NAQT and Feedback Rhetoric
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 10:12 am
(This topic has been split from this thread --Management)
I have no real new thoughts on any of the concrete ideas here (I obviously agree on the alphabetical thing, I have a range of thoughts on the "carrying a prelim loss" thing that I don't want to address here). I just wanted to say that I think Will's point about tone is correct. I don't know if "gratitude" is necessarily the right word, but yeah there's like an assumption in Conor's original post that NAQT is brutally incompetent or deliberately, gleefully malicious. Using words such as "holy fuuuuck this so stupid," "complete and utter bullshit," and "fucking bush league" seem unnecessarily confrontational to me (to be clear, I am not being a prude or saying they are never acceptable, just that they seemed unnecessary in this context at this moment). Starting a conversation with this invective, as Will pointed out, seems a clear way to enrage the people you're talking to or get them to be defensive.
This is also particularly unfortunate because Jonah's explanation makes sense: the policy was just overlooked during the format change and because it didn't seem to create an issue last year, it seemed fine this year. That's a mistake and they should definitely change it, but come on now, couldn't we just try to figure out what happened or what the reasoning behind this policy was before we start throwing words around like "fucking bush league" and "fucking stupid"? (If you want to argue the prelim-loss thing could use this invective, you may have a point as that has been talked about before.)
In light of what we talked about in the "How We Treat Each Other" thread, I'm kind of disappointed with this. Just because NAQT is a company doesn't mean it's not run by people, people that we know have a sincere desire to promote good quizbowl. Let's try to assume some good faith and believe that there might be reasons under than malicious or deliberate incompetence that sometimes suboptimal outcomes happen.
I have no real new thoughts on any of the concrete ideas here (I obviously agree on the alphabetical thing, I have a range of thoughts on the "carrying a prelim loss" thing that I don't want to address here). I just wanted to say that I think Will's point about tone is correct. I don't know if "gratitude" is necessarily the right word, but yeah there's like an assumption in Conor's original post that NAQT is brutally incompetent or deliberately, gleefully malicious. Using words such as "holy fuuuuck this so stupid," "complete and utter bullshit," and "fucking bush league" seem unnecessarily confrontational to me (to be clear, I am not being a prude or saying they are never acceptable, just that they seemed unnecessary in this context at this moment). Starting a conversation with this invective, as Will pointed out, seems a clear way to enrage the people you're talking to or get them to be defensive.
This is also particularly unfortunate because Jonah's explanation makes sense: the policy was just overlooked during the format change and because it didn't seem to create an issue last year, it seemed fine this year. That's a mistake and they should definitely change it, but come on now, couldn't we just try to figure out what happened or what the reasoning behind this policy was before we start throwing words around like "fucking bush league" and "fucking stupid"? (If you want to argue the prelim-loss thing could use this invective, you may have a point as that has been talked about before.)
In light of what we talked about in the "How We Treat Each Other" thread, I'm kind of disappointed with this. Just because NAQT is a company doesn't mean it's not run by people, people that we know have a sincere desire to promote good quizbowl. Let's try to assume some good faith and believe that there might be reasons under than malicious or deliberate incompetence that sometimes suboptimal outcomes happen.