Best Practices for Resolving Factual Protests?

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QuestionCactus
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Best Practices for Resolving Factual Protests?

Post by QuestionCactus »

What is the best procedure for determining if a team's answer should have been prompted rather than rejected, or if the clues leading up to a buzz unambiguously described an answer not listed in the answerline?

Tangentially, from NAQT Rule J.8.c.:
Factual protests are only adjudicated if they affect which team wins the match. For example, if one team loses by 50 points and protests a 10-point bonus answer, the protest will not be adjudicated (even if that protest might affect statistics, such as a team’s points per tossup heard or points per bonus, that determine playoff seeding or other future aspects of the tournament).

(emphasis mine)
This seems like a bad rule. Is it in place because otherwise, essentially every protest would have to be adjudicated?
Arjun Panickssery (he/his)
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Cheynem
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Re: Best Practices for Resolving Factual Protests?

Post by Cheynem »

You seem to be asking two different questions. In regards to your latter, I think the idea there is to save time. Ideally, we would resolve every protest to make sure stats are accurate and to account for statistical tiebreakers. However, especially at large tournaments, there just isn't enough time to do that (especially when in many cases protests must be fired off to a protest committee or expert who may not even be at the tournament). This might also open the door for more frivolous protests fired off in blowout games (although I'm less concerned about that).
Mike Cheyne
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Re: Best Practices for Resolving Factual Protests?

Post by Important Bird Area »

Cheynem wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 11:10 amIdeally, we would resolve every protest to make sure stats are accurate and to account for statistical tiebreakers. However, especially at large tournaments, there just isn't enough time to do that (especially when in many cases protests must be fired off to a protest committee or expert who may not even be at the tournament).
Mike is exactly correct about this.
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