online/Skype tournament

[tiwonge]

On the college circuit, UW has run an online/Skype tournament 3 or 4 times. Has this been done on the high school circuit?

I think that this sort of thing might be something we need to look into here in Idaho. There are lots of small schools and rural schools, and it's expensive for them to come to Boise (or wherever) to go to a tournament. I'm trying to recruit Boise schools, but the number who have expressed interest is rather small.

I'd like to experiment with an online/Skype tournament sometime this year. Having played in some of UW's online mirrors, I have some idea of what to expect (and I'll talk to Mike about logistics), but I was wondering if anything like this has been done on the high school level.

I'm going to try an experimental tournament, I think, in January, to stress-test it. I can probably get enough interested teams (looking for 8-10 teams) from my team contacts in the intermountain west (Idaho, Utah, Montana), but if not, I'd be willing to open it up to schools in other areas with a weak quiz bowl circuit.

What I do need, though, is a tournament to mirror. Since I'm just testing it, I don't want to charge for it, so I was wondering if anybody wouldn't mind donating a novice-level tournament for me to use. I'd be willing to donate a little something to the writers, but I didn't want to have to charge the playtesting teams. (I could use some released tournaments, but I'd rather not use something that people have seen before, even if it is just an experimental tournament.)

I might also need some experienced moderators (although maybe using inexperienced moderators can be part of my stress-testing). Niki says she might reach out to some of her friends in the community to ask them to moderate.

Has anybody done this before? Is it worth trying? Is there anything I might need to be aware of?

(If I were to do this in the future and charge, what's the best way to get teams to pay? Just mail a check to me after the tournament? Are schools generally set up to use PayPal?)

[KnicksRule]

We have an online skype league in the Northeast

[Al Hirt]

It's a different dynamic than a tournament. Certainly not as intensive.

[Banana Stand]

We have an online skype league in the Northeast

Shravan's league is Skype Bowl with a schedule, which certainly isn't a bad thing, but doesn't mean it's anywhere near the same as a tournament.

[heterodyne]

I do some online practice, with Niki in fact, and I am sure that she would agree that if you can, screenshare is the way to go. It prevents people from cheating by googling answers and stuff. We use google hangouts, and it is really smooth, but has the drawback of a ten person limit.

[slothslothsloth]

I do some online practice, with Niki in fact, and I am sure that she would agree that if you can, screenshare is the way to go. It prevents people from cheating by googling answers and stuff. We use google hangouts, and it is really smooth, but has the drawback of a ten person limit.

I think we were planning on running this more like an actual Skype mirror. Each team would call in from one place, and we'd basically go by the honor system to hope that no one's cheating (or y'know, listening to their feeds to see if we notice some furious typing, but mic-mute and all that). I'd like to retain my faith in humanity and put cheating beyond the teams that will play. Now, using G+ in groups and screensharing isn't bad, of course, but G+ does have a tendency to get more laggy than Skype, which is definitely something we want to avoid at all costs.

[tiwonge]

I do some online practice, with Niki in fact, and I am sure that she would agree that if you can, screenshare is the way to go. It prevents people from cheating by googling answers and stuff. We use google hangouts, and it is really smooth, but has the drawback of a ten person limit.

If you're worried about cheating, I don't know that this helps. It's not hard to have a second computer or laptop [edit: or smartphones, which are near ubiquitous nowadays] available to look up answers. At some point, you just have to trust that people are playing in good faith.

How do people who run Skype tournaments handle this? Do they just trust that people are not cheating? Do they require that coaches/supervisors/an adult be in the room?

[tiwonge]

We have an online skype league in the Northeast

Shravan's league is Skype Bowl with a schedule, which certainly isn't a bad thing, but doesn't mean it's anywhere near the same as a tournament.

You played in the Penn Bowl this weekend. How did it compare to your other experiences? What are some things you saw there that worked well, or things you've seen elsewhere that you think would work well? My only experience is with UW's Skype tournaments.

[tiwonge]

We have an online skype league in the Northeast

So, this is like a league, and not a tournament? So you're probably just playing 1 match per team on a given day?

How do the logistics work for you? What do the teams do? The moderator?

[Insolvency law of Canada]

We have an online skype league in the Northeast

So, this is like a league, and not a tournament? So you're probably just playing 1 match per team on a given day?

How do the logistics work for you? What do the teams do? The moderator?

Teams play one match per week. There's a lot of freedom involved; teams can play whenever is most convenient for them, no whatever set they mutually agree upon (and haven't played yet!), & are in charge of supplying moderators. If no one can supply a moderator, there's a pool of moderators willing to help out. There's definitely a lot of trust built into the system, but why would anyone want to cheat in a for-fun league?

[tiwonge]

We have an online skype league in the Northeast

So, this is like a league, and not a tournament? So you're probably just playing 1 match per team on a given day?

How do the logistics work for you? What do the teams do? The moderator?

Teams play one match per week. There's a lot of freedom involved; teams can play whenever is most convenient for them, no whatever set they mutually agree upon (and haven't played yet!), & are in charge of supplying moderators. If no one can supply a moderator, there's a pool of moderators willing to help out. There's definitely a lot of trust built into the system, but why would anyone want to cheat in a for-fun league?

Do the coaches or players arrange the matches? (Is this a sort of top-down league, or a more spontaneous student-generated thing?) Do coaches typically observe their teams (to make sure nobody cheats, or whatever), or do the students just set it up themselves?

What about questions? Where are they from? How does a moderator get a copy of them? (We used digital copies, which makes it easy to send them to remote moderators. The files are password-protected to make sure the correct one is read each round.)

The organization of a weekly league like this is going to be different than a one-day tournament. A single-day tournament needs to be a lot more organized to make sure it runs on time. But a weekly league might also be something we can look into.

[Al Hirt]

We have an online skype league in the Northeast

So, this is like a league, and not a tournament? So you're probably just playing 1 match per team on a given day?

How do the logistics work for you? What do the teams do? The moderator?

Teams play one match per week. There's a lot of freedom involved; teams can play whenever is most convenient for them, no whatever set they mutually agree upon (and haven't played yet!), & are in charge of supplying moderators. If no one can supply a moderator, there's a pool of moderators willing to help out. There's definitely a lot of trust built into the system, but why would anyone want to cheat in a for-fun league?

Do the coaches or players arrange the matches? (Is this a sort of top-down league, or a more spontaneous student-generated thing?) Do coaches typically observe their teams (to make sure nobody cheats, or whatever), or do the students just set it up themselves?

What about questions? Where are they from? How does a moderator get a copy of them? (We used digital copies, which makes it easy to send them to remote moderators. The files are password-protected to make sure the correct one is read each round.)

The organization of a weekly league like this is going to be different than a one-day tournament. A single-day tournament needs to be a lot more organized to make sure it runs on time. But a weekly league might also be something we can look into.

Yeah, it's definitely different. We use the archive/packets we have lying around in our own personal archives and so forth. What Jack and Patrick said are pretty accurate. We (the players) have taken charge of arranging the matches and contacting people to play. Since we're not a league of actual consequence to the scene (I've made it clear we're a practice/scrimmage league), I'm not sure if you want to follow our model (especially since we're pretty laissez-faire in our approach). We had our first game tonight, with pretty good results using a LIST packet (so obviously nothing password-protected). I think getting teams used to competing to play scrimmage skype bowl is a pretty different ballgame from getting teams that don't have our privileges and benefits to do the same.

[tiwonge]

Maybe once we set up a tournament so that they can experience it (especially for the more rural schools with little to no quiz bowl experience), we can suggest that they run an ad-lib league like this.

[Al Hirt]

Maybe once we set up a tournament so that they can experience it (especially for the more rural schools with little to no quiz bowl experience), we can suggest that they run an ad-lib league like this.

One thing we definitely benefit from is experience and motivation. The teams involved, for the most part, are pretty well established and experienced. I think if the teams you're trying to target get at least some of these benefits, it could work.