time without having to read at breakneck speed.

[No Sollositing On Premise]

I try to read at a slightly faster-than-normal-speaking-voice pace, slow enough so that I can pronounce most words clearly and not lose track of where I am in mid-question. Also, I usually ask the teams at halftime if they would rather I read faster or slower, and I try to oblige to any such request.

But personally, I don't care how fast the moderator reads just so long as they speak clearly. I mean, it's not like the other team is hearing the questions at a different speed, right? With timed formats I suppose I'd prefer a fast reader to a slow reader, but it really doesn't matter to me.

[cvdwightw]

I prefer fast moderators, if for only one reason:

In untimed tournaments (the vast majority of those in college), there are many moderators who go fairly fast, and then there are those that go quite slow. What results from this is that teams who have had a faster moderator are forced to wait for a long time for the next round if they're in a room with a slower moderator (at TWAIN, there were rooms that were literally a full round behind at some points). As both a moderator and player, I dislike the long waiting times this presents, as it forces every tournament to run way behind schedule.

Also, ACF tournaments are notorious for very long tossups; in a Regionals match between two mid-level teams (e.g. two teams that will get 90% of the tossups, but only near the end of the question) each game can take 40 or more minutes with a moderator who reads slow. No set of 20 tossups and up to 20 bonuses should ever take 40 minutes.

[zwtipp]

I think it depends on the moderator. I'd rather have a slow moderator who enunciates well and can be easily understood than someone who goes faster than they can without slurring words.

Some readers have the ability to read extremely fast and still be understood (Dwight Kidder) and others try to go fast, but can't be understood.

[radiantradon]

For me, it could go either way. Fast moderators are irritating when I can't understand a word they're saying, but slow moderators are even worse when they stumble over words. However, if both the fast moderator and the slow moderator are enunciating well, I'd rather have a fast moderator because it keeps the match clipping along at a lively speed. Slow moderators just make me nervous.

[mf_2]

I like slow moderators. But that's probably because I'm not as familiar with the English language as most everybody else on the board here is. However, if the moderators are speaking clearly and a bit louder, fast reading is ok too.

[mrs. dalloway]

I much prefer faster moderators if they can still speak clearly enough to be understood by most teams. I loved Sudheer and Sorice at the Earlybird, and so did the rest of my team (Auburn) as well as our coach. IHSA rounds tend to drag a bit, and are fairly notorious for always being behind schedule; a fast pace keeps everything moving.

[Trevkeeper]

Agreed. Sudheer and Sorice at Earlybird would be favorite speed.

[fluffy4102]

Fast. The team likes fast reading as we do that during practice. That results in our PPG increasing with fast readers. It's also handy during lightning rounds.

[NoahMinkCHS]

Wouldn't your PPG always increase with a faster reader, assuming he was comprehensible, all other things being held constant? Since you go through many more TUs that way...

Now if your PPTH or PP20TH went up, I'd see your point.

[cvdwightw]

Up to a point, in certain formats, this would occur. However, keep in mind that all tournaments have a finite number of questions, and once these questions are exhausted. Therefore a moderator who can get through an entire NAQT game in 16 minutes would not likely have a significant increase on PPG over a moderator who can get through an entire NAQT game in 17 minutes, all things held constant.

Several leagues/tournaments employ a format based on a set number of questions/tossup, not on a set time amount. In these cases everyone still gets through the same number of questions/tossups regardless of moderator speed.

[insaneindian]

Wouldn't your PPG always increase with a faster reader, assuming he was comprehensible, all other things being held constant? Since you go through many more TUs that way...

Now if your PPTH or PP20TH went up, I'd see your point.

Yeah I agree. I liked the faster readers at Nationals.

at Princeton last year, the guy in pink (anybody know his name? He was shooting a documentary at Nationals) read rather fast

this guy was at nationals reading a packet for us too, and that was my best round. However, even without timed packets (a la Princeton), I like fast readers.

[96sininep]

I like my questions fast, hard, and deep. Sudheer has, on more than one occasion, fulfilled all three (with the help of UIUC editors, of course).

[DrakeRQB]

To figure out what my team preferred this year, I read a few practice rounds fast and a few slow... and the team seemed to do much better when I read at a quicker clip. It keeps the team more alert.