New Forum Section Request

[SnookerUSF]

Disclaimer: This may or may not belong here, so moderators feel free to move this thread accordingly.

But I was thinking, precious few days before Sun 'n' Fun, wouldn't it be great if there was one central place or section of the board that one could use to farm out questions if one needed, before a tournament. You know like: I need 4 science tossups and 6 history tossups for tournament in 3 three days can offer cookies, or undying love.

Would that be nice?

[The Ununtiable Twine]

I find this idea to be exceptional. It would probably make for higher quality tournaments given that the proposed question writers would be able to produce higher quality questions at a higher rate than a TD who is obviously asking you to write questions in his weak areas because he would have already written/edited all the questions in his stronger areas if they were needed. So the community could chip in to write a few questions as opposed to complaining about questions which would most likely end up being of lower quality because they were in fact written only because the packets should obey the distribution rules.

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

I don't like this - it shouldn't become acceptable to foist last minute questions on people because you didn't have the foresight to ask them with enough notice. If you don't know ahead of time that you won't be able to do it, there's much to be gained from the shameful experience of begging for last minute questions, but a forum dedicated to this removes the begging and, therefore, the lesson about procrastination. Any of the people who would likely step in and help with 2 days left would feel much better about stepping in with 2 weeks or months left, not to mention the increased probability that you'll get positive responses.

[grapesmoker]

I would tend to agree with the moral hazard theory advanced by Brad if it weren't the case that the moral hazard is already there. People do this kind of thing all the time, and while it's not ideal, no amount of talking about it seems to prevent it from happening. I don't know if it merits a special forum or not, but as long as people continue to put off writing, we're going to run into these problems anyway.

[ValenciaQBowl]

Though Ahmad's e-mail noted his own current situation of being close to the Sun n Fun deadline, his request didn't specify that such a forum would only be for last-minute requests.

I don't know if we need a separate forum, but I've made offers of money to people to write 4/4 science for summer packets I've written in the past (plenty early, thank you), and just made a new thread in the Discussion area. But maybe Ahmad's point is that there's no obvious place for such requests, timely or not, here now.

As to moral hazards, well, my own personal opinion is that the QB community too often resorts to attempts at publicly shaming those it considers guilty of poor practices, which, as Jerry noted, is usually ineffective and, again my own opinion, misguided.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I don't like this - it shouldn't become acceptable to foist last minute questions on people because you didn't have the foresight to ask them with enough notice. If you don't know ahead of time that you won't be able to do it, there's much to be gained from the shameful experience of begging for last minute questions, but a forum dedicated to this removes the begging and, therefore, the lesson about procrastination. Any of the people who would likely step in and help with 2 days left would feel much better about stepping in with 2 weeks or months left, not to mention the increased probability that you'll get positive responses.

Wouldn't doing the begging in public be more shameful though?

One of these days I'm going to start a company that sells last-minute questions to tournament editors at extremely gouged prices.

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

Wouldn't doing the begging in public be more shameful though?

Not after repeated uses - there's something of that, but it's tempered by the "everyone else is doing it so it's OK" mentality that would crop up. As Jerry noted, both sides of that are already here, but an official public forum for it would make the problem more widespread, and I think it'd favor the acceptable side rather than the shameful side.

[AKKOLADE]

I'm of the opinion that's there no problem with people asking for help with a tournament. I'm also of the opinion that you should be asking for help earlier, rather than later, in the timeline for your tournament.

As for a forum, you should use the Misc HSQB forum for this. If it takes off to the point that it necessitates its own forum, then one would be created.

[SnookerUSF]

Perhaps I had not been clear in my original intention. So, next year I want to write Sun 'n' Fun again. But I know that my science and history editing abilities are lagging, why not ask someone (much sooner rather than much later) to help me out. It allows an editor to keep control, and still gives the opportunity for other writers to contribute in a non-committal measured basis. A formalized structure (I and potentially others will use misc HSQB for now) would be conducive to such a process, without clogging up some more meaningful forum (like this one).

Secondly, why should an editor of an tournament, and by extension the members of the community participating in the event, be forced to suffer the indignities of a sub-par tournament, when there are other possibilities. You are smart enough to know that the story rarely ever involves just one miscreant, lazy editor shirking on his self-assigned responsibilities. Please. Get. Over. Yourselves.

Let me give you a specific example. Maryland in exchange for mirror fees has offered to write me two packets, which I am thankful for, and I am happy to forfeit the few hundred dollars. For reasons unknown to me, and likely SteveJon, the history portion cannot be written by the collective talents of the Maryland staff. I have thus been informed of that situation with two days to go. Is it reasonable for me to expect this happen? Are you going to tell me straight-faced, "Well Ahmad, you should really have dozens of spare tossups and bonuses for any such situation to arise." Really? Do it-I dare you, I double dare you! (Disclaimer: Do not be alarmed, if you do in fact claim such things, I will respond with a reasoned and well-thought out rebuttal).

There is a difference in kind, and not just degree, between having whole rounds or subject categories unaccounted for, and having a handful of tossups here and there unfilled. Have the perspicacity to see that difference, or please provide me with reasons why such a difference does not abide. EDIT: Or maybe you think both are transgressions against an apparently stringent quizbowl ethic?

[The Ununtiable Twine]

Secondly, why should an editor of an tournament, and by extension the members of the community participating in the event, be forced to suffer the indignities of a sub-par tournament, when there are other possibilities. You are smart enough to know that the story rarely ever involves just one miscreant, lazy editor shirking on his self-assigned responsibilities. Please. Get. Over. Yourselves.

Let me give you a specific example. Maryland in exchange for mirror fees has offered to write me two packets, which I am thankful for, and I am happy to forfeit the few hundred dollars. For reasons unknown to me, and likely SteveJon, the history portion cannot be written by the collective talents of the Maryland staff. I have thus been informed of that situation with two days to go. Is it reasonable for me to expect this happen? Are you going to tell me straight-faced, "Well Ahmad, you should really have dozens of spare tossups and bonuses for any such situation to arise." Really? Do it-I dare you, I double dare you! (Disclaimer: Do not be alarmed, if you do in fact claim such things, I will respond with a reasoned and well-thought out rebuttal).

I thought the quizbowl community in general would have been able to infer that the concept you proposed was to help better the quality of tournaments. Perhaps there could be some consensus regarding rules and regulations concerning your proposition, but as I previously stated, I find the idea of a new forum regarding this matter to be an exceptional idea given that emergencies such as this one are commonplace and you never know when they'll occur, and the situation will often result in a non-negligible amount of discomfort by a TD.

edit: overuse of the word "general"...

[Nine-Tenths Ideas]

Ahmad, contact me and let me know how much needs to be written.

EDIT: Hey, you said it at the start of the topic! Way to go, me. I can write 6 history tossups. Still, I'd like you to shoot me an email with a little more specifics.

[Susan]

Hey, I Forbidden-Zoned the fight, which doesn't belong in this topic. Here's the stuff from Chris's post that IS relevant:

I think Ahmad's got a good idea here, and I agree with Jerry that I don't think it will have much of an incentive effect because, as he pointed out, this kind of shit is as regular as a clock reactions tossup. I'll offer another hypothetical to answer Ahmad's - if such a system existed, it's very likely Maryland could have done soemthing when it became apparent that an anticipated 5/5 history wasn't going to come in. As it is, our network was restricted mostly to the club, since I had extremely limited time/access with all my travel stuff the past few weeks and nobody else in the club has an IM list sorted by ease of question-writing intimidation. I'm sure someone from the club could have easily paid $2/question or arranged a category swap with someone using this kind of forum, and Ahmad would never have had to worry about becoming morally hazardous or whatever, because it would have been dealt with before it ever reached him.

Face it: People are going to send you unusable or missing stuff, and sometimes it'll happen at the last minute. Sometimes it's fuckery, sometimes it's unpredictable writers, sometimes it's laptop-devouring beardlice. It just happens. If this system creates another layer of responsibility for the submission side (ie you can now be reasonably expected to try to handle unexpected shortfalls yourself) rather than just piling it onto the editor's already incalculable to-do list the final week before a tournament, I'm all for it.

[No Rules Westbrook]

Yeah, I support this idea. We can all probably agree on what the best editor should do in any given case, but things happen, some understandable and some not.

This seems like it would be a good secondary option for anyone who can't find a way to rope their usual contacts into doing some needed writing. For example, anyone who practices the Matt Lafer Strategy: "Never answer emails or IM's from people who are editing tournaments that are happening in the next week...not even if the subject is 'HELP ME, OH GOD PLEASE HELP, I'M DYING'...because the body of that message will still be 'write 20/20 history for Titanomachy, due tomorrow at [insert tournament start time]'"