I think that many of the last few posts are really missing the points of Naqtrauma, Subash, and Ezequiel. First, the last post enjoined people to quit complaining about lead-ins that only people in that subject know (I assume its a response to acfraud's complaints about that math question) But recall that Subash's point was that the science lead-ins used enabled him to get questions in subject matters that were far outside of his area of expertise. More importantly, I want to examine Joon's (whom I greatly respect as a player and a person) points about the questions. Essentially, he seems to be making an argument very recently found in an Onion Point-Counterpoint. People bring many examples and outline ways of reparing the problem, and Joon responds with "no, the questions were fine, really." From what I can understand, his (and Josh Allen's) arguments) are something to the effect of "Its inherent in the timed format that a larger proportion of questions have speedchecks, because you can't put as many clues in." Personally, I think this is an affront to NAQT as an organization and timed questions as a means for testing knowledge. Its not mutually exclusive that questions can be well-structured and times. No one is trying to turn NAQT into ACF. The questions should be shorter, the game is different. Aside from the giveaway-begun questions, think about the questions that have 2 lines of vagaries followed by a speedcheck (like the Henry Adams question) Its not hard to put a clue instead of saying ""he wandered around Europe, he was sad..." There is so much information available with the Internet, it hardly takes any time; there is no excuse. Now, if NAQT wants to admit that they aren't in the business of differentiating teams by knowledge (as Matt Bruce seems to imply in his copious blog posts), then R should just end this argument right now and say ""yeah, the national championship should be decided by speedchecks." But it seems to me like NAQT is not willing to admit this; I think that fundamentally they share the basic sentiments of Subash, Ezequiel, et al that they want their product to be as good as possible. Also, as even the staunchest of the recent NAQT critics have noted, there were good questions in the ICT. The point is, if those questions are high quality, don't have giveaways to begin them, differentiate by knowledge and speed, why can't all of the questions be like that? There's no reason for the National Championship not to be measured by the same high standards they set for themselves elsewhere in the tournament. Essentially, NAQT should make up their mind what they want their tournament to be. Which half of their questions are emblematic of their organization? People should stop thinking that question writing is a mystical or secret art; it is something that improves with care and patience and practice. Certainly everyone should write on every subject; all we are saying, is that for the National Championship, we should strive to have the best possible questions.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:47 AM EST EST