ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by Auroni »

Yeah, and that the link between things like "the second Anglo-Mysore war" and the American war of independence is tenuous at best, since they involve involvements in other parts of the world around the same time that somewhat hindered the British military machine in the war. None of those connections are so definite that one can instantly associate the second Anglo-Mysore War or the Antilles war as a subclass of the greater "War of American Independence"
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by Captain Sinico »

No Rules Westbrook wrote:Also, all hard tourneys should have 2/2 social science, is my belief. If you want to throw in some geography (no matter what type), you can do that separately - stick one in now and then in place of having a third fine arts tossup or in place of a silly religion tossup that you don't really want to write anyway.
I really hope people don't follow this advice. Religion and the stuff that comes up in third fine arts questions are generally massively important and of unquestionable academic character. Frankly, if you want to boost social science (which might be a good idea) at the cost of something, how about "your choice?" On the one hand, it'll reduce the forums' charm by killing the germ of the page-long ACF Fire Emblem arguments of the future, but, on the other hand, it will allow you to include geography, which I guess some people might like, without cutting something anyone thinks is really important. I guess if you hate determinism or something, you could also demand an academic (or at least quasi-academic) "your choice" question and have geography as one of several academic topics submittable.

MaS
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by Auroni »

Captain Scipio wrote:
No Rules Westbrook wrote:Also, all hard tourneys should have 2/2 social science, is my belief. If you want to throw in some geography (no matter what type), you can do that separately - stick one in now and then in place of having a third fine arts tossup or in place of a silly religion tossup that you don't really want to write anyway.
I really hope people don't follow this advice. Religion and the stuff that comes up in third fine arts questions are generally massively important and of unquestionable academic character. Frankly, if you want to boost social science (which might be a good idea) at the cost of something, how about "your choice?" On the one hand, it'll reduce the forums' charm by killing the germ of the page-long ACF Fire Emblem arguments of the future, but, on the other hand, it will allow you to include geography, which I guess some people might like, without cutting something anyone thinks is really important. I guess if you hate determinism or something, you could also demand an academic (or at least quasi-academic) "your choice" question and have geography as one of several academic topics submittable.

MaS
I second this. To reopen old wounds for a second, it was really frustrating to see even more tossups than the 2 Ryan alluded to come up in the first round we played at ACF Winter; I think that it should be capped at 1/1 and expanded to 2/1 or 2/2 only if editors are have a difficult time with the geography in the packet.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

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I think I may be misunderstood, so let me clarify. I think expanding to 2/2 social science might be a good idea*. I strongly claim, however, that doing so at the cost of philosophy (which is what combining social science and philosophy would do if it changes anything: c.f. NAQT's distribution); religion; or non-painting, non-non-operatic-classical-music arts is not a good idea. Those things already don't come up enough for my liking, are important, are unimpeachably academic, and don't seem to have any issues being played as quizbowl.

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*I have some doubts given that there's not insignificant evidence that even good editors seem to have difficulty filling the 1/1 we have now.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

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JelloBiafra wrote:I second this. To reopen old wounds for a second, it was really frustrating to see even more tossups than the 2 Ryan alluded to come up in the first round we played at ACF Winter; I think that it should be capped at 1/1 and expanded to 2/1 or 2/2 only if editors are have a difficult time with the geography in the packet.
Can you remember what round this was? I'm pretty sure that no Winter round had more than 2 social science tossups, but perhaps I'm wrong about that.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

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grapesmoker wrote:
JelloBiafra wrote:I second this. To reopen old wounds for a second, it was really frustrating to see even more tossups than the 2 Ryan alluded to come up in the first round we played at ACF Winter; I think that it should be capped at 1/1 and expanded to 2/1 or 2/2 only if editors are have a difficult time with the geography in the packet.
Can you remember what round this was? I'm pretty sure that no Winter round had more than 2 social science tossups, but perhaps I'm wrong about that.
I felt that Editor's 1 did. There was certainly one on Walter Benjamin that round, but I felt like I heard two more beyond that. Maybe I was mixing it up with philosophy, in which case I apologize for having brought it up.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

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This was editor's packet 3
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

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Captain Scipio wrote:I think I may be misunderstood, so let me clarify. I think expanding to 2/2 social science might be a good idea*. I strongly claim, however, that doing so at the cost of philosophy (which is what combining social science and philosophy would do if it changes anything: c.f. NAQT's distribution); religion; or non-painting, non-non-operatic-classical-music arts is not a good idea. Those things already don't come up enough for my liking, are important, are unimpeachably academic, and don't seem to have any issues being played as quizbowl.

MaS

*I have some doubts given that there's not insignificant evidence that even good editors seem to have difficulty filling the 1/1 we have now.
I agree with this up to the point where combining social science and philosophy would kill philosophy. I feel that if there were 3/3 Social Science/Philosophy in a tournament, it would actually increase the possibility for philosophy to come up beyond the 1/1 already guaranteed.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by grapesmoker »

JelloBiafra wrote:I felt that Editor's 1 did. There was certainly one on Walter Benjamin that round, but I felt like I heard two more beyond that. Maybe I was mixing it up with philosophy, in which case I apologize for having brought it up.
Sure, that was my packet. So, the Walter Benjamin tossup was actually classified as literature because the clues in it are mostly literary clues (with the exception of "Work of Art etc.") There was also a tossup on Proudhon which I intended as a social science tossup and "Wretched of the Earth," which I also considered a social science question. Sorry for any confusion.

edit: actually, it may be that Proudhon was actually a philosophy tossup; that makes more sense.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

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tetragrammatology wrote:I agree with this up to the point where combining social science and philosophy would kill philosophy. I feel that if there were 3/3 Social Science/Philosophy in a tournament, it would actually increase the possibility for philosophy to come up beyond the 1/1 already guaranteed.
The problem is that you can't just decree 3/3; you have to get the extra 1/1 from somewhere. My point is, unless you also change the number of questions devoted to the two subjects, you're going to face the NAQT subject sieve (wherein people write about whatever they want if the latitude exists in the distribution) if you ask for 2/2 social science/philosophy and that's going to give you less philosophy sometimes, less social science others, and less balance almost always. If you're saying "Well, make it 1/1 of each," that's what we've got now, so...

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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

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Captain Scipio wrote:
tetragrammatology wrote:I agree with this up to the point where combining social science and philosophy would kill philosophy. I feel that if there were 3/3 Social Science/Philosophy in a tournament, it would actually increase the possibility for philosophy to come up beyond the 1/1 already guaranteed.
The problem is that you can't just decree 3/3; you have to get the extra 1/1 from somewhere. My point is, unless you also change the number of questions devoted to the two subjects, you're going to face the NAQT subject sieve (wherein people write about whatever they want if the latitude exists in the distribution) if you ask for 2/2 social science/philosophy and that's going to give you less philosophy sometimes, less social science others, and less balance almost always. If you're saying "Well, make it 1/1 of each," that's what we've got now, so...

MaS
I would advocate taking away from trash and geography and making Trash/Geo/Choice 1/1 and have Social Science and Philosophy be 3/3.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by Theory Of The Leisure Flask »

Captain Scipio wrote:I think I may be misunderstood, so let me clarify. I think expanding to 2/2 social science might be a good idea*. I strongly claim, however, that doing so at the cost of philosophy (which is what combining social science and philosophy would do if it changes anything: c.f. NAQT's distribution); religion; or non-painting, non-non-operatic-classical-music arts is not a good idea. Those things already don't come up enough for my liking, are important, are unimpeachably academic, and don't seem to have any issues being played as quizbowl.

MaS

*I have some doubts given that there's not insignificant evidence that even good editors seem to have difficulty filling the 1/1 we have now.
As someone who is probably much more strongly in favor of more social science than 99% of the people on this board, I agree that it shouldn't come at the expense of arts and RPM- those subjects are squeezed enough as it is. I would, however, be in favor of increasing SS at the expense of either geography (I would be in favor of simply using geographic clues in history and SS questions, where they can be presented in relevant context) or literature and history (which are overrepresented in collegiate/open quizbowl IMO- when I returned to quizbowl after three years away, the first thing I noticed was that most subjects weren't much more difficult, but the lit canon had disproportionally exploded in difficulty).

As for the difficulty in writing good social science questions, yeah, that's a problem. But we don't cut down on questions in other technical fields like science and music just because they require extra technical knowledge- instead, we (at least for science) seek out people that actually know the material in question. Yeah, it's extra effort, and yeah, the reality of accessibility problems mean 1/1 SS should probably remain the standard for novice tourneys. But at high-level events (and certainly any event that bills itself as being "about learning"), we ought to do a better job of representing the full breadth of academic knowledge, and that starts with more social science.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

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Sure, but what I'm saying is: even people who are expert in social science have difficulty writing those questions. I'm confident that I can write you 20/20 physics tossups by tomorrow and they'll all be tip-top; I can't think of anyone who can realistically make the same claim about social science. To me, that reflects a couple things: mainly, I think the game has attracted more players (and consequently writers/editors) good at some things than at others (after all, the quality of a question is only defined viz the people who play it: if we were all writing theses on relativistic transformations of the quantum vacuum, tossups on the Unruh effect would be buzzer races every time.) Thus, if I write what would be phenomenal social science for people who know it, it still probably sucks for people who don't and I think a lot of players don't. It may also be that there are fewer uniquely named, interesting topics in social science.
I guess my point is: I'd like to see us reach a point where good editors can routinely knock 1/1 social science out of the park (be it through expansion of what we know, turnover to people who know more, recruitment of better editors/writers, or all of those) before I say "Yeah, double that." I don't think the same argument can be applied to other areas, because there are often tournaments with acclaimedly excellent (say) science.

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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

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Captain Scipio wrote:Sure, but what I'm saying is: even people who are expert in social science have difficulty writing those questions. I'm confident that I can write you 20/20 physics tossups by tomorrow and they'll all be tip-top; I can't think of anyone who can realistically make the same claim about social science. To me, that reflects a couple things: mainly, I think the game has attracted more players (and consequently writers/editors) good at some things than at others (after all, the quality of a question is only defined viz the people who play it: if we were all writing theses on relativistic transformations of the quantum vacuum, tossups on the Unruh effect would be buzzer races every time.) Thus, if I write what would be phenomenal social science for people who know it, it still probably sucks for people who don't and I think a lot of players don't. It may also be that there are fewer uniquely named, interesting topics in social science.
I guess my point is: I'd like to see us reach a point where good editors can routinely knock 1/1 social science out of the park (be it through expansion of what we know, turnover to people who know more, recruitment of better editors/writers, or all of those) before I say "Yeah, double that." I don't think the same argument can be applied to other areas, because there are often tournaments with acclaimedly excellent (say) science.

MaS
Well, I for one would like to view this as a call for a social science subject tournament from some good writer who knows this, and then we can go from there. As I'm working on the distribution of a summer tournament, I would like to see a well-done subject tournament before I decide to jump on the expansion bandwagon. I've seen this with respect to literature subject tournaments, possibly the explanation of the explosion Chris noted, where well-crafted subject tournaments not only expand canon but allow less experienced writers and editors to find interesting topics that they feel they can write. This is actually part of my reasoning in writing an all-music tournament for this summer.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

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Awehrman wrote:
American Revolution Tossup

13.**One theater in this general war saw forces under Haidar Ali defeated at the Battle of Porto Novo, part of the Second Anglo-Mysore War. The defeat of a fleet commanded by Juan de Langara in Cape St. Vincent became known as the Moonlight Battle and allowed George Rodney to resupply troops at Gibraltar. This more general conflict ended up sparking the 4th Anglo-Dutch War, and the Battle of the Saintes was a turning point in the Caribbean phase, known as the Antilles War. The French entered this conflict via the Treaty of Alliance, while Russia formed the League of Armed Neutrality during it. For 10 points, identify this conflict where a French naval victory at the Battle of the Virginia Capes prevented British troops from reinforcing Cornwallis at Yorktown.
ANSWER: American Revolutionary War [or the War For American Independence or the Northern War of George Washingtonian Aggression; prompt on "Second Anglo-Mysore War" or "Antilles War" or "4th Anglo-Dutch War" before mentioned]

I said Mysore War after the Hyder Ali clue, but before it mentioned the Second Anglo-Mysore War. I can't remember if the Battle of Porto Novo was said before I buzzed in. I got prompted and said the wrong answer. Hyder Ali is one of the Mysore people. The first clue says general war, and the American Revolution was general, but so was the Second Anglo-Mysore War as compared to the Mysore War.
I'm a bit late to this discussion and did not participate in ACF Regionals, but I wanted to comment briefly on this question, since it's directly related to my field. In general, I really like what this question tried to do in setting the Revolution in a transnational context. Unfortunately most scholars of the American Revolution consider these events (usually with the exception of the Caribbean stuff) contemporary to but outside of the Revolution. I wouldn't have gotten it until the Battle of the Saintes, but I may have negged off the first clue with the Seven Years' War, because it is more well-known as a global conflict (Hyder Ali rose to power during it). Global historians and imperial historians often treat the American Revolution as a side event of the more global conflict of the "First British Empire," and probably would not consider those events (especially the Mysore stuff) a part of the American Revolution nor would they necessarily label it the "general war". Overall I think global history questions like this one that really stretch historical labels would be better served as bonuses. As a bonus it would reveal all of the interesting global connections with a bit of canon expansion and avoid the more head-scratching "what are they looking for?" elements of the tossup. As a side question, was this question counted as American, European, or world history?
As the author of this question, first let me apologize for both the poor idea and poor execution of it. I essentially wrote this tossup after reading a "this year in history" in a section of an art book on Benjamin West or something. It contained several interesting non-American conflicts going on at this time, several of which seemed to be linked to the conflict itself, although I was clearly mistaken about others (most notably the Second Anglo-Mysore War). Seeing this, I thought it would be clever (it wasn't) to write a tossup on the Revolutionary War that counted under the European History distribution.

In addition to the poor choice of subject matter, the execution was very bad. I don't really know anything about the Mysore Wars, but apparently many other people do, so even if there was a good connection between the Revolutionary War and that conflict, it didn't make a good leadin. Additionally, I thought things like The Antilles War and the League of Armed Neutrality were more notable than they actually were (the latter because I just read a history of the 1790s which talked about it in great detail), making this tossup very hard to get if you didn't know the first clue until the Battle of Virginia.

Generally I try to weed out these problems, especially in more "ambitious" questions like these, by playtesting them online or something. I think this would have certainly resulted in the addition of more middle clues and a changing of the Anglo-Mysore War clue. However, because I was finishing the packet on the weekend of Cardinal Classic, I was pressed for time and didn't get a chance to playtest it. I should have known better anyways and tested it after I submitted the packet and then provided feedback, but I neglected to do this.

In summary, I'd like to apologize for that question and the other weak questions that made it into that packet--such as software testing, boolean logic and the business cycles question that got cut. I hope that this tossup didn't change the outcome of any games.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by grapesmoker »

Tower Monarch wrote:Well, I for one would like to view this as a call for a social science subject tournament from some good writer who knows this, and then we can go from there. As I'm working on the distribution of a summer tournament, I would like to see a well-done subject tournament before I decide to jump on the expansion bandwagon. I've seen this with respect to literature subject tournaments, possibly the explanation of the explosion Chris noted, where well-crafted subject tournaments not only expand canon but allow less experienced writers and editors to find interesting topics that they feel they can write. This is actually part of my reasoning in writing an all-music tournament for this summer.
Well, Trygve and I wanted to run something like this during CO, but laptop theft yada yada. At some point, I assume Trygve will rebuild his stash of social studies questions; Chris and I still have our philosophy questions so whenever Trygve is ready we can run this tournament. Should be lots of fun.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by millionwaves »

grapesmoker wrote:
Tower Monarch wrote:Well, I for one would like to view this as a call for a social science subject tournament from some good writer who knows this, and then we can go from there. As I'm working on the distribution of a summer tournament, I would like to see a well-done subject tournament before I decide to jump on the expansion bandwagon. I've seen this with respect to literature subject tournaments, possibly the explanation of the explosion Chris noted, where well-crafted subject tournaments not only expand canon but allow less experienced writers and editors to find interesting topics that they feel they can write. This is actually part of my reasoning in writing an all-music tournament for this summer.
Well, Trygve and I wanted to run something like this during CO, but laptop theft yada yada. At some point, I assume Trygve will rebuild his stash of social studies questions; Chris and I still have our philosophy questions so whenever Trygve is ready we can run this tournament. Should be lots of fun.
Hey, this is as good a time as any to note that this is for sure still on. As soon as I finish with the WoQ set that I'm working on right now, I'm going to start rewriting the social science questions for this. Incidentally, I'm not sure how much of a role tossups on concepts will play. When I wrote last year, I spent much more effort on expanding the number of thinkers and works that we ask about at the expense of writing a lot of tossups on concepts (although there were a smattering); I think at the moment I'm inclined to repeat that.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by No Rules Westbrook »

I'm frankly very confused by this discussion. I don't think social science has ever had a reputation for being systematically poorly written, at least not any more than any other subject that comes up in qb (especially science!), and certainly not so that such a reputation should function as an argument for counseling against it in a distribution. In fact, I think there have been lots of people past and present with deep knowledge of soc sci who usually write excellent soc sci questions, and in fact I'm pretty confident of my ability to write them. Like Trygve, I'm not enthralled with the idea of concept tossups and I don't do them unless I think I have a super idea that will work well - rather, as you might expect, I'm all about blowing open the canon of social science thinkers and works. Which isn't so great for most events, but I mostly only write for harder stuff anyway. My argument for expanding social science at these events is that it's a subject where I think the world is just crawling with a bunch of important thinker-type dudes who rarely if ever come up.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

No Rules Westbrook wrote:I'm frankly very confused by this discussion. I don't think social science has ever had a reputation for being systematically poorly written, at least not any more than any other subject that comes up in qb (especially science!), and certainly not so that such a reputation should function as an argument for counseling against it in a distribution. In fact, I think there have been lots of people past and present with deep knowledge of soc sci who usually write excellent soc sci questions, and in fact I'm pretty confident of my ability to write them. Like Trygve, I'm not enthralled with the idea of concept tossups and I don't do them unless I think I have a super idea that will work well - rather, as you might expect, I'm all about blowing open the canon of social science thinkers and works. Which isn't so great for most events, but I mostly only write for harder stuff anyway. My argument for expanding social science at these events is that it's a subject where I think the world is just crawling with a bunch of important thinker-type dudes who rarely if ever come up.
I would tend to agree with this, especially when applied to higher difficulty tournaments.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by theMoMA »

I know I had a great time finding Social Science answers for Minnesota Open. I wound up writing at least a half-dozen questions in that category from scratch. If I recall correctly, there were a few concept tossups, but they were mostly on works. This might belong in the other thread, but in my estimation, concept tossups in the social sciences are much more problematic than in regular science, since there are a lot of concepts that are very close analogues, and things can get transparent pretty quickly. Concept tossups have to walk a thin line between things people actually study, and having complete-the-title clues for absolute uniqueness in the answer. There are certainly concepts that we can write on, and good writers will always find a way to do it well.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by Auroni »

theMoMA wrote:I know I had a great time finding Social Science answers for Minnesota Open. I wound up writing at least a half-dozen questions in that category from scratch. If I recall correctly, there were a few concept tossups, but they were mostly on works. This might belong in the other thread, but in my estimation, concept tossups in the social sciences are much more problematic than in regular science, since there are a lot of concepts that are very close analogues, and things can get transparent pretty quickly. Concept tossups have to walk a thin line between things people actually study, and having complete-the-title clues for absolute uniqueness in the answer. There are certainly concepts that we can write on, and good writers will always find a way to do it well.
Well, if I remember correctly, quite a few of the social science tossup at MO were of the common link title variety. So while concept tossups are a great idea, I think that common links are something to steer away from.
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Re: ACF Regionals Discussion Thread

Post by theMoMA »

There's nothing wrong with common link questions based on titles, as long as you summarize what's happening in the book so that knowledgeable people can buzz off of that. If you're only awarding "fill in the blank" knowledge (in any common link, not just social science), you're not writing a good question.

Most of the answers I wrote on from scratch were works (Mind of Primitive Man; Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande, The Uses of Enchantment; The City in History; etc.)
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