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Re: February Poll

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 1:40 am
by Dominator
I just wanted to thank everyone for the recent outpouring of support this past week. I now see the community aspect of quiz bowl, and it's pretty awesome.

Just to be clear, I hold no ill feelings about anything said on the forums (it appears all of us were guilty of judging too quickly). I would caution people, though, about what they say here. There are a lot of teams for which the best scholastic bowl they see all year is the IHSA State series who may stumble across these forums who would not appreciate feeling their success in "bad quizbowl" is worthless. If anything, success in IHSA should serve as a springboard to get more teams involved in "good quizbowl".

BTW, I put "bad quizbowl" and "good quizbowl" in quotes because, as a mathematician, I feel very uncomfortable using undefined terms. So far, the only definition I have seen of either term is as the opposite of the other.

Re: February Poll

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 12:20 pm
by jdeliverer
Taken from http://www.qbwiki.com/wiki/Good_quizbowl

Aspects of good quizbowl


Both the game-oriented and learning-oriented schools of quizbowl thought maintain that good quizbowl contains the following:

1. Questions that primarily reward knowledge of a topic over speed, as exemplified by tossups that contain many clues arranged in rough order from most obscure to least obscure (usually denoted by the term pyramidality) and bonuses that contain "easy", "medium", and "hard" parts.
2. Tossups and bonus parts that ask uniquely about one desired answer or (in the case of multiple-answer bonus parts or "name's the same" tossups) set of answers.
3. Clues that are interesting, informative, and point directly to the desired answer.
4. A range of topics from subjects people should and do know much about to subjects that are not as well-known but nevertheless important (the collective set of these subjects is called the canon).
5. A distribution of questions that primarily emphasizes the academic nature of quizbowl and eschews spelling, "excess" general knowledge or trash, and other "fluff".

Re: February Poll

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 12:47 pm
by Dominator
jdeliverer wrote: 1. Questions that primarily reward knowledge of a topic over speed, as exemplified by tossups that contain many clues arranged in rough order from most obscure to least obscure (usually denoted by the term pyramidality) and bonuses that contain "easy", "medium", and "hard" parts.
2. Tossups and bonus parts that ask uniquely about one desired answer or (in the case of multiple-answer bonus parts or "name's the same" tossups) set of answers.
3. Clues that are interesting, informative, and point directly to the desired answer.
4. A range of topics from subjects people should and do know much about to subjects that are not as well-known but nevertheless important (the collective set of these subjects is called the canon).
5. A distribution of questions that primarily emphasizes the academic nature of quizbowl and eschews spelling, "excess" general knowledge or trash, and other "fluff".
Well that sounds pretty good.

In reality, though, these all sound great, but how good quizbowl is implemented is still not spelled out. For example, is there a particular distribution that is accepted in good quizbowl?

Also, I'm not sure on #5. I am of the opinion that it may be possible to write a good spelling question that includes a lot of interesting etymology, but I know those questions are not general practice.

Re: February Poll

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 1:26 pm
by Stained Diviner
I wish there were better terms than "good" quizbowl and "bad" quizbowl. I think that some people extend the terminology to think that good people are associated with one and bad people are associated with the other, which is a bit dicey at best. I would prefer something more along the lines of educational quizbowl and traditional quizbowl.

Re: February Poll

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 1:45 pm
by jdeliverer
Dominator wrote: Well that sounds pretty good.

In reality, though, these all sound great, but how good quizbowl is implemented is still not spelled out. For example, is there a particular distribution that is accepted in good quizbowl?

Also, I'm not sure on #5. I am of the opinion that it may be possible to write a good spelling question that includes a lot of interesting etymology, but I know those questions are not general practice.
I think a large part of why spelling questions are not asked is because spelling is considered Trivia.

Re: February Poll

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:00 pm
by at your pleasure
Dominator wrote:
jdeliverer wrote: 1. Questions that primarily reward knowledge of a topic over speed, as exemplified by tossups that contain many clues arranged in rough order from most obscure to least obscure (usually denoted by the term pyramidality) and bonuses that contain "easy", "medium", and "hard" parts.
2. Tossups and bonus parts that ask uniquely about one desired answer or (in the case of multiple-answer bonus parts or "name's the same" tossups) set of answers.
3. Clues that are interesting, informative, and point directly to the desired answer.
4. A range of topics from subjects people should and do know much about to subjects that are not as well-known but nevertheless important (the collective set of these subjects is called the canon).
5. A distribution of questions that primarily emphasizes the academic nature of quizbowl and eschews spelling, "excess" general knowledge or trash, and other "fluff".
Well that sounds pretty good.

In reality, though, these all sound great, but how good quizbowl is implemented is still not spelled out. For example, is there a particular distribution that is accepted in good quizbowl?

Also, I'm not sure on #5. I am of the opinion that it may be possible to write a good spelling question that includes a lot of interesting etymology, but I know those questions are not general practice.
.Most good quizbowl distributions are based off the ACF distribution, possibly with some variation(for instance, replacing trash with an additional religion/mythology/philosophy question):
4/4 literature(1/1 world, 2/2 english, 1/1 euro)
4/4 history (similar)
4/4 science (1/1 each of big 3 and 1/1 minor science
3/3 arts (1/1 visual, 1/1 non-opera music, 1/1 other)
2/2 religion, mythology, and philosophy
1/1 social science
1/1 geography
1/1 trash, current events, or miscellaneous
Feel free to correct my subdistributions. Also, http://www.doc-ent.com/qbwiki/index.php ... _Questions is a very thurough outline from a question-writer's prespective of what makes for good and bad questions.
As for #5, it might be possible to insert interesting etymology clues into a spelling tossup but it's not clear that they would be very useful clues(unless you want to see if people can figure out what the word is before you give it) and spelling is simply not that academic.
EDIT:
I wish there were better terms than "good" quizbowl and "bad" quizbowl.
Well, we are making a value judgement anyways. I prefer "modern" or "progressive" quizbowl to "good' quizbowl.

Re: February Poll

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:37 pm
by Charley Pride
Dominator wrote:I just wanted to thank everyone for the recent outpouring of support this past week. I now see the community aspect of quiz bowl, and it's pretty awesome.

Just to be clear, I hold no ill feelings about anything said on the forums (it appears all of us were guilty of judging too quickly). I would caution people, though, about what they say here. There are a lot of teams for which the best scholastic bowl they see all year is the IHSA State series who may stumble across these forums who would not appreciate feeling their success in "bad quizbowl" is worthless. If anything, success in IHSA should serve as a springboard to get more teams involved in "good quizbowl".

BTW, I put "bad quizbowl" and "good quizbowl" in quotes because, as a mathematician, I feel very uncomfortable using undefined terms. So far, the only definition I have seen of either term is as the opposite of the other.
Your IHSA point is valid, since, for teams that play on QG, etc all day, IHSA is the best quizbowl they're exposed to. It's had to write off the entire question set, because while most questions are within the definition of bad, there are plenty of good and maybe great questions. The questions in IHSA aren't in inherently bad; it's the fact that most of the writers ftn have little grasp of quizbowl when they produce the set. As long as the IHSA improves and continues to do so, I have no qualms with calling it anything, even if we call it something it's not.

Re: February Poll

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 7:33 pm
by Geringer
Westwon wrote:I wish there were better terms than "good" quizbowl and "bad" quizbowl.
Those terms are "quiz bowl" and "scholastic bowl." :wink:

Re: February Poll

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 10:30 pm
by CometCoach72
Dominator wrote:I just wanted to thank everyone for the recent outpouring of support this past week. I now see the community aspect of quiz bowl, and it's pretty awesome.
Your team played very well at State Finals; I can think of two of your students off the top of my mind who played great during the 3rd Place game. Good luck the rest of this year and next year. I hope you're able to join IHSSBCA as well; I think our organization would love to have your contributions.