Non-question-specific criticisms of IS-80A

[Mechanical Beasts]

So if you hold--as that NAQT editor must have--that there is no Gorky literature giveaway that will make your Gorky tossup get converted at acceptable rates, then that tossup should not happen for that field. Your tossups should never have to cross disciplines to get converted at acceptable rates. Otherwise, I can toss up anything for high schoolers because I can cross into rhyming dictionary territory, and surely enough will convert that. There have to be solid standards on how you can cross-category (certainly, on doing so for conversion purposes alone), and I say none.

[Important Bird Area]

Your tossups should never have to cross disciplines to get converted at acceptable rates. Otherwise, I can toss up anything for high schoolers because I can cross into rhyming dictionary territory, and surely enough will convert that.

No. Because "rhyming dictionary studies" isn't a discipline.

As a matter of personal opinion, I have no problem with small percentage (let's say 10% or under) of clues that cross disciplines, assuming that the cross-disciplinary clues do not differ materially from the distribution as a whole (ie, that for every lit+geography question like the Gorky example, there would be roughly one geography+lit question of the form "FTP name this city on the River Stour in southeast England, the destination of pilgrims in some tales by Geoffrey Chaucer").

As an NAQT writer, I'll stop producing these because lots of our customers believe them to be bad quizbowl.

[Sir Thopas]

Slightly related point: Surely, even in A-sets, there have to be better giveaways for famous economists than "FTP, name this economist with middle name Maynard." I would like this practice to stop far more than I care about cross-distributional giveaways (which I do care about, for reference).

[Mechanical Beasts]

Slightly related point: Surely, even in A-sets, there have to be better giveaways for famous economists than "FTP, name this economist with middle name Maynard." I would like this practice to stop far more than I care about cross-distributional giveaways (which I do care about, for reference).

Right; while there's no rhyming dictionary studies, there is middle names and puns.

At some point, you might just have to admit that tossups will go dead unless people know things; at the hypothetical worst field ever, you totally would have to let tossups go dead, rather than reducing them all to "For 10 points, your moderator will say the answer, so try to repeat it." There is a point at which you have a baseline standard for participation in quizbowl; you don't make a tossup on the whole Revolutionary War easier by hinting that its name indicates that it was pretty revolutionary.