Reminisce about moderator mishaps here

[Weighted Companion Cube]

Favorite bad moderator moments.

"English Civil war?"
"...prompt?"
"War of the Roses?"
"Power!!!"

"Adams?"
"Prompt"
"John Adams"
"Prompt"
"John Quincy Adams"
"Hoooray you go it!"

[Mr. Scogan]

One that sticks out in my head in my short playing career would be seeing a moderator prompt on a state when the question starts "This U.S. city...".

[David Riley]

My favorite (the Illinois people have all heard this story) was about 15 years ago at a state qualifier:

The untrained moderator first pronounces the word "matrices" as "mattresses". Both teams howled and the moderator got very defensive. I called a time out and asked my team to cut her some slack as she was untrained.

A little further along, she got a question about factorials and thought that the exclamation points meant to read the numbers "with feeling". Now the teams really howled and she stormed out of the room.

While it was funny then, an untrained moderator should NEVER read for any type of qualifier or championship. If the host of such can't provide competent moderators, then they probably shouldn't be hosting.

[Cubfan125]

Ignore this.

[in on these shenanigans]

Here's one my team ran into just last saturday:

blah blah question content blah blah edit that out blah

[Cubfan125]

Sorry -- my bad. Thanks for catching that.

[Scaled Flowerpiercer]

There was one incident where someone's accent made it impossible to distinguish between the words "this," "that," and "the," which, given how demonstrative pronouns tend to indicate what is being asked for, led to a fair amount of confusion. The same moderator also contemplated the acronym "MLB" for some time, finding it to be a very strange combination of letters.

I also remember a time when Dvorak was not accepted by a moderator who did not know how to pronounce the name; there will always be imperfect readers, there isn't much that can be done about it other than tournament directors making the effort to train moderators.

Oh, and it isn't so much bad moderating so much as a hilarious mistake, but for a category named A E I O U (something to do with vowels...) my coach asked me how to pronounce it, believing it to be a French word.

[Charles Martel]

I think there's no reason to really complain about (although it's fun to joke about),
A. Moderators making mistakes that can be easily corrected, like not accepting an answer that should have been due to pronunciation. I (in an embarrassing moment) once rejected "Faber" on a tossup on "Weber", not having heard the correct pronunciation before. The team protested after I finished, and I accepted their answer. No harm done
B. Moderators mispronouncing a word in an understandable way. The best advice to untrained moderators for pronouncing words is, IMO, to pronounce everything you don't know phonetically. You'll get everything wrong, but people will know what you're trying to say.

[Dan-Don]

I think there's no reason to really complain about (although it's fun to joke about),
A. Moderators making mistakes that can be easily corrected, like not accepting an answer that should have been due to pronunciation. I (in an embarrassing moment) once rejected "Faber" on a tossup on "Weber", not having heard the correct pronunciation before. The team protested after I finished, and I accepted their answer. No harm done

It's "VEY-ber." I hope the team that you gave points to for an incorrect answer had a fun time joking about you.

[Charles Martel]

"Faber" is how I heard it, and they might have pronounced it right. Even if they didn't, it's a reasonably close pronunciation, clearly an attempt at the correct pronunciation, and closer than mine.

[jonah]

"Faber" is how I heard it, and they might have pronounced it right. Even if they didn't, it's a reasonably close pronunciation, clearly an attempt at the correct pronunciation, and closer than mine.

Jeez, Adam, why didn't you have your hand right on their vocal cords to check whether or not they voiced the first consonant?

[RyuAqua]

In order to try and extract something serious out of this last business: Don't both the NAQT and HSAPQ rules contain passages allowing moderators to ask for more specifics on an unclearly-heard or unclearly-pronounced answer? (The canonical example there is a player that says [muh-NAY] to answer a painting question, which could be "Monet" or "Manet", who the moderator asks to "spell it".) In a situation like Adam's in the future, do the existing rules permit moderators to ask something like "give me the first consonant you said" in order to more accurately determine whether the answer is acceptable?

[Dominator]

In order to try and extract something serious out of this last business: Don't both the NAQT and HSAPQ rules contain passages allowing moderators to ask for more specifics on an unclearly-heard or unclearly-pronounced answer? (The canonical example there is a player that says [muh-NAY] to answer a painting question, which could be "Monet" or "Manet", who the moderator asks to "spell it".) In a situation like Adam's in the future, do the existing rules permit moderators to ask something like "give me the first consonant you said" in order to more accurately determine whether the answer is acceptable?

I think this is too harsh. Is there really a Veber (pronounced closest to "Faber") we are worried people will confuse with the author of Protestant Ethic? The most reasonable explanation here is that a team knows the right answer but not the right pronunciation, which should not be penalized (especially considering it is a very common consequence of self-study, which quizbowl seems to like). I think the only way to avoid this situation is to work patiently with new moderators until they learn about Weber, Euler, Goethe, and the rest.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

It's been my rule of thumb after 6 years of moderating tournaments that it's better to be extremely lenient with pronunciation. Sure, the quizbowl elites (TOP TEAMS) will say that it's better for a player to just learn the answer after getting it wrong, but i fervently disagree. I've seen young players completely shut down during a game after being negged for not knowing how to pronounce a name and butchering it such that the moderator didn't accept it. That does not encourage that player to continue; it gives him or her another reason to think they are not good enough compared to the teams that "just know stuff."

For instance, i've seen a player, years ago, negged for pronouncing W. S. Maugham as "MAW-gum." Ludicrous. We do not need to be looking for additional ways to make players incorrect; in fact, we need to be doing exactly the opposite.

[David Riley]

About twenty=odd years ago, a question in art history had the clues shells, curlicues, etc. The student answered "rococo", to which the moderator replied "Well I'll accept that, but down here we say "baroque".

[Madagascar Serpent Eagle]

If this thread has become "laugh at bad moderators," I'll throw in the story of Ohio's local-format regionals a few years back where our team was really confused after hearing several questions in a row about "Bar-coo" art. Then, at states (with a different person), I was asked to spell my buzz of "Cure-isle", and when I responded with "Kurile" got a confused stare for about 30 seconds before "Well...there's not an e at the end...but...I guess I'll give it to you." The next year, the same guy refused to accept "government murdering people" for a rather bizzare question of capital punishment, despite my accurate description of the phenomenon.

[the return of AHAN]

Well, if we're piling on, at a tournament last year, on bad questions, my team captain buzzed a toss-up about the artist who painted "The Scream," and said (what sounded like) "Edvard Moonk." Before the moderator even opened her mouth, I knew what was coming... She ruled incorrect, and our opponent promptly rebounded with (what sounded like) "Edward Munch." Luckily, I won the argument when the opposing coach immediately gave way, but still....

[Broad-tailed Grassbird]

If this thread has become "laugh at bad moderators," I'll throw in the story of Ohio's local-format regionals a few years back where our team was really confused after hearing several questions in a row about "Bar-coo" art. Then, at states (with a different person), I was asked to spell my buzz of "Cure-isle", and when I responded with "Kurile" got a confused stare for about 30 seconds before "Well...there's not an e at the end...but...I guess I'll give it to you." The next year, the same guy refused to accept "government murdering people" for a rather bizzare question of capital punishment, despite my accurate description of the phenomenon.

More data for the quest to figure out Joe Nutter's convoluted political beliefs.

[Alliance in the Alps]

Once, I was initially negged for pronouncing Jacques-Louis David's last name correctly because the moderator didn't know that the painter's last name is not pronounced like how it reads.

In order to try and extract something serious out of this last business: Don't both the NAQT and HSAPQ rules contain passages allowing moderators to ask for more specifics on an unclearly-heard or unclearly-pronounced answer? (The canonical example there is a player that says [muh-NAY] to answer a painting question, which could be "Monet" or "Manet", who the moderator asks to "spell it".) In a situation like Adam's in the future, do the existing rules permit moderators to ask something like "give me the first consonant you said" in order to more accurately determine whether the answer is acceptable?

I do this all the time when I'm not exactly sure what exactly was given as an answer, but I don't think enough moderators at local tournaments are aware of even the rules about this, let alone know the correct pronunciation of such things.

[Kyle]

A moderator at a college tournament at Brown contributed quite a lot of new ideas for the expansion of the quizbowl canon, including the tournament debuts of "Austrian aborigines" and Heracles' labor to defeat the "Namibian lion."

[Scaled Flowerpiercer]

In games, there is no such thing as underlining, etc. to guide what constitutes an acceptable answer, so once when I answered a question which mentioned a "two word term" with "the dust bowl," the moderator was really unsure of accepting the answer, because of that third word I threw in the beginning.

[Sulawesi Myzomela]

My sophomore year in high school we came across a moderator who read a question that was SUPPOSED to use the phrase "this warm blooded organism", although she said something somewhat similar except not at all. Another moderator once referred to our assistant coach as being "on the pot" after she left for the bathroom, and once got so angry during a match that he picked up our buzzer system and slammed it into the ground.

[Coelacanth]

"Austrian aborigines"

I was once subjected to the opposite; we were asked about an Australian composer which turned out (I think) to be Mozart.

[bt_green_warbler]

the tournament debuts of "Austrian aborigines"

the Hallstatt culture is IMPORTANT and should come up at tournaments MORE OFTEN

[Matt Weiner]

A moderator at a college tournament at Brown contributed quite a lot of new ideas for the expansion of the quizbowl canon, including the tournament debuts of "Austrian aborigines" and Heracles' labor to defeat the "Namibian lion."

Is this the same tournament where Horatio Kitchener was "killed by a German mime?"

[Kyle]

A moderator at a college tournament at Brown contributed quite a lot of new ideas for the expansion of the quizbowl canon, including the tournament debuts of "Austrian aborigines" and Heracles' labor to defeat the "Namibian lion."

Is this the same tournament where Horatio Kitchener was "killed by a German mime?"

It was a slow and painful death, too -- he got trapped inside an invisible box and starved. But no, that was a different tournament. And the moderator said "mine" quite clearly, it's just that Jerry misunderstood.

[nadph]

I was once subjected to the opposite; we were asked about an Australian composer which turned out (I think) to be Mozart.

Quizbowl really needs to stop asking about minor figures like Mozart and concentrate on the real greats like Percy Grainger.

[cornfused]

A moderator at a college tournament at Brown contributed quite a lot of new ideas for the expansion of the quizbowl canon, including the tournament debuts of "Austrian aborigines" and Heracles' labor to defeat the "Namibian lion."

Was there a tossup on Neanderthals?


EDIT: I have been apparently beaten to this joke. Whoops.

[cornfused]

My sophomore year in high school we came across a moderator who read a question that was SUPPOSED to use the phrase "this warm blooded organism", although she said something somewhat similar except not at all. Another moderator once referred to our assistant coach as being "on the pot" after she left for the bathroom, and once got so angry during a match that he picked up our buzzer system and slammed it into the ground.

I believe that some time in the past an Illinois moderator (Coach Riley?) read a question that mentioned "hadrons" to a couple of Catholic schools, only he made a similar error.

[pray for elves]

My team once lost a game in high school because the moderator thought that "biochemistry" should be acceptable for "organic chemistry" since those are "totally the same thing."

[The Predictable Consequences]

I've had a moderator who took a solid two minutes to determine that pi/5 and one-fifth pi were not equivalent.

[David Riley]

Yes, Greg, that was me....and with two Christian schools as the opposing teams!