Signing up for lots of writing/editing

[setht]

While I was complaining about FEUERBACH, it occurred to me that what bothered me most about the tournament set was the feeling that I should have expected what happened and planned accordingly--either skipped the tournament, or lowered my expectations in advance. After all, FEUERBACH came scant months after VCU Open, another tournament that many people hailed as decent but somewhat disappointing, and another tournament in which there were issues with getting enough rounds together in a timely fashion. In fact, shortly before Matt made his formal announcement of FEUERBACH, I sent him an email expressing my concern that he was signing up to write and/or edit too many tournaments this year--something I feel he also did last year. He assured me that he would be able to handle the workload.

I'm not interested in milking this of every last drop of sarcastic commentary the situation affords; I'm much more interested in trying to make sure Matt and everyone else is on the same page regarding the workload associated with producing a quality tournament--after all, Matt is not the only person who has signed on to produce multiple tournament sets this year, and almost everyone else who's signed up to produce tournament sets this year has a good bit less experience than he does.

One team from the midwest who said they were writing a packet did not, and I had to combine two packets submitted since one of them was atrocious. Myself and Andrew Alexander wrote four full packets for this packet-submission event, which I figured would be more than enough; I'm not sure what to do when only 6 reasonable submitted rounds, a basically useless seventh round, and half of an eighth round from someone who wasn't required to write anything and was doing me a favor to even give me that much, is what shows up. We didn't really have time to write a fifth or sixth editor packet this week since we had no way to know in advance that it would be necessary.

This does sound somewhat worse than normal, but it's not beyond the pale, especially for a new tournament that doesn't have a tradition of drawing a large field with lots of submitted packets (unlike, say, Penn Bowl, ACF Nationals, or ACF Fall). Frankly, I'm surprised that Matt was surprised by what happened. So, my first piece of advice: if you're starting a new packet-submission tournament, plan on writing most of it yourself (and get started writing early). If you get a windfall of good packets from teams, that's great; if you don't, keep writing those editor packets. In case anyone needs a "way to know in advance that [this will] be necessary," I am happy to provide you with one: I'm telling you, this will be necessary. Also, don't stop writing editor questions just because teams start promising to write packets--until you get the packets, confirm that they're pretty good quality to start with and match your length and difficulty targets, and confirm that they're not all riddled with tons of repeats, you should continue to assume that you'll need to write a very large percentage of the tournament yourself. If you're signing up to edit/write multiple sets, you have even more incentive to do this: if you have a bunch of material left over because the field actually did come through for you and wrote lots of good packets, you'll be that much further ahead on the next event. Conversely, if you wait until the last second on the each event and then scramble to put together a few more packets, you'll burn out after a couple disappointing events.


Some other random pieces of advice:
-if you're working on a tournament and you find that you're not going to have an acceptable number of packets ready in time, send out a distress call as early as possible. Freelance writers and editors have jumped aboard late in the game for tournaments in the past; if you're lucky, you'll get enough help to bail you out of a bad spot.
-if you're starting a new tournament and you don't have an experienced editing pool, you should a) try to find some experienced people to help, and b) consider making it a house/editor-written tournament.
-if you're considering signing up for much more writing/editing than you've ever done before, don't.


I'm sure there's more to say here, but I want to switch back now to grousing about the FEUERBACH set.
-Seth

[Matt Weiner]

OK, I'm open to criticism of the specific questions in the set and such, but I'm not sure what this thread is about. I fulfilled my commitment; I wrote four packets and edited the others, and I also recruited a science editor who likewise did what he was supposed to do. Perhaps some questions were not as good as they could have been; I'm happy to listen to the discussion on that point in the other thread. But I'm puzzled that Seth, after making dire, unsolicited predictions of me failing to complete the tournament set, reacts to his predictions failing to come to pass by acting as if they had and posting accordingly.

There were other issues, unrelated to Seth's claims of laziness on my part, that caused the shortfall of packets. I didn't really want to bring them up, but I figure that in the name of proving that I did not in fact decide to throw the quality of my tournament to the wind, I should spell them out:

*Illinois told me several times that they would be writing a packet, as late as 36 hours before the tournament first ran, and then did not do so. Even after the October 4 sites, I was still trying to get a packet out of them for the second weekend, which they were planning to send an experienced player to. They did not agree on a no-packet fee until this past Thursday, and until 11 PM Friday night, they were signed up for Iowa. Had I known the entire time that Illinois's attendance/packet was not going to happen, I would have at least written another packet over this past week.
*Harvard boycotted the tournament because Boston College refused to give them a discount on their entry fee to make up for stiffing Harvard on fees for a Harvard tournament several years ago. This cost me probably 3 packets, since I imagine Harvard would have sent most of their program to a tournament in Boston. BC, let me put this politely: Fucking pay Harvard what you owe them so this stops happening, or let them play one of your tournaments for free. You owe them money, you still have people on your team who were there when you bilked Harvard, you can't claim it's not the same program. What in the world is your defense here?

Again, I make no claims that the questions were perfect, and I want to hear substantive criticism of the content. But I think writing 4 packets is perfectly sufficient writer effort for a packet-submission event, especially given that I had every reason to expect four more packets from Illinois and Harvard that didn't come for the above reasons.

[Mechanical Beasts]

I want to apologize personally for not providing you with a packet, Matt, though we probably wouldn't have attended the tournament nonetheless. If I had known that you were short--I paid minimal attention to the pre-FEUERBACH lead-up; I now see a post from you mentioning that you were sorely lacking packets--then I'd have made an effort to contribute at least a packet to the set. Our selfishness (explained, but not excused by the fact that we don't have much money at the moment) had a negative impact on the quality of the tournament, and that's not the sort of position I want to put the club in. It won't happen again.

[No Rules Westbrook]

Okay, I sense I might end up coming off a bit brutal here, but I don't mean any harm by it.

Here's what it comes down to: certain people produce certain kinds of tournaments. When you saw the announcement for Feuerbach, this is exactly the tournament you should have expected to get (for good or for bad). A set like this one, as edited by Matt Weiner, is not going to be polished and pretty - it's going to be roughly-assembled, makeshift, and rocky. As I see it, I'm not sure this has too much to do with editing load - it's just what you get when certain people edit tournaments.

Now, for all of its faults, this set no doubt qualifies as "playable," and there is quite likely some value in that. The other option was probably not to have any kind of worthwhile tournament to play that weekend. Of course, I think it would be fantastic if everyone were willing to make every single set into a finely-crafted masterpiece, but that simply isn't going to happen - well, at least until we have a large cadre of really careful/good writers available to make that happen.

The reason I say it won't happen is because, as Seth alludes in his post, turning these types of tournaments into really great events takes an enormous amount of work - basically, you just have to write the whole damned tourney yourself. It's lovely for Weiner to say "hey, I fulfilled my editing obligations by writing 4 editor packets" - but, doing that just isn't good enough to create a high-quality event - it's never good enough. Basically, any time you have a packet submission like this without a really good field packed with experienced writers, this is going to happen. If I'd have been asked to edit this tournament, I'd have fallen off my chair laughing and declined in a heartbeat - because I'd have known I was basically signing up to a full month of hard labor, and that at the end, the set would probably still not be terrific.

But, it's probably not so bad that there are a few tourneys like these - I mean, there are only a handful of people out there who have ultra-high standards when it comes to questions, and many of the people who attended Feuerbach probably had no feel for exactly why a lot of the questions were less than terrific. So, c'est la vie - you just have to be realistic and know what you're getting when you go to a tournament. Of course, we can shoot for marginal increases in quality where it's possible, but I'm being realistic here.

[setht]

I fulfilled my commitment; I wrote four packets and edited the others...I'm puzzled that Seth, after making dire, unsolicited predictions of me failing to complete the tournament set, reacts to his predictions failing to come to pass by acting as if they had and posting accordingly.

All right, this is an interesting point: when someone signs up to edit a packet-submission tournament, what does it mean for them to fulfill their commitment? I've advanced the position that it means delivering a reasonable (let's say at least 14 [or maybe even just 13]) number of packets, each meeting some standards of question quality. I am entirely willing to believe that there can be all sorts of mishaps and mitigating circumstances that might preclude this goal being met without warranting any real condemnation of the editor. Perhaps that's the case with FEUERBACH, perhaps not--I'll get to that below. On the other hand, I take it that Matt is advancing the position that signing up to edit a packet-submission tournament means editing whatever is submitted and writing approximately 4 extra packets, regardless of how small the resulting packet set is. Similarly, what does it mean to "complete the tournament set"? Again, I'd say it involves producing some minimal number of packets (let's say 13 for concreteness). By that standard, Matt did not complete the FEUERBACH set.

*Illinois told me several times that they would be writing a packet, as late as 36 hours before the tournament first ran, and then did not do so. Even after the October 4 sites, I was still trying to get a packet out of them for the second weekend, which they were planning to send an experienced player to. They did not agree on a no-packet fee until this past Thursday, and until 11 PM Friday night, they were signed up for Iowa. Had I known the entire time that Illinois's attendance/packet was not going to happen, I would have at least written another packet over this past week.
*Harvard boycotted the tournament because Boston College refused to give them a discount on their entry fee to make up for stiffing Harvard on fees for a Harvard tournament several years ago. This cost me probably 3 packets, since I imagine Harvard would have sent most of their program to a tournament in Boston. BC, let me put this politely: Fucking pay Harvard what you owe them so this stops happening, or let them play one of your tournaments for free. You owe them money, you still have people on your team who were there when you bilked Harvard, you can't claim it's not the same program. What in the world is your defense here?

Again, I make no claims that the questions were perfect, and I want to hear substantive criticism of the content. But I think writing 4 packets is perfectly sufficient writer effort for a packet-submission event, especially given that I had every reason to expect four more packets from Illinois and Harvard that didn't come for the above reasons.

Matt, as I said before, to me the packet situation sounds worse than typical for packet submission, but not insanely worse. I had heard about the situation with the Illinois packet; I had not heard about the situation with Harvard, but did they say several times that they were going to send you 3 packets, then drop at the last second? If so, I think it's understandable that there were so few packets; I wish you were more pessimistic and had written some extra packets earlier on, but I'm not going to pillory you for not doing so. On the other hand, if Harvard told you they were only writing one packet, or if they told you more in advance that they were not going to the tournament, I think it is fair to call you out on the low number of packets.

Here's what it comes down to: certain people produce certain kinds of tournaments. When you saw the announcement for Feuerbach, this is exactly the tournament you should have expected to get (for good or for bad). A set like this one, as edited by Matt Weiner, is not going to be polished and pretty - it's going to be roughly-assembled, makeshift, and rocky. As I see it, I'm not sure this has too much to do with editing load - it's just what you get when certain people edit tournaments.

Now, for all of its faults, this set no doubt qualifies as "playable," and there is quite likely some value in that. The other option was probably not to have any kind of worthwhile tournament to play that weekend. Of course, I think it would be fantastic if everyone were willing to make every single set into a finely-crafted masterpiece, but that simply isn't going to happen - well, at least until we have a large cadre of really careful/good writers available to make that happen.

The reason I say it won't happen is because, as Seth alludes in his post, turning these types of tournaments into really great events takes an enormous amount of work - basically, you just have to write the whole damned tourney yourself. It's lovely for Weiner to say "hey, I fulfilled my editing obligations by writing 4 editor packets" - but, doing that just isn't good enough to create a high-quality event - it's never good enough. Basically, any time you have a packet submission like this without a really good field packed with experienced writers, this is going to happen. If I'd have been asked to edit this tournament, I'd have fallen off my chair laughing and declined in a heartbeat - because I'd have known I was basically signing up to a full month of hard labor, and that at the end, the set would probably still not be terrific.

But, it's probably not so bad that there are a few tourneys like these - I mean, there are only a handful of people out there who have ultra-high standards when it comes to questions, and many of the people who attended Feuerbach probably had no feel for exactly why a lot of the questions were less than terrific. So, c'est la vie - you just have to be realistic and know what you're getting when you go to a tournament. Of course, we can shoot for marginal increases in quality where it's possible, but I'm being realistic here.

I don't think I agree with the first paragraph of Ryan's post. I think Matt has worked on tournament sets that were quite a bit more polished and complete than VCU Open or FEUERBACH. As Jerry and possibly others noted following VCU Open, the disappointing thing about VCU Open wasn't that the set was no good, it was that people were expecting it to be better; I think those expectations were built up by previous sets Matt produced. Perhaps Ryan's right and I should resign myself to expecting less-polished, possibly-incomplete sets when Matt signs up to produce a packet-submission tournament like FEUERBACH. The thing about that is that, in spite of Matt's own posts in this very thread, I don't believe Matt has held to the "4 editors packets, some editing of the submissions, and I'm done no matter what" philosophy when he's worked on, say, ACF Regionals and Nationals 2008. I'm fine with Matt not putting in as much time on an event like FEUERBACH as he does on an event like ACF Regionals, but if he's really going to put in this much less time I will leave this thread a sadder and a wiser man.

I agree with Ryan that there's some value in having a set like FEUERBACH, even if it isn't super-polished or 13+ packets long; by extension, there's some value in having Matt produce several sets like FEUERBACH, even though each such set may not represent anywhere near his best effort. One of the reasons I started this thread is that I advocate scaling back on the number of events, especially events produced by people that are currently "stretched thin" in their writing and editing commitments, in favor of bumping up the quality of each event. Perhaps it's more worthwhile to have lots of these events that require less work from the writers and editors, to give more playing opportunities to younger players who won't notice/care as much about the decreased quality. I'm not sure what to think about this, but I think I'm probably still in favor of reducing the number of events if there's reason to be concerned over the quality of the events.

In response to Matt's confusion over what this thread's about, part of the reason I started this thread was to advocate for the "less tournaments, more quality per tournament" position, part of it was to convey my concern over Matt's commitments for the rest of the year (for instance, it would be terrible if ACF Nationals winds up with 11 packets, or not enough editors' packets to run playoffs and the final because Matt was tapped out from working on Penn Bowl, FICHTE 2, and whatever else he's planning on doing), and part of it was to express my concern over other people's commitments for the year. If I'm not mistaken, there are several people at Minnesota and Harvard that have committed to producing multiple tournaments. I think this is fantastic, but I wanted to point out FEUERBACH as something of a cautionary example.

-Seth

[swwFCqb]

Perhaps it's more worthwhile to have lots of these events that require less work from the writers and editors, to give more playing opportunities to younger players who won't notice/care as much about the decreased quality. I'm not sure what to think about this, but I think I'm probably still in favor of reducing the number of events if there's reason to be concerned over the quality of the events.

This is probably somewhat biased, as I am very inexperienced on the college circuit, but I would contend that events like these are very much worthwhile to hold. As somebody who has played nothing better than NAQT for the first 5 years of my quizbowl life (and playing with teammates who have had very limited experience with pyramidal quizbowl, one of whom exclusively played OAC), I was very excited to play on questions of a lot higher quality than NAQT, and this tournament did not disappoint. Now, I have practiced on and read through roughly 50-75% of the packets on the Collegiate Packet Archive (so it's not like I've never been introduced to collegiate questions), and I did not notice any discernable difference in quality between many of those questions and these questions. Although, yes, there were several repeats and several questions that probably could have been written/edited better, I thought the set, overall, was pretty darn good, especially given the unfortunate situation Matt found himself in. The "experienced" quizbowlers, who can discern the purported quality difference between this tournament and those that have been designated as having "high quality," may disagree with that, but they do not constitute the entire quizbowl population.

So, in conclusion (because it's late as hell), I do believe that these tournaments are valuable. They give newbies a chance to get some experience while still being a "playable" (your words Seth) set for the better crowd.

[Gautam]

Seth, I think your concern about the individuals/teams which take on too much responsibility to produce tournaments and question sets in a narrow time range is valid. Not only can the tournament quality be diminished, but it can also hurt the individuals who do not budget in adequate amounts of time to take care of their academic responsibilities.

I cannot comment on Feuerbach since I did not play, but I do think that had the unfortunate events Matt describes not happened, this tournament would certainly have been in the satisfactory territory if not among the very good ones.

As for people on the MN contingent, I think I wouldn't be incorrect to say that we are feeling somewhat stretched when it comes to producing more questions. However, I think we are in a much better position than Matt was in, as we have had some great submissions for MO (and ACF Fall for that matter) which has made our work a whole lot easier.