ACF Regionals 2013 General Discussion

Old college threads.
User avatar
grapesmoker
Sin
Posts: 6345
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:23 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Re: ACF Regionals 2013 General Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

If you're combining various formats, the best thing to do is to use the "paste without formatting" option, if it exists. If it doesn't, do all your pasting, select all, clear formats, and redo by hand.
Jerry Vinokurov
ex-LJHS, ex-Berkeley, ex-Brown, sorta-ex-CMU
presently: John Jay College Economics
code ape, loud voice, general nuissance
User avatar
theMoMA
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 5993
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:00 am

Re: ACF Regionals 2013 General Discussion

Post by theMoMA »

DumbJaques wrote:I really don't think it was quite this bad, was it? First of all, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "a lot of 'titulars.'" The only time I find quizbowl to be stupid with this term is when you use it in a way that points people away from the answer, eg a tossup on The Man Who Was Thursday including a line saying "the titular day of this work. . .," and even then there are confusing and non-confusing ways to use the term. I generally try to avoid quizbowlese of this type and don't at all consider it something I have an issue with, but perhaps you could point to some specific questions?
This might be a stylistic thing, but I prefer "title" to "titular" unless we're talking about something of or pertaining to an actual (regnal) title. It's shorter and more normal.
The "and" thing is a stylistic thing where I disagree with some other people; I know some editors try to make every clue a discrete sentence; I think that sounds choppy and bothers the ear, but there are certainly editors who pull it off with a tremendous amount of success (I'd say Matt Weiner is the best example). There are probably some cases where my style would flow clearer if I edged more toward that end of the spectrum; it's something I'll be trying to keep in mind in the future. But I don't agree that it's necessarily a bad thing.
Again, this is stylistic, but I prefer to use appositives ("This man, who presided over the Conference of Errors, put down Letzler's Rebellion.") or phrases strung together with "which" instead of and, like "A flock of ducks mercilessly peck a crowd of peasants in this novel, which contains a character nicknamed 'Lardo' who eats at Joey's Diner every Tuesday." These sentences seem to flow a lot better to me than the quizbowl norm, which is usually to take two independent clauses, stick an "and" between them, and call it a day.

Looking through the set again, I think a lot of my criticisms about misplaced clues are directed at one particular packet: LASA B. This was, in my mind, a substandard round (that unfortunately cropped up against a very capable opponent); looking through the rest of the set, that packet seems to have colored my experience with the rest of the set inordinately. I stand by my critiques of bonus inconsistencies and the occasional too-difficult parts in the rest of the set, but rescind my previous wholesale criticism of the set regarding misplaced tossup clues. Looking over some of the other packets, I'm also noticing fewer quizbowlese trends than in the LASA A (EDIT: originally misidentified as LASA B) packet, so it's possible that those linguistic phenomena are confined to that packet as well.

I also want to make it clear that I enjoyed Regionals for the most part and thought that it had most of the enjoyable hallmarks of a Chris Ray tournament, chiefly humor and answer creativity.
Andrew Hart
Minnesota alum
User avatar
kayli
Auron
Posts: 1525
Joined: Sat Jun 21, 2008 10:15 pm
Location: Illinois

Re: ACF Regionals 2013 General Discussion

Post by kayli »

grapesmoker wrote:If you're combining various formats, the best thing to do is to use the "paste without formatting" option, if it exists...
By the way, this is ctrl+shift+v for Windows computers (not sure if it works on macs), and it is very useful.
Kay, Chicago.
Magister Ludi
Tidus
Posts: 677
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2005 1:57 am
Location: Washington DC

Re: ACF Regionals 2013 General Discussion

Post by Magister Ludi »

I agree with Andrew that this set was hampered by the lack of a consistent vision—one editor was writing ten-line tossups on Alvar Aalto and another was sending out seven-line questions on The Brothers Karamazov. It seemed like the editors focused on their individual questions, and put no thought into the tournament’s overarching philosophy, which ensures a balanced experience across the whole set. The editors needed to take a step back and look at the macro-perspective of the tournament because some of the problems were obvious. For example, lets look at the painting distribution.

Painting Tossups:
- Marriage a-la-mode
- Poussin
- Richard Hamilton
- Durer
- Bacon
- Dali
- Bellows
- Caillebotte
- Titian
- The Flagellation of Christ
- The Milkmaid
- Judith
- wedding
- Death on a Pale Horse
- Isenheim Altarpiece

(I bolded the answers that I thought were on the upper limit of difficulty.)

Six out of the 15 painting tossups (or forty percent) were Nationals level difficulty. Devoting forty percent of any sub-distribution to the upper bounds of the difficulty spectrum, or the “Bell Curve” (as Chris described it), is disastrous for a tournament like Regionals. But even worse, many of the tossups on ostensibly easy subjects such as Durer or Dali read like MO-level questions, with more leadins than middles clues. Four out of the eight lines of the Dali question are about other artists named Dali. Apparently we only need four lines of clues about Salvador Dali but require ten lines for Critique of the Gotha Program.

This tournament wasn’t bad, but I believe that Regionals demands a stricter editorial philosophy than other regular difficulty tournaments because it has the difficult task of bridging the gap between novice and regular-difficulty events. Accordingly, I edited Regionals in 2010 and 2011 with an ironclad difficulty distribution to ensure there was a minimum number of easy tossups in every packet and a maximum number of hard answers across each category. I wrote about fifteen extra tossups on super-easy topics that I could use to replace borderline questions, and avoid the temptation that many editors fall victim to of keeping iffy submitted tossups because they are well-written. Obviously, I have a personal bias about the best way to edit Regionals, but the positive response to the 2010 and 2011 sets has at least convinced me that maintaining a tight difficulty distribution really improves the experience of many teams. But I think it’s especially important to keep in mind how Regionals is supposed to differ from the average regular-difficulty tournament.
Ted Gioia - Harvard '12
Editor ACF, PACE
User avatar
1992 in spaceflight
Auron
Posts: 1615
Joined: Wed Jun 01, 2011 8:11 pm
Location: St. Louis-area, MO

Re: ACF Regionals 2013 General Discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

Is this set going to be posted soon?
Jacob O'Rourke
Washington (MO) HS Assistant Coach (2014-Present); MOQBA Secretary (2015-Present)
Formerly: AQBL Administrator (2020-2023); HSAPQ Host Contact; NASAT Outreach Coordinator (2016 and 2017); Kirksville HS Assistant Coach (2012-2014); Truman State '14; and Pacific High (MO) '10


Like MOQBA on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!
User avatar
Smuttynose Island
Forums Staff: Moderator
Posts: 614
Joined: Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:07 pm

Re: ACF Regionals 2013 General Discussion

Post by Smuttynose Island »

The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:Is this set going to be posted soon?
Is there some reason why this set still hasn't been posted?
Daniel Hothem
TJHSST '11 | UVA '15 | Oregon '??
"You are the stuff of legends" - Chris Manners
https://sites.google.com/site/academicc ... ubuva/home
Susan
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 1812
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 12:43 am

Re: ACF Regionals 2013 General Discussion

Post by Susan »

Smuttynose Island wrote:
The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:Is this set going to be posted soon?
Is there some reason why this set still hasn't been posted?
Working on it (albeit while trying to un-flood my house). Sorry for the delay.
Susan
UChicago alum (AB 2003, PhD 2009)
Member emerita, ACF
Locked