Re: ACF Regionals thoughts

I want to start this by saying that I thought the majority of 
questions (at least the ones in categories I had any chance of 
getting) were accessible and well-edited.  The editing was great.  
After I say that, though, there is a caveat. 


--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Matt Keller" <mkeller99_at_h...> 
wrote:
> Some of the questions seemed like they could definitely be just as 
> good with a few lines cut out...I saw several that were 8 or 9 
>lines long in 10 pt font, which just seems unnecesarry to me.  

As an example, one question that I wrote and which was used at 
Regionals had 2-3 lines added to it.  The question was well-edited; 
I do not dispute that. The information provided in the additional 
information was, IMO, perfectly pyramidal in the question's 
structure.  However, these additional facts were just that--
additional.  Almost superfluous.  There were two nuggets the editors 
added that I purposely omitted in the original because the question 
seemed long and gettable anyway.  I know I can be very guilty of 
trying to smash in all the cool facts that I know/have just learned 
when writing a question, and I realize that having ever more facts 
does increase pyramidality, but does every fact or almost every fact 
really _need_ to be there?  As long as the question is pyramidally 
structured, why must there be a surfeit of facts?  

N.b., I am a fan of slightly longer, more developed questions than 
the simple structure "One hard clue. One medium clue. One stupidly 
easy clue."  Nevertheless, it seemed to me that _some_ (not all) of 
the questions this past weekend gained little if anything from 
additional factual verbiage.  

Overall, the questions and editing were good, but some questions 
seemed to drag on, & I wonder how much of it was necessary.  

Just my dois reais...

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