Addressing a common moderator error

[rdc20]

I’ve encountered the same moderator error a few times recently, so I thought it would be a good idea to point it out and encourage TDs to inform staff of the rule before each tournament.

The error is a moderator saying, “Answer, please,” during a player’s five seconds after buzzing on a tossup. The relevant section of ACF’s gameplay rules says:

From the moment at which a player buzzes in, that player has five seconds in which to give an answer. (Recognition exists entirely as a courtesy to the player; the amount of time it takes to recognize the player who buzzed in has no effect on this count.) After five seconds, the moderator shall call time (i.e. by saying “Time”). Any answer given after the moderator calls “Time” will not be considered.

This is unlike the situation on bonuses, where the rule says:

If no team member directs an answer toward the moderator within four seconds (or six seconds for an online tournament), the moderator must ask the team for an official answer (e.g. by saying “Answer?”). The team has one second thereafter to provide an answer (or two seconds for an online tournament), after which point the moderator shall call time. (This is UNLIKE a player’s opportunity to give an answer to a tossup, during which the moderator may NOT say anything special at the four-second mark. See D.10.)

Making this mistake is distracting and can interfere with a player’s attempt to recall an answer or decide among potential answers.

[Cheynem]

If I recall, the moderator should also not say similar things if a tossup is about to go dead and nobody has buzzed in (i.e., "Anyone?" or "Last chance").

[Mike Bentley]

I don't do this "answer please" prompting on tossups, but I also wonder if there's a good reason to keep having these different rules. I guess the idea is it's redundant and might give players an extra second or two because the moderator stops counting when saying "answer please." But the rules would be simpler if everything just worked this way. And it would be slightly more predictable of when to buzz / have to give an answer to avoid running out of time on tossups.

[rdc20]

I think the distraction from being prompted for an answer on tossups is large enough that I’d be more willing to ditch “answer please” on bonuses than I would be to start doing it on tossups. To be clear, I am happy with the current rules.

Maybe other people are different, but I have a good intuitive sense of how much time I have left to answer a tossup, and the interruption from being prompted for an answer is distracting and frustrating. Nine times out of ten, if I haven’t pulled an answer after four seconds, I won’t get it in five. But the interruption is unhelpful in the ten percent of cases where I have a chance at pulling an answer.

Perhaps it’s not as distracting on bonuses because you’re already speaking out loud with your teammates as you try to remember or settle on an answer.

I’m curious to hear other people’s opinion on this.

[everdiso]

Suggestion: the reader counts down from five on their fingers and calls time when they're all down. That way, players always have a warning for when they need to say an answer, but it's not a distraction that interrupts the thought process.

[rdc20]

I think that’s a good suggestion. It also addresses the small problem that moderators often don’t give any thought to the time limit until several seconds have passed, since most of the time an answer is delivered before the time limit becomes relevant. If the moderator starts counting on their fingers immediately, it ensures that the five-second window begins as soon as the player who buzzed is acknowledged.

[Dantooine is Big!]

unsure if signaling the time you have on a bonus by counting on your fingers as a mod is necessarily good unless everyone did it (because of then having some marginal advantage when playing with that mod) but then again if a player asked me, a mod, to do so, i don't see any problem with doing so, so maybe this could become standard practice if widely enough known and asked for (by some mechanism, i guess, idk how teams who are "out of the know" or just happen to not hear about this" would necessarily know about this) ?

[Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!]

Suggestion: the reader counts down from five on their fingers and calls time when they're all down. That way, players always have a warning for when they need to say an answer, but it's not a disfraction that interrupts the thought process.

This is what I do. I don't think people should be prompted on tossups outside of this though. The prompting is there as a courtesy on bonuses because players will be looking at each other or focused on discussion and probably won't notice me counting on my fingers. Whereas on the tossup, I think's more expected that you should have an answer prepared and say it when you buzz.

[Mike Bentley]

I think it's absolutely critical that moderators prompt "answer please" on bonuses and we definitely should not change that rule. I still think it would be more consistent if we did this on tossups but can live with the current system. I don't think it really harms anything if a moderator (consistently) does this on tossups. I agree that signaling time on your fingers is a best practice.

While we're discussing moderator best practices, I'd encourage every moderator to get in a habit of saying how many points players got on a tossup/bonus every time. i.e. "30 points on the bonus" or "15 points for the tossup." I used to only say "correct" if someone got 10 points on a tossup in a tournament with powers. Even though I like to feel I never said "correct" rather than "15" or "power," enough other moderators are inconsistent about this that you're constantly having players ask "was that power?" Just get in a habit of being explicit to keep the game running more smoothly.

[VSCOelasticity]

I was always frustrated by moderators prompting for an answer on a tossup because, since it is not in the rules, it would usually end up giving a player much more than 5 seconds (or 2 seconds or whatever NAQT allows) to answer the tossup.

[theMoMA]

I don't do this "answer please" prompting on tossups, but I also wonder if there's a good reason to keep having these different rules. I guess the idea is it's redundant and might give players an extra second or two because the moderator stops counting when saying "answer please." But the rules would be simpler if everything just worked this way. And it would be slightly more predictable of when to buzz / have to give an answer to avoid running out of time on tossups.

I think the reason for the "answer, please" on bonuses is obviously that the moderator often has to cut off discussion and focus the team on giving an answer, which is not true for tossups. Absent the kind of consistency that Mike mentions, there's no good reason to have this kind of prompt on tossups (and a few drawbacks, as others have pointed out).

[everdiso]

unsure if signaling the time you have on a bonus by counting on your fingers as a mod is necessarily good unless everyone did it (because of then having some marginal advantage when playing with that mod) but then again if a player asked me, a mod, to do so, i don't see any problem with doing so, so maybe this could become standard practice if widely enough known and asked for (by some mechanism, i guess, idk how teams who are "out of the know" or just happen to not hear about this" would necessarily know about this) ?

Yeah, to be clear, I'm advocating for this to be adopted as a rule, and not just be done haphazardly :p

[bmcke]

Suggestion: the reader counts down from five on their fingers and calls time when they're all down. That way, players always have a warning for when they need to say an answer, but it's not a distraction that interrupts the thought process.

This is a hassle for the moderator. Please do not require this. Sorry if I make timing errors sometimes.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

Suggestion: the reader counts down from five on their fingers and calls time when they're all down. That way, players always have a warning for when they need to say an answer, but it's not a distraction that interrupts the thought process.

This is a hassle for the moderator. Please do not require this. Sorry if I make timing errors sometimes.

This is basically standard practice among the experienced moderators I've encountered. And once one starts doing it, it becomes second nature. It's completely reasonable to expect people who do a lot of moderating (or are moderating important events) to learn to do this.

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

Suggestion: the reader counts down from five on their fingers and calls time when they're all down. That way, players always have a warning for when they need to say an answer, but it's not a distraction that interrupts the thought process.

This is a hassle for the moderator. Please do not require this. Sorry if I make timing errors sometimes.

I don't wanna be rude but is counting to five on your fingers that much of a hassle ????????????????????????????

[Mike Bentley]

Suggestion: the reader counts down from five on their fingers and calls time when they're all down. That way, players always have a warning for when they need to say an answer, but it's not a distraction that interrupts the thought process.

This is a hassle for the moderator. Please do not require this. Sorry if I make timing errors sometimes.

I don't wanna be rude but is counting to five on your fingers that much of a hassle ????????????????????????????

I agree this is a best practice, but it would be weird to have as a rule. What happens if the moderator doesn't do this? I did this while reading SCT but I also sometimes would grab a drink of water while teams were deliberating and was unable to count it out. What would be the remedy for the players in that situation?

Also, I do think it requires at least a little bit of being able to do two things at once which some people may not be able to consistently do. Are you going to bar someone from moderating because they're not able to do this? If not, why have the rule in the first place?

[Cheynem]

Moderators should just be consistent. I find doing the fingers thing to be the most consistent, but as Mike said, occasionally you're drinking a water or pausing to do something else. That's fine. Just find a consistent way to count and be clear about that to teams.

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

Suggestion: the reader counts down from five on their fingers and calls time when they're all down. That way, players always have a warning for when they need to say an answer, but it's not a distraction that interrupts the thought process.

This is a hassle for the moderator. Please do not require this. Sorry if I make timing errors sometimes.

I don't wanna be rude but is counting to five on your fingers that much of a hassle ????????????????????????????

I agree this is a best practice, but it would be weird to have as a rule. What happens if the moderator doesn't do this? I did this while reading SCT but I also sometimes would grab a drink of water while teams were deliberating and was unable to count it out. What would be the remedy for the players in that situation?

Also, I do think it requires at least a little bit of being able to do two things at once which some people may not be able to consistently do. Are you going to bar someone from moderating because they're not able to do this? If not, why have the rule in the first place?

Come on, counting on fingers and “waiting to hear a noise” is not a lot more than walking and chewing gum… in fact I suppose if i discovered my moderator was unable to do this basic task I really wouldn’t want them to be able to make in game judgments for me!!!

[1992 in spaceflight]

Suggestion: the reader counts down from five on their fingers and calls time when they're all down. That way, players always have a warning for when they need to say an answer, but it's not a distraction that interrupts the thought process.

This is a hassle for the moderator. Please do not require this. Sorry if I make timing errors sometimes.

This is basically standard practice among the experienced moderators I've encountered. And once one starts doing it, it becomes second nature. It's completely reasonable to expect people who do a lot of moderating (or are moderating important events) to learn to do this.

Just as an example for how standard several people find this: I've been part of two presentations about how to moderate this year (one was for local coaches, one was for the members of the WUSTL team), and I specifically mentioned using your arm as a metronome and counting down using your fingers.

If you don't count down this way...how do you count down? Do you look at your watch or something?

[Mike Bentley]

Suggestion: the reader counts down from five on their fingers and calls time when they're all down. That way, players always have a warning for when they need to say an answer, but it's not a distraction that interrupts the thought process.

This is a hassle for the moderator. Please do not require this. Sorry if I make timing errors sometimes.

This is basically standard practice among the experienced moderators I've encountered. And once one starts doing it, it becomes second nature. It's completely reasonable to expect people who do a lot of moderating (or are moderating important events) to learn to do this.

Just as an example for how standard several people find this: I've been part of two presentations about how to moderate this year (one was for local coaches, one was for the members of the WUSTL team), and I specifically mentioned using your arm as a metronome and counting down using your fingers.

If you don't count down this way...how do you count down? Do you look at your watch or something?

For quite some time, quizbowl moderators just kept count in their head and called time when they got to 4 (or 12 or whatever with bad moderators). I still see people sometimes counting out a lot more fingers than 5 or 7 for tournaments.

One thing that you might otherwise be doing when counting is taking a look at the answer line or the next bonus part. If you're not practiced in hand counting, it can be a little hard to do both things but is obviously not a very hard skill for most (but not all) people.

It wouldn't hurt matters to add a clause in various rules encouraging moderators to do this as a best practice. But I still don't really see what the remedy would be if a moderator isn't doing this. You're already free to ask a moderator nicely to do this if they're not.