The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Old college threads.
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jsugrue
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The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by jsugrue »

More specifically, the collegiate section is a mess. Finding (regs-level) packets to read in our club's practice is made far too difficult by the fact that probably 50% of the packets in the "college" section are obtuse, single-packet open-level sets. This isn't what the majority of college clubs are reading, and it makes it much harder for new clubs to find good sets to read. I'm not suggesting we remove these from the site, nor am I condemning the writing and uploading of these. Instead, I'd suggest that they make up their own "Open" category, so we don't have collegiate-level sets in the same category as those seeking to "expand the canon". It's a simple fix, and one that will make things a lot easier to navigate and understand.
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Re: The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by Santa Claus »

I think a solid improvement to the archive would be to have each row display additional information. As it is now it's only the name of a set, which links to the packets - previous changes have added stuff to the name like asterisks but I don't see why a more tabular format couldn't be adopted. Something like:

Code: Select all

Name of set        | difficulty by some metric (dots?) |               advertised difficulty              | quality
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2021 ACF Regionals |              ***                  |                   Regionals                      |   high
2020 ACF Winter    |              **                   |    halfway between ACF Fall and ACF Regionals    |   high
2011 UTC Moon Pie  |              ??                   |                      ???                         |   poor
Certainly the last column could be excluded, but having more information presented up front would be useful. It might even be able to be sorted by something other than date; imagine that!
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Re: The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by alexdz »

Perhaps the "quality" column could be more like "Highly recommended or recommended?" -- basically, the database would be neutral to most submissions, and a select few could be marked as either recommended or highly recommended for new teams.
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Bosa of York
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Re: The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by Bosa of York »

It might in principle be okay to mark older tournaments that were panned by the community as of lower quality since that information can be of use to people looking for practice material who aren't going to be combing through the forums; the DB obviously shouldn't editorialize with current sets but I don't think anybody is going to be especially offended by commenting on Moon Pie or Modern World or whatever.
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Re: The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by Father of the Ragdoll »

I agree with Alex, I don't think it would be particularly helpful to highlight low-quality sets when compared to highlighting high-quality ones. At some point in the past, I thought that certain high-quality sets (especially regionals, fall, and nats) were bolded to indicate that they were considered quality study material. Doing something like that may be a better path rather than flagging poorly received sets.

As a sidebar, has it been discovered why 3 2020-21 sets are listed at the bottom of the page instead of in order? EDIT: thank you Robert for explaining this
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Re: The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by meebles127 »

It seems as if the discussion around this is being renewed.
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Re: The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by Bensonfan23 »

I'm a bit behind on this discussion, but I definitely think its long overdue to have a separate tab for academic vanity sets (especially all of the single packet novelty sets) and non-trash side events to separate them out from the collegiate section. It would certainly make the archive more accessible for newer teams and more appealing to search through overall if the "collegiate" tab were restricted to actual all-subject college sets.
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Re: The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by Dominator »

How big an overhaul do people think is needed? Adding a tab and doing some reorganization is a fairly simple process. But what about descriptions like advertised difficulty? If we’re talking about adding that information, who would maintain it? Crowdsourcing is an option, but then there needs to be a system of oversight and moderation. You can see how some relatively small asks make the project significantly more complicated.

A lot of things are possible here, but what’s really desirable?
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Re: The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by Ehtna »

I think the most pressing issue is simply separating the full-subject tournaments from the vanity sets, especially if it's a relatively simple change. It's more in tune to Jack's original concern and would certainly make browsing through the collegiate page a lot less onerous, as others have pointed out. It could also make finding certain vanity sets easier on the off-chance that someone is looking for one. And while it may be helpful in that situation specifically to have short descriptions of each vanity set, I personally find that much less of a concern than just separating them from the typical sets.
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Re: The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by Ehtna »

Is there someone who's able and willing to just make a "vanity" tab or something else in that vein on the archive? I'd rather this thread didn't die for three months again with nothing happening.
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Re: The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!! »

Ehtna wrote: Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:22 pm Is there someone who's able and willing to just make a "vanity" tab or something else in that vein on the archive? I'd rather this thread didn't die for three months again with nothing happening.
I pinged Jeffrey Hill who owns the site on this discussion - I'd love to help organize the packets with him and will hopefully get something updated in the next few weeks.
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Re: The Quizbowl Packet Archive DESPERATELY needs an overhaul.

Post by miamc »

To everyone interested: an update to the archive WILL be happening this summer! You can read more here if you're interested in helping, or just learning more about the upcoming changes.
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