Buzzers for Online Tournaments

Old college threads.
Locked
User avatar
dankosthenes
Lulu
Posts: 11
Joined: Mon Jul 08, 2019 7:55 pm

Buzzers for Online Tournaments

Post by dankosthenes »

I wanted to start a dialogue on how we can improve online tournaments, specifically the buzzer system. One issue in particular of Discord buzzing is latency.

During ACF Winter, there were a number of occasions wherein I buzzed seconds before my buzz was sent to the Discord chat. Obviously, in buzzer races this put me at a disadvantage. In other situations, when my buzz was delayed, I got to hear three or four additional seconds of the question being read before my buzz had been recognized. For example, when buzzing on the Kafka tossup, I got to hear a full sentence and a half after I had already buzzed. This put me at an advantage when buzzing aggressively. This imbalance isn't really a problem for tournaments like ACF Winter (at least for me), but may very well be problematic for online national qualifiers or online nationals. People should win on the strength of their play, not on the strength of their internet connection.

There are buzzer websites like buzzin.live that explicitly correct for latency. To me, this seems like a Pareto improvement over the current Discord buzzing. These websites are also easy to use and free. I'm curious what other solutions have been tested and what others think about this

EDIT: buzzin.live is currently being used for online high school tournaments in the Oklahoma circuit. OU has hosted a high school tournament using buzzin and it has worked very well
Chris Danko (they/them)
OU '21
MSU '26
Searching for an honest toss-up
User avatar
1992 in spaceflight
Auron
Posts: 1614
Joined: Wed Jun 01, 2011 8:11 pm
Location: St. Louis-area, MO

Re: Buzzers for Online Tournaments

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

dankosthenes wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 4:07 pmThere are buzzer websites like buzzin.live that explicitly correct for latency. To me, this seems like a Pareto improvement over the current Discord buzzing. These websites are also easy to use and free. I'm curious what other solutions have been tested and what others think about this

EDIT: buzzin.live is currently being used for online high school tournaments in the Oklahoma circuit. OU has hosted a high school tournament using buzzin and it has worked very well
As another data point, Glasgow's SCOTTIE Online used Buzzin as well, and it seemed to work well for just about every team that I read for (one team said they had had problems in one room, but I don't know if this was a widespread problem or not)
Jacob O'Rourke
Washington (MO) HS Assistant Coach (2014-Present); MOQBA Secretary (2015-Present)
Formerly: AQBL Administrator (2020-2023); HSAPQ Host Contact; NASAT Outreach Coordinator (2016 and 2017); Kirksville HS Assistant Coach (2012-2014); Truman State '14; and Pacific High (MO) '10


Like MOQBA on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!
Locked