CO History 2013 planning

[Tees-Exe Line]

So here's the deal: I would like to edit this year's version of CO History as a voluntary-packet-submission tournament on Sunday. I would be happy to limit the length so it doesn't run most of the day and Ryan or anyone else's event can also be played on that day. A couple of things:

1. If everyone hates the idea of having an edited CO History, then I will yield that prime slot to the usual guerrilla-style event and run a history side tournament with the set of brilliant history questions I've amassed some time next year. If you feel robbed by this idea, please post here or email me. I won't be offended.

2. Regarding packet submission, I will use good submitted questions in preference to my own, so submitting wouldn't be an empty exercise. It would also get you free admission, as opposed to a $20-or-so entry fee for other teams.

3. My philosophy for editing this would be to retain the freedom that has been CO History's strength in the past regarding the choice of clues and the range of possible answer lines, while subscribing to sound quizbowl practice in question-writing. So no ridiculously tortured answer lines. I would, of course, ask submitters to keep that philosophy in mind. If you have a really cool idea for a history question, this is the tournament to submit it to, but do your best to make sure it will actually play well as quizbowl and not simply show the world that you know about something interesting.

4. Since this is the one time that the many excellent retired history players have to face off against one another and the currently-active history players, I think some attention should be paid to constructing this tournament to legitimately rank the history players. In my opinion, the tossups-only structure gets in the way of this goal IF we run the tournament in teams. So I'd like to run the tournament with bonuses to make the aspect of constructing a balanced team more important, OR simply have it exclusively solo. It might be impossible to staff the latter concept, in which case I'd propose more than two teams per room, but that's departing a great deal from orthodoxy. I think 20-question rounds with bonuses and either two or three people per team is ideal.

Please let me know your thoughts about this. Points (3) and (4) characterize my view whether or not this tournament is edited or guerrilla.

[Cheynem]

I endorse this idea, but the only problem is I think CO Trash is already booked for that Sunday.

[Sima Guang Hater]

I would enjoy an edited CO history.

[Important Bird Area]

I endorse the idea of an edited CO history with bonuses (and of course I plan to submit a packet).

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Since I'm retired from playing quizbowl (for now, at least), I'd be happy to help edit any CO History tournament.

[Important Bird Area]

I'll start this year's CO History schedule controversy by noting that bonuses would extend the length of the tournament. How do we feel about:

1) Half-day tournament versus whole-day tournament? Sunday or Friday? If CO Trash takes up the whole day Sunday, there may not be a good option.

2) 20/0 packets versus 10/10 packets?

[Auroni]

I'd play CO history in any form that it ends up taking. I strongly prefer that it not be on Friday, though.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

The 16/16 format I used when I ran CO History in 2008 seemed to take only a few hours, but it was also on a bracketed schedule.

[Tees-Exe Line]

My thought was 10 rounds of 20/20, amounting to five hours. We can shorten those packets a bit, like 16/16, but I think 10/10 is too little.

EDIT: My thought is to do two brackets as well, if interest is anything like what it was last year. Or teams of four.

I can do any schedule, but I strongly prefer Sunday as I thought the barbecue was fun last year and I'd like to be free to prepare again.

[theMoMA]

CO Trash is usually a 10-packet affair (perhaps with finals), so maybe history can happen starting in the early afternoon on Sunday.

[Susan]

If you're interested in doing singles and not having it take forever and require infinite staff, you could do Eric Hillemann's format (players qualify out of pools and the the top n play a double-elim bracket. You'd have to write the whole thing if you did that, though--I'm pretty sure there's no (non-crazy-making) way of running that as a packet sub tournament.

[1992 in spaceflight]

If I make it to CO, I'd love to play this.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I'd be delighted to play such a tournament.

[Demonic Leftovers]

Regarding CO Trash I would like to run that on Sunday. Andrew is right that the current plan is to have 10 rounds and then finals. I have no objection to running CO History after it, but depending on the length of CO History I'm not sure it would be feasible. I suppose if demand for CO History is significantly higher then it could run Sunday and my trash tournament could be run somewhere else but I would strongly prefer to run it at CO.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

My suggestion is to quickly come to terms with the fact that there is no optimal solution (every possible time slot will screw somebody, pick the one that will screw the least but don't let the cries of the victims slow you), and then pick a time slot as quickly as possible to give the survivors as much time to arrange their logistics as possible.

[Tees-Exe Line]

My suggestion is to quickly come to terms with the fact that there is no optimal solution (every possible time slot will screw somebody, pick the one that will screw the least but don't let the cries of the victims slow you), and then pick a time slot as quickly as possible to give the survivors as much time to arrange their logistics as possible.

Yeah, I agree with this. I am willing to commit to running the history tournament in a manner consistent with a half-day, five-hour schedule, provided the Trash Party is willing to agree to the same grand bargain. I'm leaning toward doing that as ten rounds of 16/16 -- 18/18, with enough time left to run a one-game final. If this deal appeals, then I propose to put it to a simple vote which should be run first on the Sunday.

[Cheynem]

Can perhaps part of the history tournament run on Saturday? I guess I'd prefer to see two quality, full length events as opposed to slamming them down.

[Tees-Exe Line]

Can perhaps part of the history tournament run on Saturday?

IMO, one grand battle of minds is enough for one day. I'm always exhausted after CO. Now I suppose I won't be playing the history tournament, but I really don't want to do this. Also, there's the question of nighttime eviction as happened two years ago.

[Demonic Leftovers]

I have no objection in principle to splitting Sunday between CO Trash and History. My only concern is the actual ability to keep to the type of 10 round, 5 hour schedule you propose. While it may be possible to do so with sufficient capable staff, no major snafus, competently handled lunch, etc., I am somewhat skeptical that such a schedule could be met in practice. However, I am inclined to agree that there is probably no better solution that allows for both tournaments to be run at CO.

[Tees-Exe Line]

My only concern is the actual ability to keep to the type of 10 round, 5 hour schedule you propose. While it may be possible to do so with sufficient capable staff, no major snafus, competently handled lunch, etc., I am somewhat skeptical that such a schedule could be met in practice.

I submit that this was done, despite much carping from some people, last year between CO History and WELD, albeit with some sprawl from the history tournament and rushed moderation. I think it's feasible, especially if we explicitly set the parameters in advance and if there's a generous spirit of cross-staffing. In that vein I would be happy to staff the trash tournament.

[Cheynem]

I think it did result in a slowly dissipating field for WELD, although not horrendously so, I guess. Of course, neither History Doubles nor WELD last year featured bonuses.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

CO is of such a length and field size nowadays that any side event on the same day is pretty much unthinkable.

In the somewhat unlikely event that I attend CO, I would be amenable to trash and history existing on the same day; I would want both events to be very conscious about running efficiently and it might make sense to trim one significantly - bringing History down to 16 tossups and 16 SHORT bonuses, or even 15/15, or 20-tossup, would probably be necessary, as would ensuring that neither tournament has more than ten packets + final.

[Sima Guang Hater]

As far as format goes, I would really prefer CO history to be 20/0. I understand and sympathize with wanting to have bonuses, but it just doesn't seem possible this year.

Also, I guess this means I can't run Lederberg 2 at CO this year :(

[1992 in spaceflight]

I'm okay with whatever format this ends up being, but it sounds like it would work better time-wise if it's just tossups. I really don't care, though.

[Cheynem]

I want to write for Lederberg again if it happens!

[Tees-Exe Line]

As far as format goes, I would really prefer CO history to be 20/0. I understand and sympathize with wanting to have bonuses, but it just doesn't seem possible this year.

If the field wants tossups-only, I'll do it that way, but I'd prefer to make the number of rounds accord with the five-hour time limit and include bonuses than sacrifice the bonuses. I like the idea of unusual team combinations, and it seems to me that there's nothing really gained by forming them if the round consists of a four-way shootout, with two people's scores arbitrarily added together at the end.

[1992 in spaceflight]

So we would need to make sure that we can have 10 rounds and a final last only a couple of hours. If it works, I would definitely be willing to staff the trash tournament if some of the trash people will help staff the history tournament.

[Rufous-capped Thornbill]

There's a high probability that I won't be able to make it to CO this year, so if you want any extra help editing, I'd be down for that, Marshall.

[No Rules Westbrook]

I'd greatly prefer to have bonuses in an edited/non-guerilla history event.

But, Bruce is right...there's no optimal slot to do it. If CO is on the shorter side (and since I'm not editing it, it might be...like, say if it ends around 7:00) - then it's feasible and probably best to run the event Saturday night. It doesn't much matter to me; I'll play it whenever it happens. When can we establish the precedent that people are expected to skip school or take off work on the Monday and Tuesday of CO weekend? That would solve so many issues.

As I alluded in the other thread, I think I'll probably have a multi-subject event that would be ready to play, and if people support it happening Friday night, I'd be fine with doing it then.

[Mike Bentley]

I don't see a way of shortening the main event so that anyone will want to play a tournament afterwards. One of the problems is that you don't really have a lot of good moderators for the main event, since everyone is playing.

I also don't see a way to do a tossup/bonus event and anything else meaningful on Sunday.

[Tees-Exe Line]

I'm still pushing for bonuses, but if we do tossups only how do people feel about everyone-plays-solo, 4-person-shootout per room? (or more)

[Cheynem]

Ehhh.

[No Rules Westbrook]

Oh, there are always plenty of people who *want* to play. The CO crowd is brimming with folks who would play an event at 3 AM if you scheduled it then.

The problem is that Sunday is mayhem with people running around yelling that their flight is leaving in 45 minutes. Saturday's a big unknown as to starting time, and everyone is dog tired and not playing very well, and there's an outside chance a security guard will boot you from the building. I've always felt that Friday is by far the most stable slot, though it has its problems too.

If we're ever gonna have a "qb weekend spectacular" at some point, we're just gonna have to tell people it goes from Friday to Tuesday...but I don't know if that's doable.


As to the last comment, shootout tournaments are the worst. The only environment I like them in is "while playing poker at the hotel room."

[Auks Ran Ova]

On that note: for god's sake, people, schedule your flights for Monday morning if you want to play all the Sunday events!

[Great Bustard]

Now that CO is scheduled, what's the status of CO History? I plan on attending CO, and would like to play one event. I would rather play CO History and staff CO, but if this isn't happening this year, then I'd like to play CO this year then instead.

[Tees-Exe Line]

CO History is indeed happening:

http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... =8&t=14210

The packet submission deadline is June 9th, if you want to submit a packet.

[Great Bustard]

I'll be playing this with Edmund Dickinson. We might submit a packet - depends on how busy things are for me at the beginning of June.

[Edmund]

We might submit a packet - depends on how busy things are for me at the beginning of June.

I'll make a packet happen regardless, but if David turns out to be excessively busy, then parts of it might be not very good.