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Mandatory recognition

Discussion of quizbowl topics not related to specific tournaments
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Which best describes your opinion of the mandatory recognition rule?

Love it! All tournaments should use the recognition rule.
3
21%
Like it, but don't think it should be mandatory at all tournaments
2
14%
No strong opinion either way
0
No votes
Dislike it, but wouldn't mind if it was used occasionally
0
No votes
Hate it! Tournaments should never enforce the recognition rule.
9
64%
 
Total votes: 14

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DeckardCain
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Mandatory recognition

Post by DeckardCain »

After discussing this with a few teams at the last couple of tournaments I've worked, I've gotten curious as to what everyone else thinks of the mandatory recognition rule - specifically, the MSHSAA mandate that all tournaments must enforce verbal recognition on all tossups.

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bolshevik
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun May 15, 2016 12:18 pm

Re: Mandatory recognition

Post by bolshevik »

I don't have a major issue with it other than that it adds additional time to matches (but it's a practically negligible amount of time). But really, the main issue is that I don't really see a clear point in its usage. If there is a reason MSHSAA enforces it, I would love to know. I think it's pretty pointless and somewhat interrupts the flow of the game. I've been in situations where incompetent moderators had to be reminded to recognise someone who buzzed while the one who buzzed would be left sitting there having buzzed in and just kind of giving the moderator this blank stare, waiting to be recognised.

ilikebooks
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Joined: Thu May 14, 2015 9:03 pm
Location: Outside the town of Malbork

Re: Mandatory recognition

Post by ilikebooks »

If anything the recognition rule gives the player who buzzed an unfair advantage in my opinion. I can think of a bunch times I've used the extra time to figure out what a tossup is doing and then get easy points, because even when holding your light up for a moderator, they are still human and take an extra second to find and recognize etc. I also think it doesn't prepare you very well for tournaments like HSNCT, I remember last year a few times we would stare at the moderator waiting for recognition and then get negged because you only get 3 seconds to start your answer.

I also think dialogue should be started about having a designated captain that has to give bonus answers or defer. It is another thing that slows down gameplay. Yes, I think it's good to have a captain to settle what your final answer on a bonus is if you have two kids yelling different answers, but it would be easier to not have the current setup.

Take two scenarios: if there is a bonus about stories from the Bible, that is Chalem's to 30 and he is captain so it's fine. The problem arises when say two parts of a chem bonus are things he's never heard of and has to defer to me twice when it would be much easier for me to just say the answer. This overlap happens often and there isn't a true easy fix other than just not having a captain since I know for our team there are certain bonuses only Cole knows, only Dew knows, etc.

That is just my two cents, I would also like to hear, as Michael said, the reasoning behind these rules and what they add to gameplay rather than take away.

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scphilli
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Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: Mandatory recognition

Post by scphilli »

The reasoning is because it was always done that way because college bowl started out on radio using university to university hookups and it wasn't always clear to all who was buzzing in. They think we are still being broadcast and this is the vestigial tail of the game. That's literally the reason.

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bolshevik
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun May 15, 2016 12:18 pm

Re: Mandatory recognition

Post by bolshevik »

Yeah, as Joe said, the extra time it takes moderators to recognize can actually be used to your advantage. Which is dumb. Because our conference duals are typically run with inexperienced/incompetent moderators, matches take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. According to my calculations, on average, 3 minutes of that time is time spent recognizing, which is about 5-6.7% of the match time. Which is a lot! I guess? (I mean, most of that time is just because of how MSHSAA format runs.) I went to an ACE camp in Illinois over the summer and not needing to be recognized seemed to make everything smoother. It was definitely a welcome change from MSHSAA rules, anyways.

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CentraliaCoach
Posts: 261
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 12:38 pm

Re: Mandatory recognition

Post by CentraliaCoach »

I used to joke with one of my former math computation specialists about putting "Benjamin" on his name tag rather than "Ben" just to buy him a little extra time. It was a joke. I swear.

Best of luck this season, Michelangelo and Josephus.

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