NEWB what is mirroring

[toratora12]

Hello all,
I am new to quizbowl.
Why do organizers disclose the question set that will be used in the competition? Is that standard practice?
Do they reveal all the questions that will be used in the competition or just the editor of the set?
Also, what is mirroring.

Thanks.
AJ

User was reminded to enable a signature. --Mgmt.

[Important Bird Area]

Welcome to the quizbowl community!

Why do organizers disclose the question set that will be used in the competition? Is that standard practice?

Yes, it is standard practice to announce the question set that will be used. (Otherwise it would be easy for teams to accidentally play the same questions twice! Which would be horribly unfair and/or a waste of time and travel expenses.) Announcements will say something to the effect of "this tournament will use [named question set] produced by [group/team/company that wrote and edited it]," but for obvious reasons not reveal details of the question content. It's normal and expected for a set announcement to post a "distribution" (how many questions are in each major category, of the form "there will be this many questions per round about chemistry").

Also, what is mirroring.

Mirroring is when the same question set is used at multiple sites around the country. For example, the main site of 2023 Penn Bowl took place at the University of Pennsylvania. But there were also a number of mirrors: events using the Penn Bowl question set, but held at other more distant locations (Harvard, Purdue, Texas, Berkeley, North Carolina, etc.)