On my team, there's been a bit of a disagreement over how to promote ourselves on campus. Some of us (myself included) think that describing quiz bowl as "trivia" undersells it's serious academic nature and may turn off a lot of potential players who would otherwise be good at it. Others feel that it connects quiz bowl to something that people are already familiar with and may make it easier to recruit.
I was curious to see what the established community thought.
Use of the Term "Trivia"
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- Rikku
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Re: Use of the Term "Trivia"
At Toronto we're registered as the "Academic Trivia Club" and promote ourselves as such at the annual clubs fair, where last year we got around 100 signups, so it seems to be working for us. That said, a lot of our interest does come from people who played Reach for the Top, which is incontrovertibly trivia, unlike Quizbowl.
Zhenglin Liu
University of Toronto BASc MechEng 1T9+PEY, Engineering Science dropout
University of Cambridge (Clare College) MPhil Environmental Policy 2T2
University of Toronto BASc MechEng 1T9+PEY, Engineering Science dropout
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Re: Use of the Term "Trivia"
"Academic Trivia" should be a good compromise that leaves all semantic extremists unhappy and makes your activity understandable to the general population. If people ask "what's academic trivia?" you can reply "you know, stuff about history, literature, science, art, mythology, etc."
Anyone who would get offended by that is probably already on your team.
Anyone who would get offended by that is probably already on your team.
Bruce
Harvard '10 / UChicago '07 / Roycemore School '04
ACF Member emeritus
My guide to using Wikipedia as a question source
Harvard '10 / UChicago '07 / Roycemore School '04
ACF Member emeritus
My guide to using Wikipedia as a question source
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- Rikku
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Re: Use of the Term "Trivia"
"Academic trivia" sounds great. I was mainly worried about the ridges-on-a-coin/random-batting-averages questions that people associate with trivia, and it seems like "academic trivia" will avoid all that. Thanks!
Matt
Re: Use of the Term "Trivia"
No -- we advertise ourselves as "quizbowl" at clubs fair along with some sample questions from some old novice-level set or other. However, we are listed on the school's clubs listing as "Academic Trivia Club". I would change this name if I could, as I've found that it tends to mislead people who don't already know what quizbowl is/didn't visit us at clubs fair and instead email me or something, attracting people who think we do things like watch Jeopardy or play Trivial Pursuit (not that there's anything wrong with that!) rather than, well, play quizbowl. So they show up to one meeting, are inevitably overwhelmed, and it ends up being kind of a waste of everyone's time. So I've found "Quizbowl" to be a more effective name.The Assoluta Voice in Opera, 1797-1847 wrote:At Toronto we're registered as the "Academic Trivia Club" and promote ourselves as such at the annual clubs fair, where last year we got around 100 signups, so it seems to be working for us. That said, a lot of our interest does come from people who played Reach for the Top, which is incontrovertibly trivia, unlike Quizbowl.
Meghan Torchia
President, University of Toronto Academic Trivia Club (2015-2018)
"Garlic 2: Around the World" LearnedLeague 1-Day 49th/1150 (96th %ile), February 9th, 2022
University of Toronto, 2018, 2023
President, University of Toronto Academic Trivia Club (2015-2018)
"Garlic 2: Around the World" LearnedLeague 1-Day 49th/1150 (96th %ile), February 9th, 2022
University of Toronto, 2018, 2023