Your Genial Quizmaster wrote:Having read through many of the originals, I can vouch for the fact that David did clean things up considerably from the raw material. While moderating Saturday, I saw several problem questions and repeats that I missed on my read-through -- and so did David. He is interested in constructive criticism, as he's enough of a glutton for punishment that's he's agreed to take on editorship of COTKU this fall.
This, as the meme runs in this thread, is rich. I don't understand how these questions could have been worse unless your submitters were illiterate and just mashed their keyboards or something and sent that in. You saw
several problem questions? Just several? Not, like, a whole tournament's worth?
Also, I'm calling bullshit on "constructive criticism" because constructive criticism is for people who accept the ideas behind good question writing and want to improve. You, and pretty much everyone from your region who has ever been called out on shitty editing and writing, use the concept of constructive criticism as a way of saying, "how dare you criticize our preference for shitty questions!" I'll be more than happy to take apart a packet or two or ten of Moon Pie, but I'm not going to pretend that they didn't suck, and I'm also not going to rewrite the tournament for you so you can see how to do it right.
The #1 problem with Moon Pie may sound familiar, but it was even worse than usual: We got too few packets from too few teams at too late a date. We received a whopping two packets by the official deadline, one of which we opted to set aside for high school use due to degree of difficulty.
Oh shit, the problem with every tournament ever and then some! I don't know what the problem with your region is, but I suspect it's because everyone knows UTC hardly does any editing anyway and since apparently a total of 2 teams care about good quizbowl at all, this is what you get.
It appears that the old days of packet submission are virtually dead, and if it hadn't been for the writing efforts of our partners (Boston U. St. Olaf, and especially Oklahoma) and a swap of raw materials with Ghetto Warz, Lord knows what we'd have done. That also accounts for some of the repeats, which were between Ghetto Warz rounds and the original Moon Pie set.
It's funny how the old days of packet submission are apparently dead despite the fact that packet-sub tournaments are actively being played virtually everywhere in the country. Anyway, all this is no excuse, just like it wasn't an excuse last time.
So we've redesigned our entire tournament process to move past the packet submission issue in the future. This was in the works before Moon Pie and finalized Saturday night at Provino's after the tournament, and was not a response to anything posted here. We've lined up a different editor for each of our three collegiate tournaments for 2007-08. We've also assigned assistant editors for each tournament, including some with a science background (something no one at UTC claims to be strong at) and some who will be editing for sentence structure and readability only. We will invite but not require packet submission, and we anticipate that the bulk of the writing will be done by us and possible partner sites -- pretty much what Moon Pie wound up being, only from now on we'll be expecting it. Other schools that would be interested in sharing the load and running concurrent events in 2007-08 are invited to e-mail us at utcquizbowl [at] gmail [dot] com.
This is all meaningless because none of you understand how to produce quality questions. Your reorganization doesn't accomplish anything because on this evidence everyone at UTC is a terrible writer, and if you're to be believed, everyone who submitted packets to you is even worse. The solution is not to rearrange deck chairs and call it a success; the solution is to learn how to write and then do whatever you need to do to produce a decent set.
Like I said before, the southeast is a circuit that by and large does not hold shitty writers accountable; so, you get what you ask for, I guess. I personally warned my teammates that this would blow chunks, but they demanded to go anyway. I hope that instead of spreading out to other circuits, the craptacularity that is UTC's tournaments remains confined to the region where apparently people clamor for such things. Stop mirroring this nonsense and pretending to yourself that it constitutes good quizbowl; if you're interested in getting some help for a tournament you want to run, contact an experienced and competent editor.
I will personally edit only one collegiate tournament next year, Sword Bowl, to be held in January 2008. It will be geared for less experienced teams, smaller colleges, and junior college teams.
That's shocking and an innovation no one has thought of before. A tournament geared towards new teams, you say?! Revolutionary, please help me find my monocle.
It will be canonical and will contain some answers you have heard of even outside of quizbowl.
What the hell does this even mean? Will there be more tossups on interstate highways (cue entrance of one of the Lyons, noted defender of interstate highway questions)?
It will not include eight-sentence tossups, or bonus answers who weren't among Robert Trent's 15 favorite Nigerian authors, so I'm sure it will not meet the standards of some. If you consider such tournaments to be beneath you, feel free to stay away.
How's beating up on that strawman working out for you? Good exercise, I'm sure. Because, you see, no one has ever produced six-line pyramidal questions with accessible bonus answers! Oh no, Charlie Steinhice will be the first to do that!
Quit fucking pretending that this is about Robert Trent complaining about not enough Okigbo questions or whatever latest fallacy you're trying to propagate. You got called on that shit last time, and it's just as false today as it was a year ago. Most of the answer selections at Moon Pie were passable (although a good number were not); the core issue remains the crappiness of the questions themselves, not the difficulty of the answers. Also, I find it amusing that you don't see the irony of setting up the difficulty strawman when this tournament included bonus parts on Charles Chesnutt characters and demanded that we identify characters from
The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
I find it amusing that people have posted criticism to this forum, and then declare that the existence of these posts means "we've established repeatedly on this board"... anything. This board is a very useful forum and I learn a lot from the exchange of ideas. But it is a discussion board, not a governing body. The act of posting your opinion here and having a few of your friends agree is not the quizbowl equivalent of rapping the gavel and declaring a new man law. It does not mean that the 30-20-10 or 5-10-15 bonus, or questions on geography/military history/history of science/etc., or anything else you don't like is therefore considered verboten. Get over yourselves.
Oh waah, you hurt my feelings. You know what? When I say that "we've established," I mean that the people who actually know two shits about writing questions and editing tournaments have established. I don't poll the populace to find out if they think evolution or the Big Bang is true, and I sure as shit am not going to poll the field of a typical UTC tournament to attempt to derive a quizbowl consensus. Maybe you should be the one getting over yourself, because you're the one who is consistently out of sync with what's considered a quality tournament. Sounds a lot like arrogance to me!
Actually, I don't much care for the 5-10-15 myself. I stopped writing them and have taken to editing most of them out when they're submitted. The point is that I do so because I think they're a bad idea, not because you do. I like 30-20-10's more in the trash format than in academic, but the occasional academic one won't hurt. Now I'm tempted to add more, just to spite anyone (Northern or otherwise) who presumes he or she has the authority to "tell" rather than recommend such a change. (Actually, "gumption" says it quite nicely.)
The South will rise again! How nice that you came to the same conclusion using independent means. I have news for you: it's not an issue of "because we (Weiner, me, etc.) say so." It's an issue of what makes good quizbowl.
David may be a new editor, but he is an experienced question writer, and a good one. He's played for three colleges (UTC, Memphis, UTK) and was active in this game before you were.
I've never played on a tournament edited by David Moore. Judging from his current output, he's an experienced question writer much like I am the Crown Prince of Wales. Also, by my count, you've been active in the game at least twice as long as I've been, if not longer, and you still don't know what you're doing, so I'm forced to conclude that longevity is no indicator of competence.
I'm sorry if you don't know his name or his work, but I never felt I had to submit someone's credentials to you for approval before I accepted his or her gracious offer of help. I can't recall ever seeing a similar challenge issued to anyone else's credentials when they started writing or editing tournaments, including yours. I will not name the rest of the crew publicly at this point, just so you'll have to wait to challenge or attack them by name.
Well, you sure have spited us by not telling us their names, not that this would mean doodley squat to anyone. Of course, no one is demanding credentials, but when you say things like "experienced question writer" after asking that people be gentle because it was his first tournament, I'm inclined to say that this is a load of crap. No one is demanding credentials; we want good questions and if this tournament had been a roaring success, we would have all gone, "wow, that David Moore dude sure knows what he's doing." Of course that didn't happen. You (collective you) put out a shitty tournament, you get criticized; I know because I've been there as recently as last year. Unlike you, I didn't contort myself into believing that what I did was right, I took a fucking hint and did better next time.
There are not enough people in quizbowl willing to put in the time and effort as it is. The persistent negative tone in this forum would make anyone reluctant to enter the fray. I have spent years and countless hours trying to build this game; this discussion board seems more interested in tearing it down. If you want fewer tournaments with fewer attendees, keep it up.
I guess the negative tone drives away people who have issues with reading comprehension, because there's been an extensive effort (of which my short novella on question writing is the latest installment) on this board to elucidate just what is meant by good quizbowl. I love how people who persistently ignore these points get all huffy when called on it and claim that the negativity is driving them away. Well, if you'd bothered to read what other people are saying once in a while and think about it, maybe you wouldn't be producing crap and getting pilloried for it.
OK, you asked for it. Because when we have, the actual teams who actually attend our tournaments have pointedly told us that the questions were awful and asked us never to do that again. And yes, Matt, that includes yours.
Wonderful, the incompetent sitting in judgment over our work. I give no creedence to the idea that a bunch of schools that play CBI and NAQT IS series questions while pretending that this approximates collegiate quizbowl know anything about what constitutes a good question. I can only imagine the complaints: "We didn't know the answer on the first clue! There were too many clues! The bonuses had things I didn't learn in 10th grade!"
The reaction we got to that tournament from the attendees was worse than any tournament we've ever hosted (with one exception -- also a straight mirror that we didn't edit.) We were told by more than one established team that if we did it again, they would not attend. And I didn't throw you under the bus, did I? No, I have never once stated that in this forum, and wouldn't do so now, except that you asked.
Do it, I dare you. Let's hear every quibble about that tournament. I don't even care that it's been two years since, if you think it sucks a bag of donkey cocks, why don't you come out and say so? Present the arguments and let people consider them, instead of this passive-aggressive bullshit.
Given the choice between pleasing the frequent posters on this board or pleasing the schools who actually attend our tournaments, we'll go with our core constituency. Rip me all you want, it only seems to boost our turnout.
Enjoy being the one circuit in the country that doesn't play on good questions and whose teams (with the exception of clubs like Vanderbilt and Kentucky of yore, and maybe one or two others who actually write good stuff and go to quality tournaments) will never be competitive with anyone from outside the region.
To sum it all up, this discussion is dumb because Moon Pie sucked. If you want to know how not to suck, read the suggestions knowledgeable people post in the discussion threads. If you continue to suck, don't be surprised when you are the target of some rage, and also don't be surprised when people stop mirroring your stupid tournaments.