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History

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

sup
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Re: History

Post by goblue16 »

I thought the history was well-written and extremely accessible, so props for that. Off the top of my head, one of the tossups that I had a problem with was the invading/conquering persia one. If you could post that I could offer my criticism, since I can only remember one or two clues from it.
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Re: History

Post by Terrible Shorts Depot »

I liked most of the history, though there were some really, really odd answer choices. I was especially peeved by the wacky common links, like "invading France" and "invading Persia." My problem wasn't that they were especially poorly written, but that they confused the shit out of me (see: awful "cutting through Belgium" neg).
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Re: History

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

The two sketchiest tossups I wrote were probably "invading France" and "conquering Persia". I tried to add disambiguation clues for the things that people negged with during playtesting, but I guess I didn't catch all of them.

It's a problem that's really inherent to common links; there is much published about this in the quizbowl discussion forum.
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Re: History

Post by theMoMA »

Some of the history bonuses seemed markedly easier than their counterparts in other categories. In general, bonus unevenness was the persistent issue with this set, in my mind. The history seemed to shade easier, while the science, especially the chemistry, had much harder middle and hard parts, and occasionally didn't have a truly easy part either.
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Re: History

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Yeah I probably wrote at an easier difficulty level than most of the other editors. I tried to throw in a few hard tossups after realizing this. The bonuses were written by 3 people, so that probably explains much of the difficulty inconsistency.
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Re: History

Post by Cheynem »

I tried doing a little bit of editing to the other bonuses to try to keep the history bonus difficulty reasonably consistent. There were some pretty crazy hard parts that I wrote though (Parsley Massacre is awesome!).
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Re: History

Post by Rococo A Go Go »

The only one that I thought was odd was that "invading France" one. I negged with "beach invasion" after the different D-Day beaches were named, although I should have known better.
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Re: History

Post by ... and the chaos of Mexican modernity »

Although I feel that 99% of the history was absoultely awesome, I feel there was a problem with one question. I didn't neg on this question (other side did), but there was one particular line in the "Austria" tu where it mentioned "one person from this polity captured Richard I (Lionheart)" or something of that sort. I remember the other side negging with Swabia in which that case is indeed true because the Duke of the Duchy of Swabia did indeed capture Richard I, Matt Weiner made the decision to not accept it, although im somewhat positive Swabia could have been accepted because an individual from that polity did indeed make the capture then ransom. Let me know about this
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Re: History

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Lucy Lane wrote:Although I feel that 99% of the history was absoultely awesome, I feel there was a problem with one question. I didn't neg on this question (other side did), but there was one particular line in the "Austria" tu where it mentioned "one person from this polity captured Richard I (Lionheart)" or something of that sort. I remember the other side negging with Swabia in which that case is indeed true because the Duke of the Duchy of Swabia did indeed capture Richard I, Matt Weiner made the decision to not accept it, although im somewhat positive Swabia could have been accepted because an individual from that polity did indeed make the capture then ransom. Let me know about this
He was captured by Leopold V, Duke of Austria (and later of Styria, it seems).
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Re: History

Post by swwFCqb »

I was happy to see that many of the history tossups had buzzable clues in the first couple lines and that alot of the bonuses featured not-so-crazy hard parts. I felt personally that the Louis IX tossup was fairly transparent at this level, as the first 1.5 lines established the answer as a French king during the time of the Mongols. I also thought using Gideon v. Wainwright was a bad idea for the second clue in the Earl Warren tossup - I'm pretty sure the only reason I got the tossup was because Andrew Yaphe was in shock after hearing that clue so early. I would think that Tinker v. Des Moines, which followed the Gideon clue, is a little harder. I'm assuming the only reason it was used after Gideon v. Wainwright was because of that Vietnam clue, but the question could have easily been edited to take out that clue and/or use another less famous decision instead. Other than those minor gripes, I didn't really have any other issue with the questions as a whole. Well done Bruce!!
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Re: History

Post by Mike Bentley »

I also thought the history was pretty good.

I wasn't super crazy about the tossup on the 1830s. I feel I knew the gist of most of the things being described in that tossup but got my years off by a little bit and got it wrong. I suppose this is a valid reason for having an incorrect answer, but, again, I'd have preferred a tossup on the Opium Wars of Charles X or something.

There were a few misplaced clues (Bloody Week being the leadin to Paris Commune, mentioning a wall before the FTP on Hadrian, Operation Husky in the first line of the Italian Navy tossup), but overall things were pretty pyramidal.

The Johnstown Flood was something neat that came up that doesn't get asked about a lot in quizbowl anymore for some reason.

The bonuses also seemed pretty good from what I remembered. The only one that comes to mind right now as being a bit of an outlier was the one mentioning the Treaty of Karlowitz. I don't think a lot of people have super deep knowledge of this particular period of European history, making that bonus a bit hard.
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Re: History

Post by Cheynem »

I'm glad you liked the Johnstown Flood one--it was a submission and while the original tossup wasn't the bestest, the answer line was cool enough to play with.

I'm also sorry for putting in the Operation Husky clue to Bruce's Italian navy tossup. It was a bit short and needed some more clues, so I chose that one. I don't really know a lot about the topic, so I'm sorry if it was misplaced.

Yeah, I probably could have rearranged the Warren tossup. I guess I wanted to reward reasonable knowledge of Gideon vs. being able to lateral that Tinker was about the Vietnam War, but it's still pretty surface level knowledge of Gideon, I suppose. It was one of those inevitable "mark to play around with, never quite get the time" tossups. Sorry about that.
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Re: History

Post by Birdofredum Sawin »

Seeing it discussed reminded me of how bad that Earl Warren tossup seemed while I was playing it; looking at the question, I see that it is even worse than I remembered:

One case during this man’ s time as Chief Justice ruled that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to cancel one’s citizenship as punishment. Another case during this man’s tenure revolved around a break-in at a pool room in Florida. This man’s court ruled that children at an Iowa school could wear black armbands as a sign of protest. The Chief Justice during such cases as Tinker v. Des Moines and Gideon v. Wainwright, this man wrote the majority opinion for the case which ruled “separate but equal” unconstitutional, Brown v. Board of Education. For 10 points, name this liberal who served as Chief Justice from 1953 to 1969.
ANSWER: Earl Warren

I wrote a paper touching on the citizenship cases of the '40s and '50s not two weeks ago, and I had no idea which of those cases the first sentence referred to. (In retrospect, I assume the first sentence is attempting to describe Trop v. Dulles; is Trop really so well known in quizbowl that you can't just name it at the end of that cryptic sentence?) As I was asking myself "Is this a tossup on the Vinson court?" the question progressed to its first buzzable clue, which also happens to be a description of a well-known fact about one of the three most famous cases of the Warren Court.

I'm not so much interested in pillorying this one terrible tossup, as in discussing the kind of question writing philosophy that leads to something like this getting written. I take it the writer here thought he was producing a standard-issue question in modern style: i.e., the first sentence clearly and immediately points to the kind of answer being sought (a Chief Justice); then we get "oblique" descriptions of several cases before names of those cases are dropped. My point here is that, as a writer, you can't assume that just because you've adopted the form of many quality contemporary tossups, you've thereby produced a decent question. In fact, the first sentence is really confusing (partly because of the phrase "cancel one's citizenship as punishment," which appears to have been lifted straight out of Wikipedia -- the word "cancel" doesn't actually appear anywhere in the Trop opinion), and the first actual place one can buzz in the question is on a high school-level "Gideon" clue. Even if you don't know a ton about the Warren Court, a little thought should tell you that this question is both confusing (with one cribbed-from-Wikipedia sentence as the opaque lead-in) and not especially pyramidal.

Anyway, I'm starting to feel like a cranky music player complaining about the placement of some clue on signature pizzicatos or whatever, so I'll leave it at that.
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Re: History

Post by Matt Weiner »

Congenital Liar Zach Foster wrote:Although I feel that 99% of the history was absoultely awesome, I feel there was a problem with one question. I didn't neg on this question (other side did), but there was one particular line in the "Austria" tu where it mentioned "one person from this polity captured Richard I (Lionheart)" or something of that sort. I remember the other side negging with Swabia in which that case is indeed true because the Duke of the Duchy of Swabia did indeed capture Richard I, Matt Weiner made the decision to not accept it, although im somewhat positive Swabia could have been accepted because an individual from that polity did indeed make the capture then ransom. Let me know about this
To defend my moderating decision and reassure the writers and editors of this question that they did not commit an error, I'll reiterate that the clue stated "A duke from this country held Richard the Lionheart hostage on his return from the Third Crusade." Swabia is not a country, Austria is. Leopold of Austria is the person in question. He was not the Duke of Swabia at the time he captured Richard, nor at any other time. I have seen no evidence that he was born in historical Swabia, though as that region overlaps with some parts of present-day Austria, that is a possibility, one that would still make your answer wrong for all of the other reasons. Your answer was wrong and your continued raising of the issue (false claims included) even after you've had time to research the facts and correct your mistaken recollections about this historical detail is downright bizarre.
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Re: History

Post by ... and the chaos of Mexican modernity »

Matt Weiner wrote:
Congenital Liar Zach Foster wrote:Although I feel that 99% of the history was absoultely awesome, I feel there was a problem with one question. I didn't neg on this question (other side did), but there was one particular line in the "Austria" tu where it mentioned "one person from this polity captured Richard I (Lionheart)" or something of that sort. I remember the other side negging with Swabia in which that case is indeed true because the Duke of the Duchy of Swabia did indeed capture Richard I, Matt Weiner made the decision to not accept it, although im somewhat positive Swabia could have been accepted because an individual from that polity did indeed make the capture then ransom. Let me know about this
To defend my moderating decision and reassure the writers and editors of this question that they did not commit an error, I'll reiterate that the clue stated "A duke from this country held Richard the Lionheart hostage on his return from the Third Crusade." Swabia is not a country, Austria is. Leopold of Austria is the person in question. He was not the Duke of Swabia at the time he captured Richard, nor at any other time. I have seen no evidence that he was born in historical Swabia, though as that region overlaps with some parts of present-day Austria, that is a possibility, one that would still make your answer wrong for all of the other reasons. Your answer was wrong and your continued raising of the issue (false claims included) even after you've had time to research the facts and correct your mistaken recollections about this historical detail is downright bizarre.
My anaylysis was wrong and I believe Rob had corrected me in the thread as you can see in the posts above. I believe I said I didn't neg with the answer, but I had also "incorrectly" read somewhere (God forbid forgive me if I forget the title) that he was captured by a Swabian duke. I'm sorry I misread something over a year ago to which I can't dive into every single small detail of my life. Please don't call me a congenital liar as I misread one thing and I made a post over 2 weeks ago, but you decided to still criticize me as an individual for whatever reason....

Edit: Spelling
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Re: History

Post by grapesmoker »

I'd like to try and draw a general point out of Andrew's post, one that I think both he and I have made at various times regarding some questions, which is this: don't be coy. If you're writing something like that Warren question, it seems highly unlikely that there are vast reserves of knowledge of obscure Warren-era cases out there. So feel free to put some concrete information out there like the names of those cases. If you're referencing little-known works of authors, it's likewise perfectly ok to throw some character names in there instead of being all vague; to T-Party's credit I thought the literature questions did a pretty good job of this, so that's intended not as a criticism but as a general observation. Of course, if you're writing a tossup on a well-known figure about which people do actually know a lot, you'll most likely end up backloading the titles somewhat, which is fine, but when it comes to plot details, explanations of a thinker's thought, and so on, you're most likely not making a mistake by providing some specific information.
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Re: History

Post by Birdofredum Sawin »

Yeah, Jerry's exactly right -- the larger concern I'm trying to express is with coyness and what sometimes seems to be a perverse refusal to offer concrete clues until the very end of questions (perhaps out of fear that "unreal" knowledge may be rewarded "prematurely"). Using oblique clues as lead-ins is great in theory, but unless you really know what you're doing it's all too easy to have those lead-ins be frustrating (if you are not "oblique" so much as bewilderingly obscure) or jarring (if what you thought was "oblique" turns out to be a really famous clue). This Warren question nicely exhibits both of these phenomena in its opening sentences:

One case during this man’ s time as Chief Justice ruled that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to cancel one’s citizenship as punishment. Another case during this man’s tenure revolved around a break-in at a pool room in Florida.

The first sentence is frustrating: as it happens, I knew a lot about "citizenship cases of the '40s and '50s" and was unable to puzzle out what was being referred to. And the second sentence is jarring: instead of offering "another veiled description of a lesser-known case," it abruptly discloses a giveaway-level clue about a very famous case. By just prefacing the second sentence with something like "In addition to Trop v. Dulles, ..." it would be possible to at least alleviate the frustrating effect of the first sentence. People who actually knew what the first clue was referring to, but who was confused by its coy phrasing, would then be able to buzz; and it seems implausible that people have memorized every minor case name of the Warren Court, so it's not as if you're somehow rewarding "illegitimate" knowledge by putting that information in there.

To digress a little, this is an area in which I thought the writers of that lit/fine arts singles tournament did a commendable job. A lot of those tossups took the form "[oblique description or quotation]. In addition to X, ..." I thought that kind of cookie-cutter structure was actually a very smart decision for a tournament produced by what I'm presuming were relatively inexperienced writers. Instead of trying to get all fancy, they went with a safe formula. And the few times when they diverged from that formula produced some of the less playable tossups in the tournament (e.g. some of those musical composition questions). Again, the general point is that it's probably a good idea to rely on banal question structures and to insert proper nouns in your tossups at regular intervals unless you're really sure you know what you're doing as a question writer.
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Re: History

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Andrew, how does that translate to tossups in, for example, social science and philosophy? Do the major keyterms unique to a philosopher's work (or maybe only his relationship to those keyterms is unique; "Dasein" means different things to Feuerbach, Heidegger, and Jaspers, for example) correspond to "proper nouns?" Obviously, it's harder to tell whether a description of a work that contains such keyterms is buzzable than the description of a literary work with character names or an especially zany occurrence, but I don't see a better way to write a subject like philosophy.
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Re: History

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Just for the record, I had nothing to do with the American history at this tournament.

A few notes about my attempts to write "creative" tossups for this tournament:

* After the many negs on the "conquering Persia" and "invading France" tossups, I've decided to cease writing tossups on the concept of invading countries. There's just no way to do it without creating neg bait. I guess I'll have to find out about more navies to satisfy those urges.

* I wrote the "1830's" tossup, which thus far has been warmly received by people I've asked about it. I'd like to know what a larger audience thought of it.
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Re: History

Post by Cheynem »

Yeah, I again apologize for the Warren tossup--I should have at least dropped the name of "Trop." Thanks for the feedback.

EDIT: Please let me know about any other questions you found problematic. I wrote all of the American history, most of the Euro history bonuses, and some of the world history bonuses.
Last edited by Cheynem on Mon Mar 01, 2010 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: History

Post by grapesmoker »

Whig's Boson wrote:* I wrote the "1830's" tossup, which thus far has been warmly received by people I've asked about it. I'd like to know what a larger audience thought of it.
I thought it was a pretty good question myself. Looking back on it, I feel stupid for not having recognized the very first clue which obviously had to do with Belgian independence, but I thought it was pretty well written and contained some good stuff.

edit: I should clarify this by noting that the reason I feel dumb about it is because I wrote a tossup on the independence of Belgium for this very tournament. Although the tossup did not get used, I'm sad that I couldn't even remember the very clues in my own question.
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Re: History

Post by Matt Weiner »

Whig's Boson wrote:* After the many negs on the "conquering Persia" and "invading France" tossups, I've decided to cease writing tossups on the concept of invading countries. There's just no way to do it without creating neg bait. I guess I'll have to find out about more navies to satisfy those urges.
I've always done well on these questions, and I suspect that the issue with negs on common link questions by good writers is less anything confusing or vague about the question, and more people who have ideologically convinced themselves that such questions are bad and refuse to pay proper attention to them while buzzing.
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Re: History

Post by Cheynem »

Yeah, I regretted not being able to use the "independence of Belgium" tossup, which was fascinating. Ya gots to know your Mute Girl of Portici clues.
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Re: History

Post by grapesmoker »

Oh yeah, invading France. On the one hand, I answered the question at the part where the Schlieffen plan was being described; on the other hand, I kind of feel like I had a leg-up on that question because from the outset I knew that this was going to be an "invading X" tossup and all I had to do was wait for clues that told me what X was. It seems a little unfair overall to teams that are not familiar with Bruce's writing style.
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Re: History

Post by grapesmoker »

Cheynem wrote:Yeah, I regretted not being able to use the "independence of Belgium" tossup, which was fascinating. Ya gots to know your Mute Girl of Portici clues.
Wasn't that Bruce territory anyway? It seems like it became a bonus in a later packet, if I recall correctly.
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Re: History

Post by Cheynem »

I didn't write the Euro history tossups, but I had some input as to which ones got used and which didn't.
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Re: History

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Some mysterious person edited some of my Euro History tossups after I submitted them. I'm kind of miffed actually, not because the edits were bad (I thought the edits, in each case, made the question better) but because I was not informed that this would happen and because it was an insult to what I thought was my co-equal status as an editor.
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Re: History

Post by AKKOLADE »

So... you're upset someone improved your questions?
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Re: History

Post by Cheynem »

Sorry, Bruce, I should have told you. During the last moments of finalization (of which I recall, you were unavailable anyway), some of your tossups seemed a little short and I, in collaboration with some of the other editors, was told to add a few clues to make them a little longer. I attempted not to actually change your clues or structure, just put in a few more clues.
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Re: History

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Yeah, I was trying to write tossups as short as possible since I thought short questions was one of the goals of the tournament. I purposefully left some at 5 lines long. I'm wondering if any of the edits brought the questions over the stated hard-cap of six lines.
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Re: History

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

The Granny wrote:So... you're upset someone improved your questions?
Yes. While the outcome was obviously Kaldor-Hicks efficient, I was offended that my questions were changed without my consent or input. I joined the tournament with the understanding that I was going to be an autonomous co-equal of the other editors, and the decision to modify my questions implied that I was being subordinated to others.
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Re: History

Post by Cheynem »

I apologize again for the confusion.
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Re: History

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Whig's Boson wrote:I'm wondering if any of the edits brought the questions over the stated hard-cap of six lines.
No.
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Re: History

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:
Whig's Boson wrote:I'm wondering if any of the edits brought the questions over the stated hard-cap of six lines.
No.
To be clear, the six line cap indicated the length of tossups before the insertion of the power formatting (bold font). Some of the questions with the powers inserted do go on to a seventh line.
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