ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

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ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

I am very excited to announce Medium RaNge Academic, a Vanderbilt and Company Collaboration vIa NEtwork (MRNA VACCINE), which I imagine many will shorten to simply "MRNA." The set will be head edited by Eric Mukherjee and subject edited by the following team:

Eric Mukherjee (formerly Penn, currently VUMC) (Biology, Chemistry, Physics)
Chandler West (Vanderbilt) (American literature, World literature, Painting/Sculpture)
Conor Thompson (Iowa State) (Religion, Other science, Geography/Current Events/"other academic")
Erik Christensen (formerly Waterloo) (European history, Ancient/Other history, Philosophy)
Ganon Evans (Iowa) (World history, American history)
Chris Sims (Northwestern) (Auditory arts)
Jacob O'Rourke (formerly Truman State) (European + Classical literature)
Henry Atkins (McGill) (British literature)
Jaimie Carlson (formerly Penn) (Mythology)
Sam Bailey (Minnesota) (Social Science)
Will Grossman (Florida) (Other Visual Arts)

Additionally, we have a team of about twenty writers, with a mix of experienced and relatively new writers.

The set will consist of 15 packets of 20/20 targeting the upper end of "medium"/2 dot difficulty, similar to previous sets like 2020 LIT and 2019 Terrapin. Tossups will be soft capped at 7 lines (before bolding for power) and hard capped at 8 lines in an effort to control length, and bonus length will be closely monitored.

The set distribution (slightly different, but mostly standard mACF) is as follows:
4/4 Literature:
1/1 World lit (excluding Canada/Australia/NZ); ancient texts from outside the Western world will go here.
1/1 American lit
1/1 European + western classical/"ancient" lit
1/1 British + Can/Aus/NZ lit

4/4 Science:
1/1 Biology
1/1 Chemistry
1/1 Physics
1/1 "Other" science (math, CS, earth sci, astronomy, etc.)

4/4 History [shamelessly ripped from 2019 EFT; thanks walston]:
1/1 American history
1/1 World history
1/1 Post-Classical European History (including Britain and Ireland)
1/1 Commonwealth History, Ancient History, Archaeology/Historiography, and Cross/Miscellaneous

3/3 Fine Arts:
1/1 Painting + Sculpture
1/1 Classical music + Opera,
1/1 Other arts (split evenly between audio and visual)

2/2 Religion and Mythology:
1/1 Religion (focused more on practice)
1/1 Mythology

2/2 Thought
1/1 Social Science
1/1 Philosophy

1/1 "other" (geography, Current Events (in the "modern world" vein), and other academic); note that this tournament does not have trash.

The set is already about 30% written and is progressing quickly. Mirrors will be available in all regions beginning on February 12, 2022.
Last edited by Zealots of Stockholm on Sun Nov 21, 2021 8:44 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

Posting this publicly for full transparency:

I discovered about two weeks ago that everyone with access to acf winter last year has had access to the answerline spreadsheet for MRNA VACCINE. I made a copy of the ACF winter spreadsheet from last year and moved it out of the folder, which google told me would un-share it with others, which it unfortunately did not. I have since fixed this issue. I think the most fair thing to do is unfortunately to decide that all of the 2020 ACF Winter editors (and Tim Morrison, the head editor for 2021 Winter, who alerted me to this issue) will not be allowed to play the set. While I trust all of the other editors of Winter 2020 enough that I don’t think they would’ve noticed they had access to the spreadsheet and not told me, I think this is the most fair thing to do. I would like to apologize to everyone affected by this error. Additionally, I am waiting to hear back from ACF on if anyone other than Tim/William have access to the ACF Winter head editor email. I would like to emphasize that this is entirely my fault, and not that of any of the affected players or anyone else working on this set.

The following players will not be allowed to play MRNA VACCINE: William Golden, Tim Morrison, Nick Jensen, Vishwa Shanmugam, Bryanna Shao, Chris Sims, Jaskaran Singh, Andrew Wang, and anyone else who has access to the ACF Winter head editor email.

Perhaps relatedly, Bryanna Shao has joined our writing team.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Cheynem »

People were talking about this in the Discord:

I generally agree with what some were saying--these are all fairly trusted, upstanding folks. If they were to sign a statement promising they did not look at the sheet of answers (and likely were unaware this even existed), I would trust them to play the set. I find it implausible that--for a period of a couple of months, folks quietly accessed the spreadsheet, copied down answerlines, and plan to study them for a 2022 tournament. Particularly knowing that probably at some point, the original owner of the sheet might realize his error and easily be able to figure out who had access.

I commend Chandler for taking this seriously and in this day and age, perhaps this is the most foolproof situation. But I don't know if this is necessary. This is far different than an answer sheet being publicly available and accessible to anonymous people.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

Some updates:

This set is now 50% written!

We hope to host in person mirrors in all regions (with regions defined as they generally were pre-pandemic), conditions permitting. Mirrors will cost $45/team. There will also be an (open) online playtest mirror beforehand, probably in early January or so. If your club would like to host a mirror of this set, email me at westchandler24 AT gmail DOT com with "MRNA hosting" in the subject line.

Also, the other arts distribution will differ a bit from the initially posted one. There will be 5/5 other auditory arts across the set, and 10/10 other visual arts.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

Some updates:

Will Alston has resigned from this set to focus on other commitments. We thank him for the work he has done on the set up to this point.

Erik Christensen will be taking over editing philosophy, and Chris Sims will be joining us to edit auditory arts. The set is still making good progress and is over 70% written.

I'll start keeping track of and reaching out to potential hosts soon-ish.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

This set is 85% written and will be done on time. Mirror fees are $45/team, including house teams. We are looking for mirrors in the following regions starting on February 12, 2022:
Online playtest: directed by Em Gunter, 1/15 (announcement: viewtopic.php?t=25532)
Online closed: directed by Young Fenimore Lee, 3/19
Northeast: Harvard (3/26 - viewtopic.php?t=25851)
New York: RIT (3/5 - viewtopic.php?t=25740)
Upper Mid-Atlantic: Johns Hopkins (2/26 - viewtopic.php?p=388192#p388192) (ONLINE)
Lower Mid-Atlantic: VCU (2/19 - viewtopic.php?t=25627)
Southeast: Vanderbilt (2/19 - viewtopic.php?t=25723)
Florida: New College of Florida (2/19 - viewtopic.php?t=25749)
Great Lakes:
Upper Midwest: Northwestern (2/12 - viewtopic.php?t=25727)
Lower Midwest: WUStL (4/23 - viewtopic.php?t=25853)
North: Iowa (2/19 - viewtopic.php?t=25730)
South Central:
Mountain West:
California: Berkeley (2/26 - viewtopic.php?p=388591#p388591)
Northwest:
Canada: McMaster (3/12 - viewtopic.php?t=25784)
United Kingdom: Warwick (2/12 - viewtopic.php?p=388352#p388352)
National HS: hosted by Vanderbilt (3/26 - viewtopic.php?p=388830#p388830) (online)
HS Solo: hosted by Owen Riley, (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25530).
Other/limited mirrors: Indiana NASAT tryout (March)

If your school would like to host a mirror, please email me at [email protected] with "MRNA hosting" in the subject line. We would prefer for mirrors to be in person, but if you feel that your region is best served by an online mirror we are open to that as well and definitely understanding.

All mirrors of this tournament will be required to use ACF's official ruleset, found at https://acf-quizbowl.com/gameplay-rules/, with exceptions as granted only by the editors (e.g. any questions of team eligibility). If any team is affected by a violation of these rules by the tournament staff at your mirror, please contact the head editor of this tournament (Eric Mukherjee) for a refund of our portion of your tournament fees
Last edited by Zealots of Stockholm on Sun Mar 13, 2022 3:32 am, edited 25 times in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

We are still looking for mirrors in several regions, particularly the Northeast, Great Lakes, and California/West Coast. Given the evolving Omicron situation, we are certainly understanding if you'd like to run an online mirror (or need to move your mirror online).
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by everdiso »

I think I can speak for everybody at the playtest mirror in saying that this was an excellent set that was fun to play, had well-chosen clues and hit its target difficulty. I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in playing.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

We've just added an Upper Mid-Atlantic mirror hosted by Johns Hopkins (online) for teams that are unable to travel to VCU due to conflicts, distance, COVID concerns, etc. We would still very much like a mirror in the Northeast proper (ideally in person) and a mirror for West Coast/CA teams. There's probably room for some other mirrors as well.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by lpierson »

Hello, I am the president of Quiz Bowl at Tulane University and I was wondering how to sign up for the actual tournament. I am guessing our host would be Vanderbilt since we are in the southeast however I do not see anywhere to sign up for their mirror and any help would be appreciated.

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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

lpierson wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 2:18 pm Hello, I am the president of Quiz Bowl at Tulane University and I was wondering how to sign up for the actual tournament. I am guessing our host would be Vanderbilt since we are in the southeast however I do not see anywhere to sign up for their mirror and any help would be appreciated.
Hi, the announcement for Vanderbilt's site should be up soon. You can also email [email protected]. Thanks!
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

At this point we have secured mirrors in most regions that we hoped to besides the Northeast. We would still be happy to have a Northeast mirror, and are looking into hosting a closed online mirror sometime in March.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

If you as an individual (or a club) is interested in hosting a closed online mirror of this set sometime in March primarily for teams in the Northeast and other teams that couldn't attend their local mirror, please get in touch with me. Otherwise I will host it myself.

EDIT: It appears we've found a Northeast host (in person) and Young Fenimore Lee will TD an online closed mirror.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2022 MRNA VACCINE (Spring 2022, Medium/2 dot)

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

This set is now clear and has been uploaded to the archive pending approval.
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