I disagree with most of what Willie writes. His first and second paragraphs seem to be dedicated to excusing both the poor writing and poor editing of some of the packets. The quality of the tournament does depend on the people who write the questions, but when many of the questions within the canon are poorly structured (c.f. toss-ups 15 and 17 in the UCI Ghetto Warz packet) or extremely vague in terms of desired answer (c.f. toss-ups 9 and 14 in the UCI Ghetto Warz packet) it should fall on the editors to do more than "as little editing as possible." (For quote, see Y! message 14286). Further, writers should worry about achieving minimum standards of competence in questions within the canon before expanding into such areas as 10th Century Saxon literature (toss-up 7, Feudal Customs (toss-ups 2 and 23) and psuedo-science (toss-ups 4, 20, 22, and 24). These questions combined with a healthy dose of children's literature (toss-ups 5 and 16) make for a nearly unplayable packet. The fact that a team submitted this, and that an editing team let it through is a sad reflection on the quality of the west coast circuit. Pretending that this sort of disdain for the canon, internal consistency of packets, pyramidality in questions and objective standards of quality is acceptable merely encourages lazy writing and bad packets. For the foregoing reasons, the UCI packet from Ghetto Warz (which can be seen on the Stanford Archive) is in my mind the best available example of how not to write/edit a packet. I encourage any new writer to take a look at it as a cautionary illustration. In addition, hastily written house packs and largely unedited submissions are bad enough, but the problem is compounded when the tournament staff uses its time to write a completely superfluous trash packet rather than improving the academic questions. I encourage USC to try hosting a tournament again next year, but this year's version left an incredible amount to be desired. Steve Kaplan Not speaking for any club I have ever been associated with --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Willie Chen" <williechen7_at_h...> wrote: > And here are my 2 cents: > > I think the tournament was *a lot* of fun, and the ghetto spirit > really captured the "essence" of the day. I was especially pleased > to hear so many questions that escaped from the usual "canon" of QB. > Whoever wrote that bonus on famous Chinese people--you rock!! And > the surprise trash round was indeed a nice diversion. Kudos. > > I know there'd be a bunch of complaints about the packets--the uneven > writing, the wild distribution, and the lack of "editing." There > were moaners and groaners in all rounds. But how much of that is the > fault of the editors? If it is a "packet-submission" tournament, > then doesn't the quality of the tournament depend on the people who > actually wrote the questions (i.e., the players)?? If a packet > received is truly horrific, then the TD has all the right in the > world to return it to sender for a rewrite. > > As the proud writer of the Hroswitha tossup, I just wanted to move > beyond the usual pre-1600 canon of "literature" that has become > repetitive from tournament to tournament (Hey, I even snuck a woman > into the mix!). While I had no idea what questions my teammates > wrote when they submitted them (e.g., Sailor Moon bonus), I was > actually quite pleased with the variety and balance of our packet. > The editor obviously did a great job pulling our packet together. > > I've heard so much rant about the "internal consistency" of a packet, > but isn't the quality of a packet something quite subjective, > anyway? All I look for in a packet is that each individual question > be well written--factually correct, clues logically arranged, and > free of grammatical confusion. It's just the luck of the draw that > some questions "happen" to be in the same round. > > With all due respect to the rest of the QB community, I just think > West Coast is an awesome circuit. The concept of fun is never lost > among us. > > Okay, enough blabbing... > > Good job, USC!! Fun tournament! > > > Willie Chen > UCI quiz bowl
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