LSU Academic Challenge -- Jan 15

[scottsmith81]

We will be conducting the LSU Academic Challenge with high school varsity, high school JV, and middle school divisions, for teams in Louisiana, Mississippi, southeast Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, and Georgia. We would like to invite your school to join us.

Date: Jan. 15, 2011. Games start at 9 a.m., est. finish time is 5:30.

Place: Paul M. Hebert Law Center
1 East Campus Drive
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803-1000

Entry Fee: $75 per team

Deadline: Payment must be received by December 15, 2010.

Register: Online (http://www.qunlimited.com/louis.htm) or by phone, 800-868-1518.

The Field: Our upper and lower limits are: high school division 8-48 teams; middle school 7-24, JV 7-24.

The Questions: Pyramidal-style from Questions Unlimited. I vouch for their quality having written many of them myself. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Format: four-quarter NAC format, see http://www.qunlimited.com/rulesreg.htm

Feel free to email me with any questions you may have ([email protected]). Thank you for your time and interest.

[Matt Weiner]

I strongly advise teams not to attend this tournament, as Questions Unlimited has a long track record (from at least as early as 2000 to at least as recently as 2009) of plagiarizing questions in their packets from other events without either acknowledging or compensating the original authors. Any high school coach who brings his team to a QU event is setting a very poor example of the sort of standards that a member of academia, or indeed any ethical human being, ought to uphold.

It is also probably the case that the questions will be terrible and the tournament format quite lacking, though I do not know that with as much certainty as I know the above.

[etchdulac]

Questions Unlimited has a long track record (from at least as early as 2000 to at least as recently as 2009) of plagiarizing questions.

As resident old person, I would vouch for taking that 2000 back to 1995.

Do I hear 1992? Going once?

[The Ununtiable Twine]

I strongly advise teams not to attend this tournament, as Questions Unlimited has a long track record (from at least as early as 2000 to at least as recently as 2009) of plagiarizing questions in their packets from other events without either acknowledging or compensating the original authors. Any high school coach who brings his team to a QU event is setting a very poor example of the sort of standards that a member of academia, or indeed any ethical human being, ought to uphold.

It is also probably the case that the questions will be terrible and the tournament format quite lacking, though I do not know that with as much certainty as I know the above.

I know you disagree with most things that QU does (as do I), and that QU is basically bad for quizbowl (as do I), but in posting such a note, you are probably being a hindrance to a team that is trying to restructure itself in a state that is in relative disarray as far as good quizbowl is concerned. In order for quizbowl to grow in Louisiana, specifically, the teams at the major universities need money and lots of it, because they need to afford travel because the majority of good college tournaments are several hours away, as college teams will not travel to Louisiana to give support to any good tournaments that may want to take place there for the most part. Also, the economic situation doesn't help. I also don't believe in being a detriment to a region by using forum pseudopowers -- the only ways to make up for the damage that such a note can have on a team's future would be to either give some constructive criticism on how to actually promote good quizbowl or to send them a check for the amount of money that you may have cost them by posting this here. Hopefully this tournament will help LSU out financially and there will be good quizbowl in Louisiana for years to come, and I'll do everything that I can to help.

Note: I'm not telling you how to post, I'm just pointing out the possible consequences of such a post.

Note: I don't believe in plagiarism at all, and in fact found many examples of plagiarism by several noted people/teams while sifting through a ton of tournaments this summer, which is beyond pitiful.

[Auks Ran Ova]

I don't believe in plagiarism at all

Good for you, but QU has, in the past, been found to have copied entire questions from old packets nearly verbatim for use in, among other things, its Twenty Questions.

[Not That Kind of Christian!!]

Scott, is it feasible for you to consider using HSAPQ questions for this tournament? Sets of a similar difficulty level and a more reputable production process are surely going to be available.

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

I know you disagree with most things that QU does (as do I), and that QU is basically bad for quizbowl (as do I), but in posting such a note, you are probably being a hindrance to a team that is trying to restructure itself in a state that is in relative disarray as far as good quizbowl is concerned. In order for quizbowl to grow in Louisiana, specifically, the teams at the major universities need money and lots of it, because they need to afford travel because the majority of good college tournaments are several hours away, as college teams will not travel to Louisiana to give support to any good tournaments that may want to take place there for the most part. Also, the economic situation doesn't help. I also don't believe in being a detriment to a region by using forum pseudopowers -- the only ways to make up for the damage that such a note can have on a team's future would be to either give some constructive criticism on how to actually promote good quizbowl or to send them a check for the amount of money that you may have cost them by posting this here. Hopefully this tournament will help LSU out financially and there will be good quizbowl in Louisiana for years to come, and I'll do everything that I can to help.

Response to emphasis 1: Running a QU tournament furthers this disarray, as QU questions have not been good quizbowl in the past, and the sample packet Scott sent out continues to be bad quizbowl.

Emphasis 2: Run a tournament on the Fall Novice set, which is being advertised for free. If that's not clear in LA - I don't know where it's being mirrored at - the SCOP Novice set is also available, though not as free. Email me and we can work out financial logistics. Past that, NAQT and HSAPQ are immensely cheaper than what I'm reading QU's order form to be.
With that in mind, I can't imagine that financial viability is really in Scott's mind here; paying upwards of $600 for questions for a high school tournament wherein you could have questions for FREE doesn't make sense unless you, personally, get a cut of that $600. If anything, this tournament will either financially sink LSU or decimate the schools that attend (or both!), while QU walks away rich.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Any HSAPQ, NAQT Introductory or IS set, or high quality independent set would be an infinitely better choice for a provider, and would immediately lead to all of us critics getting fully behind your efforts to organize tournaments.

[Mechanical Beasts]

It's not really productive to say "LSU needs money, therefore LSU can only choose to host a tournament on potentially plagiarized questions!" That is one of the worst arguments I've ever heard. Many tournaments will let financially distressed teams mirror them for a greatly reduced cost, and the Fall Novice set is just plain free to everyone.

I'm much more persuaded by "I've written a bunch of questions for this provider that I think are good, so I think he might be changing his ways" (of which I'm personally a bit skeptical" than by arguments of the form "they need money, so I'm sure you won't mind if they do [thing unrelated to money]."

[Kwang the Ninja]

What if LSU changed its college tournament (which is ostensibly to be hosted on IS questions) to a high school tournament (keeping the date October 30, so you don't have to change room reservations or anything), then hosted a mirror of THUNDER II on the January 15 date*? Then high schoolers would be playing on questions of appropriate difficulty, high quality, and with no uncertainty regarding the provider's ethical standards, and the southeast would get a mirror of THUNDER II (which we are, as of right now, sorely lacking).

*- this assumes, of course, that the THUNDER editors would allow such a late date. Otherwise, you could push it back a couple of weeks and host TIT or Penn Bowl.

[etchdulac]

I doubt the organizers of this event are interested in changing question sources, since it's one of Chip's sponsored regional tournaments (as listed at http://www.qunlimited.com/regional.htm), and the guy who posted the info about the tournament evidently writes for QU. It's not just some dude using QU questions who needs to be educated. It's QU itself running this tournament.

[TheDoctor]

Scott could still do what Dallin is suggesting and change the 30 October date to a high school tournament, then host another college event in the spring after the QU event. Running an additional tournament on reasonably priced questions might help make up for the hole he'll almost certainly be in after the QU thing.

[The Ununtiable Twine]

It's not really productive to say "LSU needs money, therefore LSU can only choose to host a tournament on potentially plagiarized questions!" That is one of the worst arguments I've ever heard. Many tournaments will let financially distressed teams mirror them for a greatly reduced cost, and the Fall Novice set is just plain free to everyone.

I'm much more persuaded by "I've written a bunch of questions for this provider that I think are good, so I think he might be changing his ways" (of which I'm personally a bit skeptical" than by arguments of the form "they need money, so I'm sure you won't mind if they do [thing unrelated to money]."

Who said that? I was just pointing out that given the situation with the tournament, I thought the previous post to LSU's financial stability. I do not endorse running tournaments on said questions, however if the tournament is going to be run on said questions anyway, the previous statement would be a hindrance to the LSU club's financial stability. I've seen QU's questions too, don't worry. How about "LSU needs money, hence they should host a tournament...and the tournament should be run on good questions." I would clearly endorse HSAPQ or the Fall Novice (as I moderated at the Shorter mirror) over QU, hands down. The tone of Matt's post just seemed negative enough to have a major impact on who participates/doesn't participate in the tournament, which would then cost LSU quizbowl some money, which in turn is not good for the state of quizbowl in Louisiana at this point in time. Hopefully that clarifies things. t-11d

[AKKOLADE]

The tone of Matt's post just seemed negative enough to have a major impact on who participates/doesn't participate in the tournament, which would then cost LSU quizbowl some money, which in turn is not good for the state of quizbowl in Louisiana at this point in time. Hopefully that clarifies things. t-11d

Other than, you know, not really making sense (if you say something isn't great, you're costing them money and that is bad and you should not complain!), this is, once again, against forum rules.

9) If you are not a moderator or an administrator, do not tell anyone how to post on these message boards. Do not publicly call them out on breaking the rules and do not tell them not to disagree with you. If you do not like someone's tone, it's permissible to tell them that you don't like it, but you cannot tell them not to post that way in the future.

Which is exactly what you did in your prior post. Don't do that.

[Charbroil]

The tone of Matt's post just seemed negative enough to have a major impact on who participates/doesn't participate in the tournament, which would then cost LSU quizbowl some money, which in turn is not good for the state of quizbowl in Louisiana at this point in time. Hopefully that clarifies things. t-11d

I mean, negative commentary could plausibly reduce the field of any tournament; are you saying that as a result (since Quiz Bowl as a whole is fairly underfunded, with a few exceptions), no negative commentary on tournaments should exist?

[jrbarry]

QU has new writers, a whole new staff of writers as of this summer. Scott is probably writing the entire LSU Ty set himself. I know he has produced one tournament set for QU already. I know Scott personally an he is a man of integrity and I would bet none of his questions are gonna be plagiarized.

It seems to me that Mr. Beall is making a concerted attempt to adapt his system to the current realities of quiz bowl even though he continues to have huge numbers of schools/teams in his tournaments and buying his questions.