Does every quizbowl organization need its own blog?

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vinteuil
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Does every quizbowl organization need its own blog?

Post by vinteuil »

We've all complained about how the "blog" link on the HSQB front page leads to a very sparse page that hasn't been updated in ages. Now, even ACF has its own blog to go with NAQT's interviews and social media presence, PACE's social media, Greater Pennsylvania Quizbowl's fantastic website, etc. etc.

I don't think all this fragmentation is good for quizbowl publicity as a whole. As a community, we're thriving and even now producing a fair amount of public prose about quizbowl, but with each organization's posts isolated from the others', it's hard for outsiders to get a sense for this activity.

Here's one alternative: a glossy, photos-forward, news-style website that could integrate all of those long-form posts and show off how vibrant the quizbowl community really is.

It could include a Players' Tribune-type section, possibly as a more public-facing version of some of the long forums posts we get here (i.e. the posts that are less about generating discussion. And of course, it's always possible to make a forums thread about an article!).

Now, I don't have much experience in PR, so it may be legitimately better for traffic if, say, NAQT hosts all relevant posts on its website. In that case, this site could presumably do some kind of "link to our affiliate" or whatever and still have all the headlines available in one central stream.

Again, I don't have much relevant experience, so this post's title is a real question. What do people think? What would be the best format? (Take over the HSQB blog entirely? Make a completely new website?) What would be the obstacles to success? (If it's a matter of work and/or money, I'd be happy to volunteer at least some of both.)
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Re: Does every quizbowl organization need its own blog?

Post by Cheynem »

I wouldn't be opposed to a website that tracks all of that, but a key salient fact is that these are, in fact, separate organizations and I think it's best to keep that fact relevant. Someone looking to find information on Greater Pennsylvania quizbowl may not necessarily want to see every NAQT post. So a site like this could work, but you'd have to have it be as easily sortable and organized as possible.
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Re: Does every quizbowl organization need its own blog?

Post by vinteuil »

Cheynem wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 10:00 am I wouldn't be opposed to a website that tracks all of that, but a key salient fact is that these are, in fact, separate organizations and I think it's best to keep that fact relevant. Someone looking to find information on Greater Pennsylvania quizbowl may not necessarily want to see every NAQT post. So a site like this could work, but you'd have to have it be as easily sortable and organized as possible.
Definitely. The thing to do, at a minimum, would be to have pages/sections/columns by region and organization (which isn't hard to accomplish with a tagging system). (And this is of course what every news/media website does anyway.)
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Re: Does every quizbowl organization need its own blog?

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Sounds like this could be better accomplished by an individual running their own quizbowl news site, rather than by any of quizbowl's notoriously bureaucratic and slow-running organizations.
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Re: Does every quizbowl organization need its own blog?

Post by Aaron's Rod »

I don't think it would be expensive or a lot of work to just aggregate the social media feeds of various quizbowl organizations, and display the results on a page. As you say, you could find something that would allow you to manually add tags for posts you'd like to feature. But it sounds like you may be looking for something more.
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Re: Does every quizbowl organization need its own blog?

Post by Everything in the Whole Wide World »

I find myself adverse to this idea, at least when it comes to regional organizations. A great deal of the success we've had in Pennsylvania with GPQB is *because* it's a separate site with a distinct community and local focus. Teams really like seeing themselves get mentioned, and our blog goes out of our way to focus some of our tournament coverage on low-bracket and new teams, complimenting good performances or progress. That's the real importance of a site like ours- connecting those who may be on the outside and getting them up to a basic speed. If people get hooked on quizbowl, they'll naturally search for the macro-level stuff themselves. I've also found our site and its associated activities like naming All-State teams, giving out awards, and doing podcasts has really built up the sense of camaraderie among PA students and PA coaches, and we've worked together to have some success converting non-pyramidal formats to better ones precisely because of that teamwork. In some, what GPQB or sites like it can offer just isn't something a major national hub would ever provide, as it would inventively focus only on top-ranked teams nationally and/or fairly high theory think-pieces, as that's what its audience would want. Based on the volume of people writing about that kind of stuff, clearly there's an audience for it, but it's a small slice of the quizbowl pie nationally.
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Re: Does every quizbowl organization need its own blog?

Post by Stained Diviner »

What we might want is a newsfeed that combines the facebook and twitter pages of all good quizbowl organizations. (I think that twitter and facebook would have to be separate, and perhaps there is other social media we would want. We can also figure out if we want certain hashtags to show up.) When a particular viewer goes there, there will be many posts that aren't relevant because they are specific to another region, which is OK. When a local team wants to see coverage relevant to themselves, they'll probably go to the local page instead, which is also OK. The point is that there will be something there that is somewhat interesting and that has some activity.

The worst thing we can do is to continue the status quo. For one thing, collegiate rankings should be on the forums where people will read them and interact with them. For another thing, people new to this site are likely to think it is a dead site if one of the first things they do is check out the blog, which is a natural thing for people to do when they are new to a website, and see that it has one post per year.
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Re: Does every quizbowl organization need its own blog?

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Does anyone have a list of what QB blogs exist currently? This might just be a 1-to-1 mapping of regions to their websites, but it would be cool to know what sites are currently maintained. This might even include FB group pages.

(If I do get a list, I'll probably sticky it inside of QuizDB somewhere and regularly update it so that it's one place, more or less.)
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Re: Does every quizbowl organization need its own blog?

Post by Stained Diviner »

Sorry for the bad formatting, but this is what I came up with. I took advantage of NAQT's website. Feel free to let me know what I got wrong.

As far as blogs, here is what I found:
Colorado has a blog with two posts.
New York has a blog that has a lot of tournament recaps.
Pennsylvania's website is wordpress and effectively is a blog. It even has a post about this thread.
SAGES has a blog with four posts.
Avery has a blog with seven posts.

UPDATE: Idaho now has a blog at https://www.quizidaho.com/blog

Here is a list of state high school websites, facebook pages, and twitter accounts. These are all active to one degree or another.

Alabama: ASCA (http://home.hiwaay.net/~asca/) (https://www.facebook.com/ASCAAL/) (https://twitter.com/ASCA_al)
Alaska: quizbowl dead
Arizona: AQA (https://www.facebook.com/azquizbowl/)
Arkansas: AGQBA (non-pyramidal) (http://www.arquizbowl.org/) (https://www.facebook.com/ArkansasGovern ... sociation/)
California: NCQBA (http://www.norcalquizbowl.org/), SCQ (https://socalquizbowl.org/)
Colorado: COQB (https://coloradoqb.org/) (https://coloradoqb.org/blog/allposts/) (https://www.facebook.com/groups/405853230140858/)
Connecticut: CTQBA (https://www.ctquizbowl.org/) (https://www.facebook.com/ctquizbowl/)
Delaware: DEQBA is dead (https://deqba.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/ ... -to-deqba/)
Florida: CAC (non-pyramidal) (http://www.academic-challenge.org/)
Georgia: GATA (http://www.gataquizbowl.org/) (https://www.facebook.com/GaAcademicTeamAssociation/)
Hawaii: quizbowl dead
Idaho: Quiz Idaho (https://www.quizidaho.com/) (https://www.quizidaho.com/blog) (https://www.facebook.com/QuizIdaho/) (https://twitter.com/QuizIdaho)
Illinois: IHSSBCA (http://www.ihssbca.org/) (https://www.facebook.com/IHSSBCA/) (https://twitter.com/IHSSBCA)
Indiana: INQB (http://www.inqblots.org/) (https://twitter.com/INQBlots)
Iowa: IQBL (https://sites.google.com/view/iqbl/home) (https://www.facebook.com/Iowa-Quiz-Bowl ... 186443657/) (https://twitter.com/IowaQBLeague)
Kansas: KASBC (http://kasbc.weebly.com/)
Kentucky: KAAC (https://www.kaac.com/), KQBA is forming
Louisiana: LQBA (http://www.louisianaquizbowl.org/), LQBA (http://laquizbowl.org/) (https://twitter.com/LAQuizBowl)
Maine: quizbowl dead
Maryland: no organization
Massachusetts: no organization
Michigan: no organization
Minnesota: MQBA (https://www.naqt.com/mqba/) does Play Quiz Bowl count?
Mississippi: no organization
Missouri: MOQBA (http://www.moqba.org/) (https://www.facebook.com/MissouriQBA/) (https://twitter.com/MissouriQBA) MACA (http://www.moaca.org/)
Montana: no organization
Nebraska: ESU 11 (https://esu11.org/departments/gifted-ed ... quiz-bowl/)
Nevada: LVQBA (https://www.lvqba.org/) (https://www.facebook.com/LVQBA/) (https://twitter.com/lvquizbowl)
New Hampshire: NHQBL (https://sites.google.com/a/hanovernorwi ... wl-league/) (https://www.facebook.com/nhquizbowlleague/) (https://twitter.com/nhquizbowl)
New Jersey: no organization
New Mexico: no organization
New York: MasterMinds (http://www.nymasterminds.com/) NYQBA (https://www.nyqballiance.org/) (https://www.nyqballiance.org/blog) (https://www.facebook.com/New-York-Quiz- ... 132018633/)
North Carolina: no organization
North Dakota: no organization
Ohio: OAC (https://www.ohioacademiccompetition.com/) (https://www.facebook.com/OACCommittee/) (https://twitter.com/OACCommittee)
Oklahoma: OAAC (http://www.oaac.org/) (https://www.facebook.com/OAAC-131912983521963/)
Oregon: no organization
Pennsylvania: GPQB (https://gpqb.wordpress.com/) (https://www.facebook.com/paquizbowl/) (https://twitter.com/paquizbowl) (https://www.facebook.com/groups/656320281165140/)
Rhode Island: no organization
South Carolina: no organization
South Dakota: no organization
Tennessee: TACA (https://tnacademic.webs.com/)
Texas: TQBA (http://www.texasquizbowl.org/)
Utah: quizbowl dead
Vermont: VNEA (http://www.scholarsbowl.org/) (https://www.facebook.com/scholarsbowl/)
Virginia: no organization, but VHSL has a quizbowl page (https://www.vhsl.org/scholastic-bowl/)
Washington: Knowledge Bowl (non-pyramidal) (https://sites.google.com/wenatcheeschoo ... wa-kb/home)
West Virginia: no organization
Wisconsin: no organization
Wyoming: WAC (non-pyramidal) (https://wyomingacademicchallenge.com/)
Blogs: (https://sagesqb.wordpress.com/category/sage-advice/) (https://www.averyenterprises.net/quizbowl-blog)
Last edited by Stained Diviner on Tue Sep 17, 2019 7:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Does every quizbowl organization need its own blog?

Post by ramblinwreck »

North Carolina has NCASA (http://www.ncscholastic.org/competitions/quiz-bowl) as its organization. There is no blog, however.
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