Objects of Interest

Old college threads.
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morrisbm
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Objects of Interest

Post by morrisbm »

Hey Trashy People,
I'm one of those kids from BC who either throw crappy hockey-centric tournaments or show up to your tournaments drunk. I just now discovered this website and feel compelled to mention some things that I found of interest.

First
I appreciate the constructive criticism, Maryland & Brandeis, though since I'm 90% sure none of us had any idea that this forum existed before (I just called our president to confirm) it may have been more purposeful for you to actively e-mail us this advice (listed in the BC college bowl jam or something like that) rather than passively posting it on a forum effectively announcing to everyone important in the trashy community about our messes, and not us. It's not really your fault, maybe we should know about this, but yeah, it just feels a little gossipy. No huge deal though, all in the interest in making the game better. (except for you Brandies you owe us money! your complaints are officially worthless until you pay us! gracias).

Second
I fully enjoyed Trashionals despite our middling (Ok worse than middling) performance and punctuality. I could list things I enjoyed and disliked about the tournament questions (dont listen to those other idiots, more indie rock and hockey!!!! because thats about the only thing that BC can do better than you!!! otherwise your a bunch of hegemoners!!!! thats right i've taken a sociology class!!!) but what i was more concerned with was the level of competition. I realize that BC isn't exactly the cream of the crop when it comes to this stuff but we do have a passion for trash and all things trashy, we do throughly enjoy the tournament experience. My issue (as a sophomore, possible idiot, and first year college bowler) was that we just couldn't compete with many of the, what I'll call charitably "Alumni" teams (who may or may not be related by any actual alumni relation). I recognize the passion, effort and love that these guys have for the tournament and the joy they derive from it and have nothing for respect for those who dominate this game. But somehow i feel as if there is a kind of unfair playing field for us undergrads, who just get the crap kicked out of us by people whose lives have revolved around this sort of thing (I've been doing this for a year, which means I'll just get the !!! question before you, please don't complain about that sort of thing that us younger people can actually get). I was wondering if anybody else undergrads or otherwise felt the same way and if having an Undergraduate Trash tournament was ever proposed/happened/is possible? Because I think that kind of level(er) playing field might make the trip more enjoyable for the teams that already go and actually fun again for the undergrad teams who choose not to go because of this kind of dichotomy. This is not to say that Trashionals as it is (a tournament for "alumni" and undergrads) should be eliminated but maybe there could be another national trash tournament for undergrads? Just a thought. Let me know if this is actually feasible and your thoughts or whatever else?

Third
Yeah i just had those two things to talk about, now that I know this site exists BC will probably be more active in this community. We people are happy college bowlers who think this sort of thing is fun and ultimately worthwhile. Thanks.

I think thats a proper closing,
Matthew Morris

ps - I know my grammar sucks
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Re: Objects of Interest

Post by Mike Bentley »

morrisbm wrote:First
I appreciate the constructive criticism, Maryland & Brandeis, though since I'm 90% sure none of us had any idea that this forum existed before (I just called our president to confirm) it may have been more purposeful for you to actively e-mail us this advice (listed in the BC college bowl jam or something like that) rather than passively posting it on a forum effectively announcing to everyone important in the trashy community about our messes, and not us. It's not really your fault, maybe we should know about this, but yeah, it just feels a little gossipy. No huge deal though, all in the interest in making the game better. (except for you Brandies you owe us money! your complaints are officially worthless until you pay us! gracias).
Hey, sorry about this. I meant to e-mail you guys with my opinions of your tournament as well (and reference this site) but I ended up forgetting to do this. Sorry if it felt like we were talking behind your backs about it.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

Trash should stay "open" because that's part of what trash is. It's not for school teams. Academic is what school-affiliated quizbowl clubs should be playing. Where on the calendar are you going to put this second trash national, and where are people going to get the money to attend it, without horning in on the academic tournaments from which your team is already mysteriously absent?
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Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Why not do what NAQT does and have a separate Undergraduate championship at the same tournament as the general championship?
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Post by Mr. Kwalter »

First, while I personally have never posted anything in regard to the BC team on this board, I'm sorry you didn't know about it. For some reason many people who are involved mostly or entirely in trash never find this board, and between this and the Cancel Bowl debacle of 2006 it should be clear that the word needs to get out. Especially because it seems like Charlie and NAQT are pretty much the only ones sending out official communication through the yahoo group (and Charlie's people know to post here as well).

That being said, here's my response. I can't help but second Matt's claim that school programs should at least primarily if not totally use their funds to attend academic tournaments (to be fair to BC I am fairly sure I remember seeing them at the BU MLK mirror). Yes, trash should stay open, and there isn't room for an undergraduate nationals. I mean, while trash people aren't always of any remotely reasonable age, a number of academic teams are composed of people who are in their late 20s, early 30s, or beyond. Should they be excluded from national competitions? ICT rightfully has an undergraduate championship, a title which is regarded by no one as a second-rate achievement. ACF...well, while there may not currently be an undergraduate championship to speak of, any team composed entirely of undergraduates (like, say, Carleton this year) that does particularly well at ACF nationals is treated with the respect they deserve. I understand your frustration, and if TRASHionals doesn't formally recognize the top undergraduate team perhaps they should, but you can't put an age limit on quizbowl. If nothing else, it would possibly fatally diminish the non-CBI academic circuit and it would almost definitely destroy TRASH. I don't think you could even get enough undergraduate trash teams together for any sort of worthwhile national tournament. It's good to see that you're clearly enthusiastic about quizbowl, whatever form it may be, but you just need to get used to paying your dues as you get started and doing what you can to improve yourself.

Edit: didn't mean to echo Bruce, but he's right.
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Post by morrisbm »

Hello again,

It's Rebuttal Time...
In Order...

ikillkenny
Don't worry about it, we found the site and if we hold a tournament again it will be better. Thanks for the help.

Mr. Weiner
OK, my only issue with your argument is that you suppose that we should be participating in Academic tournaments because we are college students. Our team has been to academic tournaments in the Boston Area before (including the MLK one) and the overwhelming sentiment of the team is that we do not enjoy them. This might explain these "mysterious absences" but you know if it's not for us then it's not for us; I don't understand why this should bother anyone else. I guarantee you that if we started doing academic packets during our practices that the people we have right now would stop coming. It's just not going to work for this team. We just have a trashy dynamic. Otherwise in response to your concerns about pragmatism and logisitcs you may be right, but I'm not in a position to say.

Bruce/Hoss Cartwright
I never meant to propose destroying Trashionals as it is, even if you feel that would be the result of this proposal. Trashionals is beautiful and theres such enthusiasm from everybody who puts it together and in the end I think everyone has fun. I don't mean to be combative but I guess the issue with my line of thought here may have been that I mistakenly thought that at the core of all this was the undergrad, that college bowl connotated college. I feel that Bruce's proposition (and Cartwright's reiteration) of maybe including an Undergrad championship within trashionals could be a good sort of compromise? Then the undergrad champ and the alumni champ can meet in an ultimate championship? Would that be more feasible? I like the idea.

And yeah I guess thats all I have to respond to. I'm glad that at least this has generated dialog. Thanks for taking me seriously.
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Post by Mr. Kwalter »

morrisbm wrote:OK, my only issue with your argument is that you suppose that we should be participating in Academic tournaments because we are college students. Our team has been to academic tournaments in the Boston Area before (including the MLK one) and the overwhelming sentiment of the team is that we do not enjoy them. This might explain these "mysterious absences" but you know if it's not for us then it's not for us; I don't understand why this should bother anyone else. I guarantee you that if we started doing academic packets during our practices that the people we have right now would stop coming. It's just not going to work for this team. We just have a trashy dynamic. Otherwise in response to your concerns about pragmatism and logisitcs you may be right, but I'm not in a position to say.
morrisbm wrote:I don't mean to be combative but I guess the issue with my line of thought here may have been that I mistakenly thought that at the core of all this was the undergrad, that college bowl connotated college.
Sorry, but you can't have your cake and eat it too. There is only one event that bills itself as "college bowl," and that's CBI. In addition, you cannot possibly hope to call yourself a "college bowl" team if you only do trash. However stupid CBI is, that which is called "college bowl" has always been billed as a primarily academic event, and it is treated as such by universities. If you're just going to do trash you should rename your club as such so people who might be interested in academic competition won't come to it and be converted to the dark side rather than establishing their own organization to use the school's funds to attend real events. You may all be undergraduates, but nobody gives a flying fuck if you are affiliated with BC and I highly doubt BC would approve of your officially representing them at TRASH events anyway.
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Post by morrisbm »

Hey
Ow. Can't this be civil?

If I could i would just like to clarify what i meant by: "I don't mean to be combative but I guess the issue with my line of thought here may have been that I mistakenly thought that at the core of all this was the undergrad, that college bowl connotated college."

I can see how this could have been taken as a snide comment and I probably should have worded myself better. I meant that I didn't realize that this wasn't mostly about undergrads until I got to trashionals. I didn't mean to suggest that it should only be about undergrads or something... I now understand that university affliation is irrelevant and it does not matter where you come from in trash, just wanted to explain that I was under the wrong impression.

Maybe I don't completely understand what I'm writing about (concerning what is and isn't college bowl) but yeah, I just wanted to discuss the main point with other peoples in the community. Thats it. If your still angry fine, but whatever, I've made my point.
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Post by DoubleG »

OK, wow.

First of all, let me say that we appreciate the criticism that Maryland and Brandeis had to offer about our tournament and for the most part, acknowledge it. We announced it with the fair notice that it was our first ever tournament. Editing and packet content was definitely a major problem because it was everyone's first time writing a packet, and many of these people had not been involved in College Bowl for more than a year or two, with several people actually with a single tournament's experience. Also, many people did not finish until the day (or night) before, so editing them all was nearly impossible. Finally, there was only one person really running everything (myself), our co-president, which is partly why things didn't move along as quickly as they could have. Clearly these are all areas for improvement for future tournaments.

As for questions about things that may have been discussed by team members prior to the writing of the packets, which I believe was called our "pet shit" (at the tournament), yes that can happen and we should be more careful about it, but honestly, there are plenty of little trivia tidbits that anyone can pick up on VH1 or IMDB and mention in passing, and in short it's not like we were the only ones with access to that information. But we will try to make sure that in the future we come up with random obscure facts that no one in the world will ever have heard of to ensure everyone gets a fair try (I kid, I kid). If we play with just one or no house teams next time, that could help mitigate those "pet" effects.

And I see your point about having too many house teams; originally this was to have more teams in the tournament so more packets could be played, which was ultimately meant to benefit our guests. It was also meant to allow people on our team to play, specifically those with less experience. I see now that it can pose problems, and we will attempt to fix that next time.

About the trend to ask questions geared toward people growing up in the 90s, I do believe that our target for our tournament were people who had grown up in that decade, and the only people who didn't, the Gerbils, actually won the whole freakin tournament (congrats to them, by the way). And aren't questions about nostalgic topics that we have to search our brains for the answers to, well...trivia? And certainly not all the questions at the tournament could only be answered by 20-year-olds. I do agree that this is a larger problem for the Trash system, whose players ages range so greatly, so it is hard to cater to one age group, but I'm not going to get into that. Suffice to say, along the lines of what other have suggested, it would be nice if trashionals was split into divisions by age group or undergrad/alumni, and run at exactly the same place by exactly the same people, so it would hardly be any extra trouble at all.

Now you may wonder at my title, co-president, and I think that speaks to the kind of team we are. We may have a fair amount of people on our team, maybe 10-12 people who show up to meetings regularly, but these people all do other activities and are not College bowlers first.
To prove a point, the fact that Matt posted at 3:30am today and there were 100 views and 5 replies by noon suggests that many people are extremely dedicated and involved with quiz bowl. That is just not our team.

The goal of our organization is primarily to have a good time, while making use of the useless knowledge we possess and learning new useless information at the same time. That is why we have things like NBA jam rules at our tournament. Frankly, if we approached Quiz Bowl like other teams, we would likely not have enough members to send a team anywhere. In addition, aside from graduating players staying in the area, I'm pretty sure that everyone on our team will end their quiz bowl/college bowl careers after graduation.

For the record, we do attend academic tournaments, but not everyone on our team does, particularly the younger set. We usually don't do as well as other teams, because frankly, we don't see the point of spending hours studying for them (see goals of our organization). Several members of our team were on Quiz Bowl teams in high school (my school wasn't lucky enough to have one) and they enjoy a healthy balance of academic and trash.

Also, to be fair to our team, our College Bowl club was basically resurrected several years ago by the class of 2006, and we are barely even small-time players in the circuit. Obviously, we don't know about things like this forum and SQBS, nor or we familiar with the dynamic of the whole Trash circuit.

Finally, I would just like to comment on a certain attitude that I have often noticed among certain Quiz bowl players. To be blunt, I'm going to call it the "arrogant jerk" attitude. First of all, people saying things like "wow I would have powered (or thirtied) that question"- doesn't that just speak to the fact that everyone has different areas of expertise (we call it your "wheelhouse") and emphasize the point that knowledge isn't necessarily "insular" but often depends on what your interests may be, which most certainly vary widely even among a single team (I would not have gotten any hockey bonuses- I am from CA though). Now this is really just the tip of the iceberg, but we have often encountered similar attitudes from certain players at tournaments, which I believe can discourage younger players, and at any rate is not appreciated by more experienced players. As a recent example, there was one moderator at Trashionals who was just plain rude and had a very harsh and abrupt manner, when he could have easily been not necessarily "nice," but just less of an a-hole. Now before you tell us to "get a thicker skin" or whatever, we are a very casual, easygoing team (obviously) and we certainly can dish it out ourselves but tend to be too... respectful may be too strong a word, but maybe simply tactful. I have noticed that players like these seem to have been absent those days in Kindergarten when social skills were taught.

By the way, I'm glad you pointed out the misspelling of "Jordan" by that Maryland guy. The English language is certainly being butchered on forums like these, and it is a rampent (sic) prolbem (sic) on many sites all over the Internet. Maybe you cuold (sic) do everyone a favor and police all the other sites as well. I'm sure everyone would apreciate (sic) it.

Also, " nobody gives a flying fuck if you are affiliated with BC and I highly doubt BC would approve of your officially representing them at TRASH events anyway."
Really, Hoss? Wow. And you wonder why these events don't have enough undergrads to warrant their own championship. Maybe people have found it hard to put up with attitudes like that among the older set (and my apologies to the many older teams that we thought were awesome- House, MD in particular, and our favorite Gerbils). And you presume to know what BC would think of our team? Not sure why you went to all the trouble...

By the way, we appreciate Maryland coming all the way up for the tournament, and we had an equally adventurous time coming down for our first ever Trashionals, which was fun, occasionally demoralizing, and had awesome weather on a beautiful campus (got some good frisbee time in). Our team would certainly be interested in going to Trashionals again next year. We also appreciate those teams that came to our tournament, which was used to fund our trip to Trashionals, and who were able to bear with our setbacks. We tried to make it fun for everyone, and I know we at least had a good time, and I'm pretty sure at least a few other people did as well. (And yes, Brandeis, you still owe us a check. Not to stereotype or anything).

-Colin
BC College Bowl co-president (and author of the Scrubs packet)
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what he said

Post by jabels »

hoss, way out of line...as much as trash itself is somehow entitled as an emergent property to stay what it is, im pretty sure that the people who are in fact a part of it are allowed to think what they will...things change brother. and i dont think this thing will change but matt was absolutely not out of line for thinking about it and i back him 100% on opening a discourse on the subject.

i'm pretty sure that we can play whatever kind of tournaments we want, and im pretty sure BC doesnt really care much either way but they pay our bills so i can only assume that theyre proud to have us. our team, as resurrected by the class of '06 in maybe '03, '04 used to play both academic and trash but as it turns out double g and i had to do some recruiting this year and damn near no one wants to play academic soooo if we want to be presidents of something its going to have to be a trash college bowl team. i certainly dont care what we play because i enjoy these kids, and they enjoy trash, and if you just want to not be a dick we'd appreciate. that's about it kids.
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Post by grapesmoker »

You guys are welcome to play trash (big T or small) to your heart's content, although I really do wish you'd come to at least the novice-level academic tournaments; I bet you'd learn to enjoy them a lot more if you played them more regularly. That said, I hope reading the announcements on this board will prevent future BC teams from showing up at academic tournaments expecting trash and then leaving after the first round. That was kind of... not cool.
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Post by DoubleG »

Ok, yes I apologize that we came to that tournament expecting trash.
In our defense, however, nowhere in any email I received did it say anything about "academic."
Furthermore, a tournament calling itself the "Mooninite Pie Classic" seems to represent itself as trash. Also, remember that we are not in the know with quiz bowl happenings across the country and thus are unfamiliar with the original "Moon Pie" tournament.

As far as academic tournaments go, I can only reiterate that we have gone to most tournaments that we have been aware of in the Boston area, and if most of the younger players on our team are not interested in going, then I'm not going to force them to. This is my last year, so I can't say what will happen in the future for our team. But I'm pretty sure that anyone who has played with us in the past would certainly know us for our more laid-back style and preference for trash.

Again, sorry for the confusion, our bad, but if in the future you could clearly state the type of tournament in the original annoucement, that could help prevent this from occurring again. And hey, at least you got an extra buzzer system out of it for the day. We really enjoy coming to your tournaments, they're pretty much the bulk of our playing. So I hope this doesn't tarnish BC's image in your mind... I know you have a pretty high opinion of us already...and the rest of the team will certainly see you guys next year, maybe even for a few academic tourneys.
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Post by Rothlover »

Hey, BC people, this is Dan, I'm the hornery dude who used to go to Brandeis who isn't 7 feet tall and isn't a pro mini-golfer, if that helps place me.

Anyway, while the way Mr Cartrwight stated things was invective-laced and without tact, the crux of his argument is true. If you exist solely to go to trash/TRASH events you should see if you can rename the club or redirect the club statement or something. I know we could've done that in our student union back in the day, and its not an indictment, it would just be a statement of fact. If BC wanted to fund the BC trash club, that is their prerogative, and it leaves the window open for a BC quiz bowl club, which could get funding for NAQT ACF and ACF-style events (possibly even with a couple of the same officers as the trash club, assuming a couple of people there like SOME academic events.) So, try and take the constructive points of Mr Cartrwight and not be taken aback by the "venom." Seriously, I recall playing BC a bunch of times at stuff my freshman through senior years (and then at this years ABD or MLK mirrors?) and that was great. I hated some academic too at first, but I grew to understand its importance and eventually to love a lot of those questions and to respect the people involved etc. My advice is to find a way not to dismiss it all out of hand. If people will leave at the mere thought of academic in a quiz bowl club, then that shit is b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

As for TRASH, I believe the all university team is recognized. This year I think it was BU. Three years ago it was NYU and I forget who it was at Austin since BU had some CWRU alum on their team. Also, four years ago, a team led by Matt Lafer made the top bracket as all-undergrad. The last team that could really give the TRASHionals champions a decent run in some mythical final on a decent packet would have to have been NYU. With all due respect to Jack Brounstein and Nathan, the Keenans are very much in another league. I know personally, when I was an undergrad, I wanted to play the top competition, even if they were in their late-thirties or forties. I was part of several teams that statistically placed in the top 10-20 where the oldest member of the team was 25. Learning stuff is not ageist (as previous excellent undergrads like Weiner, Lafer, myself, NYU, Jack etc prove), even if some of the TRASH questions are (on both sides.) You can learn TRASH just like you learn academic (though the latter is rewarding.) If you want a balanced, non-ageist set, I suggest you check out Peter Whiffle this summer if anyone is in the Chicago area. It will be when all the bad Lollapalooza bands are playing sunday morning.

Welcome to the message board BC people, I hope you found some of this constructive. Understand that there is irreverent flaming and such on this board. Just understand that that stuff is par, and not always inherently directed at you. Take care.

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Post by Mr. Kwalter »

I'm sorry if my post came off as "venomous," I didn't mean to offend you inordinately. Your attitude toward academic quizbowl is clearly at worst a neutral one, unlike other programs that focus primarily on trash, and that's good. Nevertheless, the effect is ultimately similar. Mr. Rohtlover's suggestion about splitting the club is a good idea. Since it seems the only members who have any interest in academic quizbowl are departing, it would probably be wise to rename the club and leave room for or actually start a purely academic club. I and others think this is a good idea for any school with split allegiances between trash and academic. You can have crossover members, but the clubs should split to ensure that the people who enjoy academic don't get the shaft when the club blows all its money on trash. Also, as to my comment about BC not being happy, I know a lot of universities are strict about the copyrights they hold over their names, logos, and various other emblems, and many schools won't let just anyone say they represent the college/university. Academic quizbowl is one thing, since its organized and features mostly other university teams playing on questions that test knowledge you may or may not have gained from taking classes at your school. Trash is different, as you're playing random old people and other unaffiliated teams on questions that have nothing to do with the things most civilized people study in school. It's far from unlikely that a college/university would balk at the idea of having its name associated with such an event.

Now, I may be an asshole; in fact, it's pretty likely, but I'm not the only one who's tired of trash people screwing with the academic circuit. You guys are probably perfectly nice people, and your intent probably isn't really malicious, but that doesn't change the effect. The fact is that clubs are inertial. A solidly trash club is going to be a trash club until some significant event like, say, a mass exodus of members or the arrival of some enthusiastic high school player, occurs. That's fine, let it happen, but make it official so you don't suck potential academic players into the trash vortex and ruin their potential enthusiasm for legitimate academic competition.
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Post by jabels »

hey yea, like dubs said, sorry we bailed on that last tournament, but the two players who went are strictly interested in trash and were unpleasantly surprised. either way, sorry about that.

firstly, im interested in playing academic, and so are a few people in our club. we recruited as both. i miss not going to as many academic tournaments this year as in years previous but at the same time im not about to use my position in the club to try and coerce people into doing stuff they dont want to do, because im pretty sure we're all here for fun. im also pretty sure that the direction and the charter of our club are really irrelevant and certainly not an object of concern to anyone outside of the organization, on the simple grounds that it has no implications for anyone outside of the organization. besides, when we recruit--that is to say both in our everyday lives and on a hot day in early september we call "student activities day"--we try to appeal to both prospective trash and academic players. if we dont have enough people in all of BC who are interested and/or committed to an academic club, then we wont have a consistent team, and im pretty sure that this is again of no real concern to anyone outside of the organization. i guess i just dont really understand why everyone cares about how we run our business, with the possible exception of BU since we bailed on their last tourney, and sorry again, but you know thats not typically how we roll.

Edit: new post while i was writing the last...
we have a club, and its got a budget, and if we have academic players theyll go to academic tournaments, and if we have trash players theyll go to trash tournaments. i dont really care what we call ourselves: i think on the maize pages our name is "BC Double Train," if that gives you any idea. let us worry about how we run our business because we greatly increased the membership, active participation and comradery of this club, as well as a slew of other things you couldnt possibly know about, and although its fine that you have your opinions it might be pertinent that you keep them to yourselves because we're actually doing a few things ok.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

jabels wrote:firstly, im interested in playing academic, and so are a few people in our club. we recruited as both. i miss not going to as many academic tournaments this year as in years previous but at the same time im not about to use my position in the club to try and coerce people into doing stuff they dont want to do, because im pretty sure we're all here for fun.
I agree, it would be absurd for you to play academic if you didn't want to or for me to demand that you do so. That's why forming a club whose interests are entirely trash-oriented is going to discourage Boston College from appearing at academic tournaments--people who want to play academic aren't going to be able to do so in your democratically controlled, majority-trash club, nor will they be able to form their own team since you are the Boston College quizbowl club. What we are saying is that you should become the Boston College trash quizbowl club and happily continue playing trash tournaments and making a flurry of posts about them, and let people who want to play academic form the Boston College academic quizbowl club. Unless your clubs operate in some radically different fashion than every quizbowl club I've come across, the membership requirements will be loose and welcoming and thus people who are officers in the trash club or otherwise very active there will be free to float over to the academic club if they feel like playing 1 or 2 academic tournaments a year like you do, and vice versa, while people who only want to do academic or only want to do trash will be able to fulfill their wishes. I don't think there will be any problem with being a trash-only club--there's plenty of collegiate clubs with no academic purpose, such as the fencing club or the Dungeons & Dragons club or whatever.

I encourage any school quizbowl club in a similar situation to break into two clubs in order to make sure everyone is able to play the tournaments he or she wants to.
im also pretty sure that the direction and the charter of our club are really irrelevant and certainly not an object of concern to anyone outside of the organization, on the simple grounds that it has no implications for anyone outside of the organization.
It is relevant to those of us who run tournaments in Boston (such as Jerry) or who work on tournaments that will be mirrored in Boston (such as me, Eric, and anyone else who works on any tournaments) or have an understandable concern with playing the largest variety of teams and having those teams be competitive at every tournament we go to (such as everyone).
we have a club, and its got a budget, and if we have academic players theyll go to academic tournaments, and if we have trash players theyll go to trash tournaments.
But you said you want to go to academic tournaments and you don't do so, because you got outvoted. Which is fine, given that you have limited resources and a majority-trash membership, but it belies the above notion. And the fact that you had people get up early, go to BU, find an academic tournament in progress, and just bail on it rather than giving it a shot speaks to a deeper aversion to academic quizbowl on your club's part than a mere democratic preference. To re-emphasize: if you want to play trash, by all means play trash, but you have to understand that doing it through the one and only Boston College quizbowl club is in fact limiting the chance that BC will play academic even if that's not your intention.

Now about your general reaction to the criticism of your tournament: It is in fact considered normal and productive to discuss tournaments in the open. We're not trying to just pick on you here, we're discussing how tournaments should be in general and how editors can avoid certain mistakes, and this information can benefit all who read it and may run their own tournaments. I don't think a bunch of excuses that boil down to "well we didn't put forth any effort to find out what good tournaments are like" really cut the mustard, and your explanation for how a bunch of questions on stuff your house teams knew really well ended up in the packets is likewise unsatisfactory. This doesn't mean you're going to be despised or anything, it just means you need to do things differently next time. Take a look at good tournaments--good academic tournaments, even, since the principles of writing are the same and there are very few good trash tournaments. Write like that. Don't write on anything that you know for sure Person X at the tournament really likes. Set and enforce deadlines and make sure the person editing the tournament has enough free time in the week or two beforehand to weed out repeats and polish the questions. Ask for outside help if necessary--maybe there's another tournament on the same day that you can collaborate with, or maybe there's just some freelance person who will be willing to work with you for some kind of compensation. No one starts off as a great writer, but likewise no one ever got to be one without a lot of effort and the ability to take constructive criticism without getting defensive.
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Post by jabels »

i feel like a lot of my last post was taken either not as i meant it or reductio ad absurdum. the point is im pretty sure our club will continue to play academic and trash tournaments.

2 people who left a tournament are not a microcosm of our club and as such will not reflect the dynamic of the club as a whole. that once happened to another team we sent which stayed the duration of the tournament with no complaints.

as for criticism, sorry if i or anyone else reacted defensively; we're kind of new to this forum thing so it was honestly a pretty innocent question of how to take it at first. ive been going through this forum a lot of today now and can see that this is pretty normal treatment, and we in no way resent any constructive remarks made about our tournament. you're right about question writing/editing issues and we'll take care to do better in the future.
be cool.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

Alright, here's a tentative list of what I expect to be the quality highlights of the 07-08 academic season in your area, in case you are out of the loop. Please consider attending, and I hope to make it to Boston and see you there at least once.

Early Fall Tournament 2 (Brown)
ACF Fall (someone in Boston area)
ACF Regionals (someone in Boston area)
MLK tournament (Michigan, often mirrored in Boston at BU)
Penn Bowl (Philadelphia)
Weiner fall invitational (someone in Boston area I hope)

Also, we do like to use complete sentences and capitalization on this board. I'm sorry that there is no non-jackass-sounding way to say that, but there you go.
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Post by BigFlax »

Apropos of an earlier post, I believe the Cal team that won TRASHionals in 2001 at Northwestern was an all-undergrad team.
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Post by grapesmoker »

BigFlax wrote:Apropos of an earlier post, I believe the Cal team that won TRASHionals in 2001 at Northwestern was an all-undergrad team.
That's wrong, that team had two graduate students (Nick Meyer and Jon Pennington) on it. The other two were undergrads Steve Kaplan and Ross Ritterman.
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Post by setht »

grapesmoker wrote:
BigFlax wrote:Apropos of an earlier post, I believe the Cal team that won TRASHionals in 2001 at Northwestern was an all-undergrad team.
That's wrong, that team had two graduate students (Nick Meyer and Jon Pennington) on it. The other two were undergrads Steve Kaplan and Ross Ritterman.
That's also wrong, the undergrads were Steve Kaplan and noted trash prodigy Matt Levine.

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Post by grapesmoker »

setht wrote:That's also wrong, the undergrads were Steve Kaplan and noted trash prodigy Matt Levine.
You're so right. I guess Ross constantly strutting around with that stupid belt made me think he'd actually won it. Yes, the incomparable Matt Levine was the fourth on that team.
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re:

Post by BigFlax »

grapesmoker wrote:That's wrong, that team had two graduate students (Nick Meyer and Jon Pennington) on it. The other two were undergrads Steve Kaplan and Ross Ritterman.
Hmm. Well, I recall it being mentioned at the time, but obviously that was in error. Or perhaps I accidentally turned "hey, that team has ANY undergrads on it" to "all-undergrad" in my head. Nevertheless, a 50% undergrad team is still moderately impressive as far as a TRASH champion goes... if all TRASHionals winners since 2001 haven't been 100% masters, it's been pretty close.
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TRASHionals Undergrads and other musings

Post by Phil Castagna »

At TRASHionals II (1999) in State College, an all-undergrad team (but not from the same school) won TRASHionals (Kenny Peskin, Anthony DeJesus, Ryan Seibel, don't remember the 4th). The same year, my team finished 3rd as an all-undergrad team (yes, I was in college once!)

I don't think that could happen today, while I won't say that age isn't a large part of it, but the questions become much harder (and better) over that time also has something to do with it, in that you need a much more balanced team in order to win. Someone with good but not great coverage in 3 of the major 4 categories could convert 7-9 tossups against nearly anybody due to the smaller universe of what was asked and the easier clues being used, and the bonuses were much easier that what you'd see today.

While I do look at some of the answers and wonder how a 21-year old would have a prayer at knowing it, there are still easily 6-7 tossups a game that I couldn't answer to an empty room.

While I do agree that it would be beneficial to TRASH to get "younger", I am still not sure what that means. I think the 1/1 nod to video games is certainly a step in that direction, but I have no idea how traditional categories like music and tv could be tweaked to reflect that. Is old television any less askable that personalities for niche cable channels that are probably not gettable at all if you don't watch these channels with certain exceptions (Paige Davis, Rachael Ray, Emeril, etc.)

To me, getting "younger" in music is more hip-hop, top 40 stuff, or stuff like Good Charlotte or Hinder that I'm not exactly sure the audience listens to that much. At least at the past TRASHionals, questions on classic rock, pet old-fogey trash people bands (They Might Be Giants, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Squeeze, etc.) seemed smaller. I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of younger people in this regard. Matt Weiner made a point about the questions being song-based rather than album-based, and I'd like to hear any additonal ideas.

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Re: TRASHionals Undergrads and other musings

Post by BigFlax »

Phil Castagna wrote:At TRASHionals II (1999) in State College, an all-undergrad team (but not from the same school) won TRASHionals (Kenny Peskin, Anthony DeJesus, Ryan Seibel, don't remember the 4th). The same year, my team finished 3rd as an all-undergrad team (yes, I was in college once!)

I don't think that could happen today, while I won't say that age isn't a large part of it, but the questions become much harder (and better) over that time also has something to do with it, in that you need a much more balanced team in order to win. Someone with good but not great coverage in 3 of the major 4 categories could convert 7-9 tossups against nearly anybody due to the smaller universe of what was asked and the easier clues being used, and the bonuses were much easier that what you'd see today.
Also worth considering: the undergraduates who were very successful in those first few years of TRASH are now masters players and most of them are still active (for example, Craig Barker was surely an undergraduate while on the first Keenans team in 1998). Since those players were among the best then and continue to be, it leaves little room for heavily undergrad teams to squeeze in (as, owing in part to their experience and accumulation of information and in part to their ability to select their participants, the best masters teams just tend to be deeper). Or, really, for anyone to squeeze in. As someone who, in seven TRASHionals, played in the top bracket on Sunday four times, I can speak to the fact that a good number of the same faces turn up year after year in that final group, and with good reason.
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Keenans

Post by Phil Castagna »

Flax,

Actually,

Craig's 1st TRASHionals actually was TRASHionals III in Cleveland. It used to be held on CBI weekend, so Craig was not there.

IIRC, you could play TRASHionals for $1 if you turned down your CBI bid, and we were very close my junior year to winning the CBI region, and we might have considered it.

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Re: Keenans

Post by grapesmoker »

Phil Castagna wrote:IIRC, you could play TRASHionals for $1 if you turned down your CBI bid, and we were very close my junior year to winning the CBI region, and we might have considered it.
This is a fine idea. I think I'm going to offer some form of this deal to CBI-affiliated teams in the area next year.
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Re: TRASHionals Undergrads and other musings

Post by Tim Young »

BigFlax wrote:
Phil Castagna wrote:At TRASHionals II (1999) in State College, an all-undergrad team (but not from the same school) won TRASHionals (Kenny Peskin, Anthony DeJesus, Ryan Seibel, don't remember the 4th). The same year, my team finished 3rd as an all-undergrad team (yes, I was in college once!)

I don't think that could happen today, while I won't say that age isn't a large part of it, but the questions become much harder (and better) over that time also has something to do with it, in that you need a much more balanced team in order to win. Someone with good but not great coverage in 3 of the major 4 categories could convert 7-9 tossups against nearly anybody due to the smaller universe of what was asked and the easier clues being used, and the bonuses were much easier that what you'd see today.
Also worth considering: the undergraduates who were very successful in those first few years of TRASH are now masters players and most of them are still active (for example, Craig Barker was surely an undergraduate while on the first Keenans team in 1998). Since those players were among the best then and continue to be, it leaves little room for heavily undergrad teams to squeeze in (as, owing in part to their experience and accumulation of information and in part to their ability to select their participants, the best masters teams just tend to be deeper). Or, really, for anyone to squeeze in. As someone who, in seven TRASHionals, played in the top bracket on Sunday four times, I can speak to the fact that a good number of the same faces turn up year after year in that final group, and with good reason.
I'm fairly certain Craig wasn't on the original Keenan team at TRASHionals I because he was at CBI NCT. Back in those days the two events were the same weekend; I missed one TRASHionals due to being at CBI NCT in 1999.

But the general point stands. I've been a fairly good trash player but there's just no bloody way I'd be able to carry a team to Sunday playoffs without three teammates who are not only peers in terms of playing talent but know different stuff from me.
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Re: TRASHionals Undergrads and other musings

Post by BigFlax »

Tim Young wrote:I'm fairly certain Craig wasn't on the original Keenan team at TRASHionals I because he was at CBI NCT. Back in those days the two events were the same weekend; I missed one TRASHionals due to being at CBI NCT in 1999.

But the general point stands. I've been a fairly good trash player but there's just no bloody way I'd be able to carry a team to Sunday playoffs without three teammates who are not only peers in terms of playing talent but know different stuff from me.
Man, 0-for-2. That's what I get for assuming based on the team name, clearly. But at any rate, I think 2000 was his senior year, or maybe the year after it, so it's fairly close. And the better point of my post does, as you say, stand. Of my seven TRASHionals, only two were played with an all-undergrad team; we did manage to make the final group once (this was TRASHionals 4 in 2001, my first), but got our asses handed to us all day Sunday. A school would have to have at least two very solid players and one really good player, or four very solid players, to field an all-undergrad team that was likely to compete for a title, and that seems like a rarity to me. You can get good at academic while in high school, for example, but it's not like there's a high school Trash circuit, so your window of getting an all-undergrad team into title-contending shape is even smaller than normal.
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Re: TRASHionals Undergrads and other musings

Post by drollins »

[quote="BigFlax"][quote="Tim Young"]I'm fairly certain Craig wasn't on the original Keenan team at TRASHionals I because he was at CBI NCT. Back in those days the two events were the same weekend; I missed one TRASHionals due to being at CBI NCT in 1999.

But the general point stands. I've been a fairly good trash player but there's just no y way I'd be able to carry a team to Sunday playoffs without three teammates who are not only peers in terms of playing talent but know different stuff from me.[/quote]

Man, 0-for-2. That's what I get for assuming based on the team name, clearly. But at any rate, I think 2000 was his senior year, or maybe the year after it, so it's fairly close. And the better point of my post does, as you say, stand. Of my seven TRASHionals, only two were played with an all-undergrad team; we did manage to make the final group once (this was TRASHionals 4 in 2001, my first), but got our asses handed to us all day Sunday. A school would have to have at least two very solid players and one really good player, or four very solid players, to field an all-undergrad team that was likely to compete for a title, and that seems like a rarity to me. You can get good at academic while in high school, for example, bu ' not like there's a high school Trash circuit, so your window of getting an all-undergrad team into title-contending shape is even smaller than normal.[/quote]

I see no reason why High Schoolers shouldn't excel at Trash. There are high school teams that do compete (and are competitive)in trash tournaments, though. This past Sunday at UTC we had 3 High School teams who played in the Junior division of the RC Cola, and they all had a good time. The was a team of High School students this year at TRASHionals who played very well. I believe that they placed in the 3rd bracket, and the theme packet that they wrote for the tournament was excellent.

I've read post after post about how Trash tournaments skew towards older players. If younger players were encouraged to study more Trash, especially in High School programs which encourage question writing, then I think we would see a shift in the current paradigm of question writing to the younger demographic. That along with the rise of Collegiate sponsored tourneys that specifically target more current material could cause a precipitous rise in the amount of material for younger players.
And this is coming from a thirty-something guy whose knowledge base is akin to someone 10 years older.

And Tim is right on.... I've made the top 10 in over 95% of all the Trash tournaments I've played in but have never won. A solid foursome with a relatively even distribution of knowledge is always better that a team of one gunner by him/herself or with 3 weaker players. I always play better (and enjoy myself more) with teammates who fill the gaps in my knowledge. Hence our performance at College Park. Without my guys, I would've been wasting my time.
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Quick points of clarification...

Post by cdbarker »

As I am doing my best to keep my New Year's Resolution:

Tim and Phil are correct: Though I played for the Keenans at TRASH Regionals in 1998 and 1999, I was with Michigan at CBI Nationals those years (ironically missing the chance in 1998 to play on the question where I was actually a part of the question.) So while the Keenans have won four TRASHionals, I have only been there for three personally, and each time, Mike and Anne had a different fourth.

I also want to make it very clear that I would be nowhere, and I mean, nowhere, without very very talented teammates, as evidenced by my years of struggling to get over the hump at the Ann B. Davis, playing without Mike or Anne, until I put very solid teammates next to me. Similarly, Mike and I have played at every TRASH Regionals, TrashMasters, and TRASHionals together since 1996, so there's something to be said for having familiarity with one's teammates strengths, weaknesses, and knowledge base. The longer you play with someone, the more you know when to buzz, when not to buzz, and whom to trust on a bonus.

I would also like to say that I am very much in favor of efforts to make TRASH/trash relevant to younger players, but I worry that the narrow fracture of pop culture with GenY's is a part of a generation gap for newer players, where the lessening of a shared common culture due to the changes in the distribution of media makes it harder to target what will be as well known as one might suspect. However, that does not mean we should not try to do so.
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Re: TRASHionals Undergrads and other musings

Post by BigFlax »

drollins wrote:I see no reason why High Schoolers shouldn't excel at Trash. There are high school teams that do compete (and are competitive)in trash tournaments, though. This past Sunday at UTC we had 3 High School teams who played in the Junior division of the RC Cola, and they all had a good time. The was a team of High School students this year at TRASHionals who played very well. I believe that they placed in the 3rd bracket, and the theme packet that they wrote for the tournament was excellent.

I've read post after post about how Trash tournaments skew towards older players. If younger players were encouraged to study more Trash, especially in High School programs which encourage question writing, then I think we would see a shift in the current paradigm of question writing to the younger demographic. That along with the rise of Collegiate sponsored tourneys that specifically target more current material could cause a precipitous rise in the amount of material for younger players.
And this is coming from a thirty-something guy whose knowledge base is akin to someone 10 years older.
Of course high schoolers could do well at Trash, it's just that in most places it's not emphasized. I can understand why, certainly; clubs are even more school-affiliated when in high school and there would be more pressure to focus on the academic side of things, especially with the lack of an established Trash tournament/circuit geared directly towards high schoolers.

I don't really see the point, however, in encouraging Trash studying among students who, usually, won't be playing it until (at least) they get to college. The problem with Trash is that people enjoy playing it more than they enjoy writing it, and so such things usually are left to people for whom playing has more or less run its course. The few attempts at undergraduate teams writing/running their own tournaments have been more or less yawned at, to the point that this year's DUCK Bowl - formerly controlled at least in part by actual DePauw students - was written entirely (or close enough) by masters players. But there's little to no need for high school students to be writing or researching Trash - outside of the southeast anyway. All this will do is lend credence to the paranoia of people who believe that Trash fans are somehow trying to ruin academic quiz bowl.
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Post by creed_of_hubris »

Matt Weiner wrote:Alright, here's a tentative list of what I expect to be the quality highlights of the 07-08 academic season in your area, in case you are out of the loop. Please consider attending, and I hope to make it to Boston and see you there at least once.

Early Fall Tournament 2 (Brown)
ACF Fall (someone in Boston area)
ACF Regionals (someone in Boston area)
MLK tournament (Michigan, often mirrored in Boston at BU)
Penn Bowl (Philadelphia)
Weiner fall invitational (someone in Boston area I hope)

Also, we do like to use complete sentences and capitalization on this board. I'm sorry that there is no non-jackass-sounding way to say that, but there you go.
You all should stop harassing the guy and trying to get him to commit to academic tourneys.

This is a Trash forum.
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Post by AKKOLADE »

creed_of_hubris wrote:
Matt Weiner wrote:Alright, here's a tentative list of what I expect to be the quality highlights of the 07-08 academic season in your area, in case you are out of the loop. Please consider attending, and I hope to make it to Boston and see you there at least once.

Early Fall Tournament 2 (Brown)
ACF Fall (someone in Boston area)
ACF Regionals (someone in Boston area)
MLK tournament (Michigan, often mirrored in Boston at BU)
Penn Bowl (Philadelphia)
Weiner fall invitational (someone in Boston area I hope)

Also, we do like to use complete sentences and capitalization on this board. I'm sorry that there is no non-jackass-sounding way to say that, but there you go.
You all should stop harassing the guy and trying to get him to commit to academic tourneys.

This is a Trash forum.
I don't think anyone was harassing him but instead suggesting quality academic tournaments in their area since they mentioned wanting to attend academic tournaments?

Also, backseat modding = :cool:
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Post by creed_of_hubris »

leftsaidfred wrote:
creed_of_hubris wrote:
Matt Weiner wrote:
Also, we do like to use complete sentences and capitalization on this board. I'm sorry that there is no non-jackass-sounding way to say that, but there you go.
You all should stop harassing the guy and trying to get him to commit to academic tourneys.

This is a Trash forum.
I don't think anyone was harassing him but instead suggesting quality academic tournaments in their area since they mentioned wanting to attend academic tournaments?
Note Matt's attack on grammar and punctuation above. "Hoss Cartwright" (Eric?) got profane, and claimed that trash tourneys aren't "real" events and represent the dark side.

Academic quizbowl has a ton of forums on this site; proselytizing and trolling on the one trash forum is not cool.
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Post by AKKOLADE »

creed_of_hubris wrote:
leftsaidfred wrote:
creed_of_hubris wrote:
Matt Weiner wrote:Also, we do like to use complete sentences and capitalization on this board. I'm sorry that there is no non-jackass-sounding way to say that, but there you go.
You all should stop harassing the guy and trying to get him to commit to academic tourneys.

This is a Trash forum.
I don't think anyone was harassing him but instead suggesting quality academic tournaments in their area since they mentioned wanting to attend academic tournaments?
Note Matt's attack on grammar and punctuation above. "Hoss Cartwright" (Eric?) got profane, and claimed that trash tourneys aren't "real" events and represent the dark side.

Academic quizbowl has a ton of forums on this site; proselytizing and trolling on the one trash forum is not cool.
Weiner's attack on grammar & punctuation isn't so much an attack as a reference to one of the main rules on the site. Plus it was pretty much polite and not an attack at all.

2) The use of something approximating proper English is required. This means appropriate capitalization, "you" instead of "u", and other things that you might expect of people engaged in an activity associated with intellectual knowledge.

Kwartler's post should have contained less vitrol, similar to about half the posts made in the non-AHAN Jr college area this weekend. I requested that be toned down across the board in the flaming wreck of a thread in the collegiate quiz bowl discussion thread. If it's not heeded, I'll drop my hands off administration style for awhile.

And since the information was requested, it's not prostelyzing.

Apologies if I'm coming off harsh or otherwise, creed (Fred Bush?). It's been a long night for moderating purposes.
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Post by creed_of_hubris »

leftsaidfred wrote: Weiner's attack on grammar & punctuation isn't so much an attack as a reference to one of the main rules on the site. Plus it was pretty much polite and not an attack at all.

2) The use of something approximating proper English is required. This means appropriate capitalization, "you" instead of "u", and other things that you might expect of people engaged in an activity associated with intellectual knowledge.
I can't believe this is an official rule for the site.
And since the information was requested, it's not prostelyzing.
Nah, they requested information on undergraduate-only trash tourneys, and said things like (I'll paraphrase) "our team likes to play trash", "we have a lot of enthusiasm for trash events", "our players came to a tournament that they thought was trash and left because it turned out to be academic".

To which the response was a list of Boston-area academic tourneys and a discussion of how they might be preventing other, hypothetical BU players from going to academic tourneys. Really, not germane.
Apologies if I'm coming off harsh or otherwise, creed (Fred Bush?). It's been a long night for moderating purposes.
It's all good. And yeah, that's me.
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Post by creed_of_hubris »

Going back to the original point:

I just checked, and there were only two undergrad-only teams at TRASHionals. (Several other teams were mostly undergrads with some grad students, and one team was high school students with a teacher.) That doesn't represent the level of interest in trash at the college level; there are a healthy number of undergraduate teams competing at most regionals, and certainly there's a lot of enthusiasm for the game among college students.

The thing is, we send out our invites for TRASHionals based on performance, and people who've been playing for years and years have an advantage over people who are just starting out. This advantage has become more and more pronounced over the years.

We're certainly aware of the issue.
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Post by pray for elves »

creed_of_hubris wrote:Academic quizbowl has a ton of forums on this site; proselytizing and trolling on the one trash forum is not cool.
Perhaps you missed something, but these guys are from BC, not BU. BU has for a long time been attending both trash and academic events, while BC for the past few years has been heavily trash-oriented.

Also:
jabels wrote:firstly, im interested in playing academic, and so are a few people in our club. we recruited as both. i miss not going to as many academic tournaments this year as in years previous but at the same time im not about to use my position in the club to try and coerce people into doing stuff they dont want to do, because im pretty sure we're all here for fun.
jabels wrote:i feel like a lot of my last post was taken either not as i meant it or reductio ad absurdum. the point is im pretty sure our club will continue to play academic and trash tournaments.
DoubleG wrote:As far as academic tournaments go, I can only reiterate that we have gone to most tournaments that we have been aware of in the Boston area,
...
the team will certainly see you guys next year, maybe even for a few academic tourneys
(emphasis mine)

That seems like an implicit invitation to suggest good academic tournaments to go to, which Matt politely did. It doesn't seem like "proselytizing" to me, and the "hypothetical" BC players who like academic do in fact exist, just in smaller numbers than the trash contingent. In other words, back off with your "quit proselytizing" bullshit.

EDIT: fixed spelling so as not to offend Fred Bush
Last edited by pray for elves on Tue May 01, 2007 12:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by creed_of_hubris »

Guru Guru Pon-chan wrote:
jabels wrote:firstly, im interested in playing academic, and so are a few people in our club. we recruited as both. i miss not going to as many academic tournaments this year as in years previous but at the same time im not about to use my position in the club to try and coerce people into doing stuff they dont want to do, because im pretty sure we're all here for fun.
jabels wrote:i feel like a lot of my last post was taken either not as i meant it or reductio ad absurdum. the point is im pretty sure our club will continue to play academic and trash tournaments.
DoubleG wrote:As far as academic tournaments go, I can only reiterate that we have gone to most tournaments that we have been aware of in the Boston area,
...
the team will certainly see you guys next year, maybe even for a few academic tourneys
(emphasis mine)

That seems like an implicit invitation to suggest good academic tournaments to go to, which Matt politely did. It doesn't seem like "prosyletizing" to me, and the "hypothetical" BC players who like academic do in fact exist, just in smaller numbers than the trash contingent. In other words, back off with your "quit prosyletizing" bullshit.
I was referring more to Matt passages like "academic is what school-affiliated quizbowl clubs should be playing," followed by another post suggesting that the current BC quizbowl club be disbanded and reconstituted in order that another club, more dedicated to academic formats, might appear.

BTW, I must inform you that the correct spelling of Matt's activity is "proselytizing." I would not want you to inadvertently find yourself in violation of forum policies on grammar.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

The discussion went in that direction and we completed it to the satisfaction of both myself and the BC people. No one is going to scold people for mentioning trash tournaments in the academic section (which happens all the time, e.g. when people announce two-tournament weekends). Furthermore, considering that, before making his epic "people who like good questions are racist" post, Dren Rollins suggested today that high school quizbowl teams should spend their time studying trash. That's much worse "proselytizing" than anything I'm doing in that it's completely insane, and I didn't see you jumping in there.
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Post by Mr. Kwalter »

creed_of_hubris wrote:I was referring more to Matt passages like "academic is what school-affiliated quizbowl clubs should be playing," followed by another post suggesting that the current BC quizbowl club be disbanded and reconstituted in order that another club, more dedicated to academic formats, might appear.
Well, those suggestions and assertions have everything to do with trash. Maybe the thread got hijacked (it wasn't really about anything in particular except BC in the first place), but it wasn't to talk about academic subjects. It was to point out that both trash and academic people would benefit from splitting the club as suggested. A trash-centric program shouldn't get in the way of academic players. For example, a friend of mine who is going off to college next year was accepted at NYU and emailed them about possibly playing quizbowl for them. She got an email back saying "yeah we have a quizbowl club, but we only play trash, so if you came that's what we'd be doing." She wants to play academic, but she was shot down before she even got there. See how that's wrong? See how that's inappropriate? I mean, turn it around...if a club were primarily academic but had a good-sized contingent of players who wanted to play trash, wouldn't you suggest they split off to maximize their resources? If not, you're just irrational. Anyway, see how all of that, every bit, had to do with trash? Please stop trying to yell at people for hijacking threads when all you actually want to do is be petulant about the fact that people actually object to your opinions.
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Post by creed_of_hubris »

Hoss Cartwright wrote:It was to point out that both trash and academic people would benefit from splitting the club as suggested. A trash-centric program shouldn't get in the way of academic players. For example, a friend of mine who is going off to college next year was accepted at NYU and emailed them about possibly playing quizbowl for them. She got an email back saying "yeah we have a quizbowl club, but we only play trash, so if you came that's what we'd be doing." She wants to play academic, but she was shot down before she even got there. See how that's wrong? See how that's inappropriate? I mean, turn it around...if a club were primarily academic but had a good-sized contingent of players who wanted to play trash, wouldn't you suggest they split off to maximize their resources?
I expect trash players and academic players to coexist in the same club; that's how it's been done for the last ten years and I am not aware that the system is in need of change. Trash and academic tourneys are often held side-by-side, they share a skillset and a ruleset and feature a lot of player overlap, so forming two different clubs for such similar activities seems foolish.

I would expect your NYU friend to join the quizbowl team and try to find other players there to join her for an academic tourney, just like I would expect a trash player to agitate within a college quizbowl group for more players if the current group were academic-only.

If the expansion in number of non-college trash teams is causing a breakdown in this system, then it's a matter of concern.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

creed_of_hubris wrote:I expect trash players and academic players to coexist in the same club; that's how it's been done for the last ten years and I am not aware that the system is in need of change.
Despite the fact that certain people will start rotating with great velocity in outrage over the notion being suggested, it is in fact true that there are many documented cases of trash-dominated clubs not welcoming academic players and/or academic participation. Clearly the system does not "work" if you define "work" as allowing people to go to the tournaments they wish to attend. If you define it as "maximizing the success of trash even at the expense of academic" then I guess it does work, but I expect more from you.
Trash and academic tourneys are often held side-by-side, they share a skillset and a ruleset and feature a lot of player overlap, so forming two different clubs for such similar activities seems foolish.
You're right, by all logic it shouldn't be necessary, yet it clearly is. Furthermore, the reason is because certain trash people refuse to get along with academic people or allow for a peaceful coexistence.
If the expansion in number of non-college trash teams is causing a breakdown in this system, then it's a matter of concern.
I don't think that's the reason, I think it's just that the system under which collegiate quizbowl is played was developed before trash existed, so it's not prepared for the current reality and some trash people are exploiting this coincidence to their own advantage.
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Post by creed_of_hubris »

Matt Weiner wrote:
creed_of_hubris wrote:I expect trash players and academic players to coexist in the same club; that's how it's been done for the last ten years and I am not aware that the system is in need of change.
Despite the fact that certain people will start rotating with great velocity in outrage over the notion being suggested, it is in fact true that there are many documented cases of trash-dominated clubs not welcoming academic players and/or academic participation. Clearly the system does not "work" if you define "work" as allowing people to go to the tournaments they wish to attend. If you define it as "maximizing the success of trash even at the expense of academic" then I guess it does work, but I expect more from you.
Hell, Matt, I didn't get to go to all the tourneys I wanted to at Swarthmore and Rochester, just because my teammates were busy some weekends, not interested in a long drive, or whatever. Both of those schools had pretty serious academic squads. Was I victimized somehow by not being able to play in those tourneys?

I am not sure what you mean by "many documented cases of trash-dominated clubs not welcoming academic players and/or academic participation"; I don't think that teams refusing to play academic (or trash) is a flaw, for instance. If a team chooses not to play in one format, what's wrong with that?

If you'd list some of these many documented cases, preferably with documentation, maybe I would have a better sense of what you were trying to say.
Trash and academic tourneys are often held side-by-side, they share a skillset and a ruleset and feature a lot of player overlap, so forming two different clubs for such similar activities seems foolish.
You're right, by all logic it shouldn't be necessary, yet it clearly is. Furthermore, the reason is because certain trash people refuse to get along with academic people or allow for a peaceful coexistence.
You're being vague again. "Certain people" won't get along with academic players? I can't dispute that because I have no idea who you are referring to.

There's plenty of peaceful coexistence right now in the form of back-to-back tourneys.
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Post by AKKOLADE »

creed_of_hubris wrote:
leftsaidfred wrote: Weiner's attack on grammar & punctuation isn't so much an attack as a reference to one of the main rules on the site. Plus it was pretty much polite and not an attack at all.

2) The use of something approximating proper English is required. This means appropriate capitalization, "you" instead of "u", and other things that you might expect of people engaged in an activity associated with intellectual knowledge.
I can't believe this is an official rule for the site.
y ru supryzd doooooood

Seriously, there's nothing wrong with asking people to take the time to tap their shift key every once in awhile and so forth to make their posts easier to read. There's a pretty big difference between saying, "Please capitalize some and don't use AIM speak," and, "SPLIT INFINITIVE = GULAG TIME."
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Post by Mr. Kwalter »

leftsaidfred wrote:There's a pretty big difference between saying, "Please capitalize some and don't use AIM speak," and, "SPLIT INFINITIVE = GULAG TIME."
In Soviet Russia, infinitive splits you.
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