Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' consent

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Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' consent

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

I'm going to keep this short, since it's a pretty simple, unassailable point.

Sometimes, editors don't, or don't want to, power-mark their question sets. If your tournament is running an un-powermarked set, you do not get to power-mark it, or award powers at your tournament, without the consent and permission of the editors. This has happened several times over the past few years. It betrays a lack of respect for, and a lack of confidence in, the editing team whose questions you're using. If you believe your tournament must have power-marked tossups to be sufficiently entertaining, use a set which is already power-marked or ask the editors before doing anything to modify their product.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Cody »

I honestly cannot believe that this ever happens, or that it still happens. It is frankly unacceptable to do anything to a set you've received - adding powermarks, modifying questions, etc. - without first contacting the editors and getting their approval. Not being told "no" does not mean you can do whatever you want to their set.
Last edited by Cody on Mon Feb 17, 2014 12:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

Are you referring to Solon's tournament? If so, it wasn't necessarily power-marked. They just declared the first three lines were powers.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Cheynem »

That still doesn't seem right, especially if you don't ask the editors first.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by dtaylor4 »

Mr. Scogan wrote:Are you referring to Solon's tournament? If so, it wasn't necessarily power-marked. They just declared the first three lines were powers.
If you add powers when there aren't any, it's power-marked, whether you actually edit the documents or not.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

Cheynem wrote:That still doesn't seem right, especially if you don't ask the editors first.
I'm not arguing one side or the other, I was just clarifying something that wasn't clear to me. I'm not sure what happened, I thought it was just implied they edited the tournament themselves to incorporate power-marks when they simply decided a buzz in the first three lines is a power. If that is against the set writer's wishes, then I agree it shouldn't be done. Sorry for the confusion.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Excelsior (smack) »

If you add powers when there aren't any, it's power-marked, whether you actually edit the documents or not.
Well, no, I don't think that the producer of a set has (or should have) the power to specify what scoring system tournaments should use, which is effectively what you are suggesting here. More generally, I think that there should be no barrier whatsoever to changes in the way a set is played, provided that there are no modifications to the actual _content_ of the questions, which is what the producer of a question set is selling.

Auxiliary questions: should tournaments be able to use bouncebacks without receiving explicit authorization from the editors? Should tournaments be able to take an already-powermarked set and run it with NSC scoring (20-point powers, 0-point negs)? Can a powermarked set be played without powers? What if a tournament director has an idiosyncratic view of correctness rules that are e.g. stricter on vowel pronunciation than NAQT/ACF/whatever?

If an editor wishes to impose stricter constraints on the use of their questions than "do not modify the text of the questions", he or she should _explicitly_ indicate what is and is not permissible. It is not at all obvious to me (and I've been doing this for a while!) that a set of questions is inherently and implicitly attached to a given set of rules and norms about the use of the questions that go beyond what common sense would dictate. I would never powermark an unpowermarked set given to me - but that would be because powermarking either 1.) takes a while, or 2.) is done haphazardly by specifying a line-based cutoff, neither of which are ideal. Not because this is somehow obvious.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by AKKOLADE »

Excelsior (smack) wrote:Auxiliary questions: should tournaments be able to use bouncebacks without receiving explicit authorization from the editors? Should tournaments be able to take an already-powermarked set and run it with NSC scoring (20-point powers, 0-point negs)? Can a powermarked set be played without powers? What if a tournament director has an idiosyncratic view of correctness rules that are e.g. stricter on vowel pronunciation than NAQT/ACF/whatever?
None of these are editorial decisions, though, unlike the addition of power marks.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Excelsior (smack) »

Grams's Go-Go Boots wrote:
Excelsior (smack) wrote:Auxiliary questions: should tournaments be able to use bouncebacks without receiving explicit authorization from the editors? Should tournaments be able to take an already-powermarked set and run it with NSC scoring (20-point powers, 0-point negs)? Can a powermarked set be played without powers? What if a tournament director has an idiosyncratic view of correctness rules that are e.g. stricter on vowel pronunciation than NAQT/ACF/whatever?
None of these are editorial decisions, though, unlike the addition of power marks.
I would argue that "buzz in the first three lines = 15" is not an editorial decision, in the sense that it can be implemented with zero modification of the questions. It is a stupid decision, but also a non-editorial one.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by AKKOLADE »

I consider a power mark part of the question, regardless of how it is determined. Adding them is an editorial act, playing without them is a TDing act.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Auroni »

Yeah, declaring any part of a question power is an editorial decision, distinct from determining how many points they're worth once they're already there.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Cody »

Excelsior (smack) wrote:Well, no, I don't think that the producer of a set has (or should have) the power to specify what scoring system tournaments should use, which is effectively what you are suggesting here. More generally, I think that there should be no barrier whatsoever to changes in the way a set is played, provided that there are no modifications to the actual _content_ of the questions, which is what the producer of a question set is selling.
This is wholly separate from your auxiliary questions (all of which are fine, btw). You cannot take a set offered to you without powermarks and include powermarks in any shape, way, or form - whether by actually modifying the question content or declaring "everything in the first 3 lines is power" (which, I might add, is almost worse than modifying the questions - at least when the questions are [reprehensibly] modified, you can expect some level of fairness in the decision for powers. Not so by declaring "buzz before x line" is power.). This is not something that really needs saying, nor should things have to be explicitly laid out. Imposing arbitrary point values on procured questions that are not in accordance with the editor's wishes are wrong no matter how it is done. It is, in essence, modifying the questions, whether or not they've truly been modified.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Excelsior (smack) »

Okay, another question: suppose somebody runs a tournament on an unpowermarked housewrite and decides, for whatever reason, that they want to implement "old NSC-style" powers, in which you receive power for a correct answer at any point before "For 10 points" is read. I have little knowledge of old NSC, but I seem to recall that the sets were created without explicit marks of the form "(*) For 10 points", and it was assumed to be a feature of the _rules_ (rather than the _set_) that power would be awarded pre-FTP. Is it reasonable for the TD to do this?

Basically, I'm trying to identify where the boundary between the set (which should not be modified without consultation with the editors) and the rules (which I assume we all agree are to some degree under the control of the TD) lies.

EDIT:
This is not something that really needs saying, nor should things have to be explicitly laid out.
Well, clearly it _is_ something that needs saying, or else Matt Jackson wouldn't have posted this in the first place. There are many people involved with quizbowl that haven't absorbed the norms of the circuit, and it is - as I said - something that _does_ need to be explicitly laid out, because this is not something that is immediately apparent.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by dtaylor4 »

Excelsior (smack) wrote:Okay, another question: suppose somebody runs a tournament on an unpowermarked housewrite and decides, for whatever reason, that they want to implement "old NSC-style" powers, in which you receive power for a correct answer at any point before "For 10 points" is read. I have little knowledge of old NSC, but I seem to recall that the sets were created without explicit marks of the form "(*) For 10 points", and it was assumed to be a feature of the _rules_ (rather than the _set_) that power would be awarded pre-FTP. Is it reasonable for the TD to do this?

Basically, I'm trying to identify where the boundary between the set (which should not be modified without consultation with the editors) and the rules (which I assume we all agree are to some degree under the control of the TD) lies.
Even with non-blind powers, the writer/editor still has to determine where to place the power mark (which is the FTP in this situation).

The problem with the arbitrary decision is that what if mirror A wants to make it every 3 lines, and mirror B wants to do "old-style NSC" powers?
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Speaking in the abstract, and only for myself, I would not be averse to approving a decently-thought-out scheme for handing out default powers at a non-power-marked tournament; I can easily envision myself responding to a question such as "We're thinking of handing out 20-point powers for a buzz during the first 3 lines of the question, is that okay?" by saying "Sure, though that may lead to some wonky differences in how easy questions are to power -- go ahead". I don't see much reason to do old-NSC-style powers anymore, since the old NSC itself has been gone for about five years, but I might approve that as well if there were a decent reason (e.g. a very weak region). I would be less likely to approve of any independent attempts to power-mark questions on a tossup-by-tossup basis.

But none of that changes the principle, which is just that it's always worth asking first before running the set in a way that differs from the original intent of the editors. That's all!
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

Adding powermarks to a set involves someone making a substantial number of judgments as to a certainly difficulty of clues being worth extra points. Powermarking is about making judgment calls, and making them consistently within categories and within the entire set. Whether you want to be stingy or liberal with your powers is an editorial decision; whether you think Clue X is power worthy is an editorial decision; whether Tossup A has a power mark of comparable placement to Tossup B is an editorial decision. The person who adds powermarks to a set is a de facto editor of the set doing a colossal amount of work, and TDs should not essentially promote themselves to the position of editor without asking the original editors first.

Declaring that "pre-FTP is worth 20" or "the first X lines of text are worth power" or similar sidesteps all but one of the judgment calls above -- the only judgment is deciding how many lines you want to go, or if you want to go to FTP, or what have you. By taking such a blind, general approach to powers, you don't actually make any judgments on any clues, and as such I feel that such a decision is not editorial, but rather TDing.

However, I feel it is a very bad decision to make, because the general approach brings its own problems. Tossups with pronunciation keys and tossups without economical sentence structure will have stingier powermarks because fewer relevant things are said by the time the Line-X-is-over-now-it's-not-power-mark is reached. If different categories have different editors with different writing styles, you're throwing balance out of whack. It's not much, because powers aren't a terribly large factor in final game outcome, but it's definitely not negligible.

So, to me, the "editor vs. TD" debate on arbitrary powermarking is moot because arbitrary powermarking is bad. If you want powers, ask your question provider; because power marks are so incidental, I imagine many providers will say "as long as someone qualified is doing it and you make it clear that it's not an original editor in charge of that, that's OK." If they say no, that's that, because the alternative being presented here isn't a fair way to run things.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Excelsior (smack) »

The problem with the arbitrary decision is that what if mirror A wants to make it every 3 lines, and mirror B wants to do "old-style NSC" powers?
I'm not seeing why this is an issue for basically any tournament besides SCT, which is the only multi-site tournament that _requires_ that fields be nationally comparable.
But none of that changes the principle, which is just that it's always worth asking first before running the set in a way that differs from the original intent of the editors. That's all!
To be clear, I do agree that this is a good principle in general. It's just that it needs to be clearly articulated so that people less exposed to the circuit are aware of this.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by fett0001 »

RyuAqua wrote:I'm going to keep this short, since it's a pretty simple, unassailable point.

Sometimes, editors don't, or don't want to, power-mark their question sets. If your tournament is running an un-powermarked set, you do not get to power-mark it, or award powers at your tournament, without the consent and permission of the editors. This has happened several times over the past few years. It betrays a lack of respect for, and a lack of confidence in, the editing team whose questions you're using. If you believe your tournament must have power-marked tossups to be sufficiently entertaining, use a set which is already power-marked or ask the editors before doing anything to modify their product.
If you sell someone a set, and you do not provide restrictions on what they are allowed to do, you should not be surprised when those unstated restrictions are ignored.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by vinteuil »

fett0001 wrote:
RyuAqua wrote:I'm going to keep this short, since it's a pretty simple, unassailable point.

Sometimes, editors don't, or don't want to, power-mark their question sets. If your tournament is running an un-powermarked set, you do not get to power-mark it, or award powers at your tournament, without the consent and permission of the editors. This has happened several times over the past few years. It betrays a lack of respect for, and a lack of confidence in, the editing team whose questions you're using. If you believe your tournament must have power-marked tossups to be sufficiently entertaining, use a set which is already power-marked or ask the editors before doing anything to modify their product.
If you sell someone a set, and you do not provide restrictions on what they are allowed to do, you should not be surprised when those unstated restrictions are ignored.
I believe that in this case what is being sold is the right to use the set for a tournament, not the set itself, and there's an important distinction there.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

fett0001 wrote:
RyuAqua wrote:I'm going to keep this short, since it's a pretty simple, unassailable point.

Sometimes, editors don't, or don't want to, power-mark their question sets. If your tournament is running an un-powermarked set, you do not get to power-mark it, or award powers at your tournament, without the consent and permission of the editors. This has happened several times over the past few years. It betrays a lack of respect for, and a lack of confidence in, the editing team whose questions you're using. If you believe your tournament must have power-marked tossups to be sufficiently entertaining, use a set which is already power-marked or ask the editors before doing anything to modify their product.
If you sell someone a set, and you do not provide restrictions on what they are allowed to do, you should not be surprised when those unstated restrictions are ignored.
No, editors shouldn't have to spell out common sense rules on the use of their sets. If you as TD announce that you're running BHSAT, then change the set you're given without permission, you're falsely advertising to your field and potentially damaging Yale's brand. The fact that so few hosts mess with editors' work each year suggests that they generally recognize this as obvious.

Even if you're convinced that this is unclear, you're missing the point of this thread by chastising Matt for not providing restrictions. The entire purpose of this thread is to warn future hosts that this behavior is not OK and prevent it from happening.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Mike H: When I announce sets, I make sure the initial announcement explicitly asks hosts not to modify the set in any way, so as to preclude situations such as this one. Such a modifier has been on the BHSAT set description for at least the past two years, and was also on the description for MAGNI before Auroni and I solicited mirrors for that set. Other sets have done the same. That seems to count as "restrictions" in my mind, at least.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by fett0001 »

RyuAqua wrote:Mike H: When I announce sets, I make sure the initial announcement explicitly asks hosts not to modify the set in any way, so as to preclude situations such as this one. Such a modifier has been on the BHSAT set description for at least the past two years, and was also on the description for MAGNI before Auroni and I solicited mirrors for that set. Other sets have done the same. That seems to count as "restrictions" in my mind, at least.
Didn't mean to come off so harsh.

I think that my point stands though: Editors should not expect people, especially TD's who are on the periphery of the circuit, to make the same assumptions as they do about what they intend for their set. Spell them out, be specific.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by fett0001 »

Vernon Lee Bad Marriage, Jr. wrote:
No, editors shouldn't have to spell out common sense rules on the use of their sets. If you as TD announce that you're running BHSAT, then change the set you're given without permission, you're falsely advertising to your field and potentially damaging Yale's brand. The fact that so few hosts mess with editors' work each year suggests that they generally recognize this as obvious.

Even if you're convinced that this is unclear, you're missing the point of this thread by chastising Matt for not providing restrictions. The entire purpose of this thread is to warn future hosts that this behavior is not OK and prevent it from happening.
I was using "you" to mean the quizbowl community at large, and not Matt specifically. Sorry, Mattj.
I don't think that this thread will accomplish that goal. I think that the list of people who modify sets, and the list of people who will read this thread are nearly mutually exclusive.
Thus, I think it's on the editors to communicate with their customers better.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Excelsior (smack) »

Another thing to consider: every year when we at Yale run our A-set tournament, we skip all the computational math questions. Imagine that we had never asked NAQT for permission to do this.* This, to my mind, is a far more egregious change to a set than the mere addition of length-based powermarks. Is this okay as a general practice, or are we just making an exception for computational math because we think it's icky?

*As a matter of fact, I don't know if we have ever actually asked NAQT if they were okay with us doing this, though it is pretty clear that in practice they don't mind. Paging Jeff Hoppes or other NAQT people - the top of each NAQT packet makes reference to a "license agreement". Where is this document (is it just the Uses / Distribution / etc boilerplate?), and does it address the situation I described above?
Mike Hundley wrote:I don't think that this thread will accomplish that goal. I think that the list of people who modify sets, and the list of people who will read this thread are nearly mutually exclusive.
Also, this seems pretty true. I mean, this thread is a good thing and has started a useful discussion, but I think the most important takeaway is that more explicit restrictions on use are necessary if people want to avoid this problem in the future.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by AKKOLADE »

Excelsior (smack) wrote:Another thing to consider: every year when we at Yale run our A-set tournament, we skip all the computational math questions. Imagine that we had never asked NAQT for permission to do this.*
I'm pretty sure NAQT has publicly stated that it is okay to skip math comp.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Important Bird Area »

Excelsior (smack) wrote:the top of each NAQT packet makes reference to a "license agreement"
This is in fact the boilerplate listed at the top of each packet (uses/distribution/security/violations/questions). It covers pretty much what you would expect: don't steal our questions, don't use practice questions to run a tournament, etc.

As for alterations in format, the last bit covers these:
NAQT wrote:We are happy to license alternate uses of these questions. However, if you are not sure if something you want to do with these questions is permitted, please ask first.
We know that many hosts prefer to skip math comp (and some prefer to skip pop culture). This is fine by us.

Modifications to the format/scoring system are also, in general, ok. Such modifications exist in great profusion around the country: think no powers, open powers, no minus-fives, bouncebacks, PACE format, four-quarter format, a number of state-specific formats.

We have two general guidelines for using these:

1) Specify the format you will use in your tournament announcement (it does no one any good when teams arrive expecting standard-NAQT and get a local format, or vice versa)

2) Indicate the format you used when you send NAQT your tournament results, so that we can display them correctly on naqt.com (on our results pages, this is the marker for "scoring rules" next to the date of the tournament).
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Grace »

Famous Matt Jackson Subtlety (TM) aside, the issue with the Solon mirror that provoked this thread has been resolved to our satisfaction.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

A very pompous performance by the Matts in this thread. I agree with those who say that if you have strong opinions about what people should or should not do with your packets, you should make these clear before giving your packets to anyone. You should not assume that there are universal or even majority norms about these things or that people on the fringes of the circuit will know about those norms if they do exist.

This is what NAQT does. This is what Matt Weiner does: read any tournament announcement from him and it has all sorts of clauses about how he will hang you if you do certain things with the set or allow certain types of teams to play. This is what virtually any entity that releases a written product into the ether does to maintain editorial control of the content.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

I suppose I'll make the point that we like to archive statistics (and in fact have a database to do so!) - when we look at statistics we like to compare teams across the country. Messing with the power markings actively messes up the what the statistics are meant to say, thereby making it more difficult to compare across regions. Lots of people like to use powers as an indicator of team strength, so if we allow power marks to be moved to locations which they were not intended to be, the statistics would be skewed somewhat, hereby making post-tournament analysis more difficult. (Not to mention the youngsters who are sure to complain to Fred that their team should be ranked higher because they "powered" tons of questions. :party:)
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:A very pompous performance by the Matts in this thread. I agree with those who say that if you have strong opinions about what people should or should not do with your packets, you should make these clear before giving your packets to anyone. You should not assume that there are universal or even majority norms about these things or that people on the fringes of the circuit will know about those norms if they do exist.

This is what NAQT does. This is what Matt Weiner does: read any tournament announcement from him and it has all sorts of clauses about how he will hang you if you do certain things with the set or allow certain types of teams to play. This is what virtually any entity that releases a written product into the ether does to maintain editorial control of the content.
1. The request for mirrors stated clearly that hosts were not allowed to interfere with packets.
2. Solon High School is not on the fringes of the circuit, nor is Chris Romero, nor is Jonah Greenthal. The people who do this are very often perfectly aware of how the circuit works.

You don't really have any idea what you're talking about.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Excelsior (smack) »

The request for mirrors stated clearly that hosts were not allowed to interfere with packets.
You are missing the point, which is that it is entirely possible that a reasonable person could construe "power until three lines" as "not interfering with packets". Surely you aren't claiming that the people at Solon intentionally and knowingly misused the BHSAT packets.
Solon High School is not on the fringes of the circuit, nor is Chris Romero, nor is Jonah Greenthal. The people who do this are very often perfectly aware of how the circuit works.
I don't know what Chris Romero or Jonah Greenthal have to do with this, but let me just point out that Solon is, in fact, fringe-y enough to be unaware of minor and unarticulated circuit norms like this one, as are most high schools. Yes, they do go to a lot of tournaments and host a lot of tournaments, but it is entirely possible to do those things while still being disconnected from the discourse that goes on on this board. Does anybody currently at Solon even post here?
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by jonah »

Excelsior (smack) wrote:
Solon High School is not on the fringes of the circuit, nor is Chris Romero, nor is Jonah Greenthal. The people who do this are very often perfectly aware of how the circuit works.
I don't know what Chris Romero or Jonah Greenthal have to do with this?
Neither do I.

Providers of a set have a responsibility to make it clear how the set may and may not be used, and users of a set have a responsibility to respect those wishes and ask for any necessary clarification. I have no idea why this is an issue that take 30 posts to discuss.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

jonah wrote:
Excelsior (smack) wrote:I don't know what Chris Romero or Jonah Greenthal have to do with this?
Neither do I.
Presumably it is a reference to the time you edited that VCU high school set without the editors' permission.

Anyway, you're certainly right that this much discussion is pretty unnecessary: don't modify questions without the editors' permission. It's that simple.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by jonah »

Ukonvasara wrote:
jonah wrote:
Excelsior (smack) wrote:I don't know what Chris Romero or Jonah Greenthal have to do with this?
Neither do I.
Presumably it is a reference to the time you edited that VCU high school set without the editors' permission.
That's not an accurate summary of what happened with that set, but those events do inspire this addendum: If you're a host contact for a set, make sure everyone relevant is on the same page with respect to answers you give to questions from hosts.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15315

The tournament director made it clear this was going to be PACE formatted. This was a public post on this forum.

So why the outrage? Was there an indication made to the Solon team this wouldn't be okay?

Totally edited for clarity purposes.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by pajaro bobo »

Mr. Scogan wrote: The tournament director made it clear this was going to be PACE formatted. This was a public post on this forum.
"PACE format" doesn't necessarily mean "with powers".
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

AlexLiu wrote:
Mr. Scogan wrote: The tournament director made it clear this was going to be PACE formatted. This was a public post on this forum.
"PACE format" doesn't necessarily mean "with powers".
Then what does it imply?
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by AKKOLADE »

Mr. Scogan wrote:
AlexLiu wrote:
Mr. Scogan wrote: The tournament director made it clear this was going to be PACE formatted. This was a public post on this forum.
"PACE format" doesn't necessarily mean "with powers".
Then what does it imply?
It could imply bouncebacks, it could imply no negs, it could imply round robin scheduling, etc etc
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by pajaro bobo »

Mr. Scogan wrote: Then what does it imply?
It's such a vague statement that the only thing you can be sure about is 20 tossups and 20 bonuses.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

Grams's Go-Go Boots wrote:
Mr. Scogan wrote:
AlexLiu wrote:
Mr. Scogan wrote: The tournament director made it clear this was going to be PACE formatted. This was a public post on this forum.
"PACE format" doesn't necessarily mean "with powers".
Then what does it imply?
It could imply bouncebacks, it could imply no negs, it could imply round robin scheduling, etc etc
Every PACE formatted event Solon has hosted to my knowledge has used powers, bounce backs, no negs. Considering the PACE format allows for the possibility for powers, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume this tournament would. The point is totally missed here. I am sure whoever was in charge of mirrors for BHSAT did at least some research as to whether or not they were giving this set to a legit tournament in the first place. Maybe there was a caveat sent to the Solon team stating "don't use powers" before the tournament occurred, maybe not. I don't know. But considering there is a post on this board stating it was going be using a format that has _traditionally_ used powers and the set was _still_ sent to them is what is aggravating about this whole deal. This would basically imply no one from Yale is at fault and it's totally okay to vilify a high school team who paid to use your set because they were ignorant of a not well-known "rule" about adding powermarks to a set.

Edit: upon further reflection, I wrote this in a somewhat hostile tone.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

I'm not sure why people are completely overlooking Grace's post, but you don't have to worry about the specifics of the Solon event anymore. We've been in contact with them and everything is fine between them and us.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Kyle »

Hypothetically, if somebody were to decide without permission to use the "British" scoring system of having five-point bonus parts rather than ten-point bonus parts, would that provoke the same ire as illicit powermarking? Or would that not be an "editorial" change to the questions?

(Note that I'm not saying that anybody should ever actually use five-point bonus parts)
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Urech hydantoin synthesis »

Doesn't the [10] before every ACF-format bonus (and most housewritten bonuses) proscribe anything besides 10-point bonuses? (Except for when it specifies something like [5,5])
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Kyle »

Christ, I Know wrote:Doesn't the [10] before every ACF-format bonus (and most housewritten bonuses) proscribe anything besides 10-point bonuses? (Except for when it specifies something like [5,5])
Right, but the argument was made earlier in this thread that adding powermarks constituted an editorial decision, in contrast to various other rule changes which aren't editorial. For instance, if I decided you could get an extra two seconds to confer on bonuses, that wouldn't be an editorial change. So I'm asking how we know what constitutes an editorial change.
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Re: Don't power-mark question sets without the editors' cons

Post by Angry Babies in Love »

Anything that requires, or should require, a quizbowl interpretation of the questions written should be an editorial decision. Saying that there are negs or no negs, or removing powers, or bouncing back bonuses, do not require a person to have ever played a game of quizbowl, let alone written or edited a set. Placing a powermark well should not be trusted to a) a random tournament director or b) placement of power after the third line. Powermarking is an art and it should be left to the artist. If you're going to hang a painting in your museum, it's fine to hang it wherever, as long as it follows general conventions (on a wall, not in a room full of 12th-century woodcuts, etc.). But if you look at and say "you know, I think this painting would be better with a sheep on it", you better ask the artist, who will almost definitely say no. As Matt Jackson said in the original post, it's a lack of respect
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