I was given screenshots that I consider definitive proof that [A.] had made attempts to leak the majority of questions that had thus far been written for the MAGIC housewrite in retaliation for having been removed from the set and for perceived slights. This included an attempt to post questions on the forum announcement (which seems to have failed because the account did not have sufficiently many posts to avoid the moderator queue) and potentially the question database. Consequently, I assume that there was also credence to the threat to post the content to Discord. The screenshots included:
- a series of excerpted conversations/emails between [A.] and other writers on the set, indicating that he had been removed from the set and that he had been misusing the set email after being removed
- a private mail from the forum moderator that had caught the post with the leak, which had unclear question content (redacted by the person who shared them with me), information that positively identified the source as [A.], and a stated motive:
The MAGIC team kicked me out for a valid reason, but they were not polite in the manner. They took an email I created with personal info(my bad) for the group since they were kicking me out, I wanted access to the email, but I had to wait for an hour for them to give me the email and they were questioning on me on why I wanted it. They also made me feel bad and threatened me by telling my coach that I was ruining MAGIC when it is not related to [C.] QB, and also do you see [C.] anywhere in the name, no. They gave people who are rarely active more credit than me, so as payback I am leaking all the questions that I still had access to about 3/4 the total questions written so far.
- a conversation between [A.] and another writer in which he admits to have attempted to leak the set’s contents, including at least some acknowledgement of what consequences this will have on the set (“U [sic] will be significantly behind”)
Since the initial incident in the Discord [A.] has contacted me and expressed remorse for his actions. It does not seem as if he has any concept of what the time of writers or editors is worth, or of the monetary cost that his actions would have had if he had succeeded. He is very clearly a doofus middle schooler, but I do not think this absolves him of guilt. This sort of behavior sets a very bad precedent - leaking a set is one of the worst possible things that someone in quiz bowl can do. Even cheating at a tournament will typically affect fewer people and cause less financial impact (short of, of course, cheating at a nationals).
I am not interested in discussing whether middle schoolers should be contributing to high school level housewrites, or what is the appropriate amount for [A.] to apologize - those can be saved for later threads. But I want to discuss what is an appropriate level of censure for this behavior, because I am absolutely convinced that it should not be zero.
Edited to remove identifying information about which player this was- please contact the forum staff if you would like more information about this incident. --Mgmt, July 2023
