ACF Regionals Discussion (?)

[Cheynem]

The masses are clamoring for discussion. However, I am also aware that this set will be used for NASAT tryouts. I am hesitant to recommend setting up private discussion fora for that purpose, but in light of recent unethical activities, it might not be that bad an idea. Any thoughts? If people are okay with open discussion, we can begin it here.

[kayli]

Someone should make a private forum. People have gone to great lengths to cheat, so let's not facilitate it.

[grapesmoker]

While I do not speak for Chris and nothing I say should be interpreted as initiating discussion of the set, I will note that we decided to to do anything special regarding the discussion on account of NASAT. It will simply be up to the people participating in the tryouts to not read the discussion thread.

[merv1618]

It was up to certain players/writers not to delve into ICT subject pages, too.

[Cody]

I believe Jerry meant "not to do anything special." It is the correct decision. NASAT tryouts are informal measures used to assess a high schooler's capabilities on regular difficulty questions. The potential to cheat at a NASAT tryout is very different from the potential to cheat at an actual tournament, and there is no reason to present barriers to discussion of a tournament because it is being used as a tryout set.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

So, are we starting this discussion thread, then, or are we waiting for Chris (in his capacity as head editor) to open things up?

[Rococo A Go Go]

So what is the argument against making discussion private here? That cheating at NASAT tryouts doesn't matter?

[Cody]

More importantly, who cares? Cheating at NASAT tryouts doesn't matter: you'll quickly be revealed as a fraud when you play NASAT, and most people organizing NASAT tryouts already have a pretty good idea of the strength of the people in their state. However, it doesn't matter in the least; this is a perennial problem for people who run NASAT tryouts and they just have to trust that their participants will be honest. Putting discussion in a private forum and not publicly posting the set so that people can run tryouts on them is just stupid and serves no purpose except to limit discussion.

If I were the head editor, I would wish to post a post-tournament write-up before discussion started, but far be it from me to tell people what to do.

[Cheynem]

I think the arguments against making discussion private are:

1. It's a little bit more work and tends to produce a more limited discussion because it requires the additional step of joining the usergroup and having someone approve.

2. There is little precedent to prevent public discussion because of non-official usages of sets.

3. Cheating to win a tryout seems remarkably stupid and one would think that the people making the decisions regarding NASAT teams would take into account other things besides just a performance on one set.

[AKKOLADE]

More importantly, who cares? Cheating at NASAT tryouts doesn't matter

I emphatically disagree specifically with this point, as someone who's putting a non-zero amount of time into organizing a tryout.

[Cody]

I emphatically disagree specifically with this point, as someone who's putting a non-zero amount of time into organizing a tryout.

You are correct, that was poorly phrased. Cheating at anything is a big problem. Shall I say: the possibility of someone cheating at a NASAT tryout should not really be the concern of the editor's of a tournament when considering in what forum to have discussion / when to post the set. I don't wish to disrespect anyone's hard work because it is appreciated; unfortunately, it's just a problem you have to be aware of and deal with appropriately.

Mike Cheyne sums up the arguments well.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

When are NASAT tryouts? Surely there is a difference between merely delaying discussion a few days to avoid cheating at NASAT tryouts, and delaying discussion for weeks or more.

[merv1618]

I'm pretty sure Illinois already had theirs. (In that they have a Team Illinois selected which goes to NASAT; I'm not sure if there is any formal difference.)

[kayli]

The barriers to entry for discussing this set in a private forum are low. It only requires registering for an account (if you don't have one), asking for permission, and being granted permission. This takes minimal effort. Additionally, if people want the set, someone can just host it somewhere and give out the link on the private forum.

Also, cheating at a NASAT tryout is something to take into consideration. It'd be best if HSAPQ or someone produced a tryout set, but in lieu of that, this is the next best thing. If people want to use ACF Regionals as a tryout set, then I think we should oblige them. The problem isn't so much people coming out of the woodwork to score 130ppg on ACF Regionals questions, because that can be easily detected. The problem arises when competitors, who people already know are "good," use information to slightly boost their points at the tryout thereby making it unfair to the rest of the competitors. I'd argue that this is important because it may not be detected even at NASAT because the point drop might not be very large and because there's the confounding variable of you're-competing-against-other-teams-now.

However, beyond the moral implications of fairness, you also have to consider that saying you're on the state quizbowl team might look good to colleges, and this is a real, important factor to consider as people might be cheated from that.

Finally, I don't understand how after quizbowl scandal after quizbowl scandal, people could be so lax about the potential for cheating. The measures you would put in place to stop this will have a minimal negative impact, but not placing those measures could end up completely screwing over a lot of people. Making a private forum should be the obvious choice, and it's baffling how this isn't so obvious.

[kayli]

Perhaps a solution would be to have rolling blind college tournaments. Once WIT happens, people could use that for tryouts and have ACF Regionals discussion be public, and after TIT happens, then WIT would be public, etc etc. This way, discussion would be delayed by only one or two weeks for any given set.

[AKKOLADE]

I'm running Kentucky's this coming Saturday. We're using ACF Regionals since that's supposed to be the target difficulty of NASAT, it's available at the same time, and no one from Kentucky has played it. Stats on high school sets aren't of much use in determining who should make the team, particularly when you consider the lack of Kentucky high schoolers playing tournaments that are on hard difficulty sets and/or have any meaningful statistics, individual or not (multiple high school tournaments didn't put out SQBS information, and we have at least one competitor who I have zero useful information on, as KAAC doesn't do stat reports beyond scores for regionals); shadow effects (we have 10 people trying out who attend either Dunbar or duPont Manual) and other concerns like that.

When Chris decided to allow us to use the set for free, he wanted to have Regs discussion proceed like normal. I understand that decision. As a result, I'll be asking everyone who is trying out to sign a statement that they didn't look over the set or any discussion. The statement will also include a bit that they can be removed from the team if it's discovered they cheated. Frankly, detecting this after the fact would be overly difficult, and then dealing with it would be lots of fun, as you can tell from the statement on NAQT's website about their most recent scandal. But that's all I could do to prevent this in this situation.

I would certainly benefit from discussion being kept in a private forum, but I understand why the people who produced the set or played it wouldn't want to.

[1992 in spaceflight]

Perhaps a solution would be to have rolling blind college tournaments. Once WIT happens, people could use that for tryouts and have ACF Regionals discussion be public, and after TIT happens, then WIT would be public, etc etc. This way, discussion would be delayed by only one or two weeks for any given set.

This is an interesting idea that I think we should consider for next year (It wouldn't work for this semester because all of the Terrapin mirrors end before the last mirror of WIT, which I'm directing).

[Auks Ran Ova]

I've set up a private discussion forum for this tournament, until NASAT tryouts have finished or until Chris decides to make discussion public. In the User Control Panel, request membership in the "ACF Regionals 2013 discussion" usergroup to be able to see and post in the forum.

[DumbJaques]

There is no need whatsoever to make this discussion private; Rob (or any other admin), please go ahead and open it up. My actual post about the set can be found in the already-extant discussion thread.

Re: NASAT tryout hemming/hawing - there are tons of sets out there that you can use for a tryout. College set discussion should not be beholden to high school practices, and it boggles my mind that so many people think it's such a great idea. If it's so tremendously important, you can always hold your tryout the same weekend as the tournament.

[Auks Ran Ova]

Done.

[Rococo A Go Go]

A forum for the discussion of ACF Regionals 2013. Only people who have not played, or will not play, the tournament can see this forum, so discussion of individual questions is encouraged.

Well with these policies, a private discussion forum wouldn't have done much good anyway!

[Auks Ran Ova]

A forum for the discussion of ACF Regionals 2013. Only people who have not played, or will not play, the tournament can see this forum, so discussion of individual questions is encouraged.

Well with these policies, a private discussion forum wouldn't have done much good anyway!

Hah! That's been used as boilerplate text for a bunch of private forums. Wonder how no one's noticed that until now.

[AKKOLADE]

If it's so tremendously important, you can always hold your tryout the same weekend as the tournament.

Because that's always a viable option.

[Cheynem]

I still think a small set of a few "tryout" packets could be produced for NASAT purposes. I'd be willing to spearhead such a project if I could get some experienced writers to work with me in the summer.

[AKKOLADE]

I still think a small set of a few "tryout" packets could be produced for NASAT purposes. I'd be willing to spearhead such a project if I could get some experienced writers to work with me in the summer.

I'd be interested in this, because in reality there's no such set to use that fits the criteria that's been laid out by some in this thread - all high school sets are going to be played by interested high schoolers, and (assuming a college team is running it, like we are) all college sets are either going to be played by that team the day of, or else that team's got a good reason to not go. Or there's an in-state tournament you'd invariable lose out to.

[DumbJaques]

If it's so tremendously important, you can always hold your tryout the same weekend as the tournament.

Because that's always a viable option.

Oh, boo hoo! I mean, I do get where Fred's coming from and all, but it's not like ACF Regionals (or like, the other 3-5 sets one could use for this purpose each year) are sudden surprises. What I'm saying is, if this is going to be a Big Thing in your state, that's cool, but then make it a big thing. Dedicate a weekend to having this qualifier the way you dedicate a weekend to a tournament. Or perhaps even more viably, piggy-back the tryout onto an existing event - those participating in the all-state tryout are off playing regionals in whatever practice setting is optimal, and other teams are playing some kind of tournament. There are just a lot of options here, and between that and the metric buttload of questions floating around, I don't particularly understand the outcry demanding college discussion be sacrificed for high school practices.

For whatever it's worth, if NASAT is as hard as Regs this year someone will have fucked something up, so you might not even want to use that anyway.