Trash Packets Online

[MacSR]

My teammates and I are running out of trash packets to play after our normal practices. Aside from the Stanford site and quizbowlpackets.com, are there any other sites hosting trash packets?

Thanks

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Wow, you actually spent so much time "practicing" trash that you ran out of packets?

[Mechanical Beasts]

I have approximately 1300 packets in my archive of reasonably good-quality tournaments (sorry, 1995 T-Party, but you didn't make the cut!), and mine's smaller than many peoples'. Assuming that there is 1/1 trash on average, that's 1300/1300, or about sixty trash packets worth. Sure, you'll have to sift through a lot of annoyingly important things that are frustratingly worth learning, but at least you'll get to the real meat eventually!

[Broad-tailed Grassbird]

search?
This exact topic was discussed a few months ago.
Anyways, Trashionals and Trashregionals ('05?) is on Stanford Packet Archive, as well as a host of other trash packets. If you've already exhausted everything online from all the databases, I suggest you start writing more questions, or move onto exclusively academic (as bad as that sounds).

[Mike Bentley]

Hey guys some people like playing trash packets sometimes. Let's not all be dickheads about this.

I think the main issue with posting trash tournaments online is that people who write trash tournaments haven't okayed their presence online. For instance, both TRASH and UTC still try to sell their questions. I'd personally like to see this policy end and everything online, but whatever. In the meantime just find someone who will give you the trash packets from their personal archive or whatever.

[adosreme]

I have approximately 1300 packets in my archive of reasonably good-quality tournaments (sorry, 1995 T-Party, but you didn't make the cut!), and mine's smaller than many peoples'.

Is this archive online? I am looking for some novice level (non-trash) packets for practices.

[Mechanical Beasts]

It's just my personal archive, which contains not a whole lot more than what you'd get off collegiate.quizbowlpackets.com.

[grapesmoker]

Is this archive online? I am looking for some novice level (non-trash) packets for practices.

Chris Carter's collegiate quizbowl archive contains a great deal of stuff. You should check out tournaments like EFT, MUT, and ACF Fall for some good novice-level stuff.

[MichaelKearney]

OR you could just directly ask one of the nice and generous trash partisans that occasionally frequent these boards.

I gotta wonder why the replies to this perfectly appropriate question, posted in the Trash Forum got everybody up in arms. If you're not gonna be helpful, lay off other team's personal preferences and quit being so elitist.

Sameer, fire me an e-mail at friendlyneighborhood(AT)gmail(DOT)com and I'll hook you up with ten or so packets that I've written, and a couple extra in my archive.

Also, the older packets from 05 and earlier aren't necessarily as useful if you wanna get better at trash. Like all quizbowl, the newer stuff tends to be more well-written, but trash tends to lean toward the ephemeral, and questions about He Hate Me and Joe Millionaire are way less answerable than they were 5 years ago.

[Matt Weiner]

Don't tell other people how to post.

[Mechanical Beasts]

quit being so elitist.

You go too far, sir!

[Sir Thopas]

questions about He Hate Me and Joe Millionaire are way less answerable than they were 5 years ago.

They should probably stop being written, then.

[Mike Bentley]

So it's okay to insult people and not offer any helpful advice, but it's not okay to call out these people for being assholes while actually offering some helpful advice on the forum actually devoted to trash? Okay.

[Mechanical Beasts]

questions about He Hate Me and Joe Millionaire are way less answerable than they were 5 years ago.

They should probably stop being written, then.

If you mean that they shouldn't have been written five years ago, that's wrong; ephemera are an important part of the trash canon. If you mean they shouldn't be written now, then yeah, sure, but I don't think he's advocating that; he seems to be advocating the opposite.

So it's okay to insult people and not offer any helpful advice, but it's not okay to call out these people for being assholes while actually offering some helpful advice on the forum actually devoted to trash? Okay.

Nothing that was said was insulting, really; also, "study academic packets for their trash content" isn't really unhelpful because those are 1000+ very real trash questions that are generally higher-quality than a lot of trash sets (since he's already probably read your tournaments, CO trash, GARBAGE, etc.). Also: yes, it is worse to tell people how to post than to be mildly (or more!) insulting. The rules of these forums apply in the forum actually devoted to trash, too.

[Captain Sinico]

questions about He Hate Me and Joe Millionaire are way less answerable than they were 5 years ago.

They should probably stop being written, then.

Please read the things you're trying to criticize before you criticize them next time.

On a more general note, why don't we all chill for a minute here? There are perfectly good arguments against using a college team's practice time for trash (and probably arguments for it, too.) This shouldn't be the place for those and, henceforth, won't be.

MaS

[Cheynem]

I actually would suggest writing your own packets, particularly if you're interested in either just having fun (because then you can write about stuff you're interested in) or getting "better" (because then you can write about more up to date stuff).

[Sir Thopas]

questions about He Hate Me and Joe Millionaire are way less answerable than they were 5 years ago.

They should probably stop being written, then.

Please read the things you're trying to criticize before you criticize them next time.

I did, dude.

[Theory Of The Leisure Flask]

Wow, you actually spent so much time "practicing" trash that you ran out of packets?

There are actually very few trash packets freely available in the online archives; especially if you limit yourselves to the only 4-5 trash tournaments ever which have any conception of modern standards. You may remember when one of my trash-loving teammates asked the exact same question awhile back, and I can assure you we spend the strong majority of our practice time on good academic packets.

(As for the fact that the trash-reading in our practices has been non-zero: I will simply note that it's not my preference, but people clearly enjoy it and there are ways in which it's probably done some good IMO.)

[Captain Sinico]

questions about He Hate Me and Joe Millionaire are way less answerable than they were 5 years ago.

They should probably stop being written, then.

Please read the things you're trying to criticize before you criticize them next time.

I did, dude.

Then, please write criticism that reflects the fact that you have read the things you're trying to criticize. Also, please stop making off-topic posts in this thread.

MaS

[MichaelKearney]

I was just saying that older packets have a lot of things that aren't considered important in the current canon, just like Octomom and Samantha Ronson will fade away eventually. If you actually wanted to get better at trash questions, answering questions on 4 or 5-year old one-hit wonders like He Hate Me probably isn't going to get you anywhere. Also, like all quizbowl, the more recent stuff tends to be more up to current standards.

I wasn't trying to tell anyone how to post, merely defending somebody who made a perfectly legitimate request and got a lot of static for it. The idea of searching through innumerable academic packets to copy/paste all the trash questions is unhelpful and silly. If they're having regular practices, they're reading those 1/1 questions already, and they obviously wanted more(which any number of people on these boards can provide).

Saying LOLREADMOARPACKETS or telling them to write their own questions are two ideas that I'm sure already occurred to any team with a dearth of content. Simply writing your own questions doesn't help the players who want to play but get stuck with writing, and playing off your own team's questions seems a bit redundant.

I'd actually like to be a bit constructive, and question the concept that academic packets necessarily contain higher-quality trash content. Is this really something that's true?

The trash questions found in College and High-school packets are usually edited to be very accessible to a specific audience. Sometimes, they can end up being hastily-written niche filler relegated to the end of a packet. I realize that these things can be fixed by a decent editor, but with trash packets, you're more likely to have them edited/written by someone who knows/cares to move "This Quarterback was born in Santa Claus, IN" or "This NES game has a famous cheat code" to the end of a question. Trash really isn't an important part of most tournaments, so focusing on the pyramidality of that "Lady Gaga" question is probably low on the to-do list of a stressed-out editor.

I think that if you spent all your time playing on 1/1 NAQT or ACF trash, you'd miss out on a lot of harder difficulty and more varied topics. Whether or not that comes out as super-obscure things that nobody cares about, or too many questions about Canadian Hockey is anyone's opinion.

[Sir Thopas]

The trash questions found in College and High-school packets are usually edited to be very accessible to a specific audience. Sometimes, they can end up being hastily-written niche filler relegated to the end of a packet. I realize that these things can be fixed by a decent editor, but with trash packets, you're more likely to have them edited/written by someone who knows/cares to move "This Quarterback was born in Santa Claus, IN" or "This NES game has a famous cheat code" to the end of a question. Trash really isn't an important part of most tournaments, so focusing on the pyramidality of that "Lady Gaga" question is probably low on the to-do list of a stressed-out editor.

I think that if you spent all your time playing on 1/1 NAQT or ACF trash, you'd miss out on a lot of harder difficulty and more varied topics. Whether or not that comes out as super-obscure things that nobody cares about, or too many questions about Canadian Hockey is anyone's opinion.

Yeah, specifically, I've noticed that trash in academic tournaments tends to fall into two schools: first, a lot of questions on very specific parts of the trash spectrum (frequently, video games); or second, stuff all over the distribution that is rather quirky and wacky (making it rain, Springfield monorail). Both of these can be fun to play in academic tournaments (I much prefer the second, for what it's worth), but both entirely skip over the meat of the actual trash distribution.

[MacSR]

I'd just like to thank Mike Kearney for helping me with the question I originally asked, and for the packets.

My team does both academic packets and trash packets during practice. We do the trash at the end usually. We're meeting 4 times a week at least cause we like trivia, we're friends, and we're all in town.

There's more academic packets than there is trash online. Therefore it's pretty expected we'd run out of trash. We'd also like to continue doing trash. Which is why I asked.

That's all.

[Cheynem]

Just to be clear, I wasn't being flippant when I suggested writing your own trash packets. As long as you can spread the burden of writing (maybe even just have everyone write a few tossups?), it shouldn't be that bad, and I don't see what's redundant necessarily about playing off your own team's questions. As long as people don't write about their niche loves, it seems fine to me.

[No Rules Westbrook]

I don't often sally into the trash forum...but yeah, there should be more trash packets online and freely available in the same way that academic packets are. As has been pointed out in this thread, I'm not sure there exist a substantial number of trash tournaments ever produced that really live up to the standards of modern pyramidal writing - but to the extent that those packets/events exist, they should be placed online in a separate part of some archive like the collegeqb archive.

I'm not sure there will ever be a serious movement to make trash into something analagous to legitimate academic qb (Mike's points about the often-ephemeral nature of trash are certainly true and would work to impede such a movement). But I hope it happens, and a key step in that development is getting good packet sets online.

Also, can I just say, true to my name - I'm really tired of people asserting the "rules" of the forums and trying to regulate conversation accordingly. Look, if you agree with something someone says, post and say you agree with them...if you disagree, post and say you disagree...and then everyone's positions are out there and we move on. Oops, I have to be careful - that may be interpreted as potentially telling someone how to post and that would be against a "rule". Bleh.

[InvadErGII]

I too would like to see trash become a more 'legitimate' type of quiz bowl, but it's difficult to see it happening. The very definition of trash seems to hurt the plausibility of this. Regardless of its legitimacy, trash seems to have an important place in the quiz bowl universe. Due to its subject matter, I think that trash has the potential to draw more people to quiz bowl as a game or a sport or whatever it is. The exact influence that an influx of trash-only players would have on quiz bowl as a whole is debatable, but I tend to think that the more quiz bowl is always good, regardless of what the questions are about. As long as the questions are good and the community is supportive of it, good things will come as a result.
To be a little more on topic - an increased availability of trash packets isn't going to hurt quiz bowl, even if the format lacks 'legitimacy'. The web lacks any sort of trash-specific resource, which I think would be a good thing to have (be it on collegeqb or elsewhere).

[Matt Weiner]

Erik: People weren't complaining about the availability of trash packets, they were complaining about collegiate quizbowl teams using their practice time on trash.

In any case, people should send their tournament sets, whether academic or trash, college or high school, to the free archives once they are done being used. I guess I'll issue my semi-annual call for this. If you are in possession of a set that you own the rights to, send it in. If you have someone else's set and that person isn't in quizbowl anymore, won't care if you give it away, whatever, send that in too. Basically, unless your set has a huge copyright notice on it saying not to give it out, and a person who you think is actually going to stand behind that notice, just go ahead and make it available. It can always be taken down if the owner objects.