WIT comments

castrioti <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Sun, 02 Mar 2003 19:26:45 -0000

Hi--

I just wanted to say that WIT 3 has supplanted ACF Fall 2001 as my 
favorite Academic Tournament-- Kelly did more than a fantastic job 
writing and editing questions for us to play on, and tournament 
operations ran without a hitch, with just results. I only wish there 
was (were?) more time for more rounds. 

There were two minor issues I had with two of the questions, neither 
of which would have caused any change in round results, but which I 
think I should bring up, not because I want to accuse Kelly of poor 
writing or research, but because they both may be important for 
future questions: A tossup began with the following lead-in: "Near 
its southern end it forms the Shire River..." This lead-in was 
misleading, or at least not uniquely identifying for the answer, 
which was the Great Rift Valley, and I, after a word and a half more 
(and at least one other person, who I know has a lot of geography 
knowledge) negged with "Lake Nyasa," which forms the Shire River as 
it is drained from the south. Perhaps I wouldn't be complaining if my 
neg didn't cost us what was in my opinion the most awesome bonus of 
the tournament, perhaps some will say "you should have known better, 
given the difficulty of the questions," and it didn't (and wouldn't 
have) mattered at the end of the round, but perhaps there could have 
been a direction to prompt on features contained in the valley that 
early in the question. 

The other issue was also a geography issue, but it was in a bonus 
that another team had in which the mountain range identified was one 
located "between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov," the Yaila Range 
(variously called the Crimean Range or the Taurian Alps), but the 
bonus part wanted "Caucasus." Granted, this minor range could be 
thought of as an extension of the Caucasus, but that wasn't stated. 
Both of these issues were very minor in the grand scheme of things, 
and overall, they didn't detract from the great experience of the 
tournament. I thought, though, especially since the latter issue 
involved a protest that didn't matter at the end of the round, and 
therefore was not resolved, and I almost protested the "Lake Nyasa" 
neg, that I should mention them for the sake of future questions 
(BTW, do people research such protests that end up not mattering? If 
not, they could possibly lead to error propagations--they may not 
matter for purposes of win-loss determination, but they certainly do 
when it comes to future factual correctness of the questions).

Feel free to accuse, torch in effigy, or otherwise dismember me for 
this,

--Wesley (who reminds those who would accuse me of returning to 
mindless blathering after the Artaud that I'm talking about geography 
now, not geology).