The Quizbowl Resource Center

So I got this idea to create some sort of central thread for finding what packets are available that aren't on the Stanford Archives. If you have any such packets (that you produced, not that you acquired by other means), please post them in this thread.

To get things started, here's what we have at Maryland:

TIT 2005 (will be put up on Stanford Archives soon)
TIT 2007
ASS 2007 (Trash)
Chris McCray 2007 (Trash, after 6/24)

And, if for some reason you want high school sets:
Spring 2007
Fall 2006
Spring 2006 (now on Stanford Archives)
Fall 2005
Spring 2005

If you're interested, contact me at [email protected].

Note that this is not the thread to discuss the commercialization of quizbowl and the merits of selling questions. This is just a simple list of who has what questions and how to get them.

If you are looking for a set, email me and I will send it to you if I have it. I probably do. No trades, just free shit. Also, if ANYBODY has Chicago Open 2005, please please email me.

I'm probably totally wrong, but I think you might have to track down Subash in India for that set.

Oh, and I would love ACF Nats 2006, if possible, assuming that's okay with Yaphe and TPTB. wfb04 at fsu dot edu

Thanks

wd4gdz wrote:I'm probably totally wrong, but I think you might have to track down Subash in India for that set.

Oh, and I would love ACF Nats 2006, if possible, assuming that's okay with Yaphe and TPTB. wfb04 at fsu dot edu

Thanks

I'm going to make some ACF questions that haven't been made public available on the ACF site sometime this weekend.

Once we get our act together, I'll find a way for people to access the previous PACE NSC sets from 1998 to 2006 off the PACE website.

While it's great more packets are going up or are being e-mailed, why not send them to the Stanford Packet Archive? New players aren't going to know where to look for questions if they're scattered all over the net.

Perhaps the archive could also start a policy of posting all sets over two years old even if the authors haven't submitted them (and then of course pulling them if the authors complain, which I doubt they will), as some people are just lazy and/or have turned off of quiz bowl. Otherwise, they'll never get listed.

The archive is poorly managed and infrequently updated. At some point, if it doesn't get better, I'd like to see a replacement for it.

Currently, a few people are working on cataloguing all tournaments that are on record as having occurred within a relevant timeframe (do our best since like 95 but really we're talking 2000 or 2002 as a backboard). We're putting together a spreadsheet with the date of the tournament, the site, the editor, and the tournament name. Additionally, we're trying to find the packet set from every tournament along with the field and any results and/or stats that remain known/in existence. The ultimate goal of this will be to make the qbwiki what it should be: both a den of slander AND a comprehensive record of legit qb history. Each tournament will have its own page with the aforementioned information along with any notable anecdotes from that tournament and links to results/stats and the packet set, all of which will ideally be hosted by the wiki. If we run out of space, we can look into an offsite storage method, not that big a deal.

Currently, Andrew Hart, Ryan Westbrook, and I are working on this, but if you would like to help (and especially if you suspect you have one or more packet sets or stats files that nobody else has), email me and we'll give you shit to do.

Was there any reason you guys chose such a crappy wiki software?

It's a real pain to sludge through the site, IMO.

Jerry did it, there was a reason for it but I don't remember what it was. If you are interested in redesigning the site by all means let me or one of the other admins know and we can look into it. I think our lease is up soon anyway.

Yeah, the lease is expiring soon. Someone want to coordinate with me on transferring all the data to a new host? You all have my e-mail right?

ikillkenny wrote:Was there any reason you guys chose such a crappy wiki software?

It's a real pain to sludge through the site, IMO.

I had some rationale for it, but I forget what it was. I think there was something about the regular wiki software requiring PHP 5 and that not being available, I really don't recall at this point, but I think software issues drove the choice. I'd be happy to migrate to something else if you think this sucks a lot.

Can someone look at netfirms.com and see if it has the capability to handle decent wiki stuff? I am thinking of getting that for the next year since the current host will run out in a few weeks.

I don't think that AWET/BUTT/Aztlan '06 ever made it onto the Archives for some reason, but I don't know if Jerry had any other plans for that or not...

I would look into dedicated wiki hosts. You might be able to get Wikia to add a Quiz Bowl wiki, which would be free. There's also StikiPad, which costs $15/mo and supports domain mapping.

Alternately, if you know what you're doing, you could try Slicehost. You can get a VPS with full root shell access for $20/mo. Then you can go ahead and set up Apache and put whatever the hell wiki software you want on there.

If people want to pay it, thats cool. I personally can't put in that much money. I have a deal for netfirms, so I can spring for that again for people. I also have one for hostpc, but I don't think that has much built in in the way of traffic bandwith.

I am perfectly capable of hosting a wiki on my web space, the only problem is that it isn't really a domain (although we could have a domain redirect to it without too much problem). I have plenty of extra bandwidth I don't use per month and I already host several wikis (specifically Mediawiki). Send me an e-mail or something ([email protected]).

Also, if any Maryland alum or other person with old TIT question sets (before 2005) wants to post them to the archive, the current Maryland team has no problem with this (and would in fact encourage anyone who has these sets to do this).

If electronic copies aren't around, we might have paper copies of these sets somewhere. When we eventually move the questions into our new fangled office I'll see about scanning these.