Kevin wrote:Is there a date set for the Auburn mirror?
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:Same but for Berkeley so I can book my flights
Knickerbocker glory wrote:Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:Same but for Berkeley so I can book my flights
We are tentatively planning to host it on March 17.
Mike Bentley wrote:Knickerbocker glory wrote:Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:Same but for Berkeley so I can book my flights
We are tentatively planning to host it on March 17.
When do you think you'll have the date confirmed?
Knickerbocker glory wrote:Mike Bentley wrote:Knickerbocker glory wrote:Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:Same but for Berkeley so I can book my flights
We are tentatively planning to host it on March 17.
When do you think you'll have the date confirmed?
When we have room reservations confirmed.
aseem.keyal wrote:Knickerbocker glory wrote:Mike Bentley wrote:Knickerbocker glory wrote:Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:Same but for Berkeley so I can book my flights
We are tentatively planning to host it on March 17.
When do you think you'll have the date confirmed?
When we have room reservations confirmed.
To expand on this, we've already sent in the request and it will hopefully be approved by next Friday (December 16th).
t-bar wrote:Is there a date set for the NYU site?
1.82 wrote:I am not speaking for anyone but myself, but I find it odd and inconsistent that the Ann Arbor site was nixed for being too close to the Minneapolis site but a New York site has been approved despite the existence of a previously-announced College Park site.
Granny Soberer wrote:1.82 wrote:I am not speaking for anyone but myself, but I find it odd and inconsistent that the Ann Arbor site was nixed for being too close to the Minneapolis site but a New York site has been approved despite the existence of a previously-announced College Park site.
It's less that it was "too close" and more that having Michigan and Minnesota sites would create two very small fields, rather than one healthy field. The editors apparently feel that both New York and College Park can support a reasonably-size field. I have no idea if that is true or not, but the Eastern Seaboard is much more dense than the Midwest so I certainly wouldn't be surprised.
1.82 wrote:Granny Soberer wrote:1.82 wrote:I am not speaking for anyone but myself, but I find it odd and inconsistent that the Ann Arbor site was nixed for being too close to the Minneapolis site but a New York site has been approved despite the existence of a previously-announced College Park site.
It's less that it was "too close" and more that having Michigan and Minnesota sites would create two very small fields, rather than one healthy field. The editors apparently feel that both New York and College Park can support a reasonably-size field. I have no idea if that is true or not, but the Eastern Seaboard is much more dense than the Midwest so I certainly wouldn't be surprised.
This would be fine if it were true that the East Coast could support multiple fields for a nationals-prep tournament, but it's not. When I last checked earlier this week, there were three teams signed up for the Maryland site of this tournament. Last year at the only East Coast site of (This) Tournament Is a Crime, there were six teams. Granted, several teams that year (including Maryland A) attended the Michigan site, so we can look back further to the previous year, when the only American East Coast site of "stanford housewrite" drew a field of fourteen teams, including three from Chicago and one from Michigan. Taking out the Midwestern teams, that leaves ten East Coast teams that played that tournament, which most certainly does not suggest that the field was robust enough to be split across two sites. For this reason, there has been only a single East Coast site (not counting Canada) of the spring open tournament the last three years, and there was no reason to think that things would be any different this year.
When Minnesota was awarded a mirror of this tournament, they agreed to host the tournament with the expectation that they would have the only Midwestern site. Similarly, when Maryland was awarded its mirror, everyone at Maryland expected that there would be no other East Coast site. When Michigan announced a site in spite of that, Minnesotans naturally took exception, leading to the Michigan site being canceled. Why, then, is this now happening again? For Berkeley to make the mistake of cannibalizing one field without informing its host is an honest mistake; to do it twice is a problem.
Great End wrote:1.82 wrote:Granny Soberer wrote:1.82 wrote:I am not speaking for anyone but myself, but I find it odd and inconsistent that the Ann Arbor site was nixed for being too close to the Minneapolis site but a New York site has been approved despite the existence of a previously-announced College Park site.
It's less that it was "too close" and more that having Michigan and Minnesota sites would create two very small fields, rather than one healthy field. The editors apparently feel that both New York and College Park can support a reasonably-size field. I have no idea if that is true or not, but the Eastern Seaboard is much more dense than the Midwest so I certainly wouldn't be surprised.
This would be fine if it were true that the East Coast could support multiple fields for a nationals-prep tournament, but it's not. When I last checked earlier this week, there were three teams signed up for the Maryland site of this tournament. Last year at the only East Coast site of (This) Tournament Is a Crime, there were six teams. Granted, several teams that year (including Maryland A) attended the Michigan site, so we can look back further to the previous year, when the only American East Coast site of "stanford housewrite" drew a field of fourteen teams, including three from Chicago and one from Michigan. Taking out the Midwestern teams, that leaves ten East Coast teams that played that tournament, which most certainly does not suggest that the field was robust enough to be split across two sites. For this reason, there has been only a single East Coast site (not counting Canada) of the spring open tournament the last three years, and there was no reason to think that things would be any different this year.
When Minnesota was awarded a mirror of this tournament, they agreed to host the tournament with the expectation that they would have the only Midwestern site. Similarly, when Maryland was awarded its mirror, everyone at Maryland expected that there would be no other East Coast site. When Michigan announced a site in spite of that, Minnesotans naturally took exception, leading to the Michigan site being canceled. Why, then, is this now happening again? For Berkeley to make the mistake of cannibalizing one field without informing its host is an honest mistake; to do it twice is a problem.
Last year there were actually two East Coast sites of TTIAC, one at Maryland and one at Harvard, with 6 and 8 teams respectively. So, it is true that there don't seem to be a ton of teams on the East Coast who seem to want to play a Nats- tournament. However, it seems that many of these Northeast/New England teams simply do not show up if there is only one site at Maryland--Columbia was the northernmost team to go to the Maryland site of Stanford Housewrite.
andDylan Minarik wrote:the existence of this [U of Michigan] site is bad for the Spring Open
Ryan Rosenberg wrote: having only one Midwest site makes the most sense
aseem.keyal wrote:It seems there is far more diverse assortment of opinions on moving the mirror than we originally anticipated. We're gonna hold off on a decision until Friday, to allow anyone else who wants to voice their opinion to do so here.
aseem.keyal wrote:We'd like to not dilute the field at the Maryland mirror of the tournament while still allowing teams like MIT, Harvard, and Yale to play the tournament.
Edward Lansdale wrote:At this stage of my quizbowl career, I'm not keen to travel to play, but the steady stream of open tournaments at NYU and Columbia allowed me to remain involved, and I suspect other veterans would like the same. The paucity of open tournaments, along with the distances needed to travel to play at these tournaments, effectively prevent people from sticking around and being a part of the community.
.Victor Prieto wrote:It's a stretch for NYC teams to come from New York to College Park, but it's implausible to expect anybody in Connecticut or Massachusetts to travel all the way down to Maryland. So, if there's some sort of community mandate that there should be only one East Coast mirror and it should be in College Park, you're basically saying "sucks to suck" to most of New England.
CPiGuy wrote:It's also not at all implausible to expect teams in Connecticut or Massachusetts to travel "all the way" down to Maryland -- in fact, those sorts of travel distances are being expected of other teams, in robust quizbowl circuits, for this very tournament! We're not saying "sucks to suck" to most of New England, we're saying "based on which teams were willing to host this tournament and expressed interest first, you're going to have to travel a longer distance". If you allow an NYU site to go through, you will, however, be saying "sucks to suck" to Maryland, because you'll be setting a precedent that Maryland is effectively allowed to host hard opens and expect a field of more than, say, 6.
Maybe I have skewed expectations of what constitutes a reasonable travel time, since I live in Maine and go to school in the Midwest, but what I'm basically hearing from people is that they expect all tournaments to be sufficiently close to them that they don't have to travel more than 4 hours, or in some people's cases, don't have to leave the city at all. I am also hearing that some of those teams would in fact rather not play the tournament than travel more than that. That is, in my opinion, an unreasonably entitled expectation to have of tournaments.
vinteuil wrote:CPiGuy wrote:It's also not at all implausible to expect teams in Connecticut or Massachusetts to travel "all the way" down to Maryland -- in fact, those sorts of travel distances are being expected of other teams, in robust quizbowl circuits, for this very tournament! We're not saying "sucks to suck" to most of New England, we're saying "based on which teams were willing to host this tournament and expressed interest first, you're going to have to travel a longer distance". If you allow an NYU site to go through, you will, however, be saying "sucks to suck" to Maryland, because you'll be setting a precedent that Maryland is effectively allowed to host hard opens and expect a field of more than, say, 6.
Maybe I have skewed expectations of what constitutes a reasonable travel time, since I live in Maine and go to school in the Midwest, but what I'm basically hearing from people is that they expect all tournaments to be sufficiently close to them that they don't have to travel more than 4 hours, or in some people's cases, don't have to leave the city at all. I am also hearing that some of those teams would in fact rather not play the tournament than travel more than that. That is, in my opinion, an unreasonably entitled expectation to have of tournaments.
Conor, you can say this all you want, but ZERO New England teams will show up for a Maryland mirror. That is a fact that has been demonstrated on numerous occasions, despite the continual reminders from the Midwest that many teams regularly travel that far. We can debate the reasons (I-95 can't help!), but telling us all that we need to suck it up will do nothing to increase the UMD site's "competitiveness."
1.82 wrote:My apologies; I missed the Harvard site because no stats were posted on hsqb. In any case, that means that the last two spring opens both had combined fields of 14. If we accept that six teams is the bare minimum necessary for a viable field for a hard tournament, then a group of 14 teams split across two sites requires an almost even split between fields to work. This was possible when sites were at Maryland and Harvard, but only with the presence of a large number of Maryland house teams. Placing the northern site further south cannot possibly augment a Maryland site that was already marginal last year, and it's not okay to spring that without notice on a Maryland club that announced their mirror well in advance.
CPiGuy wrote:I have, it appears, been Wrong On The Internet. I should probably not have attempted to include so many specific data points. I did just grab the driving times from google maps, though, so it's also not just ten hours from AA to Minneapolis, but I was making a comparison and didn't think it was a good idea to try to estimate different teams' driving habits. I don't think the loss of that one anecdotal point about PSU detracts from my overall argument, which is:
The editors of this tournament have already made it clear that they value having stronger fields at this tournament, even if it causes teams on the periphery of the mirror sites to have to travel around double what is typical in their circuit. If they'd made the opposite decision, and allowed Michigan to host, basically nobody would have a problem with this. If the culture in the Northeast circuit is that such inconvenienced teams won't travel to it at all, the solution is not to grant another mirror, less than two months before the tournament, that will take a significant portion of the field away from an established mirror, and according to historical data, will in fact cause the opposite of stronger, more condensed fields. If there's a northeast mirror at all, it should be in Boston or elsewhere in northern New England. Full stop. Anything else would be highly inconsistent on the editors' part, and extremely unfair to Maryland, who had their shit together enough to announce a tournament site well in advance, with the expectation (based on precedent) that it would be the only site on the East Coast.
CPiGuy wrote:and as Victor, who asserted an NYU mirror would be "very convenient" for him, a Penn State student, despite College Park being closer to State College than NYC is,
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:CPiGuy wrote:Honestly, I think a much bigger problem is that local teams aren't being proactive about signing up...
Sit Room Guy wrote:CPiGuy wrote:and as Victor, who asserted an NYU mirror would be "very convenient" for him, a Penn State student, despite College Park being closer to State College than NYC is,
Google maps says the drive from UMich to UMD is two hours less than the drive from UMich to Minnesota. You probably know more about your own transportation situation than I do though.
vinteuil wrote: ZERO New England teams will show up for a Maryland mirror.
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:For the record, I am not at all averse to the idea of a single regional mirror being in New York - I'd happily travel to that! New York is a far better city than DC anyway.
Off To See The Lizard wrote:Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:For the record, I am not at all averse to the idea of a single regional mirror being in New York - I'd happily travel to that! New York is a far better city than DC anyway.
That would be extraordinarily unfair to UMD. Let's not throw that idea out there.
aseem.keyal wrote:It seems there is far more diverse assortment of opinions on moving the mirror than we originally anticipated. We're gonna hold off on a decision until Friday, to allow anyone else who wants to voice their opinion to do so here.
Edward Lansdale wrote:aseem.keyal wrote:It seems there is far more diverse assortment of opinions on moving the mirror than we originally anticipated. We're gonna hold off on a decision until Friday, to allow anyone else who wants to voice their opinion to do so here.
Has a decision been made yet?
aseem.keyal wrote:Edward Lansdale wrote:aseem.keyal wrote:It seems there is far more diverse assortment of opinions on moving the mirror than we originally anticipated. We're gonna hold off on a decision until Friday, to allow anyone else who wants to voice their opinion to do so here.
Has a decision been made yet?
Yes, we are going ahead with the NYU mirror. The editors decided this based on what we think will maximize attendance, while still having a negligible impact on Maryland's field. While we understand that our decision may seem contradictory to our decision to cancel the Michigan mirror, we determined that moving the mirror further north to Harvard wouldn't greatly impact teams in the middle and encourage them to play at the Maryland site. I appreciate the input everyone gave on the issue, and we're sorry our inexperience and lack of caution caused it.
CPiGuy wrote:this is completely unrelated but can the OP be edited to link to the announcement posts for mirrors? It's really nice when you can immediately navigate to the announcement for any specific site from the main announcement and vice versa.
CPiGuy wrote:CPiGuy wrote:this is completely unrelated but can the OP be edited to link to the announcement posts for mirrors? It's really nice when you can immediately navigate to the announcement for any specific site from the main announcement and vice versa.
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