--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, ater31337 <no_reply_at_y...> wrote: > The whole point of and source of fun from the game is the chance to > compete with knowledgeable players who knows the most. Like you said, > when everybody can buzz in correctly on the first clause, that defeats > the point, so there needs to be some sort of challenge to separate who > knows more answers, or really who knows the answers earlier (hence > pyramidality). Competition of any sort is an inherently elitist > practice, and when added to the fact that the average academic player > has a much broader knowledge base than the average person, there > really isn't any way to fulfill the point of academic competition > without the game having a learning curve. How is this different from > every other competitive college activity? Do you think, for example, > that anyone should be able to come in and place highly at a debate > tournament (even in extemp) without doing any background research? > > However, acknowledging that the game is not for everyone does not > translate into a deliberate effort towards total exclusivity. In > contrast to all the misinformation being spread, ACF's members and the > ACF supporters like Weiner, Sorice, and myself are all pretty much on > the record as supporting a decrease in difficulty for the sake of > accessibility. > > As Jerry alluded to in his post, Zeke publicly apologized for what was > mostly considered excessive difficulty at ACF Regionals, and toned > down the prelims of Nationals accordingly (he even posted the original > submissions online to show the editing changes, which were > consistently made to root out overly obscure answers). Weiner, > Sorice, and myself, have all made posts on the HSQB board in criticism > of too-difficult questions, and all of us have publicly expressed > intent to keep the questions accessible and less difficult in the > tournaments we are editing this fall. I'll probably be posting > Buzzerfest 2004 packets publicly after Chicago Open, so people can > judge for themselves whether I'm really involved in promoting some > sort of difficulty arms race. While (as said before) there is no way > to make it so any person off the street can win without compromising > the competitive purpose of the game, there has been a very earnest > public effort to make the questions recognizable to any college level > student who has a general sense of cultural literacy. > > Though you completely dismissed Weiner's comments about working to > become better, they are key to the debate about accessibility. While > any layman may not be able to put up a high PPG right off the bat, any > layman can become a high PPG player at ACF by reading books and doing > general research, thus fulfilling another main benefit of the game: to > learn more and become a more knowledgeable person. ACF-style features > like packet submission, strict academic questions with a clear > distribution, and long, gradually pyramidal tossups make the format > very transparent to anyone who wants to put the effort in to improve, > and thus score more points and have more fun. It's not as easy for > someone to exhibit the same improvement in NAQT, where even someone > who knows the academic material well can be stifled by buzzer races on > impromptu giveaway clues, puzzle-formatted questions, and > unpredictable GK and trash topics. The fun for me, at least, comes > when I've read a book or researched a subject and can recognize what > I've studied. It's far more rewarding to be able to do that than to > get points by winning a buzzer race when a list memory clue is > suddenly dropped or by being able to decipher the cryptic wording and > figure out which pronoun or verb part of "to be" Matt Bruce is asking > about this time. > > Now I'm not saying that you have to write entire tournaments or devote > a large amount of time studying QB to enjoy ACF, but that a) those who > put the effort in will enjoy playing more, and b) those who put the > effort in will perform better than those who do not. If you want to > beat good teams, put the effort in. If you don't want to put the > effort in, you don't have to, but then you shouldn't complain if you > can't beat good teams. The good teams got there through practice and > experience, and thus have earned their place above teams who have not > yet done so or chose not to do so (like any other competitive > activity). To complain about this arrangement is ignorant; to try to > reshape the whole game in order to wipe out their efforts under a > guise of egalitarianism is childish and spiteful at best, and far more > damaging to the game than a few less-than-polite posts to the message > board. I don't know about you, but if I had to choose, I'd much > rather retain someone who cares about the spirit of the game and > contributes his time and effort to it than someone who expects that he > should have the circuit bend to his will when he doesn't even want to > invest his effort into it. > > Nobody here is acting out the strawman that only people who write > entire tournaments and do constant studying for QB should be allowed > to play. Nobody is advocating that people who don't devote extensive > time to QB studying should be banned. If you want to play QB but > aren't happy with your performance, there are 3 options, all of which > are up to you entirely: a) make an effort to get better (people will > be glad to encourage you), b) play casually and accept that you won't > be a top player if you don't work at it, or c) decide the game is not > for you and move on with your life. It's really that simple. > > P.S. Just for an anecdotal note, I should add that our freshmen last > year seemed to be pretty turned off by NAQT SCT sets in practice while > both enjoying and doing well on ACF Fall packets. I should also note > that one of Princeton's best all time players, Lenny Kostovetsky, who > has never played in high school and yet managed to turn into a 40-60 > PPG player as an upperclassman simply by going to many tournaments and > showing up to every practice, finds ACF-style questions a lot more > friendly and accessible than NAQT/CBI-style ones. All it takes is > effort, not complaints. Just about everything you just said is true, and the few things that I disagreed with I'll tackle at the end of this post. Now, in spite of most of the things in there being true, it is not the complete truth, at least not as I see it. You said early in the post, "The whole point of and source of fun from the game is the chance to compete with knowledgeable players [to see] who knows the most." Very true, but knows the most about what? The goal of academic quizbowl is to reward people with academic knowledge, but over the years it has become more about who has the most quizbowl knowledge rather than knowledge garnered from schoolwork. You ask, "Do you think, for example, that anyone should be able to come in and place highly at a debate tournament (even in extemp) without doing any background research," to which my answer would be no. Call me old- fashioned though, but I think being in college should be enough background research to at least play college quizbowl, something that has become increasingly irrelevant in comparison with studying quizbowl questions. I agree with you that it's better to be able to answer a question because of legitimate knowledge, I for one enjoy the fact that I can answer the innevitable Tin Drum tossup that seems to come up at every tournament based on actually reading the book rather than waiting for a clue about the Danzig Trilogy, but academic quizbowl has evolved to the point where most undergraduates do not learn the knowledge that is asked about from actual schoolwork. You're right, quizbowl is about seeing who knows more than someone else, but increasingly it has been about seeing who has read the most packets on the Stanford Archive rather than who has learned the most through actual academic pursuits. I would never say that someone who has not done any work should be able to beat someone who has, but I do think that someone who has studied hard in college and has learned there should at least have a chance against an experienced player; the way things are now, that isn't the case simply because the player would have better used his time writing quizbowl questions to get better rather than go to class. Right now, the way that the quizbowl canon is set up makes things unnecessarily difficult for novice players and discourages more people than it encourages to learn more to be more competitive. As you said, "All it takes is effort, not complaints," but I think that putting effort into academics should be rewarded more than reading old packets; but maybe that's just me. Okay, now on to the things that you said that I disagreed with. First, you said that, "acknowledging that the game is not for everyone does not translate into a deliberate effort towards total exclusivity." I never said that it was a deliberate effort to exclude people. However, ignoring the fact that a large number of people have the same problem with the game, that it is inaccessible, does give that impression to people. Quick question: if Sorice, Weiner and you have all advocated for a "decrease in difficulty for the sake of accessibility," why do you get so up in arms every time someone says that the questions are too difficult? Doesn't the fact that you have pushed for easier questions sort of imply that you agree? Finally, I haven't said that people who don't put effort in should win tournaments, nor have I said that they deserve to beat more experienced players. All I have advocated is a system in which less- experienced teams have a chance to compete against more experienced teams. And the way that questions are set up now, they (not surprisingly) favor the people who have heard them before, rather than trying to find out who has the most knowledge. Basically what I'm saying is that if the game is set up in such a way that teams have absolutely no chance of winning going in, there won't be any incentive to get better for all but a few. Michael Adelman
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:48 AM EST EST