Can quizbowl as a group ever agree on the fundamental principles of running tournaments and move on? It seems that every time someone gets criticized for a complete lack of effort in writing, editing, or administering a tournament, we hear one or more the following: --Why do tossups need to be longer than two lines, anyway? --What's so great about tossup/bonus format, anyway? --Why do we need a distribution, anyway? --Why do clues need to have academic relevance to the answer, anyway? --Why do we need to determine the champion based on who wins the most games, anyway? --Why do people need to play more than 10 games in a day, anyway? --Why should anyone make sure they have enough spare time to edit a tournament before announcing one, anyway? --Why should the standard of tournament quality be some sort of objective measure of how well the questions rewarded knowledge, rather than the "right" teams winning or losing, anyway? --Why should you criticize a tournament you didn't win, anyway? --Why should you criticize a tournament you won, anyway? --Why should you criticize a tournament you freely decided to go to, anyway? --Why should you criticize a tournament you didn't go to, anyway? ...or any number of additional logical fallacies, either specific to quizbowl or pertaining to arguments in general. Is it time to spell out the answers to the above questions and presume that all posters agree with them unless they are prepared to explain, in a sensible manner, why they don't? What else can be done to make constructive criticism an effective tool for improving people's organizational skills rather than a sign to start calling each other names? --M.W.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:47 AM EST EST