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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Discussion of quizbowl topics not related to specific tournaments
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strbrstlvr1290
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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Post by strbrstlvr1290 »

ScoBo1987 wrote:Please don't tell me that Dixon has decided to go to Waynesville instead...
To whom it may concern:

Let me point out the first rule of this forum:

"Be friendly. We all have a common interest here, so there's no reason to be rude and/or disrespectful to anyone."

The last part is especially important. "..no reason to be rude and/or disrespectful..."

While I understand your concern for the conflicting dates of tournaments, I do not feel it is fair to respond in a rude AND disrespectful manner.

While you may you feel it is admissable to talk about schools who do not post on this forum, I'm here to tell you, as a Waynesville Scholar Bowl member, it is extremely offensive.

I hope in the future you will follow your own rules.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... lvr1290</a>, Feb 28 2009, 06:52:03 PM.</div>

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DeckardCain
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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Post by DeckardCain »

I'm sorry, but there's absolutely nothing rude or disrespectful about that post. Jeff's inquiring as to why a team has dropped from a tournament he is hosting is in no way out of line.

Also, please identify yourself in your signature, as outlined in the board rules, which can be found here.

Charbroil
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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Post by Charbroil »

Umm...I think the issue is more the way Jeffrey implied that Waynesville's tournament was inherently of inferior quality. To someone who didn't understand why, that would seem to be an insulting implication.

Thus, in response to the Waynesville player:

As far as I am aware, there wasn't any such insult intended at all. Rather, I think the issues at hand are these:

1/ Waynesville's tournament was scheduled on the same day as Missouri Science and Technology's Spring Tournament even though the Spring tournament had been announced a number of weeks before. Given that Waynesville is only 30 miles away from Rolla, I think the Waynesville player should recognize why Jeffrey (ScoBo1987) would be rather unhappy about that.

2/ Waynesville's tournament will probably be using questions that are inferior to MS&T Spring's. All this means is that they will be short, badly written questions which test speed more than knowledge (especially if you are using state provider Questions Galore). In contrast, the questions at MS&T will be long, "pyramidal" questions with multiple clues arranged in order of descending difficulty in order to better test deep knowledge of a topic. (Not to mention significantly better written)

Given this, I hope that the Waynesville player will understand the sentiment that Jeffrey's original statement was made in. Not only will your tournament draw teams away from MS&T Spring, but it will draw them to questions of inferior quality.

That being said, welcome to the forum. I'd like to think that we do generally try to be friendly on this forum, and I know that some of the statements of individuals on this forum can be taken as insulting at first glance. I, for one, always appreciate hearing from new voices interested in Quiz Bowl, and I hope that you'll stay.




<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... arbroil</a>, Feb 28 2009, 08:05:27 PM.</div>

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DeckardCain
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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Post by DeckardCain »

Charbroil wrote:Umm...I think the issue is more the way Jeffrey implied that Waynesville's tournament was inherently of inferior quality. To someone who didn't understand why, that would seem to be an insulting implication.
Yes, and my contention is that there's no such implication in his post. As far as I'm aware, Waynesville has not publicly announced a question provider. Therefore, for all we know the Waynesville tournament could be a shining beacon of quizbowl goodness. Jeff's post is no less valid even were this to be the case, however.

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Jeffrey Hill
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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Post by Jeffrey Hill »

Ehh, I wouldn't say there was nothing wrong with that post; it was directed toward the fact that Waynesville is hosting a tournament the same day, and stated in a not-so-friendly manner. I apologize for any offense you might have taken from it.

For some background on the reason for the questionable post: this has been a huge problem for UMR and Mizzou this year - nearly every tournament we have hosted has had nearby tournaments scheduled on the same day. It's particularly frustrating when you've been hosting a tournament around the same weekend for the past 4 years and suddenly you find out about another tournament being hosted the same day, by a school only 35 miles away (and a school that attended our tournament in 2006, no less!), and when a school that is closer to that site drops out, the first thing you speculate is that they decided to go to the closer tournament.

Multiple tournaments on the same day help nobody - simultaneous tournaments suffer from smaller fields, forcing schools to decide which tournament to go to, and, as you've seen here, unnecessary negative attitudes between the competing hosts.

The problem is that most schools are still using mass e-mails to announce their tournaments, and because the colleges are not part of that, we rarely hear about competing tournaments until we have already announced ours. This message board has encouraged open communication about Missouri quizbowl for the past five years, and while it has brought a lot of players in from all over the state for general discussion, we don't have as many coaches on here as we would like.

There really is no reason that the primary means of announcing tournaments should be a relatively closed system of mass e-mails between coaches. Announcing tournaments in a public place, like this message board, would go a long way to reducing the possibility of this kind of thing happening. Additionally, this is the fifth season in which the MACA calendar has been available, and tournaments are still rarely being announced there. I must give Waynesville credit for actually posting to the MACA calendar; otherwise, we probably still wouldn't know of its existence!

It would be extremely helpful if you could go to the Waynesville tournament thread and post some more information about your tournament, including question provider, teams that are currently signed up, etc.

In any case, I hope you stick around and encourage others to join our community. The more open communication we can get, the less likely this kind of thing will happen in the future.

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Charlie Dees
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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Post by Charlie Dees »

Yeah, given that the Mo S&T dates were announced like last year, unless Waynesville had announced their tournament even earlier I'm not at all surprised that people at Mo S&T would be frustrated with what is a pretty blatant violation of what I'll lable the gentleman's code of claiming dates. If you were like 100 miles away from Rolla I probably wouldn't sympathize as much with Jeffrey, but you are only 30 miles away and given that there are all kinds of free weekends all throughout the year for you to use, picking their date that had been announced ages ago to run something seems like both a really rude gesture to the Rolla guys who are putting a lot of work in and a terrible idea for your own tournament, since not only are you drawing away local teams from them, but they are conversely drawing away local teams from you.

FZW Coach
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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Post by FZW Coach »

It is going to take a while to get people trained to use this site. I do like how you have a special section for tournaments, so that it will be more useful for tournament directors and coaches who might not be all that interested in the particulars of the general discussion (which has been noted to me as being negative), but can find tournaments and results easily.


Of course, maybe we will be better next year after Matt trains us at the MACA convention! :)


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... 9041/'>FZW Coach</a>, Feb 28 2009, 08:54:31 PM.</div>

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Jeffrey Hill
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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Post by Jeffrey Hill »

FZW Coach wrote:I do like how you have a special section for tournaments, so that it will be more useful for tournament directors and coaches who might not be all that interested in the particulars of the general discussion (which has been noted to me as being negative), but can find tournaments and results easily.
Yeah, this is the motivation behind this change - it emphasizes our desire to see more tournaments announced publicly, separating the other stuff that might distract from that goal.

strbrstlvr1290
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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Post by strbrstlvr1290 »

Jeffrey, thank you for your apology.

I think the simple fact that many seem to be missing here is that we were not aware of S&T's tournament. Our tournament's date was not meant to interfere in any way with ANYONE'S tournament.

Our coach is new this year and does not clearly know all of the rules, written or not.

And I am passing the message on from my coach that we find our tournaments on the MACA calendar. It is true that it is not as up to date as it should be as schools randomly post there and thus, we are not aware of every tournament date, even only 30 miles away from us.

I also want to make the point that Waynesville would benefit from constructive criticism/help rather than simply discussing our mistakes amongst yourselves. (And I mean no offense to anyone when I say that).

Again, I'm sorry for any inconvenience we may have been to the S&T tournament. We meant no harm.

Charbroil
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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Post by Charbroil »

strbrstlvr1290 wrote:I also want to make the point that Waynesville would benefit from constructive criticism/help rather than simply discussing our mistakes amongst yourselves. (And I mean no offense to anyone when I say that).

Okay...what are you wondering about? The issue of tournament scheduling (which can be resolved simply by checking the MACA website and on here) aside, I'm sure that if you post some questions, the people on this forum will only be too glad to answer them.

Edit: And look! We now have our own convenient forum thread! :D


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... arbroil</a>, Mar 2 2009, 09:18:43 PM.</div>

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Jeffrey Hill
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S&T/Waynesville date conflict stuff

Post by Jeffrey Hill »

Yeah, in retrospect we took the wrong route when we found out about all of these date conflicts. Instead of complaining about it on the board (which, since the other schools didn't know about our tournaments, they wouldn't see that either), it would have been much more productive to contact the conflicting schools and try to work out a rescheduling agreement. In some cases (Warrenton) it was way too late, but in this case we have known about Rock Bridge and Waynesville for quite some time now and had we contacted the schools directly, it might have been possible for some tournaments to be rescheduled, there wouldn't be as much negativity between the affected hosts, and everyone involved would be more aware of the MACA calendar and this board.

Once again, ideally we would like to see all tournaments announced on this message board, as well as any pertinent updates. For instance, you may have noticed in the Missouri S&T thread that Matt has been updating the list of teams currently signed up for the tournament. As I requested above, it would be fantastic if you could post the question provider and a list of teams currently signed up in the Waynesville thread. Additionally, if you know anything about how the tournament will be structured (like how many preliminary rounds, how many teams advance to the playoffs, etc), it would be nice to know that too, but posting that is not quite as important.

As for additional suggestions, I recommend that you use SQBS to record game scores and player statistics. This easy-to-use program is used all over the country for keeping tournament stats, and part of the reason that it is so popular is its ability to generate reports that you can post to the Internet. As an example, the report for our Fall tournament can be found here. Additionally, if you use SQBS, I provide free SQBS report hosting on my website, so you won't have to go through the hassle of finding a place to host it. Basically, if you use SQBS, it does all the calculations for you, and it generates a stat report that you can upload that your coach can include a link to in a post-tournament email. I highly recommend downloading it and trying it out before the tournament, and posting any questions you may have about using it.

We will be happy to answer any other questions you may have, so don't hesitate to ask.

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