ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

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vinteuil
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ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by vinteuil »

I'm delighted to announce the inaugural iteration of WORKSHOP, a successor to PADAWAN. The set will be played in Spring 2020.

The goal is to write a high-quality regular-difficulty (3 on Ophir's scale) set each year, and for the set to be mainly written by newer writers. In other words, we want to provide an annual opportunity for newer writers to get experience with and detailed feedback on regular-difficulty questions, and for quizbowlers to get experience working on administration, logistics and finances.

We welcome participants in high school and above. Writers should expect to contribute a minimum of 5 tossups and 5 bonuses to the set.

Applications are now closed; those still interested in working on the set or future iterations can contact us via email below.

The Team (Spring 2020)
Logistics: Alex Damisch
Literature: Olivia Lamberti
History: Jakob Myers
Science: Adam Fine (chem, physics), Kevin Wang (bio, other)
Arts: Jacob Reed
Religion: Jacob Reed
Philosophy: Jacob Reed
Social Science: Will Holub-Moorman
Geography/Other: Jakob Myers
Other Academic: Will Holub-Moorman

The Set
14 packets plus tiebreakers
Length caps: 7 line tossups (before powermark), 8 line bonuses (not including answerlines)

Distribution
4/4 Literature: American, British, European, World
4/4 History: American, European, World, Ancient/Archaeology/Other
4/4 Science: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Other
3/3 Arts: visual, audio, other
1/1 “Legends” including at least .5/.5 traditional “religion”
1/1 Philosophy
.5/.5 Other Religion
1.5/1.5 Social Science
1/1 Other (roughly two-thirds geography and current events

Payment Structure
We will set aside 25% of all proceeds for set-wide work: dealing with mirrors, keeping track of payments, billing hosts, proofreading, packetizing, wrangling writers (enforcing deadlines) etc.

For questions, we'll use a “points system”:
  • 5 points given out per tossup, 4 points per bonus
  • 2 point to the writer for writing a tossup, 1 point for a bonus
  • 1 point to the writer if the question needs minimal editing (roughly: “25% or less of question text needs replacement” with some discretion)
  • 1 point per question to the writer if they consistently make life easier for the editors (writing a lot, writing on time)
  • The remaining points will go to the editor of that question
The 75% of non-set-wide revenue will then be divided up based exclusively on the percentage of total points a writer or editor receives.

Conservatively, we expect to be able to pay about $5 per question, so responsible, good writers will receive $3.75 per question, while editors who have to put major work in would also make $3.75 per question. (It's likely that payments will be higher than this!)

Planned Timeline
We anticipate having all question-writing done by Thanksgiving, and the set completed by SCT. We will accept writer applications until all question slots are claimed.

Questions? Concerns?
You can reach us at [email protected]
Last edited by vinteuil on Mon Feb 24, 2020 1:36 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by Aaron's Rod »

Mirrors
Stanford (02/22)
Southern California (02/23)
UT-Austin (02/29)
Georgia (02/29)
Michigan State (02/29)
NCSU (02/29) Cancelled
Team Illinois tryouts (HS) (03/01)
Toronto (03/07)
Online (closed) (03/07)
Swarthmore (03/21) Cancelled
Minnesota (03/21) Cancelled
UCF (03/28) Cancelled
NYU (HS) (05/02) Cancelled
Online Open (04/25)
Online Closed (05/02)
UK Online (05/23)
Last edited by Aaron's Rod on Wed Mar 18, 2020 4:19 pm, edited 18 times in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by vinteuil »

We're delighted at the response we've gotten so far! Given the impressive number of applicants, we're going to close writer applications for now; applicants should expect to hear back tonight.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by Bosa of York »

Is there any update on the progress of this set or plans for mirror sites?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by vinteuil »

Milhouse wrote: Thu Nov 07, 2019 1:22 am Is there any update on the progress of this set or plans for mirror sites?
Our logistics team started contacting potential hosts last week—we hope to have sites decided in the coming weeks. Anyone interested in hosting after February 15, particularly on February 29th (pre-nationals) or May 2nd (post-nationals) should contact us at [email protected]!
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by Bosa of York »

Are there any plans for a collegiate mirror of this set in the Northeast/upper Mid-Atlantic (the NYU mirror being high-school-only, which one might also regard as a questionable decision but nevermind that)?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

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Milhouse wrote: Wed Jan 22, 2020 1:27 pm Are there any plans for a collegiate mirror of this set in the Northeast/upper Mid-Atlantic (the NYU mirror being high-school-only, which one might also regard as a questionable decision but nevermind that)?
Brown is interested in hosting in May, but is waiting to confirm until after their Terrapin mirror in February.

I hope to confirm our other Mid-Atlantic site, likely for sometime in March, this week.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by Aaron's Rod »

Aaron's Rod wrote: Wed Jan 22, 2020 2:59 pm
Milhouse wrote: Wed Jan 22, 2020 1:27 pm Are there any plans for a collegiate mirror of this set in the Northeast/upper Mid-Atlantic (the NYU mirror being high-school-only, which one might also regard as a questionable decision but nevermind that)?
Brown is interested in hosting in May, but is waiting to confirm until after their Terrapin mirror in February.

I hope to confirm our other Mid-Atlantic site, likely for sometime in March, this week.
I am pleased to say that Swarthmore will be hosting a mirror on March 21st, with a formal announcement coming today.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by Smuttynose Island »

Are there any plans for an online mirror?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

Smuttynose Island wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 11:10 pm Are there any plans for an online mirror?
Yes. An announcement for a closed online mirror is forthcoming.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by vinteuil »

I've been alerted to the fact that I didn't understand Ophir's scale; this set is and has been intended to be regular-difficulty, i.e. Regionals. Sorry for any confusion.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by CPiGuy »

Given the potential cancellation of in-person mirrors (and, selfishly, my own desire to play the set despite not having been able to play my local mirror or the closed online mirror), is there any consideration being given to running an open online mirror at some point? Would you be open to such a tournament being run if anyone was willing to do so?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by John Ketzkorn »

vinteuil wrote: Mon Feb 24, 2020 1:37 pm I've been alerted to the fact that I didn't understand Ophir's scale; this set is and has been intended to be regular-difficulty, i.e. Regionals. Sorry for any confusion.
Hasn't Regionals always run harder than regular difficulty? There are always more challenging answer lines / deeper hard parts at Regionals than your more standard models of regular difficulty tournaments (some of the Terrapins, Penn Bowls, NASATs of years past). I think confusion stems from "Regs" being used for "Regionals" and regular difficulty interchangeably, but in my humble opinion, SCT and ACF Regionals aren't excellent models of regular difficulty.

I'm not basing this on the set, so this should perhaps be made into a new forum thread for discussion.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by vinteuil »

John Ketzkorn wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2020 10:02 am Hasn't Regionals always run harder than regular difficulty? There are always more challenging answer lines / deeper hard parts at Regionals than your more standard models of regular difficulty tournaments (some of the Terrapins, Penn Bowls, NASATs of years past). I think confusion stems from "Regs" being used for "Regionals" and regular difficulty interchangeably, but in my humble opinion, SCT and ACF Regionals aren't excellent models of regular difficulty.
Sure, Regionals overshot regular difficulty in 2018 and 2019 (and to a limited extent in 2013)—but, to take one of your examples, Eric has explicitly described Penn Bowl as intended for "the hard-side/verging of regular+" in the past (and NASAT has had even more consistent problems with difficulty control!). So I think "always" is hardly the right qualifier.

But it's reasonable to ask for more specific examples—let's say that Regionals 2008, 2010–12, 2014–17, and 2020 are good models for what we aimed at, in terms of difficulty.
Last edited by vinteuil on Wed Mar 11, 2020 11:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by 1.82 »

John Ketzkorn wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2020 10:02 am
vinteuil wrote: Mon Feb 24, 2020 1:37 pm I've been alerted to the fact that I didn't understand Ophir's scale; this set is and has been intended to be regular-difficulty, i.e. Regionals. Sorry for any confusion.
Hasn't Regionals always run harder than regular difficulty? There are always more challenging answer lines / deeper hard parts at Regionals than your more standard models of regular difficulty tournaments (some of the Terrapins, Penn Bowls, NASATs of years past). I think confusion stems from "Regs" being used for "Regionals" and regular difficulty interchangeably, but in my humble opinion, SCT and ACF Regionals aren't excellent models of regular difficulty.

I'm not basing this on the set, so this should perhaps be made into a new forum thread for discussion.
It is not true to say that this has always been the case. The idea that "regionals difficulty" represents a different and harder difficulty level than regular difficulty is a relatively recent one; as far as I know, nobody held this opinion when I was an undergraduate. As best as I can tell, this notion comes from a couple Regionals sets having overshot their intended difficulty (as is often the case for sets of all difficulty levels), which led to theorists arriving at the notion that these sets did not in fact exceed their difficulty but instead had actually always secretly been of a harder difficulty level. I think that this is poor reasoning for several reasons, not least of which is that it encourages people to expect unreasonably difficult Regionals sets, and I would be unhappy if this reasoning became widely accepted (perhaps it already has).
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Shockingly, I don't disagree with any of what Naveed said - I think every Regionals from 2017 has been a real step up from the 2016 and earlier editions in terms of difficulty (I think 2020 was definitely the hardest, though). I was initially uneasy about this, but given that Regionals is officially a Nationals-qualifying tournament now, I think it's appropriate that such a set provide a substantial challenge to sort out the qualifying teams and prepare people for even harder events. At the same time, there's a lot more tournaments at the EFT level than before and I think this is probably a good thing too, as old "regular difficulty" was a bit above what most weaker teams would enjoy.

In any case, Jacob's assessment is eminently fair - this tournament struck my as approximately the same difficulty as this year's Regionals overall, though obviously of an entirely different flavor.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

CPiGuy wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2020 2:14 am Given the potential cancellation of in-person mirrors (and, selfishly, my own desire to play the set despite not having been able to play my local mirror or the closed online mirror), is there any consideration being given to running an open online mirror at some point? Would you be open to such a tournament being run if anyone was willing to do so?
We do plan to hold another online mirror(s?), the exact form of which is still to be determined. We will update with new information when a decision is arrived at.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by Mike Bentley »

Fuddle Duddle wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2020 7:51 pm
CPiGuy wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2020 2:14 am Given the potential cancellation of in-person mirrors (and, selfishly, my own desire to play the set despite not having been able to play my local mirror or the closed online mirror), is there any consideration being given to running an open online mirror at some point? Would you be open to such a tournament being run if anyone was willing to do so?
We do plan to hold another online mirror(s?), the exact form of which is still to be determined. We will update with new information when a decision is arrived at.
I for one am interested in playing an open mirror but it also likely makes sense to have some closed online mirrors unless the plan is to move this to the fall where there's likely already a lot of tournaments.
Mike Bentley
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2020 WORKSHOP

Post by Aaron's Rod »

Please note that there will be an online UK mirror of WORKSHOP on May 23rd, so the set will not be clear until at least that date.
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