Situation

sdrossboss · Thu, 08 Nov 2001 12:38:45 -0800

Let me just make a note about what's happening
here.

I would hope that it would cross the minds of those
who are reacting to the posting of qbcardinalsin that
this person was hopefully rational enough to
contemplate rather thoroughly the ramifications of making a
post accusing a member of cheating.

Indeed I
like to think of quiz bowl as a national community of
sorts where, when possible, we have respect for one
another at the basic level, regardless of whether or not
we, for example, have a problem with the way someone
writes questions or whatever. I take matches seriously
regardless of the opponent and when beaten, though upset,
have utmost respect for the other team who pulled it
together and was the better team in that
match.

Thus, though i'm not sure everyone shares my views, I
would tend to think that the person making such a post
has enough respect for the community and its players
to only resort to such an action if he or she deemed
it to be only highly necessary. In other words I
don't think this person would haphazardly go about
accusing someone of cheating were he or she not quite
convinced of it. I cannot speak for everyone but you can
imagine how pleasant we would be to one another if we
were accusing each other left and right. I'm sure this
is something someone thought about quite thoroughly.
I don't find this whining at all.

Another
thing is that I, to some extent, cannot blame this
person for their anonymity. Certainly it's easy to argue
that this person is gutless, but if it were me making
that post I would not want the enmity of the entire
community brought down upon me because then it could be
brought down upon my club which is certainly something
that should be avoided at all costs.

The person
did apologize before hand for doing so and asked for
thoughts.

As I tried to stress a few posts ago: people were
thinking that because post had the word cardinal in it
that this was a stanford person posting. I doubt the
poster would try to make it that obvious, but in anycase
if you were inclined to believe that it was made by
a stanford team which would play its matches on the
west coast then go ahead and look at the west coast
stats and results, which are freely available for all
to look at. By looking at the individual stats it
would be easy to see that this player was not playing
alone and in most cases had the same teammates, these
were all academic tournaments, and these are
tournaments whose formats are no secret; one of which, as Mr.
Usher pointed out, was an all undergraduate tournament.
As it turns out indeed these are all West Coast
tournaments.

So to those asking for additional qualifying facts -
they're all available readily. 

Again, it's a
racey thing to do, accusing a player and his or her
club of doing such a thing. But at the same time, now
that I think about it, if someone does have such
suspicion it would be important to preempt the activity
before it happens again. 

If the accusing person
is indeed wrong, I'm sure he or she will own up to
such an accusation and apologize, albeit privately, to
the accused.

Having faith in the people in
this community, I think that the original poster has
alot of respect for this community and what it stands
for. If the accusations are true, then the accused,
one could argue, obviously lacks not only integrity
but thus respect for quiz bowl as the sport we all
enjoy. It is thus also something of a favor to us all
that someone wishes to uphold the integrity of quiz
bowl and would take steps to ensure that.

-Ross