Andrew Juhl said: > I know I have never said it to you because that would be tantamount > to telling you off, and--believe it--I would definitely remember > having told you off. As you yourself have said, you're an asshole. I will not dispute this point, but I will say that, given that you're an asshole and have been for such a long time, it's likely that you've forgotten a number of episodes in which you've told people off, with Sorice being one of them. Of course, I cannot recall this specific instance personally, so I have nothing more to offer on this point. > I may have promised you 75% academic, though I doubt it. It is > possible, but if I did, it most likely a few months before my first > year (and first time) as a TD. For sure, I did not promise it the > second year, and I had little to do with last year beyond writing > questions. I recall reading an e-mail promising 75% academic, and I believe that I heard it in person as well. > And perhaps--just perhaps--if your (team's) experience wasn't so > awful in 2003? Why else would you(r team) have come to 2004's and > 2005's TTGT11? I mean, you need a squad of 6-8 to be competitive, > so unless everyone on your team had nothing better to do than waste > their time and UIUC's money, I'd have to guess there was some other > draw. We came to TTGT11 in 2004 because there was a dearth of tournaments in the immediate surrounding time period, and because we wanted to give our freshmen the opportunity to play. Our freshmen went in 2005, and, as Mike noted, several asked us why we hadn't prevented them from going. Also, you probably noticed that we didn't field anything close to a full team in 2005...IIRC, our team consisted of about four players at maximum. > Also, in a tournament with over 30 question authors, coming from as > many as 10 differnt schools, and who are quizbowlers and not always > prompt about getting in packets on time, you're going to have a few > repeats. Deal with it; 5-10 repeats in 1000-1200 questions isn't > the end of the world. The only reason why repeats aren't the end of the world is because quizbowl isn't the end of the world. If you want to have a reputable, top-quality tournament, it quite simply won't contain repeats. Editors of ACF and (good) non-ACF tournaments alike put in hours upon hours of work to ensure that tournaments will not contain repeats, or they swap and trade enough questions to make sure that they have sufficient replacements in order to prevent repeats from happening. Incidentally, Mike and I are both experienced editors (albeit he moreso than I), and we know that people don't get packets in on time. Ultimately, it's your call whether or not you want to put in the work to make your tournament better...just keep in mind that, if you don't, people will call you out on it. Period. > THE MAJOR POINT OF THIS DISCUSSION IS: or at least, what I wanted it > to be is: TTGT11 has a novel tournament format, and it is not meant > to conform to any one player or team. IT IS MEANT FOR PEOPLE WHO > LIKE ANSWERING QUESTIONS ON ALL SORTS OF STUFF AND WHO LIKE HAVING > FUN. If you want a purely academic tournament, those exist, but you > won't find one in Iowa City on the weekend of October 21, 2006. No one's saying that TTGT11 ought to be a purely academic tournament. I'm also not asserting that I haven't had fun at past TTGT11 tournaments...aside from a couple ACF Falls, TTGT11 2001 was one of my favorite tournaments. But at those past tournaments, there also seemed to be better choices made in terms of answer selection, question quality, and packet balance. These things could certainly be improved in more recent editions. > Finally, as was alluded to by Zach, you have a choice of 1 of 2 > packets each round. No one on you team likes old country > standards? Tough shit. You're UIUC, you have plenty of strengths, > and you'll make it up in another round. This comment is both irrelevant and non-responsive. If there is *any* non-masters-level round of quizbowl (academic, trash, or otherwise) in which two *highly* experienced teams (we're talking Carleton, and UIUC, teams that have consistently finished top 15 and top 10 at the past several ICTs) have not heard of over 50% of the answers, your questions are empirically either way too hard and/or way too obscure. Realistically, though, what's egregiously bad is when a team gets a question by virtue of the question's containing the answer to it. > And since, I guess, you forgot, Sudheer's post didn't mention a > year, but did mention the country songs round, which was 2005, not > 2003 (so, yes, go fuck yourself); Sudheer's post had its impetus in > Sudheer wanting to be a dick. Incidentally, all I did in my original post was ask two simple questions. Answers of "no", "no", and "we think we've done a reasonably good job so far, and we're always trying to improve the tournament" would have been more than sufficient as a response. I myself have undoubtedly taken more quizbowl-related criticism than you have, but I honestly think I've done a much better job of responding to it. > Well done, Sudheer. Thank you, Andrew. You know, dealing with the criticism hasn't been easy, but I managed to take it in stride with some effort. Your praise is appreciated. --Sudheer > --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Michael Angelo Sorice" Hi, > Since, I guess, you forgot (must be all that social life stuff or > whatever?) Sudheer's post has its impetus in the fact that, in 2003, > you promised us (as in Illinois, through me) a tournament that was > 75% academic and delivered something that, by the statistics I kept, > was 45%. You claim somewhat more, but this is moot; the simple fact > is that we didn't have a very good time (and this at a tournament we > won) because we didn't get what we were promised by you. Besides the > issue of content, there were a number of other issues (repeats, at > least two answers three times and other things, topped-off by that > audio round where about 60% of the questions were songs that neither > team had heard but which contained their titles in the lyrics. > That's just a piss-poor idea.) When I attempted to discuss these > issues with you, you told me that, if I had a problem, I shouldn't > have come. > > Since, doubtless, your reply will be to say what an asshole I am or > say my opinion doesn't matter since I didn't go last year or tell me > to fuck myself (as you already have Sudheer) or something equally > insipid, I'll note that the team of mostly freshman that we sent to > last year's incarnation also didn't like it. In fact, they came back > dissapointed with me for not having prevented their going. For all > that, we might even still go back, but we'd want an actually reliable > accouinting of the contents of the tournament. I don't see that > that's unreasonable. I had a blast at this tournament the first two > times I went and I don't see why it shouldn't be like that again. > > Later, > MaS >
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:48 AM EST EST