The Quizbowl Resource Center

I added the ability to have tossups you've searched read by clicking the "Read # Results" link next to the Download one. I also added in the checkbox thing that Justin requested.

Is there any way we could upload packets ourselves? The database would grow a lot faster if we could do that.

Hello everyone,

I just added the logging in and score tracking features to the interface.

You first have to go to the login tab, then create an account (theres no encryption on the password or anything, so create at your own risk), log in, then read questions as normal. The answer checking system has not been changed, so if you get a question wrong that you should have gotten right, sorry for now. On the right, after the question is over, it'll show who buzzed before, at the same time as, or after you and their score.

Please tell me what you think. It's not the best tested feature, so there will probably be a ton of bugs. Also, I haven't spent much time styling, so it will look ugly for a while.

Once I learn if the system works, I can add cool stuff like leaderboards and other statistics.

The "Read To Me" section no longer checks answers. It's just timing out.

It seems to be working for me and some other people who have tried it. Is this happening to anyone else?

LucasBrown wrote:The "Read To Me" section no longer checks answers. It's just timing out.

Are you typing "buzz" to stop the question before you type in your answer?

Dishonor wrote:

LucasBrown wrote:The "Read To Me" section no longer checks answers. It's just timing out.

Are you typing "buzz" to stop the question before you type in your answer?

Yes. If it's relevant, I'm using Chrome on Ubuntu 10.04.
UPDATE: I moved over to Firefox, and it's fine.
On another note--How does the score tracking feature work? It's been jumping around all over the place...

Yes. If it's relevant, I'm using Chrome on Ubuntu 10.04.

I dunno, I've been using the exact same setup and haven't had any problems.

Here's a link to a preliminary leaderboard type page before I integrate it into the interface:
http://quizbowl.tpclubs.com/viewStats.php

sharadmv wrote:The reason a lot of answers are being ruled incorrect is because right now the answer checking is solely based on whether the input string is contained in the original tossup answer string.

Would you be able to add a way for people to either rule the answer as correct (as can occur on #scobowl) or update the answer line and fix the list of alternate answers (so you don't have to do it yourself for all 24,000+ tossups)?

I'm going to be working on fixing answer detection.

Just a quick question, does anyone know of an ideal formula for determining the leaderboard ranking? Right now, it's (Average correct buzzes)/(# of correct buzzes) and whoever has the lower score is ranked higher. I was thinking that I should take into account the variables of the category of questions buzzed on and the difficulty too.

Why not roughly divide it up by difficulty and have different leaderboards for the different difficulty levels?

Hello, just a quick update:

I added a leaderboard to the interface under the tab "Statistics". You can click on a name on the leaderboard to display pie charts of their buzzes.

I also conducted a minor stats reset. This might have removed you from the leaderboard, but you can get back on by playing.

sharadmv wrote:I'm going to be working on fixing answer detection.

Just a quick question, does anyone know of an ideal formula for determining the leaderboard ranking? Right now, it's (Average correct buzzes)/(# of correct buzzes) and whoever has the lower score is ranked higher. I was thinking that I should take into account the variables of the category of questions buzzed on and the difficulty too.

Yeah, I think Fred has a formula for the difficulty of sets relative to one another.

It's not a formula so much as "compare teams who played both an IS set and (insert set), find the difference in ppb, take the average, and then go to round numbers."

Fred wrote:It's not a formula so much as "compare teams who played both an IS set and (insert set), find the difference in ppb, take the average, and then go to round numbers."

Well, that does count as some sort of a formula. It's certainly better than putting each set on the same level.

Would you somehow be able to put a report wrong subject/change subject feature on the "Read to me!" page?

How did I just see this? This is awesome!

This is awesome and you are awesome. Many thanks to you from the team.

We LOVE this, it is a great tool. I have a question though. We can run it fine at school on Firefox, I can run it at home on Google Chrome, but students are having trouble running it at home if they have internet explorer. Are we doing something wrong? Is this something that can be addressed? Thank you!

MissIrene wrote:Are we doing something wrong? Is this something that can be addressed?

Yes and yes. Simply tell your students to stop using that pitiful excuse for a browser, and they should find that many of their internet-related issues are solved.

Prof.Whoopie wrote:

MissIrene wrote:Are we doing something wrong? Is this something that can be addressed?

Yes and yes. Simply tell your students to stop using that pitiful excuse for a browser, and they should find that many of their internet-related issues are solved.

the IRC wrote:that post was so ill-conceived

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:

Prof.Whoopie wrote:

MissIrene wrote:Are we doing something wrong? Is this something that can be addressed?

Yes and yes. Simply tell your students to stop using that pitiful excuse for a browser, and they should find that many of their internet-related issues are solved.

the IRC wrote:that post was so ill-conceived

It works perfectly on IE9--try upgrading.

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:

the IRC wrote:that post was so ill-conceived

I'll rephrase more politely for the sake of this anonymous group of IRC frequenters. (Note: I very much appreciate specific, person-to-person critiques of my behavior or mannerisms in just about all facets of life. How am I to become a better person otherwise? If anyone has any issues with me, please confront me directly/email/Facebook/actually talk to me, and we can try to work it out. Let's all try to make each other better people, right?)

Rephrased:
"Man, in this modern age, Internet Explorer is a very poor choice of browser. It is demonstrably less secure, less standards-compliant, and less user-friendly than a number of easily-available alternatives. Why not recommend to your students that they switch to a browser like Firefox, Chrome, or Safari, to name only a few of the better options than IE? I'm sure they'll thank you for it one day."

Stop posting about browsers.

Out of curiosity, is there any way that you could let individual users create a list of "favorite sets" or saved groups of sets and question types so that all the person would have to do is select that group and then play rather than scrolling through the list of tournaments and selecting each individual tournament that they wanted? Also, this database is a wonderful study tool. Thanks for making it.

Great tool. It will be interesting to see if this makes teams more competitive in the short term, and makes sets more difficult in the long term.

Uncanny wrote:Great tool. It will be interesting to see if this makes teams more competitive in the short term, and makes sets more difficult in the long term.

Both of those things have already happened and will continue.

Could someone put a link to this under the links on the right side of the www.hsquizbowl.org homepage?

I'm having an issue in that once I get a question wrong on "Read to me," it keeps on repeating the same question even if I get it right. I'm using IE 8, and before anyone comments, I just got this laptop and haven't had the chance to download Chrome yet.

Charbroil wrote:Could someone put a link to this under the links on the right side of the http://www.hsquizbowl.org homepage?

Done.

Is it a stretch to say that this is the best quizbowl resource out there?

EDIT: Spelling

unleashmayhem wrote:Is it a stretch to say that this is the best quizbowl resouce out there?

If there wasn't a forum that in itself introduced and has the access to these resources, I would say that it is.

The website seems to be unavailable right now. What's going on?

I'm experiencing the same problem. Will this be fixed soon?

Whatever caused it, it's fixed now.

Uncanny wrote:Great tool. It will be interesting to see if this makes teams more competitive in the short term, and makes sets more difficult in the long term.

This is a double-edged sword. It's great to see teams getting better, and if sets need to become more difficult to account for that, then so be it. However, I've seen way too many games with low point totals, and firmly believe that this is a major turnoff for many players, especially those who don't aspire to national elite status. If certain sets become more difficult, that's a good thing. But quizbowl could use more novice tournaments and easy sets to make new players comfortable. Having read through the collaborative middle school set the other day, I find that set even too hard for many new high school players. Note: this isn't a knock on pyramidality or even question length. The kids on Ridgewood, almost all of whom are new to qb, love pyramidal questions, but way too many questions are going dead completely - and these are kids who are naturally very smart. Also, whoever writes easier sets should always power mark them - tournament hosts can decide to use powers or not, but in my experience new kids particularly like the concept of power. Sorry for the thread hijack, new players getting left behind in the ongoing arms race (and folks, mark my words, we aren't close to where this race is ultimately going to end up) is one of my personal bugaboos.

nationalhistorybeeandbowl wrote: If certain sets become more difficult, that's a good thing. But quizbowl could use more novice tournaments and easy sets to make new players comfortable.

Writers should keep in mind that new players probably don't use Torrey Pines.

Hey guys,

Sorry for not posting in more than 6 months.
I've actually been working a newer, better version of the website that's getting close to release.

I'll put the link up here when it's done and create a redirect from the tpclubs site, since it's on a different url.
Note that the added features will probably entail a complete stats and users reset when the new site is ready.

Hey Sharad, I'll be updating the Berkeley Quiz Bowl site to link to this database - just give me the link when you're done.

Hey,

Does anyone know which HSAPQ tournaments that have been released online overlap (ie VHSL Districts and Tournament 17) and which would be considered encompassing? I'm trying to avoid duplicates.

sharadmv wrote:Hey,

Does anyone know which HSAPQ tournaments that have been released online overlap (ie VHSL Districts and Tournament 17) and which would be considered encompassing? I'm trying to avoid duplicates.

The ones in the same directory on hsapq.com are the ones that share questions.

Is it complete overlap or are there unique questions or do some encompass the others?

There's partial overlap; for example, the last regular tournament set of the spring in each of the past two years has taken tossups from VHSL Districts and Regionals, written a few to fill in gaps, and then written entirely new bonuses.

Sorry everyone, the site seems to be down. I'll try to get it up and running ASAP.

Strange that no one else has noticed this but there quite a few net denizens who enjoy *ahem* screwing with the site. One in particular, "trollmaster", who has a 1.3966 (repeating, of course) word average. You can usually answer a question as soon as it comes up quickly "hitting" buzz then enter again, sending a blank string. I know its not a very pressing issue, but it would be nice if this was fixed.

The problem is that I haven't thought of a foolproof way of checking if a question is right or wrong. It's hard to emulate the judgement of a moderator. Any ideas?

sharadmv wrote:The problem is that I haven't thought of a foolproof way of checking if a question is right or wrong. It's hard to emulate the judgement of a moderator. Any ideas?

From Spanish class: http://quizlet.com/
Basically if you answer a question wrong, they have a small button asking if you are actually right. So if it's possible, you place a button next to submit that says "I was right" or something. That TU can be flagged for review.

Well you're using GWT right? So then you have to use Java. Are you doing something along the lines of to see if the answer is there? Could an exception be made for blank strings to automatically return false when querying the database?

Also, I'm excited about this new parser you're working on. If you need some help, I'm sure some of us would be willing

I thought of using the "flagging" method but decided not to because it would require a lot of work to go back and correct any mistakes the flag will have changed. Flagging would also require a lot more maintenance.

The current site does use String.contains, but the new site will add that exception. The problem with putting in one letter answers will still be there though.

I was thinking of a machine learning approach.