2018 Sun God Invitational General Discussion

[Jason Cheng]

Also, while I'm clearly destroying what it means to have an orderly forum, I'd like to apologize to Jacob Reed for exploding at him in this thread after some of his heckling comments--he too was on the whole helpful to us, and gave us specific actionable feedback as opposed to "this set sucks!" [ensuing silence].

[heterodyne]

We didn't actually rewrite the set from ground up, and I'll bet you actual money that you wouldn't have said this about any other set if someone said "hey I liked _____," because this is the set you chose to perform your drive-by crusade against

It's unclear to me why you still think I am acting in bad faith. Is that really easier to believe than the conjunction of 1) I don't think this set was good 2) other people did 3) as anyone who interacts with me regularly can tell you, I have a tendency to forcefully disagree with people saying things that I take to be false?

On the other hand, "X set was terrible" and "I'll post why at the end of the week"--no one buys that anymore. I sympathize with being incredibly busy, because that's what I've been for the last half a year while producing this set and doing these discussions, but could it kill you to maybe _not_ drive-by criticize a set which you suddenly have some good opinions about and then go radio-silent with no intent to clarify your statements of "SGI was most certainly not good" and "SGI wrote questions in ways that are harmful to the community?" Because if you're going to say those two things together in one conversation, you have to understand that you're constructing an... argument. This goes for you and your teammates, by the way, in case you think I'm suddenly just on an anti-you crusade--I've interacted with you many times in person and I'm sure you're pretty cool, but come on now.

As I thought I made explicit in my previous post, I would not have said those things that I did if I was aware that my life in the last month was going to be much more difficult that I had any way of predicting. I agree that it's bad to say things and then not back them up! This is precisely why I feel quite bad for not having done so, and would like to provide that backing, even if it's belated. However, what I don't appreciate is the repeated implication that I had no intention of doing so or that I was making claims out of some sort of animosity towards you or your co-editors. If you would like references to confirm both the general disarray into which my academic and personal lives have fallen in the past ~4 weeks and my relative inability to predict this at the outset, I am happy to provide them

(By the way, I'm having trouble believing your attempts to backtrack your claims and say you enjoyed large parts of the set because I never saw that caught up in the storm of negative commentary coming from you)

I apologize if my previous articulation of this belief wasn't included in the screenshots you received from whoever has been making you privy to my Facebook conversations. I can assure you, however, that this post isn't the first place I have said this. I understand that you're currently committed to assuming I have acted in bad faith out of some malice towards you or your co-editors, so I don't expect you to believe me.

You'll have to excuse me if I take the things you keep saying about people who apparently don't know anything to be part of one overarching opinion from one person using my "reading skills," because when I see you say "It doesn't surprise me that the most people liked SGI because I had a problem with hard clues and people didn't buzz early" and shortly afterwards receive word that you said "I wish some people wouldn't say sets are good because those people don't know shit," it kind of sounds like a related underlying belief (Hey, by the time you said people weren't buzzing in power, the detailed conversion stats had already been up for a week and the second set of mirrors were being played! The stats that said 19% of tossups were powered were in those conversion stats!).

As you're surely familiar with hyperbole, judging from your prolific usage in this very thread, you shouldn't have any trouble understanding the idea that I did not literally believe that nobody had powered anything. What I said was "most of the teams that played weren't doing much buzzing there." I was proposing the possibility that a lot of the most vocal people who enjoyed the set hadn't noticed some of the problems that I did, because the alternative was directly insulting their ability to judge clues. Maybe I'm wrong and the difference is one of taste - I'm really not sure. But once again, I was making these claims (you are correct in taking them to be related) in a good faith attempt to figure out why my opinion of the set on reading through it varied so strongly from what appeared to be the online consensus.

I don't think it would be productive for this thread in general to continue this conversation here (although of course you're welcome to respond publicly if you feel that I'm mischaracterizing you drastically.) If you'd like, I'd be happy to continue this conversation privately, if you think that doing so would help us come to an understanding. I don't think you were editing or responding in bad faith, and I hope that I can convince you that I was not doing so either.

[jmarvin_]

My cat woke me up early this morning and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I thought I'd try to finally whip a post out before this fracas devolves further. I'm sure most of you who, like me, have some kind of digitally-related ADD or other attention issues understand procrastination, and I assure you that in my case the lack of a "substantiation" of my critiques—which were, might I add, much milder in character than those of some of my peers—was entirely a result of procrastination and prioritization of other things, nothing more. The forums have a higher expected quality of thoroughness and effort than offhand comments at a tournament, or on the Discord, or wherever else; in general I think this is a good thing, and this standard has led to many high-quality and rigorous arguments that have made the current game the philosophically rich and mechanically sound experience that it is at its best. However, this also makes posting on the forums outside of moments of fiery inspiration into a task, and unlike the various books I had to read, papers I had to write, dishes I had to wash, and food I had to cook, it is a task which has neither deadline nor pressure of immediate need, and thus is one whose temporal priority I shafted arbitrarily in favor of more pressing things, or in favor of wasting time. When I said I was going to get to this by "the end of the week," as has been repeatedly brought up, I meant it, and only the obligations / happenings of the weekend after got in the post's way. After a while I decided it would be prudent to wait for the release of the packets in order to be more exhaustive and textually specific, and then somehow I missed their posting. Then ensued the problem of prioritization of the post having depreciating returns: since I already was late to write it, I figured that the importance of timely completion was lost already anyway, and that waiting a further day (on any arbitrary late day) seemed an inconsequential choice each time I had to make it.

Was this disrespectful and unkind to the editors and writers of this tournament? Yes, I admit that. Do I have an excuse? No, I really don't. I can only apologize for stating I would do something at some time and failing to do so by that time, and for any damages that this may have caused to the feelings and reputations of those who produced this set. I never meant to paint a picture of this set in any public or private context as worthless, unenjoyable, etc, and I apologize for making comments that would ever be perceived as suggesting such conclusions.

(It is worth restating that Alston in fact did have legitimate reasons to delay commentary, as previously stated; I don't speak for Alston in any way, but I do want to make sure that nobody conflates my statements here with his.)

Now, the fact that (as far as I can tell) two people who were critical of the set and agreed to write about their criticisms failed to do so in a timely manner for whatever reason in NO WAY implies that there is a conspiracy to "drive-by" slander the hard work put into this set. Most especially, it doesn't imply that there is—as has been now alleged by multiple people—some deliberate effort by the Chicago team to exonerate itself from its loss by invalidating the tournament set. Such a characterization is not only far more slanderous than any criticism ever leveled at this set and its team, but is patently absurd. If the Chicago A team were interested in finding excuses for its loss, there are many much easier ones to find before one would have to resort to a coordinated hit on a high-effort tournament, like for example the fact that the team was playing at only 3/4 strength!* But, and I need to emphasize this, nobody on Chicago A has ever tried to make an excuse for losing the finals to MSU, whether on account of the set or otherwise. This villainous lack of integrity is totally imagined—Matthew did nothing but offer positive and detailed feedback on the set in private, Kai offered substantial thoughts in this forum, and Alston earnestly planned to; JL has made no public statement. I do not speak for Chicago A at all, a fact which makes my involvement in this set of insinuations all the more bizarre: the only two people I can identify that are being taken to task for alleging criticizability and not making timely criticisms are Alston and I, and I have no part in the A team nor have I ever in the past, and have no stake in their game besides their being my friends. So people like Eric M are explicitly accusing Chicago of a coordinated attempt to dismiss this set in order to save face after their A team's loss... on account of a guy who played on the C team and someone who couldn't make the tournament saying they want to critique the set and not getting around to it? It's almost as if people started making the "Chicago Cabal" jokes so much they started to believe them.

The response that, because we haven't posted, we therefore must actually have had nothing to say from the start (all two of us...) and that our declaring intent to post was always a ruse intended only to publicly discredit this set, with no actual criticisms ever in mind and no constructive points to be made, is not only a ridiculous assumption about our character but an astoundingly strange one. Who would do such a thing as we have now been accused of multiple times? I don't just mean "who would be petulant and spiteful enough to do so"—certainly also a worthwhile question—but who would be so stupid? What would this possibly accomplish? In what conceivable world would such a plot be capable of accomplishing whichever hypothetical end, and not just be called out dramatically as has been "done" here, resulting in nothing but a loss of reputation and a public scandal? I honestly don't understand why, when two people had a response that this set could be improved in some ways (one of them also complimenting a lot of what this set had going for it), and didn't get around to enumerating them promptly, the editors'/public's first assumption seems to have been that these were insidious actors intending to undermine a job well done, and not that maybe there is something the editors missed or do not know which these people noticed.

After NASAT was played this summer, I was proud of a lot of the work I did in the categories I cared about, and received praise from some people on them, but I also received incredibly harsh criticism from Alston and Kai specifically on both the work I thought was good and the various failed attempts at writing literature and other categories that I hashed out for that set. The harshness stung at first face, yes, but in the end I learned a whole lot about difficulty control, buzzable answerlines, and so forth, from the criticism—and I learned absolutely nothing I didn't already know from the praise. I've realized since coming to Chicago that the sooner you realize that Alston's harshness is often honesty and stop building up walls of interior self-defense because of his style, the sooner you can correct whatever issue or learn whatever lesson such that nobody, not even Alston, can call you out ever again; I learn more, and more quickly, every time Alston (or anyone!) decries something I said as foolish or false than I ever did from people respectably disagreeing or keeping silent when I make mistakes, and surmounting pride to embrace an open mind toward self-development is one of the foremost qualities of maturity.

Again, I'm still baffled that two individuals' lack of punctual post writing—one of them not even promising very harsh criticism!—got inflated into a university-wide conspiracy to character-assassinate two editors who made a good-faith effort. Never did anyone imply that anyone involved with the production of the set was lazy, incompetent, or any other such thing, merely that there were real and substantial problems in the questions which merited discussion, as is true of every set I've ever encountered, and true of most other sets much more than this one. This post is already long enough, so next up I'm going to enumerate some constructive issues with specific examples in the Specific Questions thread where they won't be bogged down by this nonsense—and I'm going to do so right now, to avoid further baseless accusations that I've been lying about this from the start.

* Not to mention the fact that—and it must be stated explicitly that no member of Chicago A has, to my knowledge, ever made such an argument in public or in private—the potential for a large upset two rounds in a row would be possible legitimate grounds to critique a set. The fact that this argument would be legitimate to level (after all, a good set can consistently differentiate top teams correctly on each packet) and that nobody has made it should tell you something about the character of the players involved and their motivations.

[A Dim-Witted Saboteur]

* Not to mention the fact that—and it must be stated explicitly that no member of Chicago A has, to my knowledge, ever made such an argument in public or in private—the potential for a large upset two rounds in a row would be possible legitimate grounds to critique a set. The fact that this argument would be legitimate to level (after all, a good set can consistently differentiate top teams correctly on each packet) and that nobody has made it should tell you something about the character of the players involved and their motivations.

Was this paragraph really necessary? I agree with nearly all of your post and with the aspects of this part of it about Chicago A's sterling moral character, but I must admit I'm not a big fan of the "I'm not making this rather insulting argument but I totally could" thing. I also fail to see how "this set sucked so much that MSU won" is at all a legitimate line of criticism. You're correct that assumptions that Chicago is acting in bad faith are stupid and wrong, but that seems like a point you could've made without this addition.

[jmarvin_]

* Not to mention the fact that—and it must be stated explicitly that no member of Chicago A has, to my knowledge, ever made such an argument in public or in private—the potential for a large upset two rounds in a row would be possible legitimate grounds to critique a set. The fact that this argument would be legitimate to level (after all, a good set can consistently differentiate top teams correctly on each packet) and that nobody has made it should tell you something about the character of the players involved and their motivations.

Was this paragraph really necessary? I agree with nearly all of your post and with the aspects of this part of it about Chicago A's sterling moral character, but I must admit I'm not a big fan of the "I'm not making this rather insulting argument but I totally could" thing. I also fail to see how "this set sucked so much that MSU won" is at all a legitimate line of criticism. You're correct that assumptions that Chicago is acting in bad faith are stupid and wrong, but that seems like a point you could've made without this addition.

Jakob, I apologize and agree that if that were the argument I were mentioning and if I thought it was a good one or worth making, it would be reprehensible. I think it's great that your team won and it brought a smile to my face to hear about the huge upset, university allegiance be damned. I put this in a footnote in small text because I knew it had the potential to be badly misread in such an insulting way here, but I promise that my intention was never to say that this set was bad because you won, or that such a thing would be reasonable to say in any way. What I wanted to point out is that in general, a good set should be able to minimize upset potential—I don't think this is controversial, since that is the point of 'distinguishing top teams'—and so one could make a limited comment about a set's ability to do this in evaluating it. But the more pressing point here is that nobody thought this comment was appropriate here, and nobody was making it, because it doesn't apply in this case! All I was trying to point out is that if the Chicago team really were the petty connivers and sore losers they have been insinuated to be, such a dirty argument would be employed in full force, but it hasn't been, because it's not true in this context—neither that the Chicago players are interested in invalidating your victory nor that the set failed to distinguish your performance from theirs.

[Deepika Goes From Ranbir To Ranveer]

Well, I stand by my praise of this tournament. I thought it was "really, really good", and I don't think that means that I don't know shit.

Having said that, Lordt, if someone tells you that they meant to do something, but failed to do so because their grandmother's health took a sudden turn for the worse, and they had to scramble to deal with their personal and professional lives, then DO NOT challenge that, and DO NOT express your sympathy in terms of how hard you worked on this set.

I'm happy to fight you over our opinions regarding the quality of this set, Alston, but Jesus, I hope your grandmother is doing better, and that you and your family are well.

[On a lurgid bee]

I was asked to cross-post from the Discord so in case anyone is reading this that did not read it there (and apologies if only one or two people hold this belief, my explanation was quickly accepted on the discord so it's possible I'm addressing a problem that barely exists) the Chicago team's on-site critique of the set was not influenced in any way by the outcomes of our finals matches against MSU. We were saying that we did not like the set long before we ever played them, as I'm sure Jakob, Chris, or Clark would be happy to tell you, or as my messages to Alston on the day of could confirm. I hold a lot of respect for MSU as a team (and like them as individuals!) and their victory was absolutely deserved. Our loss should not reflect our broader critiques of the set.

I'd also like to push back against the tendency of phrasing our criticism of the set as some sort of "cabal" as well. Now I've used that phrase in a humorous manner a lot and I do think it's funny, but it's also worth noting that the Chicago team is composed of a bunch of different people, and it's not as if our lord John Lawrence is just directing us all like sock puppets on what to say. I don't quite understand why our particular team seems to have put forth the lion's share of the criticism for this particular set (although certainly privately it seems some people agree with us and have not posted, and others have done a good job laying out critiques that seem reasonable to me as well), however I don't think it's at all fair to analyze our critique as one made by a team that is attempting to create an echo chamber of our own voices.

[Jason Cheng]

All this stuff about casting you all as a collective of performative assholes* (I did this, yeah) and denouncing claims that it was Chicago's sour grapes (neither I nor anyone on the SGI writing team (including noted Richard Nixon Self-Identifier Will Alston) ever made this claim to my knowledge, although I suppose other people unrelated to us did so) magnificently misses the point of when you publicly and repeatedly make claims about a set being substantively awful and then seemingly ignore the writers' attempts to engage that discussion in the forum discussion, where multiple editions of the set and tons of buzzpoint and conversion data are available for your perusal, while continuing to make those claims about the set, you are engaging in poor discourse practice and "drive-by criticism," whether or not you think you're acting in good faith. I realize I'm rapidly becoming hypocritical by continuing to bicker (although hopefully not about the weird semantics and fluff the discussion keeps getting redirected to) when that was my original point, and it very much stands. Since John Marvin's posted a list of specific, discourseable feedback in between my writing this post and my posting it, this will be the last I say about this, although I suppose you all can continue to defend yourself here if you want. I'll reply tonight to your post in a way consistent with the rest of the feedback we've been getting (i.e. the rest of the posts in this forum), since that was always the intention.

I don't think I need to elaborate any more on that point since it looks like the error was mostly recognized, mind-numbing pedantry about the difference between "this set harmed the community" and "this set wrote questions in a way that harms the community" aside.

Let's say I'm judging what I've seen over the last month by actions--for example, actions of facially elitist comments about "people who don't know shit will say a set is good" (by the way, the social pressure is 100% in the other direction) should be judged as an act of elitism, even if weeks-later nuance is added in some kind of weird backtrack-y sophistry:

How do you think your general behavior comes across to me, who isn't in any of the Facebook group chats various people seem to have made their "good" "nuanced" comments to, or to Emmett, a new writer and "outsider" to this community who wrote 70 questions for this set, or to the whole host of other relatively newer writers and editors who are eager to learn how their questions were received? Do you think you're the only ones with high standards? People who aren't wholly plugged into side servers and group chats and whatever may want some explanations for why the majority of the community (including many "strong players" and "good writers" whose writing work I highly respect) thought this set was fine, and then there were a few well-established voices in the community who seemed to think we messed up somewhere. In fact, they might think there's value in trying to find out why those well-established voices thought so, because if there's this much polarization in discourse, it's worth hashing things out. Again, I fully sympathize with personal life issues, but if we aren't aware of them and we've repeatedly made appeals to get feedback and all we see more trickle-down news of the socially-related people we appealed to continuing to trash the set (with little response to our appeals), I don't know how I'm supposed to interpret these actions. Obviously, I don't want to believe anyone is acting in bad faith, but how am I supposed to take it? Those were some pretty shocking things to say, and "posting on the forums takes too much time" isn't a good excuse--I can't be understanding if I don't know that there's something keeping you from substantiating your claims and all I see is more "lol set sucked hard."

*In case anyone thinks I'm actually imputing moral character from quiz bowl of all things, I don't actually believe anyone involved was or is a bad person and might actually be pretty cool, I just think y'all were being a bunch of dicks who wouldn't put up or shut up in the face of massively available discourse material and space.

Kai offered substantial thoughts in this forum

Now you can hop on over to the other posts in this forum you're posting in and see that Kai offered exactly three posts, which I will present to you here:

I assume that not deciding whether something was “literature” based on its “merits” also led to the inclusion of Shel Silverstein and Black Beauty in this set.

This was my thought process on many tossups, but most notably on the "logistic function" tossup. Upon hearing Verhulst, I was absolutely convinced that the answer could not be logistic, as no reasonable question would ever include his name before a pre-FTP clue, but then they gave the exact differential that the logistic equation is derived from so I buzzed. To my amusement, I somehow still received power! I'm honestly completely unsure where this tossup went - if it all went to carrying capacity clues or whatnot then this tossup was far too bottom heavy even for an upper difficulty high school set.

Looking at this specific question, I would argue that Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami are more challenging than than dropping "cut piece." Perhaps this was a bit of a misplaced clue.

Did I think these three pithy, mostly one-liners at all explained the blanket denouncement of the set I saw coming from your/your school's general direction? No, not really. The first one was a matter of opinion which I explained (the book represents an important slice of cultural history alongside Little Women and Alice in Wonderland, and is certainly discussed by both the academy and lit people as a serious act of literature), but I think I'm self-consistent about doing things like this. The second one was a useful point which we took to heart and used to lower the placement of the Verhulst clue, just like we've adjusted our questions to many other critiques presented. The third is, by all accounts including the ones made by not-SGI writers in that thread, wrong, but I don't think that's a knock against discussion, and I think that's the merit of discussion--so opposing parties can actually evaluate claims as to what's good or bad in a set. These three posts in total were nowhere near helpful in closing the case of "where is the griping we keep hearing from that person coming from?" The Kai Smith who posted in this three page long specific discussion thread, by the way, told one of our editors that he wouldn't give us more feedback about SGI forums or not because he didn't think we'd do anything about it, which is where I'm sourcing some of my claims about "dishonest discourse" from whatever "camp" might exist between the group of you encouraging each others' voiced opinions.

* Not to mention the fact that—and it must be stated explicitly that no member of Chicago A has, to my knowledge, ever made such an argument in public or in private—the potential for a large upset two rounds in a row would be possible legitimate grounds to critique a set. The fact that this argument would be legitimate to level (after all, a good set can consistently differentiate top teams correctly on each packet) and that nobody has made it should tell you something about the character of the players involved and their motivations.

Was this paragraph really necessary? I agree with nearly all of your post and with the aspects of this part of it about Chicago A's sterling moral character, but I must admit I'm not a big fan of the "I'm not making this rather insulting argument but I totally could" thing. I also fail to see how "this set sucked so much that MSU won" is at all a legitimate line of criticism. You're correct that assumptions that Chicago is acting in bad faith are stupid and wrong, but that seems like a point you could've made without this addition.

Jakob, I apologize and agree that if that were the argument I were mentioning and if I thought it was a good one or worth making, it would be reprehensible. I think it's great that your team won and it brought a smile to my face to hear about the huge upset, university allegiance be damned. I put this in a footnote in small text because I knew it had the potential to be badly misread in such an insulting way here, but I promise that my intention was never to say that this set was bad because you won, or that such a thing would be reasonable to say in any way. What I wanted to point out is that in general, a good set should be able to minimize upset potential—I don't think this is controversial, since that is the point of 'distinguishing top teams'—and so one could make a limited comment about a set's ability to do this in evaluating it. But the more pressing point here is that nobody thought this comment was appropriate here, and nobody was making it, because it doesn't apply in this case! All I was trying to point out is that if the Chicago team really were the petty connivers and sore losers they have been insinuated to be, such a dirty argument would be employed in full force, but it hasn't been, because it's not true in this context—neither that the Chicago players are interested in invalidating your victory nor that the set failed to distinguish your performance from theirs.

"I could've said [my detailed paragraph of really insulting, highly debatable stuff], but I didn't."

(although certainly privately it seems some people agree with us and have not posted, and others have done a good job laying out critiques that seem reasonable to me as well).

If that's the case, then I take issue with them too, although I don't think I've seen broad denouncements as large from anyone else so it wouldn't be an issue of "put up or shut up," because we've gotten plenty of criticism from people who didn't post here either but had the decency to engage with us personally--you included, but also people not of whatever "Chicago cabal" I've been characterized as crusading against, especially when I never even implied it was a single institution in my initial post rather than a set of people. I don't actually give a shit about this meme to be frank, and have zero personal opinion about you all as a collective outside of the context of 2018 Sun God Invitational (like I said earlier, personally pretty cool I guess).

Well, I stand by my praise of this tournament. I thought it was "really, really good", and I don't think that means that I don't know shit.

Having said that, Lordt, if someone tells you that they meant to do something, but failed to do so because their grandmother's health took a sudden turn for the worse, and they had to scramble to deal with their personal and professional lives, then DO NOT challenge that, and DO NOT express your sympathy in terms of how hard you worked on this set.

I'm happy to fight you over our opinions regarding the quality of this set, Alston, but Jesus, I hope your grandmother is doing better, and that you and your family are well.

I hope Alston's grandmother is doing better as well, and I apologize if it seems like I'm devaluing other people's personal lives with this—like I said, it’s just quiz bowl, and I’m mildly unhappy John decided to post instead of working on his finals, since this is infinitely less important. I also sincerely apologize for glossing over this point in your post in my anger, Alston.

I'm also on a broader scale apologetic for exploding in anger in this thread, but the overarching behavior for which apparently there's a reputation was certainly something which needed to be called out, and it is true that it's too tiresome for me to picture myself dealing with it regularly, or the rest of our writing team to, or for that matter, new hopeful writers and editors in general.

[vinteuil]

Emmett, a new writer and "outsider" to this community who wrote 70 questions for this set

I should've posted a long time ago about this (I've discussed this with a number of people and told Emmett himself), but I thought Emmett did a really fantastic job—lots of good ideas and solid execution. From what I hear, he was also great to work with. People looking to put together writing teams should take note!

[On a lurgid bee]

I may respond to more of this later (I think Alston's arguments are being a bit unfairly maligned) but I wasn't really thinking of you when I made my post Jason.

[jmarvin_]

Look, I talked to Jakob personally to make sure that that part was understood correctly, because it's important to me that nobody be unintentionally insulted in a cruel and pointless manner like that, and Jakob told me he understood and recognized I was not trying to attack or delegitimize his team's fantastic performance—but apparently the point is not yet explicit enough. I'm not saying "ha ha, I could be saying this awful thing, but I'm not!" in some Trumpian manner; the whole point was that if the theory that Chicago's non-existent "agenda" against this set was caused by malice and poor sportsmanship were true, then there's an obvious scumbag route to take, a route which is not true and which nobody ever suggested even once was true. I thought I was clear from the outset in mentioning this that in the case of SGI 2018 nobody has claimed or would claim that the set's quality invalidates the results, and the entire point of my saying that was to point out that, if the goal of this imaginary "smear campaign" were really to invalidate MSU's win, why the hell has nobody once suggested that MSU's win was invalid?

The answer, if it wasn't obvious enough, is because nobody thinks that! Not even the cruelest critic of this set!

Also, I decided to take the time to respond because I couldn't get it off my mind. First I procrastinated on saying anything, now I'm procrastinating on something else by getting around to it. So goes the vicious cycle. The finals will get done.

[Jason Cheng]

All this stuff about casting you all as a collective of performative assholes* (I did this, yeah) and denouncing claims that it was Chicago's sour grapes (neither I nor anyone on the SGI writing team (including noted Richard Nixon Self-Identifier Will Alston) ever made this claim to my knowledge, although I suppose other people unrelated to us did so) magnificently misses the point of when you publicly and repeatedly make claims about a set being substantively awful and then seemingly ignore the writers' attempts to engage that discussion in the forum discussion, where multiple editions of the set and tons of buzzpoint and conversion data are available for your perusal, while continuing to make those claims about the set, you are engaging in poor discourse practice and "drive-by criticism," whether or not you think you're acting in good faith. I realize I'm rapidly becoming hypocritical by continuing to bicker (although hopefully not about the weird semantics and fluff the discussion keeps getting redirected to) when that was my original point, and it very much stands. Since John Marvin's posted a list of specific, discourseable feedback in between my writing this post and my posting it, this will be the last I say about this, although I suppose you all can continue to defend yourself here if you want. I'll reply tonight to your post in a way consistent with the rest of the feedback we've been getting (i.e. the rest of the posts in this forum), since that was always the intention.

I don't think I need to elaborate any more on that point since it looks like the error was mostly recognized, mind-numbing pedantry about the difference between "this set harmed the community" and "this set wrote questions in a way that harms the community" aside.

Let's say I'm judging what I've seen over the last month by actions--for example, actions of facially elitist comments about "people who don't know shit will say a set is good" (by the way, the social pressure is 100% in the other direction) should be judged as an act of elitism, even if weeks-later nuance is added in some kind of weird backtrack-y sophistry:

How do you think your general behavior comes across to me, who isn't in any of the Facebook group chats various people seem to have made their "good" "nuanced" comments to, or to Emmett, a new writer and "outsider" to this community who wrote 70 questions for this set, or to the whole host of other relatively newer writers and editors who are eager to learn how their questions were received? Do you think you're the only ones with high standards? People who aren't wholly plugged into side servers and group chats and whatever may want some explanations for why the majority of the community (including many "strong players" and "good writers" whose writing work I highly respect) thought this set was fine, and then there were a few well-established voices in the community who seemed to think we messed up somewhere. In fact, they might think there's value in trying to find out why those well-established voices thought so, because if there's this much polarization in discourse, it's worth hashing things out. Again, I fully sympathize with personal life issues, but if we aren't aware of them and we've repeatedly made appeals to get feedback and all we see more trickle-down news of the socially-related people we appealed to continuing to trash the set (with little response to our appeals), I don't know how I'm supposed to interpret these actions. Obviously, I don't want to believe anyone is acting in bad faith, but how am I supposed to take it? Those were some pretty shocking things to say, and "posting on the forums takes too much time" isn't a good excuse--I can't be understanding if I don't know that there's something keeping you from substantiating your claims and all I see is more "lol set sucked hard."

*In case anyone thinks I'm actually imputing moral character from quiz bowl of all things, I don't actually believe anyone involved was or is a bad person and might actually be pretty cool, I just think y'all were being a bunch of dicks who wouldn't put up or shut up in the face of massively available discourse material and space.

Kai offered substantial thoughts in this forum

Now you can hop on over to the other posts in this forum you're posting in and see that Kai offered exactly three posts, which I will present to you here:

I assume that not deciding whether something was “literature” based on its “merits” also led to the inclusion of Shel Silverstein and Black Beauty in this set.

This was my thought process on many tossups, but most notably on the "logistic function" tossup. Upon hearing Verhulst, I was absolutely convinced that the answer could not be logistic, as no reasonable question would ever include his name before a pre-FTP clue, but then they gave the exact differential that the logistic equation is derived from so I buzzed. To my amusement, I somehow still received power! I'm honestly completely unsure where this tossup went - if it all went to carrying capacity clues or whatnot then this tossup was far too bottom heavy even for an upper difficulty high school set.

Looking at this specific question, I would argue that Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami are more challenging than than dropping "cut piece." Perhaps this was a bit of a misplaced clue.

Did I think these three pithy, mostly one-liners at all explained the blanket denouncement of the set I saw coming from your/your school's general direction? No, not really. The first one was a matter of opinion which I explained (the book represents an important slice of cultural history alongside Little Women and Alice in Wonderland, and is certainly discussed by both the academy and lit people as a serious act of literature), but I think I'm self-consistent about doing things like this. The second one was a useful point which we took to heart and used to lower the placement of the Verhulst clue, just like we've adjusted our questions to many other critiques presented. The third is, by all accounts including the ones made by not-SGI writers in that thread, wrong, but I don't think that's a knock against discussion, and I think that's the merit of discussion--so opposing parties can actually evaluate claims as to what's good or bad in a set. These three posts in total were nowhere near helpful in closing the case of "where is the griping we keep hearing from that person coming from?" The Kai Smith who posted in this three page long specific discussion thread, by the way, told one of our editors that he wouldn't give us more feedback about SGI forums or not because he didn't think we'd do anything about it, which is where I'm sourcing some of my claims about "dishonest discourse" from whatever "camp" might exist between the group of you encouraging each others' voiced opinions.

[part you're talking about goes here]

(although certainly privately it seems some people agree with us and have not posted, and others have done a good job laying out critiques that seem reasonable to me as well).

If that's the case, then I take issue with them too, although I don't think I've seen broad denouncements as large from anyone else so it wouldn't be an issue of "put up or shut up," because we've gotten plenty of criticism from people who didn't post here either but had the decency to engage with us personally--you included, but also people not of whatever "Chicago cabal" I've been characterized as crusading against, especially when I never even implied it was a single institution in my initial post rather than a set of people. I don't actually give a shit about this meme to be frank, and have zero personal opinion about you all as a collective outside of the context of 2018 Sun God Invitational (like I said earlier, personally pretty cool I guess).

Well, I stand by my praise of this tournament. I thought it was "really, really good", and I don't think that means that I don't know shit.

Having said that, Lordt, if someone tells you that they meant to do something, but failed to do so because their grandmother's health took a sudden turn for the worse, and they had to scramble to deal with their personal and professional lives, then DO NOT challenge that, and DO NOT express your sympathy in terms of how hard you worked on this set.

I'm happy to fight you over our opinions regarding the quality of this set, Alston, but Jesus, I hope your grandmother is doing better, and that you and your family are well.

I hope Alston's grandmother is doing better as well, and I apologize if it seems like I'm devaluing other people's personal lives with this—like I said, it’s just quiz bowl, and I’m mildly unhappy John decided to post instead of working on his finals, since this is infinitely less important. I also sincerely apologize for glossing over this point in your post in my anger, Alston.

I'm also on a broader scale apologetic for exploding in anger in this thread, but the overarching behavior for which apparently there's a reputation was certainly something which needed to be called out, and it is true that it's too tiresome for me to picture myself dealing with it regularly, or the rest of our writing team to, or for that matter, new hopeful writers and editors in general.

[gimmedatguudsuccrose]

Kai offered substantial thoughts in this forum

Now you can hop on over to the other posts in this forum you're posting in and see that Kai offered exactly three posts, which I will present to you here:

I assume that not deciding whether something was “literature” based on its “merits” also led to the inclusion of Shel Silverstein and Black Beauty in this set.

This was my thought process on many tossups, but most notably on the "logistic function" tossup. Upon hearing Verhulst, I was absolutely convinced that the answer could not be logistic, as no reasonable question would ever include his name before a pre-FTP clue, but then they gave the exact differential that the logistic equation is derived from so I buzzed. To my amusement, I somehow still received power! I'm honestly completely unsure where this tossup went - if it all went to carrying capacity clues or whatnot then this tossup was far too bottom heavy even for an upper difficulty high school set.

Looking at this specific question, I would argue that Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami are more challenging than than dropping "cut piece." Perhaps this was a bit of a misplaced clue.

Did I think these three pithy, mostly one-liners at all explained the blanket denouncement of the set I saw coming from your/your school's general direction? No, not really. The first one was a matter of opinion which I explained (the book represents an important slice of cultural history alongside Little Women and Alice in Wonderland, and is certainly discussed by both the academy and lit people as a serious act of literature), but I think I'm self-consistent about doing things like this. The second one was a useful point which we took to heart and used to lower the placement of the Verhulst clue, just like we've adjusted our questions to many other critiques presented. The third is, by all accounts including the ones made by not-SGI writers in that thread, wrong, but I don't think that's a knock against discussion, and I think that's the merit of discussion--so opposing parties can actually evaluate claims as to what's good or bad in a set.

I believe John was slightly mistaken when he said I offered substantial feedback on this forum. As you have astutely pointed out, I have only posted 3 times in this subforum. I apologize if the "pithy, mostly one-liner" posts I offered in this forum were not enough for you - when I made those posts I did not have access to the questions and was going off the top of my head. However, I offered quite a bit of feedback to both Will and Aseem privately on many of the questions that I viewed as problematic, with a good deal of back and forth on both sides that helped to improve the set's feel and playability for future mirrors.

These three posts in total were nowhere near helpful in closing the case of "where is the griping we keep hearing from that person coming from?" The Kai Smith who posted in this three page long specific discussion thread, by the way, told one of our editors that he wouldn't give us more feedback about SGI forums or not because he didn't think we'd do anything about it, which is where I'm sourcing some of my claims about "dishonest discourse" from whatever "camp" might exist between the group of you encouraging each others' voiced opinions.

Dishonest discourse? That's what I thought you said - now let me offer a rebuttal!

I’ll cop to basically making up the criteria with which I vetted clues since this was my first and probably only time serving as a head editor, but to respond [Kai saying] the “clue selection being player unfriendly,” I’d like to point out that power rates were at 20%, neg rates were at 23%, and conversion was at a bit over 90% on tossups, which seem like exceptionally normal stats
And like I said in the forum group, we’re waiting on visualizing the buzzpoints but they look by eye test more or less even and in a pyramidal manner

If you're interested specifically in what I'm talking about, Jason, feel free to message me and I'll tell you with specific examples the same thing I told Will. It's not that every tossup was a hose, but there were more tossups than I've seen in a set in recent memory with these specific issues. Also, by their posts, both John Marvin and Graham Reid felt the same way on some questions

And lo and behold, I was not given a PM or a response in that thread. Considering that by that point I had just begun to message Will and Aseem about the questions and changes were underway, I thought that it would be unnecessary to post the same thoughts on the forums. In addition, many of my issues with the tournament overall were laid out on the Discord. As it is a much more fluid platform that is more conducive to rapid conversation, I again did not think that my philosophical issues with the tournament needed to be placed here (NB - if you want to hear my blabbering about the tournament in more detail or see links to my messages on the Discord, feel free to PM me on here or FB).

However, I can't offer a rebuttal to your claim that I "would not give us more feedback about the SGI forums or not because I didn't think we'd do anything about it" because I never said this! Receipts please!

[Jason Cheng]

Sure, you can point to that Discord server I rarely frequent, and to the fact that I didn't PM you, but I notice you didn't respond to the stats disputation either. If this is an indictment of my inability to PM you while I was at work and then failure to follow up afterwards (bigger failing there, my bad), then sure, I apologize unconditionally for that.

I thought we were over sourcing my claims the first time it came up in this thread and I did so _exactly_, but I'm really done with this bickering, and like I said, you can continue to defend yourself if you want, though I question your continued insistence to talk across my point about drive-by criticism and the denial by a set of people which may overlap with you and cites you as an example of doing so--you made this sentiment known to an editor of this set who'd have no reason to lie to me, and I trust that claim. It may be that the point was more nuanced, but I was led to believe this commentary wasn't very productive or numerous in quantity.

EDIT: Nor did you respond to our continuous pleas to post on the forums on the Discord, which Ophir just told me to point out

[gimmedatguudsuccrose]

The reason I did not reply to the comment about the advanced stats was that all of the clues that I had issues with were before anyone had buzzed at any site - the advanced stats couldn't really help my claims there. Also, I know that I was not the most productive contributor to the discussion of the set, but both Aseem and Will told me that they appreciated the feedback that I gave. The reason that I'm replying is precisely to defend myself from the attack that I shit on this set and provided no useful feedback and did not want to.

By the way, I searched long and hard for the still unsourced claim that I "would not provide feedback," and the closest I have come to expressing any sentiment remotely related to that has been attached to this post (it's from a PM with an editor of this set).

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