Changes to ACF Hosting Guidelines

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The King's Flight to the Scots
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Changes to ACF Hosting Guidelines

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

Hello,

ACF has increased its fees and some of its discounts moving forward. Please look at the linked sections of the ACF hosting guidelines for details.

Please note that:

-The base fee for Fall and Regionals has increased to $150, of which $80 goes to the host and $70 goes to ACF. The other rules for dividing money between hosts and ACF will stay the same, but have been edited for clarity.
-The host of ACF Nationals will now receive $25 per team and $15 per staffer.
-The buzzer discount for Fall and Regionals has increased to $10 per system, and the staffer discount has increased to $15 per staffer.
-The base fee for ACF Nationals has increased from $320 to $350. The buzzer discount has increased from $10 to $15 per system.

Any questions can be sent to ACF's mirror coordinator, Alex Damisch, at [email protected]. We expect these changes to help ACF events run more efficiently, pay hosts more generously and compensate editors more fairly. We again hope they will be welcome as we look forward to the coming competition year.

EDIT: Updated links to the website
Last edited by The King's Flight to the Scots on Thu Jun 27, 2019 4:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Changes to ACF Hosting Guidelines

Post by CPiGuy »

Is ACF planning on making changes to their Regionals hosting guidelines to spell out more clearly what happens when an error by a Regionals host causes ACF to have to issue extra Nationals bids (for example, by failing to play off a tie between two undergraduate teams)?
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Re: Changes to ACF Hosting Guidelines

Post by Aaron's Rod »

CPiGuy wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 1:48 pm Is ACF planning on making changes to their Regionals hosting guidelines to spell out more clearly what happens when an error by a Regionals host causes ACF to have to issue extra Nationals bids (for example, by failing to play off a tie between two undergraduate teams)?
Great question! There may be a few more tweaks to the hosting guidelines forthcoming in the next few weeks, since editors are still being selected. We will be sure to update this thread when they happen. Since schools need time to budget and raise funds, we've announced the financial changes first.

Your suggestion for specifically addressing those kinds of situations is a good one, and we will update our hosting guidelines to address it. I will say that part of the reason why I wanted a Mirror Coordinator position was to improve the communication between hosts and ACF, so that mistakes are less likely to happen! I really look forward to working with hosts so that they can provide the best tournaments possible.
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Re: Changes to ACF Hosting Guidelines

Post by Aaron's Rod »

Since we have indeed made further tweaks to the hosting guidelines, we are, as promised, noting them down here. With regard to your question above, we have determined that if a host fails to properly award an Undergraduate or DII title, we will handle bids on a case-by-case basis. Other major changes to note include the following:
  • Defining 13 regions of North America for the purposes of ACF tournaments
  • Laying out a timeline of tasks for hosts to complete before running a tournament
  • Requiring hosts to record payments from teams on payment tracker spreadsheets provided by the Treasurer
  • Requiring non-US hosts to work out, in discussions with the Mirror Coordinator and Treasurer, a payment structure
    appropriate for their contexts
  • Codifying that ACF Fall and Regionals will have at least 15 packets
  • Providing guidelines on the use of detailed statistics, and now promise that the Mirror Coordinator will provide training
    to hosts on their usage
  • Setting guidelines on recording games and posting videos of gameplay at ACF events
We have also improved our formats page to explain handling finals scenarios and created an SQBS guidelines page to standardize stats publication.

We hope these updates are helpful to ACF hosts and will inform the community of future updates to ACF documents as they occur.
Alex D.
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Re: Changes to ACF Hosting Guidelines

Post by 1.82 »

I am not sure why Maryland is placed in the same region as New York and a different region from Virginia. By way of illustration, Maryland and Virginia attended the same site of ACF Regionals (either as a participant or host) in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 (this tournament was, if memory serves, hosted by Virginia even though it was physically held at VCU), 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019: that is to say, each of the past nine years. You can substitute VCU for Virginia and get much the same results. I don't think that any further evidence should be necessary to demonstrate that, for the purpose of determining where to place ACF tournaments, Maryland and Virginia constitute a single region, but the database provides ample further evidence that teams from Maryland and teams from Virginia constantly see each other at tournaments and see teams from New Jersey and New York much less often.

I am aware that ACF hosting deadlines state that actual sites may differ slightly from the stated regional definitions, but I can't conceive of any reason for the lines to be drawn the way that they are in the first place. If these boundaries are to have an impact on site selection, I can only hope that ACF will fix this mistake and place Maryland (and the District of Columbia) in the proper region.
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Re: Changes to ACF Hosting Guidelines

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

1.82 wrote: Fri Jul 12, 2019 1:05 pm I am not sure why Maryland is placed in the same region as New York and a different region from Virginia. By way of illustration, Maryland and Virginia attended the same site of ACF Regionals (either as a participant or host) in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 (this tournament was, if memory serves, hosted by Virginia even though it was physically held at VCU), 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019: that is to say, each of the past nine years. You can substitute VCU for Virginia and get much the same results. I don't think that any further evidence should be necessary to demonstrate that, for the purpose of determining where to place ACF tournaments, Maryland and Virginia constitute a single region, but the database provides ample further evidence that teams from Maryland and teams from Virginia constantly see each other at tournaments and see teams from New Jersey and New York much less often.

I am aware that ACF hosting deadlines state that actual sites may differ slightly from the stated regional definitions, but I can't conceive of any reason for the lines to be drawn the way that they are in the first place. If these boundaries are to have an impact on site selection, I can only hope that ACF will fix this mistake and place Maryland (and the District of Columbia) in the proper region.
As we mention in the guide, the hosts do not have to be chosen in strict accordance with these guidelines, teams are free to attend any site, and we will aim to choose hosts in adjacent regions to maximize convenience for all teams involved. That said, we have registered your points and will take them under consideration. Anyone can feel free to email [email protected] as well if they have further questions.
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Re: Changes to ACF Hosting Guidelines

Post by 1.82 »

The ACF Fall announcement has been posted and ACF's list of regions has not been changed, which is to say that the concerns that I presented have not been addressed in any way. Given that the list of regions was linked in the tournament announcement, this leaves two possibilities:

1) ACF's list of regions will be taken into account when determining host sites, which means that ACF's determination that Maryland belongs in the same region as New York and not Virginia will affect the decision of where to place sites, even if it is not the sole determining factor.
2) ACF's list of regions will not be taken into account when determining host sites and the fact that Maryland and Virginia are in different regions will be completely ignored, which is to say that the action of creating and posting a list of regions will have been completely useless.

This would not be an issue if the list of regions had been fixed, but the fact that it has not been changed indicates that it is the official belief of ACF that (flying in the face of both historical facts and geographical logic) the Potomac River represents a logical dividing line between circuits. Consequently, if ACF will continue to stick to this definition, I think that it would be helpful for the quizbowl community to understand the implications of this.
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Re: Changes to ACF Hosting Guidelines

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

1.82 wrote: Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:48 pm The ACF Fall announcement has been posted and ACF's list of regions has not been changed, which is to say that the concerns that I presented have not been addressed in any way. Given that the list of regions was linked in the tournament announcement, this leaves two possibilities:

1) ACF's list of regions will be taken into account when determining host sites, which means that ACF's determination that Maryland belongs in the same region as New York and not Virginia will affect the decision of where to place sites, even if it is not the sole determining factor.
2) ACF's list of regions will not be taken into account when determining host sites and the fact that Maryland and Virginia are in different regions will be completely ignored, which is to say that the action of creating and posting a list of regions will have been completely useless.

This would not be an issue if the list of regions had been fixed, but the fact that it has not been changed indicates that it is the official belief of ACF that (flying in the face of both historical facts and geographical logic) the Potomac River represents a logical dividing line between circuits. Consequently, if ACF will continue to stick to this definition, I think that it would be helpful for the quizbowl community to understand the implications of this.
As we mention in the guide, the hosts do not have to be chosen in strict accordance with these guidelines, teams are free to attend any site, and we will aim to choose hosts in adjacent regions to maximize convenience for all teams involved. That said, we have registered your points and will take them under consideration. Anyone can feel free to email [email protected] as well if they have further questions.
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Re: Changes to ACF Hosting Guidelines

Post by Cody »

I agree with Naveed. The UMD/UVA/VCU triangle has among the highest mutual tournament attendances of any 3 collegiate programs. It really makes no sense for Virginia and Maryland (& DC) to be considered different regions given the prolific hosting and attendance histories between the programs in these states.

Yes, the regions aren't definitive, yadda yadda, but I don't understand why this wouldn't just be adjusted. Presumably the regions are used to provide some structure to listing and determining mirrors, yet the definition ACF is using for Lower Mid-Atlantic does the opposite.
Cody Voight, VCU ’14.
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