My god, you should talk!Magister Ludi wrote:It's these types of unsubstantiated comments that are only meant to take underhanded swipes at writers whose writing philosophies you disagree with that lead to bad post-tournament discussion.
You know Ted, if you want to throw bombs, that's fine, you can go ahead and do that. It can be fun and even productive sometimes (though I would argue not in this instance). But you are the quintessential example of someone who likes to dish it out but can't take it. Your typical style is to come in wide wide-ranging complaints about how horrible everything is and how every tossup that deviates by an iota from what you imagine to be the only viable standard is a terrible thing. In the parlance of our time, everything is a fucking travesty with you. Then what happens is that people post their questions and explain (more patiently than you deserve, in my view) how no, this isn't a horrible question, and it was actually just fine, and people who had knowledge of stuff got rewarded and so on. But you're so determined to hate whatever it is you think that is wrong with this question, or category of questions, or mode of writing that you just post walls of text trying every possible avenue of condemnation. Of course because things like "consistency" and "coherence" are sacrificed in this endeavor, no one can actually figure out what the hell you're talking about or what your beef is. Naturally people start to tune you out, and your cavalier denunciations of competent people's work naturally gets others' hackles up. When you get called out on all of this, all of a sudden it's you who are the poor oppressed with whom we're not engaging rationally or who is the victim of "underhanded swipes." I mean, it's not like you ever take swipes at writers whose philosophies you disagree with.
You want to go in guns blazing, you do that, but when you do it, playing the victim is unseemly. You are free to write your questions as you like; never write a common link, for all I care. But your attitude that "there is one path to good quizbowl writing and it's the path of Ted," is wrong, and when you assert it, be prepared to have people disagree with you. And if you're going to be combative from the start, then expect that disagreement to be equally vociferous, and indeed, derisive when you can't even get your own basic arguments in order.