NAQT rules and policy changes for 2023–2024

[Important Bird Area]

NAQT has made a number of changes to its rules and policies for the 2023–2024 season.

Gameplay Rules

We made the following changes to the NAQT Gameplay Rules (highlighted on the page):

We changed the structure and content of Rule F.2 (about the length of games). The biggest effect of this is that high school games now use 10-minute halves rather than 9-minute halves. Also, all college games (including community college games) now use 11-minute halves, except that 11-cycle untimed halves are retained for four-year Sectional Championship Tournaments.

We changed and added several rules (F.9.e, J.7, J.8, J.9, J.11) related to the timing of lodging of protests. Essentially, both factual and procedural protests can now be lodged between a tossup and its bonus or at the conclusion of a tossup-bonus cycle (removing the need to wait for a clock stoppage for factual protests, removing the ability to interrupt a question for procedural protests, and removing the need for moderators to intuit whether a protest is factual or procedural when determining when it can be lodged).

We added Rule F.12 codifying how stuttering during answering shall be handled.

We replaced the former Rules G.12 (conferring on tossups) and K.2 (use of reference materials and communication devices) with a new Rule K.2 with a full definition of conferring (including use of reference materials and communication devices) and specifying the penalties for same.

There are some additional minor changes that are not listed here but are highlighted on the Rules page.

We also made some adjustments to the rules for the Individual Player National Championship Tournament, all of which codify existing practice rather than making substantive changes.

Hosting Policies

We have codified existing practice by adding the following to our hosting policies:

Hosts must not publicly post (or otherwise make widely available) scoresheets, category statistics, “advanced” statistics, or other results beyond what NAQT posts on its website without permission in advance from NAQT. Such data may be shared with coaches and players of teams in attendance provided that those people agree not to distribute them further.

Hosts are no longer permitted to retain an (unprotected) electronic copy of questions from their tournament. They may retain printed copies, and electronic access will (generally) be granted via the Study Library.

Eligibility Rules

We have made the following changes to the various eligibility rules (Middle School, High School, Community College, and Collegiate):

In the Middle School Eligibility Rules and High School Eligibility Rules, we clarified that institutions whose possible status as a school is unclear must request rulings at least 14 days before the first tournament at which they wish to compete.

In the Middle School Eligibility Rules and High School Eligibility Rules, we stated that players must enroll in and regularly attend relevant classes to be eligible. Previously, only enrollment was required, leaving open the possibility of odd situations involving withdrawing/dropping classes but remaining eligible.

In the Middle School Eligibility Rules and High School Eligibility Rules, we stated that a taking a class confers eligibility to play for the school(s) on whose transcript the class appears.

In the Middle School Eligibility Rules and High School Eligibility Rules, we stated that if dispensation is granted for a player to compete for a school they do not attend due to local standards making it untenable for them to compete for the school they actually attend, the player may not play for any school other than the one they were granted eligibility to play for.

In the Middle School Eligibility Rules and High School Eligibility Rules, we determined that if a combination of schools is permitted to compete together (as a “co-op”) in quiz bowl or a similar activity by a multi-discipline state athletic and/or activities association, then that co-op is permitted to compete the same way in NAQT quiz bowl. Coaches of such co-ops and hosts of tournaments at which they compete are very strongly urged to notify NAQT of the details of the situation.

In the Community College Eligibility Rules, we established a new rule that a player who loses their Division II collegiate eligibility also loses their Community College eligibility.

In all eligibility rules, we modified the clause stating that we would notify banned parties of bans to allow for the possibility of not having contact information for banned parties. In these cases, we will notify whomever we deem relevant, such as (but not necessarily limited to) coaches, school administrations, etc.

Correctness Guidelines

We made the following changes to the Correctness Guidelines (highlighted on the page):

Fleshed out guideline C.3 about giving partial or inexact dates, years, centuries, and millennia
Broadened guideline C.4.e about giving creators’ names as possessives with the name of a created work
Adjusted guideline C.12 about abbreviations for amino acids
Clarified how guideline F.5 about foreign-language titles applies to performance-oriented works

Other

The Very Small Schools ranking at the Small School National Championship Tournament will now be for schools with no more than 200 students in their top three grades (up through 12) instead of 300.

[matthewspatrick]

Hosting Policies

Hosts must not publicly post (or otherwise make widely available) scoresheets, category statistics, “advanced” statistics, or other results beyond what NAQT posts on its website without permission in advance from NAQT. Such data may be shared with coaches and players of teams in attendance provided that those people agree not to distribute them further.

Is the policy now for hosts to tell their staffers not to do things like post a photo or screenshot of a scoresheet of games they read/kept score for on social media?

Eligibility Rules

In the Middle School Eligibility Rules and High School Eligibility Rules, we determined that if a combination of schools is permitted to compete together (as a “co-op”) in quiz bowl or a similar activity by a multi-discipline state athletic and/or activities association, then that co-op is permitted to compete the same way in NAQT quiz bowl. Coaches of such co-ops and hosts of tournaments at which they compete are very strongly urged to notify NAQT of the details of the situation.

So then, if a charter school and public magnet school, which happened to share a campus and whose students play together on the same state-sanctioned athletics teams, were to have a unified quiz bowl team with players from both schools, said team would be NAQT-eligible?

[Important Bird Area]

Is the policy now for hosts to tell their staffers not to do things like post a photo or screenshot of a scoresheet of games they read/kept score for on social media?

That is a best practice, yes.

So then, if a charter school and public magnet school, which happened to share a campus and whose students play together on the same state-sanctioned athletics teams, were to have a unified quiz bowl team with players from both schools, said team would be NAQT-eligible?

Probably not, at least from this much information; note that our rule is based on competition in quiz bowl as organized by a state activities association. In general, we strongly encourage teams in unconventional situations to contact us well in advance before registering for tournaments.

[matthewspatrick]

Is the policy now for hosts to tell their staffers not to do things like post a photo or screenshot of a scoresheet of games they read/kept score for on social media?

That is a best practice, yes.

OK, but that doesn't quite answer the question. "This is the best practice" doesn't necessarily mean, "this is the policy"

So then, if a charter school and public magnet school, which happened to share a campus and whose students play together on the same state-sanctioned athletics teams, were to have a unified quiz bowl team with players from both schools, said team would be NAQT-eligible?

Probably not, at least from this much information; note that our rule is based on competition in quiz bowl as organized by a state activities association. In general, we strongly encourage teams in unconventional situations to contact us well in advance before registering for tournaments.

Thanks, I see now I didn't read that one quite closely enough.

[alexdz]

So then, if a charter school and public magnet school, which happened to share a campus and whose students play together on the same state-sanctioned athletics teams, were to have a unified quiz bowl team with players from both schools, said team would be NAQT-eligible?

Probably not, at least from this much information; note that our rule is based on competition in quiz bowl as organized by a state activities association. In general, we strongly encourage teams in unconventional situations to contact us well in advance before registering for tournaments.

This is probably something that would count as an unconventional situation in which reaching out is the correct plan of action, but I'd encourage NAQT to consider cases where there is no such thing as state-sanctioned "quiz bowl" in a particular state, but where that state would still allow co-ops in other regulated competitions.

[Important Bird Area]

So then, if a charter school and public magnet school, which happened to share a campus and whose students play together on the same state-sanctioned athletics teams, were to have a unified quiz bowl team with players from both schools, said team would be NAQT-eligible?

Probably not, at least from this much information; note that our rule is based on competition in quiz bowl as organized by a state activities association. In general, we strongly encourage teams in unconventional situations to contact us well in advance before registering for tournaments.

This is probably something that would count as an unconventional situation in which reaching out is the correct plan of action, but I'd encourage NAQT to consider cases where there is no such thing as state-sanctioned "quiz bowl" in a particular state, but where that state would still allow co-ops in other regulated competitions.

Yes, teams in this position are encouraged to contact us directly. (We deliberately avoided trying to write rules about which other competitions were regulated and how, especially because different states may have very different rules about their administrative organizations for school activities.)