The Quizbowl Resource Center

Scaled Flowerpiercer wrote:

conquerer7 wrote: Once this furor dies down, I would appreciate if somebody could go through what I edited and give criticism (especially math and non-modern physics, and hopefully not in the same form as the brutal SUB-OPTIMAL critique of IMSANITY

I could probably give you some critiques on a lot of the science if given access to the questions as I am somewhat knowledgeable in those areas and I remember a lot of the issues I encountered when playing with the set and could probably deliver most of the critique by memory. Of course if this is still going to be made into a middle school set it will neither be as public (or as brutal) as the one to which you refer.

Not to rain on your parade Sam, as it is certainly noble of you to offer your help, but I'd like to quote Max's guide to writing a housewrite here:

More importantly, find someone experienced and get them to look over the set for you. When I say experienced, I don’t mean a college freshman or two who haven’t head-edited anything but worked for Fall Novice once, I mean EXPERIENCED: someone who has edited multiple high school tournaments and can instantly tell a good question from a bad one. A great place to do this is the quizbowl irc channel -- usually it’s just a bunch of semi-busy college people sitting around who are almost always more than happy to be read a packet and provide feedback if you ask them nicely and politely.

To be frank, I'm not sure that you, a rising college freshman who has nary any experience actually editing questions, will be able to provide anyone with the necessary feedback to make them an appropriately better writer. While it is nice that you want to help out Kevin and others, it is this sort of thinking that leads to poorly written sets such as this one. Namely, "I am fairly knowledgeable in this area and have played a few tournaments so I must be able to write good questions." Even supposing that, and this part is entirely possible, you were able to adequately point out what is wrong with Kevin's questions (finding negatives in something is usually fairly easy), what you almost certainly will not be able to provide and what I'd argue is far more important, is how to correct the problems in Kevin's questions. It is this sort of feedback that truly helps writers improve as it allows them to empower themselves and fix their own problems rather than constantly rely on outside help. Without offering a fix you leave Kevin and others in an odd position. It is a position where they think they've received the feedback that they need to improve, but have yet to receive any feedback that they can act on immediately to make them better writers.

In other words. I'd strongly suggest that any writer or editor of this tournament who is looking for feedback ACTIVELY seek out help from the people that Max has deemed as "experienced" rather than settle for those who can only offer half or less of the feedback that you need to improve. By actively I mean going on the IRC channel and asking nicely if someone will please look over your questions (it helps if you introduce who you are as well, both to the channel and to any individual that might help you) or doing a little research and finding the email addresses of successful tournaments (this can be done by searching the older sections of the forums). Keep in mind that personal or semi-personal (a personal email) will almost always garner more positive attention than a forum post, although forum posts can work.

I would also like to strongly suggest that, if you are someone like Sam who does want to help people improve as question writers, you hold back on giving advice now and quietly seek to become good writers by working for the various quizbowl set productions that occur each year and actively seek out help from the editors of those sets (NAQT is a great place to start if you are interested in this). Then, once you have yourself become a good writer, a skill that while aided by being a great player is a fairly distinct one, you should go forth into the greater Quizbowl community and share your wisdom as you see fit.

I don't doubt that he would get better/fuller/more helpful feedback from someone who is a far more experienced writer than I, and I certainly would think that it would be best for the writers/editors of this set to get feedback from people more experienced than I so that they can learn for the future. I just wanted to lend whatever help I could as, as I mentioned, I had essentially already "playtested" the questions and could thus give some helpful feedback quickly.

But yes, as Daniel's post makes clear, it would certainly be better if the writers/editors sought out much more capable help in how to improve the questions, especially if they have to turn it into a middle school set, in which case "their next project" which they need to improve for would be looming somewhat near.

Hey all,

I'm glad to hear that the ATTACK set was generally well-received this weekend. First off, if there are any specific complaints about pyramidality or factual misinformation or impossible powers or whatever, please let me know ASAP so I can get it fixed for the Missouri mirror this weekend.

Second, I'd like to thank Max Schindler for his honesty in revealing that a handful of answerlines for the set were accidentally revealed on the IRC by people who played this past weekend, to those who are going to play next weekend. I'm a little disappointed something like that could happen, but it's not a big deal yet. I've been told that [two tossups] were mentioned, so I've removed those from the set and replaced them with two others, but if there are any other questions that got spoiled, I need to know that also ASAP, so as to prevent any one individual from gaining an unfair advantage.

Third, Mr. Madden did ask me if he could use ATTACK's second finals packet on Friday, and I agreed without realizing that it would impede the fairness of Saturday's tournament and prevent a real final. For that, I apologize to the teams involved, because I should have realized the consequences of that decision.

And just because it was mentioned, the numbering for FInals 2 seems fine on my computer, so perhaps it got lost in the transfer between tournaments? Regardless, I'm glad that this tournament was enjoyed during the summer even if it didn't work out during the school year.

(edited to remove potentially advantageous information --mgmt.)

adamsil wrote: Third, Mr. Madden did ask me if he could use ATTACK's second finals packet on Friday, and I agreed without realizing that it would impede the fairness of Saturday's tournament and prevent a real final. For that, I apologize to the teams involved, because I should have realized the consequences of that decision.

I still don't really understand why this is an issue - there were 12 teams on Saturday, hence an 11 round round-robin. If we had done a true advantaged final after that, we would have needed 2 packets, but there were only 12 in the set. Obviously there are other ways we could have configured the prelims (say, 2 groups of 6, then rebracketing), but that would have resulted in lots of teams playing each other twice without the full round robin. I stand by my decision to set it up this way, and don't think that there is any need to second guess this approach.

User was warned for telling people not to discuss quizbowl on the quizbowl board. --the mgmt

nationalhistorybeeandbowl wrote:

adamsil wrote: Third, Mr. Madden did ask me if he could use ATTACK's second finals packet on Friday, and I agreed without realizing that it would impede the fairness of Saturday's tournament and prevent a real final. For that, I apologize to the teams involved, because I should have realized the consequences of that decision.

I still don't really understand why this is an issue - there were 12 teams on Saturday, hence an 11 round round-robin. If we had done a true advantaged final after that, we would have needed 2 packets, but there were only 12 in the set. Obviously there are other ways we could have configured the prelims (say, 2 groups of 6, then rebracketing), but that would have resulted in lots of teams playing each other twice without the full round robin. I stand by my decision to set it up this way, and don't think that there is any need to second guess this approach.

I'd like to hear a contingency plan given that you had zero back-up packets, i.e. if someone read a round out of order.

So you would really have just broken the tie between the two best teams, if they had the same record, by looking at their total points scored?

Groups of 6 rebracketed into groups of 6 would take either 10 games (with rematches) or 8 (without).

nationalhistorybeeandbowl wrote:

adamsil wrote: Third, Mr. Madden did ask me if he could use ATTACK's second finals packet on Friday, and I agreed without realizing that it would impede the fairness of Saturday's tournament and prevent a real final. For that, I apologize to the teams involved, because I should have realized the consequences of that decision.

I still don't really understand why this is an issue - there were 12 teams on Saturday, hence an 11 round round-robin. If we had done a true advantaged final after that, we would have needed 2 packets, but there were only 12 in the set. Obviously there are other ways we could have configured the prelims (say, 2 groups of 6, then rebracketing), but that would have resulted in lots of teams playing each other twice without the full round robin. I stand by my decision to set it up this way, and don't think that there is any need to second guess this approach.

If you can't come up with a format that uses 12 packets to give a fair resolution to a 12-team field, then maybe you should have either acquired more packets or capped the field at a lower number? This isn't that hard, and it's not the Internet's fault if you back yourself into a mathematically impossible corner due to lack of planning.

Tokyo Sex Whale wrote:So you would really have just broken the tie between the two best teams, if they had the same record, by looking at their total points scored?

That's what he said would happen. He stated multiple times pre-tournament that "points matter, because we'll do wins minus losses, and then if that's tied, total points."

I guess it's a plus that he didn't have games end in ties, so that we'd have Hunter and DCC both at 10-0-1. Maybe then we'd have had the riot my weekend was so sorely lacking.

deserto wrote:Esther said she wrote over fifty questions one day, which, whether due to necessity or desire or both, was sure to lead to oversights, which needed to be corrected by the editing team.
EDIT: evidently, I misremembered a comment Esther made to me on Friday evening. She did not write fifty questions in a day but went from 17 to 54 questions written over several days.

Esther just wanted to clarify that this was because she would be gone for five days without internet, and her goal was to finish the questions before she left so they could proceed to editing.

In other news Friday and Sunday's sets are open for discussion, while stats for Saturday are up : http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/10 ... -all_games

Friday and Sunday's stats will be up as soon as possible.

The Hunter A-Walt Whitman and GNS A-Walt Whitman games are missing. It appears the Hunter A-Walt Whitman game got attributed to Ridgewood instead of Hunter somehow.

karav0 wrote:
In other news Friday and Sunday's sets are open for discussion,

Will/Are they be posted somewhere?

In addition to what has been written above, most of my bonus points from the Kate Smith DAR game are missing.

Salt Lake Dream wrote:In addition to what has been written above, most of my bonus points from the Kate Smith DAR game are missing.

Somehow all the issues are with your stats...3 of the Walt Whitman games have Bonus Points numbers ending in 5.

The score for my game against Bergen is wrong.

It also says that I got 4 negs overall on Saturday, and I'm fairly certain that I didn't neg once the entire tournament (I'm pretty cautious and I don't buzz in unless I'm sure it's the answer, and I don't remember any negs on my part). Also, I was fairly certain I got more than 3 powers on Saturday.

I just looked over the stats and there a a few other issues:

I think Bergen B was in the lower play off bracket, and thus finished 5th over all. St Joe's edged out High Tech for second, thanks to ppg.
All of Hanover's bonus points are missing from our last match, against Oakland Mills. There are many instances of bonus points for a round ending in 5, so it's no just limited to Whitman's games.

I bit over a month after the end of this, is there any word on when Friday and Sunday's stats will be available?

EDIT: Friday's are here: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... all_games/

Scaled Flowerpiercer wrote:I bit over a month after the end of this, is there any word on when Friday and Sunday's stats will be available?

Friday stats are already up