> Oh, and to everyone who has bitched about Mr. Knapp posting here: I > have had involvement in hosting, directing,writing for, and playing > in current/recent quizbowl tournaments; do I have your permission to > post to the board? Or is my ppg total too low for my opinions about > the fact that ACF-style tournaments have become inaccessible to most > players to be taken as anything other than whining? Well, no, but that's a nice straw man. See, you made some coherent points that had something to do with quizbowl, and while I and others may not agree with them, indeed may be able to prove conclusively that you are incorrect, that's what this board is for. Mr. Knapp's posts about Ken Jennings were not needed because the latter's Jeopardy achievements have already been well noted here, and further uninformed rambling about them as a pretext for the usual "confuse them with nonsense" style of Mr. Knapp's posts is of no real worth to anybody. That, and not the substance of his posts (whatever it may be), is why we do not wish to see him posting three or more times a day. And by we, I refer to people who are not in charge of this board anyway, and thus have no power to prevent posts from you, or Mr. Knapp, or, regretably, the morons who spam us with advertisements for game show conventions. In any case, as we can't do anything about it, whining that we are preventing you from posting is somewhat paranoid and indicative that you have no real argument to make. Now, if you are really looking for an answer to the points you raised, and I doubt you are, then I urge you to look at the performance of the median team on ACF Fall questions. Saying that the ACF Nationals field is self-selecting and that the questions are not great for bad teams proves nothing, because all national tournaments are like that. The NAQT ICT is not something a bad team would choose to do if their goal was scoring a lot of points, nor is it a tournament that Token Bad School B would do well on. That doesn't mean other NAQT tournaments with different goals from a national are too hard, and that same line of reasoning goes for ACF. Of course, looking at it from the above consistent, statistical perspective is only one method. Alternatively, we could continue pretending that this is 1994, we are posting on Usenet, and the toughness of ACF questions is still a topic with any life in it. To get us in the mood, I will put on my Spin Doctors records and watch the final episode of Clarissa Explains it All while considering whether to vote for Newt Gingrich. Perhaps Mr. O'Neal, who at this point may actually still be playing the game, can come along and shriek "FORMAT WAR" until we all leave out of disgust, or perhaps that is only his reaction to the pointing out of flaws in CBI, which, as this is 1994, more than 5 legitimate contenders from the real quizbowl circuit play. I expect all of those fans, who will no doubt be along to this thread shortly, to be oddly silent with their caterwauling when the subject is pointless potshots at ACF. As I buy some flannel shirts to fit in with the new grunge trend, I can reflect on how the "silent majority" hates questions that test academic knowledge, and on how, as this is 1994, the concept of the logical fallacy has not yet been invented. As I make a mental note to check out this new Pulp Fiction movie that the critics seem to love, I will also ignore the fact that the median score of the largest ACF Fall tournament in 2003-2004 was 360 points per 1000 available, while the median score of the NAQT Sectionals events held in the same region was 284 points per 1000 available. After all, as it is 1994 and quizbowl discussion must consist of polarized irrational stereotypes shrieking insults at each other. Statistics have no place here, on the screen of my 286 IBM Compatible on which I have reserved a block of time in the university computer lab. Oh, if only it were not 1994, and I could somehow access the Information Superhighway from the comfort of my own home! Thus, since these numbers are not available, I have in no way proven that NAQT Sectionals, a tournament which almost no one would accuse of being too hard, was actually 127% as difficult as ACF Fall, a tournament which, despite being sought out just yesterday for use in a high school singles event, is still lambasted as far too difficult by a bunch of people whose opinions are, as it is 1994 and we have no method of resolving this, equally valid as mine. Perhaps some day in the distant future we will have a better method of communicating than rampant lies posted over Usenet. Perhaps some sort of "electronic mail" or "bulletin board" system on a "web"--worldwide in scope!--which would span "sites" on which we could post "facts" and "data" and "logically constructed arguments" instead of simply regurgitating what the cool kids of Usenet like to say now, in 1994. However, since it is 1994 and we do not have such nice things, I can only concede your absolutely original and productive allegation that academic quizbowl is too challenging for the people who enjoy challenging questions about academic topics in a quizbowl setting. I will also concede, as I collect the latest slap-bracelets, that ACF is clearly run by an ivory tower elite, which in no way accepts new blood every year from a variety of teams, and is thus far inferior to other formats, which I cannot accuse of being run by people who no longer participate in the circuit and in many cases refuse to identify themselves, because obviously such behavior is not elitist, and obviously such behavior does not exist here in the idyllic world of 1994 quizbowl. Defeated, I sign off, and await for the propogation of my Usenet posting through the network of 14K modems. --M.W.
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