High School Skype Open June 29th-30th

[Weighted Companion Cube]

This is an announcemet for the First Anual HIgh School Skype Open, which will take place on June 29th and 30th.

The questions will be written by myself and a few of my quizbowl companions. I intend for them to be fairly easy, as to be answerable by everyone who plays. Think HSAPQ, but a bit easier. I think this will provide an excellent opportunity for players to refresh their abilities in the usually dead summer. I will post a sample packet sometime in the near future. There will be powers and negs
Distribution-
4/4 History
4/4 Literature
4/4 Science
2/2 Fine Arts
3/3 RMP
1/1 Social Science
1/1 Geo
1/1 Trash

Format- (subject to change, depending on interest, and available readers) Friday- Teams will be broken up into four groups of 5 and will play a round robin for preliminary rounds. Any ties in record at the end of this will be broken based upon who won the head to head match, if a circle of death happens, the two teams with the lowest PPB will play one another on a half packet, and the winner of that will play the team with the highest PPB on another half packet.
Saturday-The top two teams from each group will be split into two upper brackets of four. The top team from each of those brackets will play in an un advantaged final. The same procedings as Friday will be followed in case of a tine. The 12 teams not in the top two teams from each bracket will be broken into groups of four and play a round robin. The 3 top teams from those brackets will be placed in a circle where the two teams with lower ppb will play a half packet for a chance to play the team with the highest ppb on a full packet in a lower bracket championship.

Logistics- Each team will be given a schedule with a moderator's name (I will provide all of their skype names before hand, to eliminate the possibility of a massive slow down) and the members of that team will be call that moderator for their match.

Issues- Seeing as this is a tournament that will be on the internet, it is likely that some will have issues with their internet. We'll try and be as flexible with this as possible without slowing the whole tournament down. If a person disconects, they have 120 seconds to reconect. If they are unable to do that, the match will continue, and that person can call in again once they reconect.

Teams- You can join this tournament in a few ways. One is by yourself, another is with one other person, and the last is with up to 3 from your state. People who join by themseles or with one other person will be put on team with other people who do the same (unless it is requested otherwise). I will try and balance teams the best I can. To join, please post here, or send an email to cloverfield742@gmail.com with your name, grade from the previous year, and school you are from along with the state. To be eligible, you must be a current high schooler or have graduated this year. If there is a need for more people, I may allow some college Freshmen to play as well.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? This is my first tournament that I have had to do the logistics for, so please, if there is an obviously better way to run this, please tell me.

[Weighted Companion Cube]

Field
Nathaniel Boughner, 11, New Kent High School, Virginia. Skype name- NKBoughner
Sameen Belal, Walter Johnson High School, Maryland. skype name: samssystem
Tom Moore. Fisher Catholic, 10, Ohio, Skype Name- TDMoore7
Ammad Mansoor, 9th Grade, Pikeville High School, KY, Skype name ammad50
Qian Mei, 10th grade Centennial High School, Maryland, Skype- chunky.clams
James Haubert, 12th, Detroit Catholic Central, MI, skype name-Jimmy Haubert
Willie Ha, Hunter College High School, New York, 11 Skype name: ha.willie
Harrison Gatlin, Grade 12, Kinkaid School, Texas,Skype name hgatlin21
Sanjana Rajagopal 10 Ridgewood High School NJ Skype Name: sanjanarulz
Rohan Nag, 11, MLK Magnet, Tennessee. Skype name- brohan972

Team 1- (witty name to come)
Justin S 12 Torrey Pines California skypename: songjustin
DoWon (Dan) Kim 10th, School: Torrey Pines High School CA Skype: danny96221

[Weighted Companion Cube]

Also, I will need readers, if you can read for this, please email me or post here, it'd be much apreciated.

[No Electricity Required]

Any ties in record at the end of this will be broken based upon who won the head to head match, if a circle of death happens, the two teams with the lowest PPB will play one another on a half packet, and the winner of that will play the team with the highest PPB on another half packet.

PPG is a much better metric for breaking ties within brackets than PPB. It is also a lot better to break head-to-head ties by PPG as well because head-to-head tiebrackers benefit one team for winning a particular match, without giving the other team credit for the other games that they won two be in the tie. More data is better than less data.

[Horned Screamer]

Why not just write this set and actually run it as a real tournament in the fall and actually make money off of it?

[Weighted Companion Cube]

Why not just write this set and actually run it as a real tournament in the fall and actually make money off of it?

I wanted to make a skype tournament

[Horned Screamer]

Yeah, but, like, why? Is there REALLY a need for this? Because I can tell you there IS a need for good invitational sets to be written for actual tournaments.

[MorganV]

Considering more sets were written this year than any single area was able to mirror, do you really see a lack of sets as being a problem?

EDIT: Also I'll probably play this, teammates pending.

[Horned Screamer]

I mean, there is always a need for questions, and more importantly, Skype quizbowl tournaments are a horrible idea and the fetishization of video chatting in quizbowl needs to end. I think the Skype League Madden runs is a terrible idea, and don't want to see it spread any further, much less see people start diverting questions that could be used in real tournaments towards it to produce fresh sets. If Collin were to write some packets that got sent to a real editor and combined with the work of some other teams, that would be infinitely more productive for the quizbowl world than this idea.

[Christ, I Know]

Yeah, there are a lot of options out there that probably be better than this. For example, if it's happening next year, you could collaborate with Dunbar on DAFT, or with another school on another set. In addition, since this set is going to be on the novice side of things, there is always the possibility of you contributing a packet to SCOP or something in exchange for a free copy of the finished set for you to mirror.

[NKBoughner]

I don't quite understand why everyone wants to rip this idea, he can make money if he'd like, he can run a free tournament if he'd like. The OSPL is fun and competitive, and run at a time when otherwise I wouldn't be able to play quiz bowl. There also isn't exactly a shortage of sets to play at actual sites, so this one wouldn't necessarily be much needed.

[Weighted Companion Cube]

I mean, there is always a need for questions, and more importantly, Skype quizbowl tournaments are a horrible idea and the fetishization of video chatting in quizbowl needs to end. I think the Skype League Madden runs is a terrible idea, and don't want to see it spread any further, much less see people start diverting questions that could be used in real tournaments towards it to produce fresh sets. If Collin were to write some packets that got sent to a real editor and combined with the work of some other teams, that would be infinitely more productive for the quizbowl world than this idea.

I'm curious of your reasoning for this mentality. It's not really a "fetishization." I, along with the vast majority of people I assume, prefer actual face to face play that over the internet. However, that's nearly impossible in the middle of the summer. So, I made this. The notion that there is always a need for questions is false. There were multiple good sets that didn't get mirrored in certain areas of the country, and even areas of heavy play (Illinois, for example) didn't play all the available sets. We made a tournament at DCC, that didn't get played because hardly anyone signed up for it.
So please, if you don't like how I'm doing this, don't play in it. If you think this a waste of valuable resources, write your own tournament. I think this idea is interesting, and it seems to have resonated fairly well with the community overall.

[Horned Screamer]

The quizbowl community is very receptive to awful ideas time and time again. Just look at the Quiz Bowl facebook group, which currently consists of 90% high schoolers yelling "TINYCHAT" over and over and over.

You are making a lot of faulty assumptions though. Just because a set has tossups that are longer than 4 lines and uses ACF formatting doesn't make it good, despite what you think. There were lots of sets this year, but lots of them were awful or too hard and had no business being mirrored around the country, such as your beloved DAFT III, or the RM/TP set that was a mess at NIU, or BDAT. There weren't enough housewritten sets that were easy, truly good, and worthy of being mirrored elsewhere, and we need more of these next year, especially since right now I know of none of them happening in the fall and there are some sets that were good that aren't happening again. If we eliminated all the mirrors of bad sets and had a couple really good sets to offer in their place, that would be a whole lot better. Thus, you or someone like you submitting some packets to an event overseen by a very good editor would in fact be incredibly productive, far more than wasting the time to write an entire set for an incredibly limited audience of people who you know that want to be read questions on the internet.

Similarly, NAQT does in fact always need questions, and if you spent the time to write a bunch of middle school or college questions for them, that would still be more productive than this.

Also, like, open tournaments do exist in the summer, you know that, right? There isn't some dead zone where NASAT happens and then quizbowl dies until September. DCC hosted one last summer, even! There's no reason somebody couldn't host an actual face to face event on some uncleared high school set instead of this.

Skype being the location of actual competitions is terrible though, and I am very annoyed that this precedent of quizbowl online is being set. If you want to practice on an old set with some friends, uh, go nuts, but if you extend beyond that into the ridiculous Dave Madden territory of attempting to hold a competition on Skype, you either end up with his current situation of reading a bunch of old questions to players who have already heard them, which is patently worthless as a competition, or else you end up with your situation where you waste a phenomenal amount of time producing a set with incredibly limited utility. Just because some dumb high schoolers on the internet think it's kewl doesn't change that fact.

[DrCongo]

What Collin's doing is a wonderful idea. He's writing quiz bowl questions for other quiz bowlers to play and enjoy. There can't be anything wrong with that. Skype quiz bowl is indeed not as fun in my opinion as actually going to a tournament, but quiz bowl is quiz bowl, and a serious player will study the packets and become better for when he or she plays in real tournaments.

[Horned Screamer]

It's not bad, like, cosmically or anything, but it's not good either for quizbowl to have this stuff going on.

[Ukonvasara]

He's writing quiz bowl questions for other quiz bowlers to play and enjoy. There can't be anything wrong with that.

That's...not necessarily true!

[Weighted Companion Cube]

The quizbowl community is very receptive to awful ideas time and time again. Just look at the Quiz Bowl facebook group, which currently consists of 90% high schoolers yelling "TINYCHAT" over and over and over.

You are making a lot of faulty assumptions though. Just because a set has tossups that are longer than 4 lines and uses ACF formatting doesn't make it good, despite what you think. There were lots of sets this year, but lots of them were awful or too hard and had no business being mirrored around the country, such as your beloved DAFT III, or the RM/TP set that was a mess at NIU, or BDAT. There weren't enough housewritten sets that were easy, truly good, and worthy of being mirrored elsewhere, and we need more of these next year, especially since right now I know of none of them happening in the fall and there are some sets that were good that aren't happening again. If we eliminated all the mirrors of bad sets and had a couple really good sets to offer in their place, that would be a whole lot better. Thus, you or someone like you submitting some packets to an event overseen by a very good editor would in fact be incredibly productive, far more than wasting the time to write an entire set for an incredibly limited audience of people who you know that want to be read questions on the internet.

Similarly, NAQT does in fact always need questions, and if you spent the time to write a bunch of middle school or college questions for them, that would still be more productive than this.

Also, like, open tournaments do exist in the summer, you know that, right? There isn't some dead zone where NASAT happens and then quizbowl dies until September. DCC hosted one last summer, even! There's no reason somebody couldn't host an actual face to face event on some uncleared high school set instead of this.

Skype being the location of actual competitions is terrible though, and I am very annoyed that this precedent of quizbowl online is being set. If you want to practice on an old set with some friends, uh, go nuts, but if you extend beyond that into the ridiculous Dave Madden territory of attempting to hold a competition on Skype, you either end up with his current situation of reading a bunch of old questions to players who have already heard them, which is patently worthless as a competition, or else you end up with your situation where you waste a phenomenal amount of time producing a set with incredibly limited utility. Just because some dumb high schoolers on the internet think it's kewl doesn't change that fact.

Thank you for your input, but my response is I disagree 100% Questions are questions. Just because this is through a medium that you don't enjoy doesn't make this a waste of time. Again, if you want more good tournaments, why don't you spend the time to write one that is used in an ideal setting. I want to make a skype tournament, and will do so.

[Horned Screamer]

You do realize you're talking to somebody who's been involved in the direction of 12 separate tournaments in this year alone, no?

[Weighted Companion Cube]

You do realize you're talking to somebody who's been involved in the direction of 12 separate tournaments in this year alone, no?

Well good for you. Seeing as you have done that many, this really shouldn't matter.
This is my tournament, I will use it as I like.

[Weighted Companion Cube]

And in all actuality, seeing that this is going to have a very limited venue, this set could still very well be played as an actual tournament.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

There are tons of uncertainties with online quizbowl as it is to ever run a tournament on it. Also, no offense, but you have no writing and editing experience so there's no guarantee that a tournament written by you will be worth playing. What I suggest instead is to write however many questions you like and find some place to read it online to whoever wants to show up. You satisfy your question writing itch, you get to see your questions played, everyone gets to hear questions.

[Grams's Go-Go Boots]

You do realize you're talking to somebody who's been involved in the direction of 12 separate tournaments in this year alone, no?

Well good for you. Seeing as you have done that many, this really shouldn't matter.
This is my tournament, I will use it as I like.

If you're going to pull the "appeal to doing something yourself" card (which is a lame card to play anyway), and then get burnt with the accurate response of "I do more than 99.5% of people in quizbowl," you can't just go "yeah, well, that's like, your opinion, man."

[Francis the Talking France]

This is getting far too juicy for a quiz bowl forum.

Wouldn't it be advantageous to limit this to a certain audience anyway, considering the fact that it's going to be easier than HSAPQ, which is I guess, verging on novice. If the set is in fact of the novice difficulty, chances are that this would be better suited for newer players. Usually newer players have very little knowledge of quiz bowl, let alone the forum at which very good players (I'm an exception) congregate about the upper echelons of quiz bowl-related things.

I guess if you want this to be a fun little shindig on the interwebs, have at it, but it seems like this set would benefit a larger part of the QB community that you're not really reaching out to.

Adding onto the post 2 above mine: I would just read whatever questions you've written on tinychat for fun and leave it at that, because that's where the online attention seems to be going.

[Weighted Companion Cube]

There are tons of uncertainties with online quizbowl as it is to ever run a tournament on it. Also, no offense, but you have no writing and editing experience so there's no guarantee that a tournament written by you will be worth playing. What I suggest instead is to write however many questions you like and find some place to read it online to whoever wants to show up. You satisfy your question writing itch, you get to see your questions played, everyone gets to hear questions.

I'm writing History and some of the Social Sciences. Editing is not being done by me.

[Weighted Companion Cube]

Please everyone, this is a tournament announcement, not a discussion. If you take issue with what I am doing, please Email or message me and I'll talk to you about anything you are concerned with. Other than that, please limit all posts to either signing up or comments directly involving this tournament. If you don't like it, don't play in it. Thanks.

User was banned for 24 hours for telling others how to post. - Staff

[Standard-winged Nightjar]

but if you extend beyond that into the ridiculous Dave Madden territory of attempting to hold a competition on Skype, you either end up with his current situation of reading a bunch of old questions to players who have already heard them, which is patently worthless as a competition

If that's the case, then why did we fill up the field 6 times over for OSPL? Some people obviously see value in it, and I don't think for a nanosecond that most players in OSPL have heard/memorized even a tiny fraction of the questions we use. And if so, so what? Repetition is the key to knowledge.
As someone who does do more than 99.5% of people in quiz bowl, let me offer my $.02 here. Collin, I think this is a good idea in theory, but in practice, I'm not sure how many people you're going to get. If you get 80 people (and you may), then it probably has value. If you get, say 15-20, then it's not worth writing a whole set for them.
A while back, I posted about running summer tournament(s) at Ridgewood High School in NJ. Since my schedule is absolutely insane until June 15 or so, I need to hold off for now on details there. But potentially, there may be some interest in a mirror, set collaboration, etc.
Other than that, I volunteer at some point after HSNCT to help edit any non-science questions with whatever you come up with, and if you need readers, I should be able to help out. Anyway, good for you for showing initiative, and I (and likely other NHBB people) are happy to work with you to make this a valuable exercise worth playing. Just not for the next five weeks...

[Horned Screamer]

Just because the activity is popular doesn't mean that its results aren't pretty much worthless due to the fact you're reading questions to people who have already heard some of them.

[Jeremy Gibbs Paradox]

but if you extend beyond that into the ridiculous Dave Madden territory of attempting to hold a competition on Skype, you either end up with his current situation of reading a bunch of old questions to players who have already heard them, which is patently worthless as a competition

If that's the case, then why did we fill up the field 6 times over for OSPL? Some people obviously see value in it, and I don't think for a nanosecond that most players in OSPL have heard/memorized even a tiny fraction of the questions we use. And if so, so what? Repetition is the key to knowledge.
As someone who does do more than 99.5% of people in quiz bowl, let me offer my $.02 here. Collin, I think this is a good idea in theory, but in practice, I'm not sure how many people you're going to get. If you get 80 people (and you may), then it probably has value. If you get, say 15-20, then it's not worth writing a whole set for them.
A while back, I posted about running summer tournament(s) at Ridgewood High School in NJ. Since my schedule is absolutely insane until June 15 or so, I need to hold off for now on details there. But potentially, there may be some interest in a mirror, set collaboration, etc.
Other than that, I volunteer at some point after HSNCT to help edit any non-science questions with whatever you come up with, and if you need readers, I should be able to help out. Anyway, good for you for showing initiative, and I (and likely other NHBB people) are happy to work with you to make this a valuable exercise worth playing. Just not for the next five weeks...

I cannot stress enough how funny I found this and hope you are soon scribing for Modern Family.

[Standard-winged Nightjar]

but if you extend beyond that into the ridiculous Dave Madden territory of attempting to hold a competition on Skype, you either end up with his current situation of reading a bunch of old questions to players who have already heard them, which is patently worthless as a competition

If that's the case, then why did we fill up the field 6 times over for OSPL? Some people obviously see value in it, and I don't think for a nanosecond that most players in OSPL have heard/memorized even a tiny fraction of the questions we use. And if so, so what? Repetition is the key to knowledge.
As someone who does do more than 99.5% of people in quiz bowl, let me offer my $.02 here. Collin, I think this is a good idea in theory, but in practice, I'm not sure how many people you're going to get. If you get 80 people (and you may), then it probably has value. If you get, say 15-20, then it's not worth writing a whole set for them.
A while back, I posted about running summer tournament(s) at Ridgewood High School in NJ. Since my schedule is absolutely insane until June 15 or so, I need to hold off for now on details there. But potentially, there may be some interest in a mirror, set collaboration, etc.
Other than that, I volunteer at some point after HSNCT to help edit any non-science questions with whatever you come up with, and if you need readers, I should be able to help out. Anyway, good for you for showing initiative, and I (and likely other NHBB people) are happy to work with you to make this a valuable exercise worth playing. Just not for the next five weeks...

I cannot stress enough how funny I found this and hope you are soon scribing for Modern Family.

Huh? What's funny? Trying to support someone with an idea that with a little help could be enjoyable for others?
And meanwhile, before I go back to editing questions at 2:54 on a Saturday morning, the point of OSPL is a PRACTICE league. I have made this point all along, and everyone knows it. No one is under any illusions that OSPL is a serious competition along the lines of a tournament, hence it being free, hence no one getting too upset if someone's not there on any given day. Seriously, do you think there's no value in playing old questions for practice? Give me a break.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

or BDAT.

Just chiming in here to say that the BDAT editors did indeed realize their tournament was far too hard, and have enlisted my help in editing their set for next year which should be completed in the Fall (we are shooting for October). Sounds like somebody remembers that i'm the guy that complains about every set being too hard and they think i can actually improve one before it comes out. Cool idea. After CR runs our tournament today, i'll be more directly involved in the editing and production of this set, which already has a significant number of questions written.

[Horned Screamer]

Yeah, that's good, I have talked to the BDAT editors and they are trying to do what they can to make the set better, so I hope that set is good this year (and I actually got conscripted into helping them find experienced collaborators to help them, so if anybody who's been involved in a good tournament before wants to work on a set, get in touch with Norcross).

[Weighted Companion Cube]

I'm changing th set up to 12 teams, as 20 was a little over zealous. Anyways, the field is a quarter full, so keep signing up!
Questions are coming along nicely, and I think I'll be able to play test the set after NSC.

[sbfromcopley]

I sent you a message but I forgot to include my skype username which is sbfromcopley. Also, how are you going to pick teams between the people who signed up alone? Is it going to be completely random or are you going to try to split up teams evenly based on what you know about each player.

[Weighted Companion Cube]

I sent you a message but I forgot to include my skype username which is sbfromcopley. Also, how are you going to pick teams between the people who signed up alone? Is it going to be completely random or are you going to try to split up teams evenly based on what you know about each player.

I'm going to make teams from people who sign up solo, and if I don't know the person at all, I'll try and dig up stats from them to make teams,

[Standard-winged Nightjar]

I'll read for this. Also, bring the set to ACE IL so I can edit it there. I also presume you'll get either players or readers or both from Ridgewood if you haven't heard from them already.

[tinioril]

I'll tentatively sign up for this, it seems like a fine idea, and my Skype username is also tinioril.
Having not actually played on Skype ever, how does it work? Video or audio chat? How do you buzz? How do you answer?

[Transparent Pudding]

I don't have a "fetish" for video chat, so apologies to Charlie, but I can read. raynell.cooper is my skype thingamajig.

[dtaylor4]

Two weeks out, what's the latest?

[Weighted Companion Cube]

Two weeks out, what's the latest?

Unless I get a sudden rush of interest, I'm probably going to have to move this to later this year, the set will be ready by the original date, however, so if anybody wants it I can give it to them.

[Weighted Companion Cube]

Yah so this isn't going to be happening, the set is still going to be available, however. I might see if I can get it polished enough to run as an actual tournament next season or try and do a skype-tournament some time in the fall.

[Mr. Scogan]

Yah so this isn't going to be happening, the set is still going to be available, however. I might see if I can get it polished enough to run as an actual tournament next season or try and do a skype-tournament some time in the fall.

Why is this not happening, and what is the set's completion percentage?

[Weighted Companion Cube]

Yah so this isn't going to be happening, the set is still going to be available, however. I might see if I can get it polished enough to run as an actual tournament next season or try and do a skype-tournament some time in the fall.

Why is this not happening, and what is the set's completion percentage?

The amount of people isn't enough to run this.
I stopped working on it and starting working on other things when I saw interest dried up, so it's like 50%ish done.

[Mr. Scogan]

Yah so this isn't going to be happening, the set is still going to be available, however. I might see if I can get it polished enough to run as an actual tournament next season or try and do a skype-tournament some time in the fall.

Why is this not happening, and what is the set's completion percentage?

The amount of people isn't enough to run this.
I stopped working on it and starting working on other things when I saw interest dried up, so it's like 50%ish done.

You had twelve people sign up, including myself. I like your premise behind this. However, you probably expected way too much.

Who all even wrote on this effort? You said you were only writing "history and some of the social sciences". What do you realistically expect to be the usage of this set? Isn't DCCAT II supposed to be a fall event? I don't want to sound overly critical or annoying about this, but you have a set that you appear to be writing by yourself that is only halfway "ish" done the day before the event. And your school is hosting a housewrite supposedly in the fall. Why not put some of your questions to DCCAT where they can be edited and polished and actually played? Do you plan on completing this project?


Edit: why not just let everyone do a solo team? That's twelve teams.

[Weighted Companion Cube]

Yah so this isn't going to be happening, the set is still going to be available, however. I might see if I can get it polished enough to run as an actual tournament next season or try and do a skype-tournament some time in the fall.

Why is this not happening, and what is the set's completion percentage?

The amount of people isn't enough to run this.
I stopped working on it and starting working on other things when I saw interest dried up, so it's like 50%ish done.

You had twelve people sign up, including myself. I like your premise behind this. However, you probably expected way too much.

Who all even wrote on this effort? You said you were only writing "history and some of the social sciences". What do you realistically expect to be the usage of this set? Isn't DCCAT II supposed to be a fall event? I don't want to sound overly critical or annoying about this, but you have a set that you appear to be writing by yourself that is only halfway "ish" done the day before the event. And your school is hosting a housewrite supposedly in the fall. Why not put some of your questions to DCCAT where they can be edited and polished and actually played? Do you plan on completing this project?

Questions are written by myself, Connor Teevens, and Ryan Dillon.
Yah, I was a little over excited, but in my defense, I had at least four people say they would make teams of four and sign up, and none of them actually did.
DCCAT and this is are completely independent. There isn't any question overlap. I'm not in charge of DCCAT, btw, in case anyone thinks so.

I would like to finish this and market it as a novice tournament, worst comes to worse, I wouldn't mind giving this out to people so they can use it as virginal practice material. I'll post more about it come fall.

EDIT: To answer your question, I though about doing that at one point. I decided not to as this tournament is a lot easier than DCCAT, so it made more sense (to me) to just write different questions for both.

[Mr. Scogan]

Yah so this isn't going to be happening, the set is still going to be available, however. I might see if I can get it polished enough to run as an actual tournament next season or try and do a skype-tournament some time in the fall.

Why is this not happening, and what is the set's completion percentage?

The amount of people isn't enough to run this.
I stopped working on it and starting working on other things when I saw interest dried up, so it's like 50%ish done.

You had twelve people sign up, including myself. I like your premise behind this. However, you probably expected way too much.

Who all even wrote on this effort? You said you were only writing "history and some of the social sciences". What do you realistically expect to be the usage of this set? Isn't DCCAT II supposed to be a fall event? I don't want to sound overly critical or annoying about this, but you have a set that you appear to be writing by yourself that is only halfway "ish" done the day before the event. And your school is hosting a housewrite supposedly in the fall. Why not put some of your questions to DCCAT where they can be edited and polished and actually played? Do you plan on completing this project?

Questions are written by myself, Connor Teevens, and Ryan Dillon.
Yah, I was a little over excited, but in my defense, I had at least four people say they would make teams of four and sign up, and none of them actually did.
DCCAT and this is are completely independent. There isn't any question overlap. I'm not in charge of DCCAT, btw, in case anyone thinks so.

I would like to finish this and market it as a novice tournament, worst comes to worse, I wouldn't mind giving this out to people so they can use it as virginal practice material. I'll post more about it come fall.

EDIT: To answer your question, I though about doing that at one point. I decided not to as this tournament is a lot easier than DCCAT, so it made more sense (to me) to just write different questions for both.

This makes sense, but why a novice tournament? If I'm understanding you correctly, 50% of this tournament is done. How many packets are there, and how many are finished? If you have a somewhat reasonable amount already finished, why not just consider letting this event run and just let people have fun with it? I agree a much more practical and utilitarian use would be to let this run as a regular season event, or a "real" event at an actual tournament. Personally I'd like to play "fresh" Skype bowl, I'm sure I'm not the only one (granted, I do skype bowl hardly ever). If for some reason you can't get a mirror of this set, holding this during the fall or winter wouldn't be a horrible idea.