Actual Discussion of HSQuizbowl/Kidder podcasts

[marnold]

So I listened to all Season 2 and a lot of that was indeed wrong-headed. First, where will you ever find meta (in the original sense) clues or questions being asked where people aren't expecting it? All the problems he claims hinge on meta being foist upon everyone, which just doesn't happen. Either it's Auroni's meta round or the IRC where the 25-30 people in the world who would like those questions are exclusively the ones participating, or its the CO trash tournaments where people go in knowing there will be a bit of meta and its pretty benign. I suppose there are joking references in bonus lead-ins in tournaments the rest of the season, but who gives a darn about those. Also, his trickle-down argument is pretty obviously empirically denied by the growth of elite high school teams/players that appear poised to seamlessly move into the college game where the good quizbowl principles appeared first.

But still, um, am I allowed to say I agree with a lot of stuff he says? Even though calling it "meta" is probably a stretch, writing questions "for" other people seems to be a legitimate concern. All the stuff early in this podcast season about recruiting are great. The idea of the importance of density is good.

And most importantly, I don't think he's all that wrong about this forum. Whether or not it is inevitable it will break apart in a ball of flames, two things seem to be correct. First, while I'm new-ish to the activity so I can't compare to the old systems, the signal-to-noise ratio seems pretty skewed on this forum as it is. Obviously the summer is boring, but even during the year intra-team drama nonsense, public call-outs and AHAN/Off-Topic-esque stuff seems to take up a disproportionate amount of space. Moreover, the localization idea seems very true, especially in high school. Currently, there's the threads for state comparisons, but it seems things like the Missouri forum have led to way more dialog and positive change. When I was really into non-quizbowl things in high school, the boards I read for that all had sub-forums exclusively to local regions and circuits which were helpful in bringing purely local people into a community who would then inevitable be exposed to the National Circuit activity that was running parallel to it. Feel free to ban me for "backseat admining," but I'd think that would be a worthwhile thing to pursue here to take advantage of his better points.

EDIT: verbs, syntax, quotes

[Matt Weiner]

When I was really into non-quizbowl things in high school, the boards I read for that all had sub-forums exclusively to local regions and circuits which were helpful in bringing purely local people into a community who would then inevitable be exposed to the National Circuit activity that was running parallel to it.

This was tried when we first launched the board, and people didn't take to it. However, this may have been because there was a smaller userbase and it was more focused on national-level discussion at that time. It's up to Fred whether the Comparisons forum might transmute into something like this in the future.

[AKKOLADE]

But still, um, am I allowed to say I agree with a lot of stuff he says?

Dude, as long as it's reasoned, say whatever you want to. I don't exactly go for the 'hivemind' approach myself.

Even though calling it "meta" is probably a stretch, writing questions "for" other people seems to be a legitimate concern.

Right, but does this actually happen? I haven't heard any real complaints about this for maybe five years.

Stuff about the forums I'm not going to quote due to not wanting to cause scroll bars to explode.

I'm actually going to defend the off topic stuff for the following reasons:

• It's easy enough to ignore these threads; the staff is pretty vigilant for non-sequitur posts, and they really do not happen that often.
• It prevents the fracture of the boards, which is an inconvenience and can limit people's exposure to the good things that do get posted here.
• It theoretically gets more people to read important stuff like the Jerry post on how to write questions. I do know that over time the number of views have gone up for our threads by quite the figure. It would be foolish to think that this is all or even largely due to the presence of miscellaneous crap, but I do think it plays some role.

So, I view it as an overall positive rather than a negative.

Presently, I think the location-specific threads are sufficient to deal with those areas' demands. I have considered giving the more active areas a specific forum, but I still think our structure serves their demands as well as possible.

Feel free to ban me for "backseat admining," but I'd think that would be a worthwhile thing to pursue here to take advantage of his better points.

I would never ban anyone for giving me feedback, especially when I call for it so much. That's about the most childish thing I could do.

[marnold]

Right, but does this actually happen? I haven't heard any real complaints about this for maybe five years.

Well, Dwight seems to equivocate two senses of writing "for" people: on the one hand, he uses it to mean people think "LOL won't David Seal love this Washington Wizards toss-up I just wrote! I bet he'll power it but good!" while also meaning "the number of people who could conceivably get this is almost alarmingly small." I agree the first problem is rare if it happens it at all, but I don't think its unreasonable to see the second kind of thing becoming more common in quizbowl. Single subject side-events and harder tournaments seem to be getting more popular; almost by definition, those cut the number of people comfortable with the answer space at an ever-increasing percentage of tournaments on the schedule. Science history has been purged from the game, leaving 1/5 of the game more or less exclusively for the people who study a science in school.* I can see how all of these can be seen as byproducts of good quizbowl, so maybe they aren't even bad and I'm definitely not in a panic about them killing the activity like Dwight might be. Still, it seems reasonable for Dwight to raise that as a potential concern.

I'm content with my earlier contribution about forum lay-out.

*this is possibly controversial, but I think Andrew Yaphe once covered why this is both true and unique to science in some other post that I may reference if people are up in arms about this claim.

[Gautam]

So, I heard this latest podcast, and it got me thinking. I *somewhat* understand what he means about the local groups being irrelavant on this big board. I mean, looking at the Minnesota threads, it's about 10 people from the top tier of teams chatting among themselves, and I don't think the quality of discussion is that great. It's still better than what it was 3 years ago (aka nothing) but I think it could be better.

The points Dwight outlines are:
1. Facebook currently has a much larger following among quizbowlers than do these boards.
2. Team management is easier.
3. Coach-Student issues are minimized.

I don't know how much point #2 is relevant to this discussion. EP Quiz Bowl has been using Yahoo Groups for, oh, 5 years now, and it continues to be quite a good "team management" tool. However, what has team management got anything to do with quiz bowl discussion?

Point #3, I think, assumes a lot of stuff. It's assuming that a large portion of the discussions are hostile, that people are unable to make up their differences of opinion in private (through e-mail or whatever), and a lot of other things that make it a major turn off for new people. I don't know how much of this is true, and, given the recent growth of the number of people attending this forum (students, coaches, and other well-wishers of the community), I don't know whether this is relevant.

I think he is spot on about Facebook currently having more membership and students feeling more comfortable to interact on facebook. However, I think Facebook can be used to make this website more relavant, by making the set of quizbowlers who are on quizbowlers but not on hsquizbowl aware of the fact that there exists hsquizbowl where quizbowl discussion has been taking place, and is the happening-est place on the internet for QB.

Facebook may be able to takeover the role of hsquizbowl by offering a superior technical product, but I think it will always lack the somewhat serious nature with which Quiz Bowl is discussed over here.

My brother and I are trying to bring Minnesota High School Quiz Bowlers together on facebook, and experiment with the environment it has to offer. We will definitely do our best to introduce people to these forums and make hsquizbowl more relevant in the community.

[theMoMA]

This will probably warrant a whole 'nother thread, but I really don't think that science is something that a player has to study in school to get points in a quizbowl game. Basically you just have to be willing to keep listening when science tossups are read, and pretty soon you'll be rolling in Clebsch-Gordon coefficients (figuratively speaking).

[vcuEvan]

I don't understand how students would be reluctant to tell coaches about hsquizbowl, and than ask their coaches to join them on Facebook. In high school I got the impression most teachers were avoiding Facebook.

[First Chairman]

We are in an age where multiple forums and media exist and will continue to explode. I don't think any one of us can monitor everything from Facebook to myspace to IRC channels. There are multiple discussion forums on the state level that already exist (Missouri, Ohio), and I know that if someone really didn't like the way things are handled, one can always find an outlet somewhere else. While Facebook does lack a unified area for discussion like this, it can do is provide a nice way for people to "register" their teams for events and get an unofficial head count. It also provides another way people can meet and talk with each other outside of events, and it certainly allows for students within a school to meet each other, set up practices, and so on. Facebook is also more for "networking" than it is for lively discussion, but I suppose that could change fast.

That said, I agree that I have a large concern about "professionalism". I think most of the students here would not be so blatent as to write questions for a specific person or team who plays at their event, but students do take notice of what a person's favorite tendencies are regarding topics. For a newer writer, this means that more players will have some level of advantage through meta knowledge of that person's own ways of thinking, writing, and editing. I don't quite know how to correct this; it isn't illegal to say "if you go to this tournament or play on this source's questions, watch out for the stupid pun questions." There is that risk when it comes to single-writer or small group of writer-written events, and only with experience (read: feedback) and comfort with more areas will that likely improve.

[Stained Diviner]

It is disappointing that schools and teachers are against Facebook. New Trier allows teachers, but not students, to access Youtube on school computers, but it does not allow even teachers to access Facebook. Facebook will spread eventually, since people entering the profession are already on it, but not as quickly as it should.

That being said, the quizbowl groups on Facebook have approximately zero useful discussions on them. They are a useful place to network, but that's it--the best quizbowl group on Facebook is easily LOLQuizbowl, and even that's not so great. When you have a limited number of people interested in vigorously discussing a particular topic, then splintering can be a serious problem. It would be a problem for quizbowl if it was happening, which it is not. The old forums died off when a better venue came along, and this forum has not died off (or even started heading in that direction) because nothing better has come along.

That being said, I think some of Dwight's points about the limits of this forum come from his goals for the activity. There are over 20,000 high schools in the country, the majority of which do not have any quizbowl, and the majority of which that do have quizbowl do not have very good quizbowl. If your primary goal is to change these facts, then this forum has its limitations. Large groups need a dedicated core, and this forum provides a useful way for many of the core people to communicate. However, large groups grow when that core reaches out to the masses, and that's something that hasn't been figured out yet--in fact, there are legitimate questions as to how much energy should be used in that direction.

I'll add a bad analogy here. This board is like Judaism, interested in encouraging its members to act properly. Our activity also needs people and forums that are going to be like Christianity, which puts a bigger priority on spreading the word to nonbelievers. Many of the people on this board already spread the word to one degree or another, but it currently is a very slow process.

[Mechanical Beasts]

This will probably warrant a whole 'nother thread, but I really don't think that science is something that a player has to study in school to get points in a quizbowl game. Basically you just have to be willing to keep listening when science tossups are read, and pretty soon you'll be rolling in Clebsch-Gordon coefficients (figuratively speaking).

I agree, and this is coming from someone who's supposed to develop into a science player (eric mukherjee you bettah watch your back).

I don't know jack about some topics that even non-science players know kinda well from high school, because my high school science education sucked. Shady Side thought we were too good for the AP curriculum--boy, is it wrong! I got the Nernst equation tossup at Illinois Novice not because I knew anything about electrochemistry, though I've learned stuff since, but because I'd seen the G-H-K clue in tossups before, and because it was listed as a stock clue on QBWiki and I read that article, I got the tossup. Similarly, I can make up answers in some areas of physics not because I've taken physics above the level of some pathetic course I took at Pitt to get out of my even worse high school option, but because I've heard clues about them.

This isn't much different from the humanities. I can buzz more comfortably, perhaps, on literature I've studied in classes, and I can certainly buzz comfortably on the German historiography I spent last semester reading (more tossups on Niall Ferguson plz), but I can still buzz on other stuff. I just learn the clues and read some texts.

The only difference might lie in Magin's cognitive-map ideas. It's much easier, perhaps, for Eric Mukherjee to learn a new clue about Drosophila than for most anyone else; it's easier for Charles Meigs to learn a new clue about Central Asia. So once you're a science player, and have dedicated yourself in that direction, it's certainly easier to become more and more of a science player than if you're a humanities player trying to get a foothold in the sciences. But I don't know if that's substantially harder than it is for science players to establish a foothold in the humanities. Perhaps it's because there are fewer humanities players taking, like, science electives (or engaging in science non-quizbowl activities) from which they could start learning clues and attaching them than there are science players who used to do debate and so know some philosophy, or have a passion for a certain area of literature, or whatever.

[leapfrog314]

Perhaps it's because there are fewer humanities players taking, like, science electives (or engaging in science non-quizbowl activities) from which they could start learning clues and attaching them than there are science players who used to do debate and so know some philosophy, or have a passion for a certain area of literature, or whatever.

I think it's partly because science very much has its own language; it would be easier for me, a science player, to go read Moby Dick and then know everything about Moby Dick than for a humanities player to go pick up an organic chem book and then learn anything about organic chem. Science seems to require a very developed "cognitive map" in the subject--it all builds upon itself. I mean, look at science courses at any college--there are many layers of prerequisites, while literature courses aren't nearly as directly dependent on one another.

[at your pleasure]

I think part of the problem with the sciences is that it is not as easy to figure out what to study as with other areas. with lit and the arts, for instance, the You Gotta Know lists can be used to pinpoint the most-quizzed works, and these can be subjected to more in-depth study. If you were to pick up a chem textbook, you are more likley to be stymied by not having a clear idea what to look for at the outset.
Now, if a humanities player were sufficently interested in developing themselves with respect to the sciences, they could list the topics that come up the most, study the questions, learn everything about the most quizzed science, and get a few more science questions the the none they used to get. However, for the purposes of increasing overall PPG and team quality(assuming there is not a gap to be filled in the sciences), it is probably more efficient to increase your depth in the humanities.
As for the issue of outreach, I will agree that facebook is more useful for that purpose. The forums are important for the puropose of enabling deeper discussion of quizbowl, but the average student coming to good quizbowl from is more likely to be bewilderd than enlightened by a debate on MATHCOMP or whether or not the answers for a paticular packet from a tournament were legitmatley askable. Note that I do not say that this would not benefit them, merley that it would be bewildering.
The issue of writiting for other people, if it exists, might be more attributable to a habit of assuming topics to be better know than they are. Here, too, good editing and cooperative question writing could help by filtering out overly obscure questions.

[AKKOLADE]

Michael, Re: the harder difficulty of some tournaments and the subject specific ones, it seems that these aren't the rule as much as the exception. There's a few more subject-specific side events these days, but that's what they are - side events.

Also, while CO and the ilk get harder, there are plenty of novice and normal difficulty college events available, and this number seems to be growing. So, I don't think we're letting things get too hard. Maybe a future summer novice event would be nice, as a complement to CO?

[cvdwightw]

Also, while CO and the ilk get harder, there are plenty of novice and normal difficulty college events available, and this number seems to be growing. So, I don't think we're letting things get too hard. Maybe a future summer novice event would be nice, as a complement to CO?

If Zot Bowl is well-received (or at least, "this set had some problems, but they're fixable, and didn't completely detract from my enjoyment of the tournament") at the Truman State and VCU sites I would be fine with running such a thing again next summer. I have learned several lessons already from my experience about the pitfalls of editing novice tournaments (for example, the tournament is still probably going to overshoot target difficulty, but a more consistent difficulty is something I can work on next year) and I haven't yet reached my Westbrook Limit. We wouldn't be able to run it at UCI due to room fees, but if there was a call for such an event I'm sure something could be worked out.

[Matt Weiner]

No one's saying that Facebook should never be used. OK, I say that, but it's because I have a distaste for the sort of high school-esque drama that those sites tend to generate, and I'm unconvinced that any such site is still going to be here in three years rather than being the next Friendster. Myspace is already something that no self-respecting college student will touch, and who knows where the trends will go? Anyway, of course you can use Facebook to try to get people to stumble upon quizbowl and learn a little more about what they can be doing. What is kind of objectionable is the notion that people are going to get anything productive out of local Facebook groups for quizbowl. You already see the people in your local area at every tournament! That's what makes them local! If the idea of just communicating with people you see all the time was acceptable, we wouldn't need the Internet at all. I worry about what happens when people don't encounter discussion about what happens elsewhere. You think there's problems with "tone" or the "coach-student" relationship here? Wait until 60 people set up their little 5-team fiefdoms on Facebook.

We don't need web applications of any kind if we're just handing out information about when tournaments are happening; we all have e-mail accounts. Discussion--telling people how to make their teams better, how to make tournaments better, and how to write questions--can only happen centrally, because very few people know how to do those things. I'm worried about NAQT officers preaching on how to "absolutely kill hsquizbowl" (direct quote) at the same time that R. Hentzel has started to come here and engage in some dialogue. I shouldn't have to explain why.

[Mechanical Beasts]

I'm worried about NAQT officers preaching on how to "absolutely kill hsquizbowl" (direct quote) at the same time that R. Hentzel has started to come here and engage in some dialogue. I shouldn't have to explain why.

He will use his advanced naqt.com technologies of cascading style sheets, excessive use of tables, and long loading times to spam us with navigation-logo-2.gif?

[marnold]

cascading

IT JUST DOESN'T WORK

[AKKOLADE]

In my opinion, Facebook won't replace HSQB for some reasons stated above (the whole 'hot social networking site' label is transient, won't promote in-depth discussion like this site), the fact that it can't support projects like what Evan Silberman has been working on (to be announced soon) and the fact that the layout is godawful. Seriously, trying to use that place as a source of discussion is only marginally more useful than self-mutiliation.

[Nine-Tenths Ideas]

In my opinion, Facebook won't replace HSQB for some reasons stated above (the whole 'hot social networking site' label is transient, won't promote in-depth discussion like this site), the fact that it can't support projects like what Evan Silberman has been working on (to be announced soon) and the fact that the layout is godawful. Seriously, trying to use that place as a source of discussion is only marginally more useful than self-mutiliation.

True, and also, other than most forum members, I don't know that many quizbowlers who have a Facebook. Social networking sites seem like a "waste of time" to some people I've talked to.

[theMoMA]

Signal-to-noise might not be the best board statistic to cite. I think that a lot of times, the AHAN stuff that makes this seem like a hokey "internet community" actually serves to keep people interested in the boards during lull periods (like right now, for example).

[BuzzerZen]

Signal-to-noise might not be the best board statistic to cite. I think that a lot of times, the AHAN stuff that makes this seem like a hokey "internet community" actually serves to keep people interested in the boards during lull periods (like right now, for example).

As someone who's been around here since fall of '03, this is definitely the most active summer the boards have seen in that time period.