2019 NHBB Online
- See also: Question recycling
The 2019 "NHBB" Discord Tournament, also known colloquially as "NHBB Online", was an online history bee-style "tournament" held during April 2019 on Discord servers. The brainchild of 8th grade Laurel Springs NHB player Ameya Singh, the "tournament" was won by Sam Brochin in a small field. Aside from rampant logistical problems, the event also attracted controversy after it was revealed that a large number of questions it used were knowingly plagiarized from existing packets, rendering it not a true tournament, but instead a scrimmage, indicating deceit on the part of the organizer(s), and resulting in a minor scandal.
Aftermath of the prelims & resulting "scandal"
Onset of the controversy
The event, which charged no admission fees, had consistently promoted itself on the HSQuizbowl.org forums as a housewrite. (Ameya Singh said early on that it would be "based off of NHBB/IHB packets"; the ambiguity of this statement helped contribute to the later ensuing confusion.) After its preliminary stages had concluded, attempts were made to upload the first three packets onto the packet archive, leading many observers to note that comments made on the Discord had implied that the questions had been adapted from existing questions, which would have barred them from being posted. The packets in question were instead posted to the forums for review, where, as documented on this thread, many of the tossups were verified by noted members of the QB community to have been directly copied from past sets. Aside from the apparent dishonesty of such an action, it was also furthermore pointed out that the above actions taken by the organizer(s) might potentially constitute copyright infringement. Other writers who participated in staffing the project provided chat logs that indicated that this plagiarism was intentional (though perhaps not totally malicious), having been done knowingly.
TD Singh's relative lack of experience also was discussed.
Further developments
There was also additional concern over the choice to explicitly dub the event the "NHBB Discord Tournament" (or "NHBB Online"), despite it not being affiliated with or connected to NHBB or International Academic Competitions (IAC) in any way. Though such connections were admittedly denied, such denials were only found in niche areas of associated discussion, thus preventing most from accessing them.
In the midst of the controversy, the organizer of the event elected to continue his actions, indicating that he would keep drawing questions from existing packets, but not post them. Ignoring the advice of much more experienced members drew additional censure, as did a later attempt by the organizer to run multiple other such events. Ultimately, the finals round was run on a packet of 15 housewritten tossups (though this fact is, as of yet, unverifiable).
Conclusion
Perhaps as a direct result of these events, a new category on the forums was created to advertise for and organize events, tourneys, scrimmages, etc. with greater transparency with regards to clear packet usage.
Fortunately, to his credit, Singh eventually later apologized for any errors (as well as, as he put it, "(arguably) border-line [sic] unethical decisions") on his part.
Packets used
Samples from the prelims include: