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Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 3:32 pm
by Mike Bentley
As I plan some travel stuff for this fall, I want to make sure I'm not overlooking any already announced (or soon to be announced) open tournaments this season. Is anyone planning on writing one?

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 3:37 pm
by vinteuil

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 8:25 pm
by ezubaric
We'll be announcing soon an open tournament for December that is open to high school teams, college teams, grizzled veterans, and computers.

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 8:42 pm
by vinteuil
ezubaric wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 8:25 pm We'll be announcing soon an open tournament for December that is open to high school teams, college teams, grizzled veterans, and computers.
...who is "we"?

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 5:41 pm
by ezubaric
It'll be hosted at UMD.

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:16 pm
by vinteuil
Er, who's writing it?

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 4:58 pm
by ezubaric
It will be packet submission, but with computers helping to write the questions. (Similar to our experimental round at PACE in June.)

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 5:06 pm
by vinteuil
ezubaric wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 4:58 pm It will be packet submission, but with computers helping to write the questions. (Similar to our experimental round at PACE in June.)
Now I'm curious why you weren't more forthright about what is clearly the animating premise of the set. Instead, you chose to advertize an experimental set that's practically guaranteed to be full of quirks and faults as equivalent to a standard open tournament.

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 5:50 pm
by Victor Prieto
This isn't exactly fair to Jordan - he didn't misrepresent his thing as equivalent to a standard open tournament, he just said "an announcement is coming soon about an open tournament." You badgered him into revealing information before he wanted to, then condemned the effort as doomed to fail before he's even had a chance to officially announce it. Can't you at least wait until he's ready to announce before making judgements?

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 9:45 pm
by Cheynem
Yeah, by "advertise" if you mean one, slightly vague post (which to be fair to Jordan says "computers" right there!).

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 11:31 pm
by vinteuil
If I posted in this thread about an "open tournament" and it turned out to be a trash tournament or some vanity set, I think it would be pretty fair to call that misrepresentation, and I think people would reasonably question my motives for withholding such a core element of the set from the get-go.

(EDIT: I do apologize for being so quick to make assertions about the quality of Jordan's project, although I think it's reasonable to expect such information up front, just like it would be reasonable for players to know immediately that some open was being written with/by a bunch of middle schoolers or similar.)

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 5:16 pm
by ezubaric
Sorry for not responding earlier; I don't read the boards as closely as I used to!
Instead, you chose to advertize an experimental set that's practically guaranteed to be full of quirks and faults as equivalent to a standard open tournament.
Thanks for bringing this up; one of the reasons that we've not formally announced is that we want to make sure we do a good job of framing this to encourage participation.

I want to stress that we want to have high quality questions, and one of the prizes ($250) will be for writing the highest quality questions possible ($100 and $50 for second and third place packets). To the best of my knowledge, this is the first tournament to have monetary prizes (beyond free registration back in the day, which was a trend that sadly has disappeared along with packet sub events) for question writing.

The goal of having computers in the loop is to improve the questions from both a scientific perspective and a quiz bowl perspective. This is a quiz bowl forum, so let me focus on that first. Here's how computers can help you write better questions:
  • Avoid stock clues in the leadin
  • Automatically find similar questions (to find other interesting clues or avoid repetition)
  • Avoid hoses (if the computer thinks the answer might be X, so might a human ... perhaps you can rephrase)
  • Automate tasks like pronunciation guides and alternate answer lines (don't know if this will make it in for this iteration, but it's on our todo list!)
Again, we hope that the resulting questions are high quality from a human perspective. We hope that we'll attract good question writers, and that a reasonable reader will recognize them as good questions. We're not going for gimmicks and quirks in terms of the questions.

The reason that we're doing this is that we're hoping that these questions will also help computer science researchers write better systems that can answer questions automatically by avoiding stock clues and other "triggers" that make quiz bowl questions artificially easy for computers. We believe that this will result in more unique, creative, more engaging questions for a human audience.

Please stay tuned, we'll be officially announcing very soon (today if I can).

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 5:23 pm
by ezubaric
vinteuil wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 11:31 pm trash tournament or some vanity set
We'll also be using a standard distribution, for what it's worth. The biggest difference will be changes to format (tossup only), eligibility (all human players eligible, computer teams welcome), and prizes for question writers.

Re: Fall 2018 Open Tournament?

Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2018 7:21 am
by ezubaric
You can view the video of our past event here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf5GHwDb6Ig

And the official announcement is here:

http://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic. ... 31#p349431

I'm certainly interested in suggestions for how to best convey that we're interested in soliciting quality questions.