That's what you argued, though. You complained about opposing players not telling the moderator to give you points when you were obviously right, then used the Proust incident as your example of unsportsmanlike conduct.Ike wrote:I'm not making the point about the Proust specifics to my overall point, but to the suggestion that I was "correctly negged." I had a whole post typed up about the specifics of why you should take that answer, but strictly from a rule reading: there is no "things have a name" rule since this character literally doesn't have a name - he's an unnamed narrator for every volume of the books! The idea that my answer should be negged because he's not called Proust is invalid, since he isn't called Marcel in the books. Therefore, Auroni's rationale for accepting Marcel has to be that "people often referred to him as Marcel" in academic discussion. Well, my reasoning for accepting "Proust" is the exact same: my professor once called that character "Proust" in discussions as well, and I was providing a print source that actually does so. I can only imagine that one doesn’t call him Proust that often in print because of the ambiguity it would create in most formal papers by having to distinguish between “Proust the author” and “Proust the character.”I don't think even this lone source you've found is completely clear on the question. This example doesn't even approach the level of "it's unsportsmanlike to not insist that the moderator award me points without looking into it."
By the way, Evan, I didn’t say what you put into your own quotes, and that quote is not even a paraphrase of my overall point about sportsmanship.
I don't like these "backroom deals" to award points for an answer that's not on the page. In my experience, this usually happens when a decorated player gives an answer that's not completely right, then tries to pressure the moderator and opposing team into awarding him points anyway. For one thing, this is just unfair, because it allows quizbowl's aristocrats to use their community status to extract points out of less-known staffers. For another, it makes us look deeply unprofessional when we handle potential game-swinging decisions in such a haphazard way - there's a lot more gnashing of teeth involved in this process than in marking it and moving on. To me, it seems totally reasonable to just mark these complaints as protests and have the TD resolve them at the end if they matter.