2019 NHBB Online

The 2019 "NHBB" Discord Tournament, also known colloquially as "NHBB Online", was an online history bee-style "tournament" or scrimmage held during April 2019 on Discord. It was principally run by eighth-grader Ameya Singh of Laurel Springs. It had a small field, led by Sam Brochin, but is more notable for using plagiarized or recycled questions (depending on how charitable you want to be).

The event was promoted on HSQB as a "housewrite based off of NHBB/IHB packets". In fact, the questions were plagiarized from other sets, sometimes with minor alterations. Discord chat logs demonstrated that the plagiarism was intentional; it may have been started without understanding that, or why, such practices are unacceptable, but once the issues were pointed out, Ameya Singh defended them at length and refused to change course. He ultimately offered a partial apology that some viewed as not demonstrating due contriteness and/or real understanding of the issues.

A minor aspect of the controversy concerned the name: the tournament's name seemed to suggest affiliation with NHBB, but in fact the tournament was in no way connected to NHBB or International Academic Competitions, it merely sought to emulate some stylistic aspects thereof.

These events may have been partly or wholly responsible for HSQB adding a separate subforum for open practices, scrimmages, and playtesting, along with rules governing announcements for events using old questions.

Packets used

Samples from the prelims include:

• Packet 1
  • Packet 1 (with plagarism noted)