[ A copy of this message is available at http://www.umich.edu/~uac/mac/mlk2003notes.html#quality] In order to encourage new question writers and to improve the question quality of the tournament, we are offering a packet quality discount and packet mentors at MLK 2003. PACKET QUALITY A discount of up to $25 will be offered to teams whose packets show they put considerable effort into writing high quality questions for MLK. This discount replaces the new program discount and is intended to encourage new question writers, although any team can receive the discount by submitting an excellent packet. The amount of the discount will be based on both the quality of the packet and the experience of its writers. A team consisting of four first-time question writers will only need to submit a reasonably well-written packet to receive a discount, while a team with years of question writing experience will receive a discount only if they submit a truly excellent packet. The criteria for determining the packet quality discount are subjective; the exact value of the discount is at the sole discretion of the editor-in-chief. PACKET MENTORING Writing good questions involves not only learning the intracacies of the style, but also developing a feel for the material that players at different skill levels know. Because of this new quizbowl players almost always have difficulty in writing good questions; in fact, the first packets written by many of the most profilic quizbowl writers today are almost uniformly terrible. However, with a little guidance and a little effort, inexperienced question writers can learn to write solid questions fairly quickly. Therefore, we are offering packet mentors to teams that feel they could use some help to write a good packet. The mentor's role will be 1) to explain the conventions of question writing that you might not be aware of; 2) to help you write questions at the appropriate difficulty level; and 3) to provide feedback and advice so that you can continue to write good questions for tournaments in the future. If you want guidance while writing your packet, send an email to mlk.editors_at_... and we will do our best to help you write a high quality packet. We also encourage any teams that have questions about our guidelines to ask questions while preparing their packets. Teams that receive mentoring help are still eligible for a packet quality discount; in fact, they are more likely to receive one. We strongly encourage all teams to put the most possible effort into their questions so that MLK can have the best question set of the year.
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