How do we use "Description Acceptable"?

[Cheynem]

I recently heard some discussion over how to use this warning and how players interpret it that I found interesting (the specific example is not clear, unfortunately, so I'll use a hypothetical).

Let's say there is a tossup on the character "Mola Ram" from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The question says "Description acceptable," as it also accepts answers like "the high priest from Temple of Doom." But he has a name. A player, after hearing the "description acceptable," decides this is asking about a character or thing that does not have a name and is thus confused, knowing that Mola Ram, of course, has a name. The player thus doesn't answer or negs and is genuinely confused.

The broader question is:

-What does "Description Acceptable" imply? For me, I have always interpreted it as "This thing may have a name, but it's hard enough that the question is accepting a description." For others, apparently, they interpret it as "This thing does not have a name."

-Would, in the instances in which there is a named thing being asked about, something like "Name or Description Acceptable" be clearer?

-There is also the school of thought, of course, which feels like giving too much information to the player is being overly sympathetic, and that players should know what things have names and which don't.

The other complicating factor is I have seen "Description Acceptable" used to mean all sorts of things, from "This thing doesn't have a name" to "We'll take the name or a description, but the name is pretty hard/obscure" to "We're being generous here, even though this is a pretty well known name" (like the CO tossup on the Glorious Revolution). Sometimes I also see some questions on the same thing differ about what they will accept or not accept--for example, does a question only accept "Malice at the Palace" or a description?

My basic point is I think, especially regarding the first two points, we need to come to a consensus about what "description acceptable" at least is implying. Broader than that, we should also perhaps think about when we should use "description acceptable" at all in questions.

[Cody]

using “description acceptable” for answerlines without proper names is a bad writing tick that should be abolished. top 3 pet peeve.

a player instruction, such as “description acceptable”, is only necessary when departing from standard quizbowl rules – e.g. descriptions are not acceptable for things with proper names. if you accept a description, but do not tell players that you are going outside of the ruleset, then accepting the descriptive answerline is pointless or unfair (depending on whether someone answers with an acceptable description). but if the answerline does not have a proper name, then there is no departure and it is simply part of knowing the answer.

the whole point is to avoid a game of chicken about writer leniency because players aren’t mindreaders.

in the hypothetical example, the confusion is understandable since the incorrect usage of the instruction is ubiquitous, but it is still a bad conclusion.

[Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!]

An answerline is typically pretty straightforward: a person, place, thing, book, figure, chemical, cryptid, etc. I try and recommend to new writers to stick with answerlines like these as they tend to have more straightforward "This is what the question is looking for" play. However, there are some answerlines that may not be encompassed by one term or answerspace. Take this excellent question below from this year's ACF Regionals:

Note to moderator: Read the answerline carefully. Description acceptable. Crónicas about this problem inspired a 2014 memoir by Selva Almada and the inciting event in the novel Hurricane Season. The anthropologist Marcela Lagarde modified a term for this problem coined by Diana E. H. Russell. The “Calm Line” is meant to mitigate this problem, which the UN dubbed the “shadow pandemic.” A specific aspect of this problem inspired a viral song by the Chilean collective LasTesis. This problem is referenced by “the part about the crimes” in Santa Teresa in Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666, which was based on hundreds of incidents in Ciudad Juárez. The campaign “un día sin nosotras” raised awareness of this problem, whose high rate in countries like Honduras sparked the movement “ni una menos.” For 10 points, machismo may exacerbate what harmful acts that include most domestic abuse? Report Question
ANSWER: violence against women [or VAW; accept femicide, feminicide, femicidio, murder of women, or equivalents accept girls, wives, females, or mothers in place of “women”; accept gender-based violence; accept Dead Girls or Chicas muertas; prompt on domestic violence, murder, killing, homicide, rape, sexual assault, sexual violence, abuse, beating, asesinatos, or equivalents by asking “who are the victims?”; prompt on misogyny or machismo] (Fernanda Melchor wrote Hurricane Season. Bogotá’s mayor Claudia López Hernández introduced the“Calm Line.” The song is “A Rapist In Your Path.”)

This topic is reified enough to warrant its own question with entirely unique clues, however, you can clearly see by the answerline that there are many different ways to word the correct answer. Description acceptable adds flexibility and allows for answerspaces like this: I tend to use it on descriptive tossups that aren't as intuitive.

However, I think Mike is right to point out a fundamental issue in which "description acceptable" when there's a given name for something. Typically, it means its a crutch for a hard answerline. With that being said, I also think there are a lot of situations where someone is best known as a description versus by name. I can get a question on "Anne Bradstreet's husband" or "Sylvia Plath's Dad" but I couldn't tell you their names. I think this is justified though because these descriptions are used in the works they appear in ("To My Dear and Loving Husband" and "Daddy").

Description acceptable is helpful. But it can't make up for issues such as poor choice of an answerline, very broad commonlinks, and non-unique clue choice. If the answerline, is a person with a name or another reified thing, I lean more towards staying away from description acceptable. It creates a slippery slope: how come I can't say "the guy who was the first President" for George Washington when I can give a description for another person in the set? Where that line is drawn is arbitrary depending on the editors.

I like the idea of Name or Description Acceptable to be clearer to players, notwithstanding the above philosophical issue of doing so.

a player instruction, such as “description acceptable”, is only necessary when departing from standard quizbowl rules – e.g. descriptions are not acceptable for things with proper names. if you accept a description, but do not tell players that you are going outside of the ruleset, then accepting the descriptive answerline is pointless or unfair (depending on whether someone answers with an acceptable description). but if the answerline does not have a proper name, then there is no departure and it is simply part of knowing the answer.

I think not having a warning to players when there isn't a precise answer isn't good form - either to have a question that isn't specific OR that you're not warning players who are going to be sitting there with the correct answer but not knowing if there's a proper name for it. If a set sticks to the "things have names" policy, it needs to find ways to explore those expansionary topics in different ways - for instance, answerline of Anne Bradstreet cluing her stuff to her husband, or on Sylvia Plath cluing from Daddy.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I agree, this is a solution to the somewhat rare problem of answerlines not being fully reified.

Similar to the "violence against women" example above, I recall a tossup in my playing days where the answerline was "pink scares" but we were informed before the tossup that description would be acceptable. I buzzed pretty early and answered "uh, so like, scandals where politicians are accused of being gay?" and was given 10 points. I had never heard the phrase "pink scare" before in my life at that time and was probably not alone.

Quizbowl is biased towards things that have names. There are some things worth knowing about that do not have a single, widely accepted name.

[Mike Bentley]

using “description acceptable” for answerlines without proper names is a bad writing tick that should be abolished. top 3 pet peeve.

a player instruction, such as “description acceptable”, is only necessary when departing from standard quizbowl rules – e.g. descriptions are not acceptable for things with proper names. if you accept a description, but do not tell players that you are going outside of the ruleset, then accepting the descriptive answerline is pointless or unfair (depending on whether someone answers with an acceptable description). but if the answerline does not have a proper name, then there is no departure and it is simply part of knowing the answer.

the whole point is to avoid a game of chicken about writer leniency because players aren’t mindreaders.

in the hypothetical example, the confusion is understandable since the incorrect usage of the instruction is ubiquitous, but it is still a bad conclusion.

As a player it's probably 95% obvious to me what's meant by "description acceptable" for a given question and much more helpful than trying to mindread how specific the editor wants me to be. Quizbowl should keep using it. I'm happy to get some more unity around what to do when there is a specific answer that's also acceptable.

[Mike Bentley]

Quizbowl is biased towards things that have names. There are some things worth knowing about that do not have a single, widely accepted name.

Yeah I think I'm bothered more than the typical quizbowler with quizbowl's rigidity towards "this thing has a name." There are all sorts of answer lines out there that would be unrecognizable to the creator of the work / people participating in the event being asked about. It's a pretty good rule of thumb that the title of any work of art made before 1800 had a title that was bestowed by posterity and not the original artist. Being persnickety about calling it "The Ghent Altarpiece" rather than like the "St. Bavo's Altarpiece" or "Lady with an Ermine" over "Woman holding an Ermine" is not something I do as an editor.

Rejecting answers like "the Afghanistan War" for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan similarly rubs me the wrong way. Insisting that the reign of Porfirio Diaz is something called the "Porfiriato" and rejecting any alternate answer while also theoretically writing a tossup on the reign of Lázaro Cárdenas and allowing descriptive answers because that doesn't have a reified enough name would seem like a strange decision to me (sure, maybe you just writ these on Diaz or Cardenas, but in practice writers don't always do this).

At the same time, I do recognize that quizbowl is a game and has a somewhat artificial ruleset. My general opinion is we should be reasonably sympathetic to players. "Description acceptable" as it's practiced in quizbowl today helps with this, however imperfectly.

[theMoMA]

On the narrower issue of what terminology to use when a description or a reified name is acceptable, I inclined toward verbiage that eliminates as much ambiguity as possible. So I would lean toward something along the lines of "A name or reasonably specific description is acceptable." This communicates what kinds of answers are acceptable regardless of individual player expectations.

As this example indicates, I don't really like panicky prefatory language such as "NOTE TO PLAYERS." And I prefer these notes to be written as a grammatically correct sentence rather than as a blaring interjection.

Finally, if you're going to write on a descriptive answer of any sort, you absolutely must not recite words in the giveaway that are specific enough to be rearranged into an acceptable response. This is one of the more abominable practices in writing mechanics that is still relatively common.

[Cody]

a player instruction, such as “description acceptable”, is only necessary when departing from standard quizbowl rules – e.g. descriptions are not acceptable for things with proper names. if you accept a description, but do not tell players that you are going outside of the ruleset, then accepting the descriptive answerline is pointless or unfair (depending on whether someone answers with an acceptable description). but if the answerline does not have a proper name, then there is no departure and it is simply part of knowing the answer.

I think not having a warning to players when there isn't a precise answer isn't good form - either to have a question that isn't specific OR that you're not warning players who are going to be sitting there with the correct answer but not knowing if there's a proper name for it. If a set sticks to the "things have names" policy, it needs to find ways to explore those expansionary topics in different ways - for instance, answerline of Anne Bradstreet cluing her stuff to her husband, or on Sylvia Plath cluing from Daddy.

Perhaps an example is in order, but many questions do not have a precise answer and the further you go back in time the less you will see anyone use “description acceptable” in order to clue in players that a question is trickier than standard, or to make up for poor/poorly worded clues, or – as you note – to make up for a poor choice of answerline.

The two examples given in this thread (“violence against women” and “pink scare” [lavender?]) seem fine to me. The answer is a specific term, fully reified or not, and “description acceptable” tells players that they can receive points without knowing it. Likewise, Anne Bradstreet’s husband and Sylvia Plath’s father obviously have names, so “description acceptable” tells players that they will still receive points for knowing the work that is clued.

On the other hand, you can search qbreader.org and find any number of questions using “description acceptable” for answerlines that don’t have names or which themselves are just basic descriptions.

[Muriel Axon]

I remember an instruction from one of the Scattergories that said something like "Description acceptable, and indeed indispensable!" You can perhaps only say it in those words at a tournament with that sort of whimsy, but I could imagine a more formal phrasing being useful at times.