It amazes me that people on this group are so eager to argue that they'll twist what seem like uncontroversial statements into a pathetic straw man. (I'm replying to various things that have been said, not necessarily just in cbijustgothosedagain's post.) No one is denying that people learn by writing questions on subjects outside their field of expertise. As has been stated repeatedly, that's great for packet submission tournaments. But the benefit gained by the question writer never justifies a bad question. It doesn't excuse poor research. *A packet you write is, foremost, meant to provide an enjoyable game to others, and to accurately discriminate which team is better.* This is all the more true at, for instance, ACF Nationals, where a number of very good teams are playing and a national title is at stake. Your own desire to learn about other subjects is great; but at least learn about what you're writing about well enough that you don't produce a hose or a first-line giveaway. Surely you know someone who knows about the subject; ask them to read it. If you're concerned about taking the time to learn about new subjects, try to also take the time to write *good* questions on them. The two can go hand in hand. But we started out by discussing the NAQT ICT. And none of this applies to the ICT. Cbijusthosedagain and others appear to argue that what have been characterized as immediate giveaways are, in fact, only obvious to experts. But they're not! We've had posts from Subash, Zeke, and Adam Fine, representing three of the top four teams as determined by NAQT. *All of them*, as well as Naqtrauma, myself, Lenny, and others, have posted that there were too many immediate giveaways. Perhaps I focused too much on one field in my posts, but only because Naqtrauma had already summarized the problems across all fields. There were simply too many of these questions, as so many good teams have been posting. The problem isn't that *more than one person* knew lead-ins, but that *people with minimal knowledge of a topic* knew lead-ins. I certainly powered questions I know little about. Subash admitted to many "fraudulent powers." This wasn't an isolated phenomenon at the ICT. And that *is* a problem. This doesn't mean writing more difficult questions! It means writing questions with more difficult lead-ins. The *answers* should not be things that are unknown to all but the most expert. They should generally be things that a large fraction of people at a tournament know. The lead-ins, while not necessarily meant only for the most expert, should be sufficiently difficult that they can discrimate between good teams. The ICT is a national tournament, and certainly not a bad one. But it could be a great one. We wouldn't be discussing this if it were CBI, since everyone knows that organization wants to produce bad questions and artificially close matches. But we expect more from NAQT, because we respect people like R. Don't let that make you accept inferior questions! Just because mediocrity is commonplace, it isn't excusable. Now, what of this is so controversial? Don't we all prefer better questions? Does anyone really want buzzer races on the first clues? Do people really want questions to give advantages to weaker teams, for more "excitement"? If so, go to CBI and leave the rest of us alone. --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, cbijustgothosedagain <no_reply_at_y...> wrote: > Well, here's the name that people have been asking for... > > If people only wrote in their area of expertise, or even just topics > that they really knew well, then there would be no way for a four- > player team to submit a packet, especially if the players are > majoring in x field that does not even show up in y distribution, and > not everyone knows everything about something they write about > anyway, even within their major. I guess question writing is no > longer a valid method to simply get better at quizbowl; basically, > people have been saying that if someone doesn't know how to derive > the Gibbs-Duhem equation, then one shouldn't write a tossup on it, > and if someone hasn't read War and Peace, then War and Peace is out > as an answer. > > Also, many people learn a whole lot of stuff specifically for > quizbowl, *especially* if they write questions on such topics. Thus, > I don't think that it is a bad thing for people to be powering many > tossups; I think that it speaks to the circuit getting smarter and > the players getting smarter. Are we going to let difficulty get so > far out of hand that we're writing tossups on George Washington's > uncle's sister's second cousin? > > It seems that people think that any clue in which more than one > person knows the answer is a poor lead-in. Especially if it's in > their field; in which case, any clue in which anyone besides > themselves knows it is a poor lead-in. Chill out.
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