Hello everyone-- First off, I just wanted to echo Kelly's comments that IMHO questions for ACF Tournaments have never been of a higher quality: they are denser, more interesting, and, sometimes as a result, more challenging then they have ever been. I also think that difficulty at Nationals last year went beyond what even I, and I enjoy hard questions, thought was productive and feasible for a collegiate championship (I thought Raj's 2002 effort was more reined in and a better tournament), but that I also think difficulty has topped out or will top out and/or downright change when the next crew of editors comes along (BIG PLUG: If you care about ACF and want to be involved in editing or logistics next year, please come talk to me, Subash, Kelly, Dave, or Raj B., at this year's Nationals or email us, check the website for email addresses, most of us feel like the time has come to turn the responsibilities over to other folks, though we would help out as advisors during the transition period) but I digress, what I really wanted to focus on here is this year's regionals. I actually have a personal interest in doing so, since due to extenuating circumstances for Mr. Bhan during two weeks leading up to the 14th, I actually ended up editing everything but the science for this year's edition of the Regionals. I'd also like to say that no matter what you thought of the questions I received the majority of them, literally 90% of them Feb. 5th through the 10th!!, giving Raj and I a grand total, in some cases, of three days to edit. This is not an excuse though, just something to keep in mind when we set the next question deadlines. There's always something to be learned... moving right along. I want to begin addressing the various worthwhile points that Regionals attendees across the country have been posting (both in this group and on M. Weiner's forum thingy) with a general observation about the shifting nature of ACF Regionals in the past few years, ie. what it really represents? I think such a focus may should be relevant to a lot of the concerns that people around the country (and although my teammate Paul L. overstates this a bit in his response on the other forum), especially younger Southern circuit teams, have been voicing. In my opinion ACF Regionals is a tournament that has been in limbo, and by this I mean that very few people know what it is really supposed to do anymore. Is it a qualifying tournament? Is it just another invitational that is mirrored around the country? Is it a hard academic tournament? Is it supposed to be a stepping stone towards Nationals? My own impression is that what Regionals is, and has always been, is a barometer for the state of the ACF format. It features the most packets submitted by a geographically diverse set of writers and as such contains the most up to date examples of what people are playing on these days or what people think is worth asking about. I tend to think that's a good thing. I think that as a caveat the content of ACF tourneys tends to be driven by the teams who write the most, who also often happen to be the best, and often most experienced, teams. This can result in some variance. Now, where difficulty enters into the picture, and a host of people have made this point already, is that what is accessible or challenging or downright impossible varies from team to team and region to region. I see this all the time as a player and/or as a moderator. What has made the recent set of circumstances even more complicated, in my opinion, is the development and success (and rightfully so, considering all of Kelly's efforts) of ACF Fall. The Fall tourney has implicitly recast the Regional tournament and affected the way its been perceived and most importantly the kinds of questions that should be asked there. All of a sudden Regionals is caught in the middle between easy and hard, and people have a hard time figuring out what a median level of difficulty should be-- as some people have noted in the past, a result of this confusion is that the meaning of the phrase "Regionals level difficulty" has become hard to pin down and, at worst, empty. To continue with the Fall theme, many questions that I think would have been submitted to regionals, say 5 years ago, are now considered ACF Fall level and are written as such, while Regionals has tended to skew closer to Nationals, in order, I suspect, to differentiate it from the ACF Fall offering. But it does not have to be like that-- of course since ACF Tournament questions are dictated, in large part, by the quality of the submissions, and if the best questions tend to get written about "harder" stuff then those questions will get in-- but again, nowhere does it say that people can't write about more well known material for Regionals, or even Nationals (although I would agree that Nationals needs to feature a substantial step up from Fall, as it has always done in the past of modern ACF). Thus I have two proposals. One, because I think ACF should let anyone who wants to play play, I want to propose throwing out the requirement that people must play Regionals in order to participate in Nationals. In fact, if you did not make it to a Regionals this year (and several teams have contacted me about this already) you can definitely play at Maryland on April 10th, just let us know when Registration officially opens. Instead, I think Regionals would do well to emulate the Fall tourney as a stand alone submission tourney with centralized editing, not one that is tied to the Nationals tourney. We could even rename it, ACF Spring tourney or something, but the important thing is that the culture of question writing scales back its difficulty somewhat. Maybe this won't work, but I think if people associated Regionals more with Fall instead of Nationals, then maybe, just maybe, the perceived difficulty would come down. Secondly, and if people don't object to having their packets scrutinized (and I stress that this is in the name of openness and respect for those who play ACF and not for the purpose of calling so an so out) I would like to set up a website that contains all of the original submitted packets for this year's Regionals and those final packets that ended up being sent out to the various sites around the country. I think that it would certainly provide a new perspective on what is being said in the various forums and, I think, reveal that the questions this weekend were much less out of control than some people are claiming. Also, I think it would give people a chance to comprehend the amount of and type of work that goes into editing an ACF tourney. On a sidenote, I'd agree with Ahmed's earlier suggestion that hosts could help spotcheck facts and grammar in the future, ie. become a bit more involved with the product they are presenting, and we did have some offers from outside readers, but it just was not feasible this year because of the time crunch. Anyway, i just want to end this with saying that contrary to popular belief most of the members of ACF were once young players who got destroyed round after round on questions that they had no clue about, but that by writing down said answers or taking an interest in an anecdote, or a title, or an idea, here or there, at least I, began to think of quiz bowl as something open and democratic instead of something closed and elitist. If you have read this far, thanks for indulging me, Ezequiel (speaking mostly for myself... blah, blah, blah)
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