Counterpoint: Sets and stats should be released immediately

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Sima Guang Hater
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Counterpoint: Sets and stats should be released immediately

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

There's no reason that a question set, in the form it was played, can't be immediately disseminated to those who played it. If you want to take a few extra days to clean up spelling and grammar before sending it off to the archive, that's great and should be encouraged. But given how quickly memory (and motivation for posting) tends to fade, it seems pretty important that people can immediately see copies of the questions for commentary purposes.

Furthermore (though I have less experience with this), assuming a tournament of normal size, you're not truly done until stats are done. Again, there's always time to make corrections, and I can see very little reason for not releasing stats fairly soon after the tournament is finished. There are obviously exceptions for large tournaments with many rounds, i.e. NSC or ACF nationals, since those require some post-production.
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Re: Counterpoint: Sets and stats should be released immediately

Post by Cheynem »

Stats, yes.

Sets...maybe.
If the set is done being mirrored, yes.
If there are still mirrors, you need to be very careful. I don't really enjoy copies of sets being sent around, especially to folks who didn't play the set.
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Re: Counterpoint: Sets and stats should be released immediately

Post by vinteuil »

This is sort of like responding to "don't steal cars" with "Counterpoint: driving is good." Your overall point is of course good (I agree with Mike that releasing sets IMMEDIATELY isn't like, necessary—what urgently depends on it?), and it's good to have people amplifying Alston's excellent post about stats.
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Re: Counterpoint: Sets and stats should be released immediately

Post by Ike »

Yeah, I agree with Jacob -- I don't think this is a counterpoint to really anything sensible, or if there is one, Eric has failed to identify the original point he's countering. Eric, are you perhaps explaining why you thought it was okay to distribute someone else's tournament?

In line with Mike and Jacob, I think it's reasonable to wait for a set. In my experience, when people want (stats and) sets now, it's for getting the dopamine rush -- we want to see how well we did, go back and see what we missed, etc. Very few posts require the entirety of the set or the entirety of a category to articulate thoughts -- if anything, only a few select examples are made. I think a reasonable solution is that authors will make individual questions available to players on a question by question basis if they ask and provide a reason why -- e. g. "I want to post about the tournament's poetry it seemed hard, may I look at the answers and text of these few questions to illustrate my point?"
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Sima Guang Hater
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Re: Counterpoint: Sets and stats should be released immediately

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Ike wrote: Sun Sep 02, 2018 12:48 pmEric, are you perhaps explaining why you thought it was okay to distribute someone else's tournament?
I apologized for that already, and if I knew it was going to come up repeatedly I certainly wouldn't have sent Chicago Open to two groups of people I'm writing tournaments with for criticism and illustration purposes. Not to mention it was a tactical error in the context of the subsequent conflagration.
Ike wrote: Sun Sep 02, 2018 12:48 pmIn my experience, when people want (stats and) sets now, it's for getting the dopamine rush -- we want to see how well we did, go back and see what we missed, etc. Very few posts require the entirety of the set or the entirety of a category to articulate thoughts -- if anything, only a few select examples are made. I think a reasonable solution is that authors will make individual questions available to players on a question by question basis if they ask and provide a reason why -- e. g. "I want to post about the tournament's poetry it seemed hard, may I look at the answers and text of these few questions to illustrate my point?"
I actually disagree with this. Though I don't doubt the dopamine rush thing, I find reading through a set as a complete entity fairly useful for criticism, esp with fresh memories, because I tend to remember more things worth criticizing when I do. This is especially true if you want to talk about things like bonus difficulty across categories since that's a gestalt thing rather than just a matter of looking at particular questions.

Mainly what I'm objecting to is the idea that its worth holding onto a set before making corrections or small edits; you can still do that before sending it to the archive. In fact, having an un-corrected version of the set might be better for criticism.
Last edited by Sima Guang Hater on Sun Sep 02, 2018 7:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Eric Mukherjee, MD PhD
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Coach, University School of Nashville

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vinteuil
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Re: Counterpoint: Sets and stats should be released immediately

Post by vinteuil »

How would you feel about editors publicly stating that anybody who played/can prove that they are not going to play the set can email them for a copy as it currently stands? (This already being the policy for every set I've encountered for at least the past 5 years.)
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Re: Counterpoint: Sets and stats should be released immediately

Post by merv1618 »

Eric's motivation for posting aside, I really don't see much of a difference between being given copies of a set and retaining knowledge of most of it after having played it. If you're trying to prevent contamination, having a physical copy of the set doesn't really prevent anyone from playing it from leaking answerlines if they want to or happen to do so.
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Re: Counterpoint: Sets and stats should be released immediately

Post by Cody »

The Bold Ideas of Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wrote: Mon Sep 03, 2018 12:31 am Eric's motivation for posting aside, I really don't see much of a difference between being given copies of a set and retaining knowledge of most of it after having played it. If you're trying to prevent contamination, having a physical copy of the set doesn't really prevent anyone from playing it from leaking answerlines if they want to or happen to do so.
This is simply not true. Despite explicit instructions to the contrary, people who have a digital copy of a set will be glad to forward your questions on to anybody who asks them, with minimal (if any) vetting. There have been multiple examples (including at the high school level) of question security being compromised because a set was forwarded willy-nilly.

No set with future mirrors should distribute packets to competitors because leaks via a copy of the set are unfixable. (Unintentional answer line leaks are, by contrast, fixable. And intentional leaks are relatively rare.) Question security is far more important than the instant gratification desired by quizbowlers.
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