Difference between revisions of "ScoBo"
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*[http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=6288 Announcement of Discussion System] | *[http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=6288 Announcement of Discussion System] | ||
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Revision as of 14:34, 25 July 2019
ScoBo (short for Scholar Bowl) was the collective name given to the quizbowl-related software hosted by Jeffrey Hill at scobo.net. All ScoBo applications were originally developed in VB.NET using Microsoft Access as the database backend. These applications were taken offline in December 2011 and are no longer available.
In 2011, the services once offered by ScoBo were migrated to, and merged with, the Quizbowl Resource Database, which Hill helped to develop.
ScoBo Tournament Central
ScoBo Tournament Central provided free SQBS web report hosting and was by far the best known ScoBo application; the term "Scobo" usually refers specifically to this service. SQBS report hosting was added to the existing application in March 2007 after a conversation begun with a comment by Jeremy Gibbs about the SQBS reports from the 2007 UMR Spring Tournament[1]. As the hosting service gained more widespread use, the application gradually shifted to focus on SQBS hosting instead of its original functionality.
Jeffrey had no knowledge of the existence of SQBS at the time he created Tournament Central. The application was originally developed in late 2004 as a web-based score management system with typical Missouri format tournaments in mind. To use it, the tournament schedule was pre-entered and allowed for automatic swiss-pairing and single-elimination advancement, as well as manual scheduling. Scores could be entered by the database administrator or in individual game rooms by using randomly generated codes for each game. It was used for Liberty High School's 2005 Varsity and JV tournaments. The original system had no statistics tracking whatsoever. Attempts to add these detailed stats were made but resulted in a product remaining clearly inferior to SQBS, largely due to Jeffrey's lack of exposure to good quizbowl at the time.
Tournament Central was discontinued with the introduction of the Quizbowl Resource Database in September 2011, which effectively merged Tournament Central's SQBS hosting functionality with the tournament listing functionality of the original hsquizbowl.org tournament database. All reports previously hosted at scobo.net have been transferred to the Quizbowl Resource Database with old scobo.net URLs redirecting to corresponding locations on hsquizbowl.org.
ScoBo Question Database
ScoBo Question Database was the original ScoBo application, begun in summer 2004, which was developed to manage the questions for Liberty's 2005 Varsity and JV tournaments. The program allowed multiple users to submit questions for a tournament, which were then assembled in and printed directly from the browser. It originally only supported the format used for Liberty's tournament, but was eventually modified to allow customization of the game format. Several enhancements and feature additions were made in the three years it was under development, but it was never widely adopted. Among the many flaws were a clunky user interface, poor category management, and the use of HTML for all formatting (even by question submitters). The only tournament to ever use the database that didn't include Jeffrey among its editors was a Truman State/Georgia collaboration in spring 2008; following that tournament the database was effectively abandoned.
ScoBo Question Discussion System
ScoBo Question Discussion System was a short-lived attempt to provide question writers with a secure place for participants to discuss question packets. It was developed in 2008 and was inspired by Shawn Pickrell's method of assigning questions to tournaments in Missouri at the packet level rather than as complete sets like NAQT or HSAPQ. It allowed for assigning certain packets to tournaments and allowing users to access discussions pertaining to tournaments they had attended, thus only allowing access to discussions about individual packets they had heard. The system was used for the Missouri Quizbowl Alliance private forum when the organization was founded, but as the number of posts on that board increased the application became unbearably slow and was subsequently abandoned.