This came up in a discussion I had online, and I recently had a long drive on which to think about this. For an intramural tournament, would the insertion of location-specific questions be a good or a bad thing? By location specific, I mean questions pertaining to the school at which the IM would be held, from a bonus famous alumni to a tossup on that popular prof who teaches the majority of students at one time or another in intro chem, to questions about campus urban legends. Other location specific questions could delve into popular local bands, sports teams, city landmarks, or whatever is interesting specifically to a given student body. I know this sort of questions make up part of the fun of the Yale Trivia Challenge, which I'm sure Ben Gross et. al. would like to remind you can be listened to Wednesdays 4-5pm online at http://www.am.wybc.com/ I can think of several arguments for and against the insertion of such questions. FOR: -The enjoyment of writing extra questions and possibly poking fun at one's school or others of local interest in a snarky manner. -The ability to target a specific audience by customizing a one-size-fits-all question set, possibly increasing interest. -The questions would make an IM tournament more fun for participants. -The joy of meta-knowledge. -The replacement of questions as too hard, regionally biased, or outright lame is good editing practice. AGAINST: -The effort of writing extra questions is not worth any rewards that might result from this practice. (or, I don't care about IMs anyways) -If IMs are a recruitment tool, this just attracts the kind of bad sort who thinks that things like meta-quizbowl are fun. -Some stuff about the purity of the game and dilution with questions about trivial things. Well, okay, you may have guessed that I am on the side of viewing the addition of such questions as potentially interesting. While I am not going to say that people ought to adjust IM sets like this, I think it is within the range of acceptable quizbowl behavior. In response to the "ethical dilemma" of Jason of Tulane, several people suggested using a high school set. If coming from another college's HS tournament, it is possible that such a tournament might have regional biases. A tossup on super-scrub Rafael Belliard might be gettable in Braves country, but if adapted to a hypothetical IM tournament at a hypothetical Los Angeles school with a mostly local geographic draw, a suitable replacement tossup could be on the glory that is Dave Hansen. A high school set might need more adapting. A geography-neutral set as that put out by NAQT might be deemed sufficient in itself to not need editing. Then again, you just might be the kind of cook who thinks no soup is good until you get a chance to pee in it yourself. I don't think there's any one answer to whether or not this is a good idea. The solution is contextual, depending upon a given team's resources, including writers and the question set being used, on the goals one has for running an IM as such, and on the prevailing attitude of the student body. A school where students have more pride in their school or where the IM is generally run along the lines of residence halls or fraternities/sororities would probably be more favorable towards this scheme. Just something to think about. Anthony de Jesus, who reminds you that "Weapons of mass destruction don't kill people, people do."
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:46 AM EST EST