Southern California 08-09

Dormant threads from the high school sections are preserved here.
User avatar
warpoet
Wakka
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:00 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by warpoet »

say what?
Max Stivers
Santa Monica High '10
NYU '14
User avatar
cvdwightw
Auron
Posts: 3291
Joined: Tue May 13, 2003 12:46 am
Location: Southern CA
Contact:

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by cvdwightw »

warpoet wrote:say what?
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=6751
Dwight Wynne
socalquizbowl.org
UC Irvine 2008-2013; UCLA 2004-2007; Capistrano Valley High School 2000-2003

"It's a competition, but it's not a sport. On a scale, if football is a 10, then rowing would be a two. One would be Quiz Bowl." --Matt Birk on rowing, SI On Campus, 10/21/03

"If you were my teammate, I would have tossed your ass out the door so fast you'd be emitting Cerenkov radiation, but I'm not classy like Dwight." --Jerry
tracyclee
Lulu
Posts: 51
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2008 8:19 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by tracyclee »

If say, hypothetically, people wanted to go to ACF Winter, would the questions be a lot harder than they were at ACF Fall? I'm trying to get people to give it another shot [and to make more underclassmen try it for once], but if they're only going to be baby seals for the clubbing, then I'm not sure I want to make them do it.
Tracy Lee
Arcadia High School '09
Chicago '13
User avatar
cvdwightw
Auron
Posts: 3291
Joined: Tue May 13, 2003 12:46 am
Location: Southern CA
Contact:

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by cvdwightw »

tracyclee wrote:If say, hypothetically, people wanted to go to ACF Winter, would the questions be a lot harder than they were at ACF Fall? I'm trying to get people to give it another shot [and to make more underclassmen try it for once], but if they're only going to be baby seals for the clubbing, then I'm not sure I want to make them do it.
The questions will be harder than ACF Fall. If you are interested, try last year's ACF Fall in practice and record the number of questions you got, you'd at least heard of the answer for, and you'd never heard of before. Do the same thing with last year's ACF Regionals. The amount of questions you will probably know the answer to is the average of those two values.

I'm expecting that the difficulty of this tournament will be roughly or just slightly harder than that of the Finals packets at Zot Bowl (as in, when I write my ACF Winter packet, that is the difficulty to which I will be writing it), so you may want to try those as well.
Dwight Wynne
socalquizbowl.org
UC Irvine 2008-2013; UCLA 2004-2007; Capistrano Valley High School 2000-2003

"It's a competition, but it's not a sport. On a scale, if football is a 10, then rowing would be a two. One would be Quiz Bowl." --Matt Birk on rowing, SI On Campus, 10/21/03

"If you were my teammate, I would have tossed your ass out the door so fast you'd be emitting Cerenkov radiation, but I'm not classy like Dwight." --Jerry
User avatar
warpoet
Wakka
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:00 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by warpoet »

Just found out we can't go to Trojan Wars cause our coach, a UCLA alum, is going to the football game. :w-hat:TF?
Max Stivers
Santa Monica High '10
NYU '14
ihavenoidea
Rikku
Posts: 304
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2007 12:05 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by ihavenoidea »

Wait why would he going to the football game affect you in anyway? Are you required to be accompanied by a coach?
Zhao Zhang
Rancho Bernardo High School '09
User avatar
warpoet
Wakka
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:00 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by warpoet »

Well, it's kinda the SAMO custom, and our ride, and we're low on cash (insert even more lamenting here)...
Max Stivers
Santa Monica High '10
NYU '14
tracyclee
Lulu
Posts: 51
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2008 8:19 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by tracyclee »

Man, just get your seniors to drive...and then do fundraisers. I recommend candied apples. :D Everyone loves them and cute people can sell 3 boxes in one day. How I love my cute, enthusiastic, little, money-making freshmen.

I don't remember your coach having done this before. Isn't Trojan Wars usually on the day of the Big Game?
Tracy Lee
Arcadia High School '09
Chicago '13
User avatar
Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
Chairman of Anti-Music Mafia Committee
Posts: 5647
Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2006 11:46 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Perhaps the money you save on Trojan Wars could go towards attending a non-NAQT event.
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White
User avatar
warpoet
Wakka
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:00 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by warpoet »

To Tracy: We have one senior, a slacker who doesn't have his license yet. And all our cute people play Oceans.

To Dees: Brilliant idea, but that is money we don't have yet, and apparently we're elitist (insert word that some people feel is inappropriate for the High School section of the site here)s...
Max Stivers
Santa Monica High '10
NYU '14
User avatar
Auks Ran Ova
Forums Staff: Chief Administrator
Posts: 4295
Joined: Sun Apr 30, 2006 10:28 pm
Location: Minneapolis
Contact:

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

warpoet wrote:and apparently we're elitist (insert word that some people feel is inappropriate for the High School section of the site here)s...
What in the world are you talking about?
Rob Carson
University of Minnesota '11, MCTC '??, BHSU forever
Member, ACF
Member emeritus, PACE
Writer and Editor, NAQT
User avatar
warpoet
Wakka
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:00 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by warpoet »

Ukonvasara wrote:
warpoet wrote:and apparently we're elitist (insert word that some people feel is inappropriate for the High School section of the site here)s...
What in the world are you talking about?
I dunno, I thought I read that we weren't allowed to swear in the high school section, my apologies for any confusion
Max Stivers
Santa Monica High '10
NYU '14
User avatar
Auroni
Auron
Posts: 3145
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:23 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Auroni »

warpoet wrote:To Dees: Brilliant idea, but that is money we don't have yet, and apparently we're elitist (insert word that some people feel is inappropriate for the High School section of the site here)s...
wait, so when you do have that money, you'd skip out on something totally affordable and feel bummed for not attending an A-set that I'm pretty sure you're sick of by now?

edit: what the hell are you getting at with the elitist comment?
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
User avatar
warpoet
Wakka
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:00 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by warpoet »

By elitist I mean that SAMO only plays NAQT. Not meant sarcastically towards anyone who does actually think so.
Max Stivers
Santa Monica High '10
NYU '14
User avatar
Auroni
Auron
Posts: 3145
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:23 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Auroni »

warpoet wrote:By elitist I mean that SAMO only plays NAQT. Not meant sarcastically towards anyone who does actually think so.
I'm still not sure why none of you have even chosen to question this "policy".
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
User avatar
Auks Ran Ova
Forums Staff: Chief Administrator
Posts: 4295
Joined: Sun Apr 30, 2006 10:28 pm
Location: Minneapolis
Contact:

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

warpoet wrote:
Ukonvasara wrote:
warpoet wrote:and apparently we're elitist (insert word that some people feel is inappropriate for the High School section of the site here)s...
What in the world are you talking about?
I dunno, I thought I read that we weren't allowed to swear in the high school section, my apologies for any confusion
You are correct in thinking that. I have no idea what you could possibly mean by "elitist," though, a view shared by at least Auroni.
Rob Carson
University of Minnesota '11, MCTC '??, BHSU forever
Member, ACF
Member emeritus, PACE
Writer and Editor, NAQT
User avatar
Mechanical Beasts
Banned Cheater
Posts: 5673
Joined: Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:50 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Playing only NAQT is in no way an "elitist" viewpoint, considering how successful the teams are that attend events like Prison Bowl and HFT--or, heck, PACE NSC.
Andrew Watkins
User avatar
Terrible Shorts Depot
Yuna
Posts: 760
Joined: Mon Mar 24, 2008 5:05 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Terrible Shorts Depot »

The American Heritage Desk Dictionary wrote:elitism- 1. The belief that certain person or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment. 2a. The sense of entitlement enjoyed by such a group or class. b. Control, rule, or domination by such a group or class.
I fail to see how this applies, except for maybe in that many people believe that teams who seek out and play the best events deserve the favored treatment that comes with winning a lot.
Charlie Rosenthal
Shady Side Academy '09
Carleton College '13
University of Pennsylvania '18
User avatar
cvdwightw
Auron
Posts: 3291
Joined: Tue May 13, 2003 12:46 am
Location: Southern CA
Contact:

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by cvdwightw »

Look, the standard argument for quizbowl being elitist is that quizbowl is dominated by the players who are good at quizbowl, because those players are the ones doing the vast majority of the writing, editing, tournament hosting, and griping about terrible questions - in other words, the group of people that are the best in the game dominate the quizbowl landscape.

Let me rephrase the Santa Monica argument:
"We're elitist snobs because we prefer NAQT to the exclusion of all other forms of good high school quizbowl, and we're not willing to give non-NAQT quizbowl a shot because we don't have the money to do it, even though we could attend 3 non-NAQT tournaments for the price of 2 NAQT tournaments, because we prefer those 2 NAQT tournaments to the exclusion of all other tournaments for reasons that we will never make clear to you because we don't understand why either."

No one's going to rag on you for saying "We like good quizbowl, provided that a significant number of questions are on popular culture or current events, and therefore since we have budget issues we would prefer to attend fewer tournaments with questions we like than more tournaments with questions we might not like as much." We are going to rag you for thinking that preferring NAQT is "elitist", and for not giving a real reason for why you would prefer to go to fewer, more expensive NAQT tournaments than more, less expensive non-NAQT tournaments.

Also, Santa Monica: HOST A TOURNAMENT! It brings in money! There are several unclaimed NAQT, HSAPQ, and independent tournament sets for you to choose from. Teams will (theoretically) show up to your tournament! There are plenty of people at UCLA that would be willing to help with logistical details, possibly to the point of figuring out how to take the Big Blue Bus from UCLA to Sa Mo HS to help staff your tournament if that's an issue for you. You have plenty of Science Bowl and Oceans Bowl contacts that we don't have - heck, advertise the heck out of it at whatever your regional Oceans Bowl or Science Bowl is and get a bunch of those teams to come play on an A-level set.
Dwight Wynne
socalquizbowl.org
UC Irvine 2008-2013; UCLA 2004-2007; Capistrano Valley High School 2000-2003

"It's a competition, but it's not a sport. On a scale, if football is a 10, then rowing would be a two. One would be Quiz Bowl." --Matt Birk on rowing, SI On Campus, 10/21/03

"If you were my teammate, I would have tossed your ass out the door so fast you'd be emitting Cerenkov radiation, but I'm not classy like Dwight." --Jerry
User avatar
warpoet
Wakka
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:00 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by warpoet »

Thank you Dwight, for saving me from my lack of eloquence. I'll continue to talk with Gaida and the other members of our Quiz Bowl Teams to see what strings can be pulled. ACF Winter sounds enticing, especially at the first-timers entry fee of $20(?)
Max Stivers
Santa Monica High '10
NYU '14
ihavenoidea
Rikku
Posts: 304
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2007 12:05 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by ihavenoidea »

50 now, but if you had came to ACF Fall it would have been 20! And the questions are leagues above NACUTIES.
Zhao Zhang
Rancho Bernardo High School '09
User avatar
warpoet
Wakka
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:00 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by warpoet »

Actually, for anyone else wondering, it's $70 according to viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6634
Max Stivers
Santa Monica High '10
NYU '14
User avatar
Matt Weiner
Sin
Posts: 8145
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2003 8:34 pm
Location: Richmond, VA

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Matt Weiner »

Fees for ACF tournaments begin at $120. All high school teams are entitled to a $50 discount. Further discounts for providing buzzers, a laptop, staffers, or a packet are available. Please consult http://www.acf-quizbowl.com/documents/packetsub.php for the latest information on ACF fees.
Matt Weiner
Advisor to Quizbowl at Virginia Commonwealth University / Founder of hsquizbowl.org
User avatar
Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
Chairman of Anti-Music Mafia Committee
Posts: 5647
Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2006 11:46 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

If you submit an early packet you can get another $50 off, which you are able to do for another 2 weeks. That, plus the already present HS discount, and all the other potential discounts, makes for a cheap entry.
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White
User avatar
warpoet
Wakka
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:00 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by warpoet »

we're tentatively going to ACF Winter. The only obstacle might be the date (Damn Finals)

Oh, and Gaida's excuse for not playing ACF? He didn't know what it was. Not sure if I buy that but whatever...
Max Stivers
Santa Monica High '10
NYU '14
User avatar
Chico the Rainmaker
Wakka
Posts: 201
Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2006 3:52 pm
Location: Santa Monica, CA/Medford, MA

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Chico the Rainmaker »

warpoet wrote: Oh, and Gaida's excuse for not playing ACF? He didn't know what it was. Not sure if I buy that but whatever...
Really? Pretty sure he hadn't heard of PACE when I was there, why would he have heard of ACF?
James(NotI)
Tufts '10
User avatar
warpoet
Wakka
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:00 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by warpoet »

makes sense, I just knew that he didn't like PACE, I mistakenly assumed that applied to all non NAQT formats... Now that I think of it, he did seem genuinely confused
Max Stivers
Santa Monica High '10
NYU '14
User avatar
Joe Romersa
Rikku
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 12:20 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Joe Romersa »

Hey guys,
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6820

Interested?
Alex Wang
Arcadia High '10
UCLA '14 or so
User avatar
Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
Chairman of Anti-Music Mafia Committee
Posts: 5647
Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2006 11:46 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Hello people in Southern California,
When literally every non-NAQT or league tournament in your region for the last three years is forced to not run because hardly anyone signs up for them even though every NAQT event has a thriving field, that means there is something very wrong with your circuit. To all the teams who did sign up for these other events, you guys are great, and hopefully in the future your actions will be copied. For everyone else, let me send a very clear and strong message that something needs to change. If it is because all the NAQT tournaments are exorbitant, then please send letters to those TDs telling them they are too expensive, and cut one or two of them to be able to pay for the multiple non-NAQT tournaments you should then be able to afford. If it is because you are too lazy to wake up an hour and a half early to go down to San Diego, then maybe you should think for once about how every San Diego team has to make that drive in reverse to every tournament in your backyard, and that in every other circuit, teams wake up early to go to tournaments that are a couple hours away on at least a monthly basis. However, some of these tournaments were to be held at UCLA, so that still isn't explained away, which leads into my last point. If you are skipping these tournaments because you only care about doing NAQT and don't respect any other format or question provider, you need to seriously reconsider what quizbowl is and why we do it. Quizbowl is here to provide educational opportunities to students as well as a fun, competitive game. Arbitrarily taking away those opportunities to your club because of who produced the questions (since they don't have a bad track record) is simply insane. Your team should be going to every high quality quizbowl tournament that it can afford and has members who are available for, because that is what good quizbowl teams do. Whether or not you know it, these tournaments are actually put on as a way to increase the quality and competitiveness of your circuit, and the reason people like Ray Luo and Auroni Gupta try putting them on actually has to do with the whole fact that they care about making their local high school circuit even better. The actions of all you teams that decided to skip out on these tournaments at UCLA, Rancho Bernardo, and UCSD have far greater repercussions than you probably bothered to think about, because now Rancho Bernardo does not have the financial backing a tournament would have provided to allow them to keep making the trip up to your tournaments every weekend, and UCSD similarly has no institutional money now to attend their college events, you have simultaneously possibly ruined multiple team's budgets for the season (when in quizbowl there is, or should be some kind of social contract about supporting these new tournaments run by people who care) and you have denied yourselves multiple opportunities to attend the kinds of tournaments that true national contenders play on, as well as chances for your team to qualify for the PACE NSC (if you didn't notice, that's that tournament all the top teams seem to show up to and blather on about being the best national championship set), and generally denying your team another opportunity to play some good quizbowl, which regardless of format should be what our teams are here for. If your circuit really just wants to keep attending tournaments on sets that are kind of good but really not great and that will only provide them moderately OK nationals preparation, thus continuing the cycle of California being a circuit that can produce a bunch of playoff level teams at the HSNCT, none of which will ever actually contend for any national title, at the expense of a program or two who do want to transcend but are not being given all of the opportunities they need to be able to bridge that gap, and thus will end up being at the high end of your teams but still only finish somewhere in the top 20, then congratulations because as long as you keep this, to borrorw the phrase, immature nose thumbing up that is exactly what will happen year in and year out in the SoCal circuit. And I think that's really just kind of sad.
Sincerely,
Charlie Dees
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White
User avatar
Auroni
Auron
Posts: 3145
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:23 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Auroni »

Dees, while your post was really great, the factors you describe don't paint the entire picture. Much of the Southern California circuit in San Diego, for example, are busy forming their lineups for the San Diego and North County league formats, a process which typically involves tryouts. I sincerely think that both of our tournaments would have run if we had held them, say, sometime in January. And that's probably what we'll attempt to do.
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
User avatar
Auroni
Auron
Posts: 3145
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:23 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Auroni »

Addendum: A lot of the Orange County/Los Angeles circuit participates in Academic Decathlon, and if my total assumption is correct, they're preparing for that stuff right about now as well. Not that I think that participation in either of these actually precludes real tournament attendance, but it may help to better pinpoint the problem.
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
User avatar
Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
Chairman of Anti-Music Mafia Committee
Posts: 5647
Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2006 11:46 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

I still don't think that those problems really are the root here - otherwise UCLA would have gotten those PACE style tournaments going since I believe those were in the Spring. Especially when a repeated theme that I'm hearing (and not just from that Santa Monica dude) is "well, our team only plays NAQT." I think there is something deeper causing these problems.
EDIT - also, if teams are only now forming and are doing tryouts, causing these problems, and that is the reason your tournaments couldn't field teams, that is still a pretty big problem that I think falls under the "quizbowl teams not going to good quizbowl tournaments" heading. I mean, really, what better way to figure out your league teams than to take those players to a tournament and see how they do.
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White
User avatar
cvdwightw
Auron
Posts: 3291
Joined: Tue May 13, 2003 12:46 am
Location: Southern CA
Contact:

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by cvdwightw »

Charlie--

Probably around 2/3 of quizbowl teams in LA/OC do not play bad quizbowl. 2/3! That's a higher number than in just about every other area that has lots of quizbowl teams. Also, 2/3 of those schools do not read this board. If you look at this thread (or last year's thread), something like 80% of posts are made by either me, Auroni, or people associated with RB, Arcadia, Sa Mo, and Edison. Posting a rant against Southern California schools in a place that most schools aren't going to even look isn't going to help anyone, except maybe you'll feel that whatever passive-aggressive feelings toward our circuit are finally gone.

We're in a completely different place than most other places in the country. Just about everywhere else, there's a bunch of teams that play bad quizbowl and a few crusaders who are pulling those teams into better quizbowl. There's a lot of these circuits - Virginia, Illinois, Georgia, Alabama, etc. What's in common with these places? There's no real suggestion that either NAQT or mACF is somehow "better" than the other, but there is a suggestion that both of them are better than bad quizbowl, and that teams should attend as many of those tournaments as they can regardless of whether it's NAQT or mACF. The challenge, then, is to wean teams away from bad quizbowl (and they will presumably be accepting of both NAQT and mACF, which I think can/should/do exist in harmony with each other, testing slightly different things; I mean, I don't know, maybe you and a few like-minded people have decided to consign NAQT to the dustbin of "bad quizbowl," but I don't think most people in these places have). We're in a place somewhat akin to, say, the Minneapolis suburbs, where there's only a small but tight-knit circuit of teams playing good quizbowl, and that's almost entirely NAQT (except that, if I understand correctly, there are still a lot of schools playing some kind of Knowledge Bowl format out there). If one of the people from that area were to come out and say, "This is how we're getting schools to accept other forms of good quizbowl as equally legitimate to NAQT, and you should try it because it's worked here," then I would listen. You don't even suggest ways to make things better - you just out and out blast our circuit for whatever reason.

Quizbowl here is sick, but it can be salvaged, and people like myself/Auroni/UCLA people are working to expand the circuit both in number of teams and range of play. We know that something needs to change. We're not in as bad a place as Missouri. We don't have these strict eligibility rules and travel rules and whatnot. We have cooperative coaches and players dedicated to getting better. If the other SoCal people who are reading this board want to form a Southern California Quizbowl Alliance, I'm all for that - heck, I'll head it up. But the last thing we need is unconstructive criticism from people who don't know what's going on. And lest this sound like some kind of "civility" argument, it's not. I am not "defending" any bad quizbowl practices that may or may not be going on in Southern California. I do and will welcome constructive suggestions on how to go about making quizbowl in this area better. I'm trying to expand good quizbowl in Orange County. I've got interest from the Orange County Dept. of Ed., but it doesn't look like we'll be able to get anything done this year (I'm optimistic about next year, though). And yes, even though this is going to piss you off, we'd probably start with an NAQT IS-A set because it's the easiest "legitimate" set out there, and we'd have a bunch of teams that have never played quizbowl before. If it gets off the ground next year, it's a start. Maybe not a great start, but it's heading in the right direction.

If you or anyone else has constructive suggestions on how to get teams to accept mACF as a legitimate alternative to NAQT, how to expand quizbowl in this area to new teams, how to get college teams to stop charging ridiculous prices for their tournaments, or how to solve other "problems" that actually do exist, let me know. If you or anyone else is just going to post here attacking circuit teams, it's not going to reach your intended audience, and about the only thing that's going to happen is that you're going to piss me off.
Dwight Wynne
socalquizbowl.org
UC Irvine 2008-2013; UCLA 2004-2007; Capistrano Valley High School 2000-2003

"It's a competition, but it's not a sport. On a scale, if football is a 10, then rowing would be a two. One would be Quiz Bowl." --Matt Birk on rowing, SI On Campus, 10/21/03

"If you were my teammate, I would have tossed your ass out the door so fast you'd be emitting Cerenkov radiation, but I'm not classy like Dwight." --Jerry
User avatar
Auroni
Auron
Posts: 3145
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:23 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Auroni »

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:I still don't think that those problems really are the root here - otherwise UCLA would have gotten those PACE style tournaments going since I believe those were in the Spring. Especially when a repeated theme that I'm hearing (and not just from that Santa Monica dude) is "well, our team only plays NAQT." I think there is something deeper causing these problems.
EDIT - also, if teams are only now forming and are doing tryouts, causing these problems, and that is the reason your tournaments couldn't field teams, that is still a pretty big problem that I think falls under the "quizbowl teams not going to good quizbowl tournaments" heading. I mean, really, what better way to figure out your league teams than to take those players to a tournament and see how they do.
Charlie -- While I wish I could echo some of Dwight's optimism about the San Diego area, I can't. The theme you see of "we only play NAQT" is even less applicable in San Diego County, where the vast majority of quizbowl teams do league and other crappy TV formats. NAQT here is only an afterthought that a select few teams go to when they have time. Coaches here rigidly operate under the mentality that months of practice on buzzer beaters will somehow cause them to win their fake league championships, and while I'm sure that they don't have an innate distaste of other formats (something Dwight pointed out that I want to reemphasize here), they damn well will sacrifice all that to meet their training regimen. This is why I keep saying that Zhao and I picked the wrong month to host our tournaments. Your arguments are definitely applicable for those teams that should know better (arcadia, edison, samo, la jolla, hell maybe even TP), but you need to consider that the greater problem here is that the other teams that do NAQT (especially the san diegan ones), do it whenever they aren't practicing for league for whatever reason. This is why I'm optimistic that a January Prison Bowl-mirror would probably be more beneficial. About the PACE thing that you also brought up, I think it was poorly advertised. I know for sure that my coach didn't get an email about it, since she shares all emails about tournaments with our teams. But again, this isn't the place to reach those teams that do need to be reached in order for mACF to be more accepted in our circuit.
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
User avatar
Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
Chairman of Anti-Music Mafia Committee
Posts: 5647
Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2006 11:46 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Hey guys - if you don't think me publicly posting my thoughts about what is most certainly a problem needing to be addressed, perhaps this is an opportunity to consider how keeping the mailing lists in the California area under your iron fist is why I had to do this in the first place, Dwight.
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White
User avatar
Auroni
Auron
Posts: 3145
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:23 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Auroni »

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:Hey guys - if you don't think me publicly posting my thoughts about what is most certainly a problem needing to be addressed, perhaps this is an opportunity to consider how keeping the mailing lists in the California area under your iron fist is why I had to do this in the first place, Dwight.
:w-hat:
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
User avatar
Auroni
Auron
Posts: 3145
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:23 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Auroni »

Nobody told you not to post publicly here, dude. We're just in concurrence that you posting here won't actually accomplish much.
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
User avatar
cvdwightw
Auron
Posts: 3291
Joined: Tue May 13, 2003 12:46 am
Location: Southern CA
Contact:

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by cvdwightw »

Exactly. Charlie, you have the right to piss me off as much as you like on this board.

I'm not saying "you don't know how this works, so don't criticize it." What I am saying is that there are people who know firsthand what the problems are and we are working in an attempt to correct those problems. It's a long process. It takes time. If you have some kind of constructive comments that would get us further, I'm all for it. If you're just going to rant about how there are problems, then I'm not sure what good it does to anyone.

Auroni is trying to reach out to a lot of the San Diego Academic League schools. He has a bunch of contacts there. He knows how the system works, and he's trying to work within those constraints to bring good quizbowl to those teams. I'm trying to expand good quizbowl in Orange County. I've contacted the Orange County Department of Education and am trying to work with them to bring good quizbowl to many more schools, hopefully as soon as next year. I'm also crusading against high tournament entry fees. None of these changes are going to happen overnight. And maybe someone else (Ian?) can start helping to bridge the gap between NAQT and mACF, but even that's going to take time.

Also, I don't know what this nonsense about having an iron fist on the Southern California mailing lists is. I'm sole admin on a list that hasn't been regularly used since 2007, and a lowly mod on the main list right now.
Dwight Wynne
socalquizbowl.org
UC Irvine 2008-2013; UCLA 2004-2007; Capistrano Valley High School 2000-2003

"It's a competition, but it's not a sport. On a scale, if football is a 10, then rowing would be a two. One would be Quiz Bowl." --Matt Birk on rowing, SI On Campus, 10/21/03

"If you were my teammate, I would have tossed your ass out the door so fast you'd be emitting Cerenkov radiation, but I'm not classy like Dwight." --Jerry
User avatar
Matt Weiner
Sin
Posts: 8145
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2003 8:34 pm
Location: Richmond, VA

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Matt Weiner »

Not taking sides on the propriety of calling people out on the board (though perhaps you can guess my feelings on that), it sounds to me like if people are devoting any of their practice/tournament attendance time to "leagues," especially leagues that are run on terrible questions and formats (which all leagues ever are, and which this league in particular has been described as in the past by people in this thread), then you do in fact have the very same "good quizbowl is suffering because bad quizbowl is competing with it" problem that you claim not to have. Also, the practice of stocking the quizbowl team with the same people who are on the Science Bowl team and the Academic Decathlon team is not really conducive towards actually participating or succeeding at any of those things; any one of those three activities is normally a full-time commitment in non-California places. Is there any way to communicate to people that they are allowed to have more than 6 students at their school participating in extracurricular activities, and thus can actually form separate teams for each event? SPORTS ANALOGY This is like if California schools arbitrarily decided that their baseball team and football team had to be made up of the same people and offered "we have a football game that day" as a reason for skipping a baseball game, without any self-awareness as to how this could be avoided.
Matt Weiner
Advisor to Quizbowl at Virginia Commonwealth University / Founder of hsquizbowl.org
tracyclee
Lulu
Posts: 51
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2008 8:19 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by tracyclee »

I don't think "stockpiling" is the problem. It's true that a good chunk of people play SB or OSB, but we tend not to think of it as much of a conflict. At least not in Arcadia, where over half the team is also on some other team(s). The same people are always going to be trying out for different academic teams. I'm fairly certain that of the 6 real teams at our school [not including Speech&Debate, Destination Imagination, or Constitution Team], we're spreading around the same 50 people.

What I don't understand is why people only trust NAQT? After having actually egged my team into attending an ACF tournament, I can see the clear difference in quality. Can we chalk up this uninterest to the Willie Chen fiasco? Although I think the problem might lie more in that people who are mediocre at quizbowl are bound to like "worse" formats better. When you don't know anything and have to sit around in a chair all day knowing that you don't know anything and will not get anything, it can't be very exciting. In fact, I know this because I was told so. Good quizbowl is good quizbowl, but trashier formats can be more fun, I guess.



PS: Isn't January actually the worst month to host a qb tourney? We usually skip ones then because everybody is cramming for finals. GPA>QB? [At least it is to parents.] :sad:
Tracy Lee
Arcadia High School '09
Chicago '13
User avatar
Auroni
Auron
Posts: 3145
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:23 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Auroni »

Matt Weiner wrote:Not taking sides on the propriety of calling people out on the board (though perhaps you can guess my feelings on that), it sounds to me like if people are devoting any of their practice/tournament attendance time to "leagues," especially leagues that are run on terrible questions and formats (which all leagues ever are, and which this league in particular has been described as in the past by people in this thread), then you do in fact have the very same "good quizbowl is suffering because bad quizbowl is competing with it" problem that you claim not to have. Also, the practice of stocking the quizbowl team with the same people who are on the Science Bowl team and the Academic Decathlon team is not really conducive towards actually participating or succeeding at any of those things; any one of those three activities is normally a full-time commitment in non-California places. Is there any way to communicate to people that they are allowed to have more than 6 students at their school participating in extracurricular activities, and thus can actually form separate teams for each event? SPORTS ANALOGY This is like if California schools arbitrarily decided that their baseball team and football team had to be made up of the same people and offered "we have a football game that day" as a reason for skipping a baseball game, without any self-awareness as to how this could be avoided.
For the record, I never claimed that we don't have a problem of "good quizbowl is suffering etc." I'm stating that in order to bring mACF to SoCal (which is what I'm trying to work towards), we need to work within the constraints of the crappy league system that dominates these teams' lives. This is because I simply don't know how to push for reform of decades-old organizations/leagues/committees that keep all member schools from prioritizing some other, better format. I don't know how to curtly tell coaches to stop playing shitty formats because I'm afraid of the repercussions. There, I said it. Dees claimed that mACF isn't in Southern California because of lazy semi-good teams that don't want to get better, I showed how he was wrong and how mACF doesn't happen in SoCal because of teams being made to do different things instead.

@Tracy: I picked January since I know that Prison Bowl is around that date, and it would be like a second shot at giving high schools the experience they need with better quizbowl. I also know that January corresponds with regular league practices -- no events should really be happening by that time for another month or so.
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
User avatar
cvdwightw
Auron
Posts: 3291
Joined: Tue May 13, 2003 12:46 am
Location: Southern CA
Contact:

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by cvdwightw »

tracyclee wrote:Can we chalk up this uninterest to the Willie Chen fiasco?
I don't know. All I know is that prior to that tournament I had attended two tournaments with mACF-style questions (keep in mind, though, that neither of those were the pinnacle of pyramidality, in particular, I think one was a UTC mirror); after that, I only attended one (and that was ACF Regs two weeks later with Charles and Brendan).
tracylee wrote:Although I think the problem might lie more in that people who are mediocre at quizbowl are bound to like "worse" formats better. When you don't know anything and have to sit around in a chair all day knowing that you don't know anything and will not get anything, it can't be very exciting. In fact, I know this because I was told so. Good quizbowl is good quizbowl, but trashier formats can be more fun, I guess.
Difficulty-appropriate quizbowl is a requisite for good quizbowl. Perhaps people like the amount of trash and stuff in NAQT, I've never actually done a survey, but assuming we're not doing things like HFT playoff packets, even the teams that are struggling with NAQT should have at least heard of a significant number of the answers.
Dwight Wynne
socalquizbowl.org
UC Irvine 2008-2013; UCLA 2004-2007; Capistrano Valley High School 2000-2003

"It's a competition, but it's not a sport. On a scale, if football is a 10, then rowing would be a two. One would be Quiz Bowl." --Matt Birk on rowing, SI On Campus, 10/21/03

"If you were my teammate, I would have tossed your ass out the door so fast you'd be emitting Cerenkov radiation, but I'm not classy like Dwight." --Jerry
User avatar
Joe Romersa
Rikku
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 12:20 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Joe Romersa »

Usually, at SoCal NAQT tournaments, I've noticed the majority of the teams are Arcadia/RanchoBernardo/SantaMonica/Edison/TorreyPines, and the rest are converted AcaDeca/other formats, and usually, the top brackets are filled with the Arcadia/RB/SaMo/etc. And the better, top bracketed, teams like "good quizbowl" better because it's more of their level, while converted AcaDeca and idiots like me would probably prefer easier questions, like NAQT A-packets. There aren't enough good teams for formats like ACF to thrive, and the other teams don't go to ACF because they think they aren't good enough, and because they dont go, they never get better.

Also, Anurag's on at 7.

and...

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6820

...
Alex Wang
Arcadia High '10
UCLA '14 or so
User avatar
Auroni
Auron
Posts: 3145
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:23 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Auroni »

al3xWal3x wrote:and the other teams don't go to ACF because they think they aren't good enough, and because they dont go, they never get better.
This is the part of the problem that's completely changeable.
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
User avatar
warpoet
Wakka
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:00 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by warpoet »

tracyclee wrote: PS: Isn't January actually the worst month to host a qb tourney? We usually skip ones then because everybody is cramming for finals. GPA>QB? [At least it is to parents.] :sad:
We may have the same problem. I'm excited about the prospects of playing ACF Winter, but some of our people are worried about finals, especially when the competition is on the weekend just before SAMO's finals week.
Max Stivers
Santa Monica High '10
NYU '14
User avatar
Joe Romersa
Rikku
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 12:20 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Joe Romersa »

Let us take a moment to stop the "good quizbowl" discussion to celebrate Anurag's pwnage at day one of Teen Jeopardy finals.
Alex Wang
Arcadia High '10
UCLA '14 or so
tracyclee
Lulu
Posts: 51
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2008 8:19 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by tracyclee »

al3xWal3x wrote:Let us take a moment to stop the "good quizbowl" discussion to celebrate Anurag's pwnage at day one of Teen Jeopardy finals.
You're like Gordon Brown during Question Time. "Let's just stop arguing for a second, even though we're in the middle of something serious, so we can congratulate the rugby team and wish them good luck in the championships."

But yeah, Anurag is officially the hottest piece of ass in the SoCal quizbowl circuit now.
User avatar
dtaylor4
Auron
Posts: 3733
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:43 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by dtaylor4 »

tracyclee wrote:
al3xWal3x wrote:Let us take a moment to stop the "good quizbowl" discussion to celebrate Anurag's pwnage at day one of Teen Jeopardy finals.
You're like Gordon Brown during Question Time. "Let's just stop arguing for a second, even though we're in the middle of something serious, so we can congratulate the rugby team and wish them good luck in the championships."

But yeah, Anurag is officially the hottest piece of ass in the SoCal quizbowl circuit now.
Two comments:

One, English rugby needs all the luck it can get to hang with the Tri-Nations.

Two, I sincerely hope that last sentence was in jest.
ihavenoidea
Rikku
Posts: 304
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2007 12:05 am

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by ihavenoidea »

The reason our "league" commissioner gave me for not changing the terrible questions into something more acceptable was "Academic League is Academic League. If we changed the questions, it would no longer be Academic League"
Zhao Zhang
Rancho Bernardo High School '09
User avatar
Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
Chairman of Anti-Music Mafia Committee
Posts: 5647
Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2006 11:46 pm

Re: Southern California 08-09

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Also, I don't know what this nonsense about having an iron fist on the Southern California mailing lists is. I'm sole admin on a list that hasn't been regularly used since 2007, and a lowly mod on the main list right now.
I'm discussing your refusal to give people who ask you for it the coaches contact information. If my post was somehow ineffective to post on this board as you claim, with somewhat of an implication being that the people who really need to read it won't, then it is insanity to attack me for posting it here when I have been denied the ability to directly contact those people who are in positions to change things.
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White
Locked