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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

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Charlie Dees
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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Charlie Dees »

Since this appears to be it in terms of posting from you at the moment, can you please confirm for us that you read and comprehend this post's reality? http://www.moquizbowl.com/viewtopic.php?p=37004#p37004
We would appreciate it if you actually responded to the threads you profess to have so much interest in to glean material from for how to improve MSHSAA, but if you aren't actually going to do that but will keep using the board for threads where you aren't directly asked questions, I guess I just have to carry it wherever you do pop up.
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Charbroil
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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Charbroil »

ashkenaziCD wrote:Since this appears to be it in terms of posting from you at the moment, can you please confirm for us that you read and comprehend this post's reality? http://www.moquizbowl.com/viewtopic.php?p=37004#p37004
Uh...weren't all of the MSHSAA suggestion threads consolidated into the "MSHSAA suggestion thread?" Coach Gibbs already posted there that he was going to look at those...

...and in any case, there's really no need to follow the guy around over this...it hardly makes it more likely that Mr. Gibbs will support our case.

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Charlie Dees »

No, it does, this is an established pattern of behavior (see the hsqb boards). There have been direct questions that I think are pretty important for us to know the answer to asked of Gibbs in those threads that have gone unanswered for days, yet it's OK for him to instead strictly post in threads where there isn't any heat? I don't think so, and this is part of what is so aggravating about all of this, the pattern of behavior where once a bunch of people start bringing stuff to the table that is not on his side, he'll disappear. It's happened, oh, twice now on hsquizbowl, and is happening as we speak, and it's unacceptable from the coach who has the most responsibility of any in Missouri for representing people (nobody else is on the AdCo is the president of MACA).

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by FZW Coach »

ashkenaziCD wrote:No, it does, this is an established pattern of behavior (see the hsqb boards). There have been direct questions that I think are pretty important for us to know the answer to asked of Gibbs in those threads that have gone unanswered for days, yet it's OK for him to instead strictly post in threads where there isn't any heat? I don't think so, and this is part of what is so aggravating about all of this, the pattern of behavior where once a bunch of people start bringing stuff to the table that is not on his side, he'll disappear. It's happened, oh, twice now on hsquizbowl, and is happening as we speak, and it's unacceptable from the coach who has the most responsibility of any in Missouri for representing people (nobody else is on the AdCo is the president of MACA).
I will see if I can sift through what questions were asked.


It has nothing to do with heat. It has to do with I hate reading lines and lines of complaining. When Matt Weiner called me a liar, as you did here a while ago, I lose all respect for anything posted in those threads. (I have not read the highschoolquiz bowl site since that time . . . . he called me a liar since I had not logged on in a few days . . . . it turns out I may have other things going on in life than spending 8 hours a day on message boards). I tend to not read the long lines of complaining and attacks directed at me. Who would want to read that? Seriously . . . . who would? I doubt President Bush spent hours listening to critics of his who may not have had all the inside information he had. Why would he bother with such ridiculousness?

If you ever attend a MACA convention, you will see why coaches do what they do. They love this sport for everything it is, even if we are not able to have perfect questions at each tournament. We love it for everything it is! Working with unbelievably smart students is exhilerating!

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Charlie Dees
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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Charlie Dees »

You can say what you want, but when I can do a simple post search and immediately find a direct question you could have answered without any problem asked of you on hsquizbowl, that makes it harder to argue that this isn't the pattern of behavior. To claim Matt Weiner called you a liar because you had not logged in for a few days is a baldfaced lie, and thus makes his stance more believable. Whether or not you initially lied to tip him off, it had nothing to do with that and everything to do with the fact you went onto hsquizbowl claiming to be interested in making Missouri better, and then not doing anything about it and then getting us strapped with Questions Galore and as far as we can tell, not doing anything to change those other things he brought up in the post I linked you to. That is what is called saying you will do something, then doing something else, and to those of us not present at MSHSAA AdCo meetings it appears to be lying. Coming up with a lie to justify yourself in this very thread in the same post where you attack people calling you a liar for doing something that appears to be lying is not the way to fix these perceptions - instead come on and say "I did fight for change, it just didn't make it through" if you did, and if you didn't then you did in fact lie. Prove to us that in these suspicious circumstances WHERE WE HAVE EVERY REASON TO THINK YOU LIED that you didn't.
Similarly, this attack of "I have better things to do with my life, unlike you losers, and those threads are too mean" is not only uncalled for, it is completely inappropriate when you have made pledges to read and consider these threads that you've called for in the first place! How completely absurd is that? You want input on what people think about MSHSAA, yet you specifically avoid the places where you'll find it? This is ridiculous, man up and at least read through it like you say you are interested in doing.

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Charbroil »

Oookay...can we split this off into a new thread--"The Jeremy Gibbs vs. Charlie Dees Showdown?" :D

Seriously, though, I have to admit that I sympathize with Gibbs on this one--I probably wouldn't want to spend my time having to defend myself endlessly. In any case, the question I imagine you're referring to on HSQuizBowl--

[Quote = "Matt Weiner", time = 0]"Hey: Are you going to fix the distribution, the qualifying format, the no-getting-better rules, and the possibility of athletic sanctions?" [/Quote]

--at least from my point of view, didn't seem like a serious question so much as a rhetorical attack. After all, it's MSHSAA that controls that, not the AdCo, and while the AdCo could make a recommendation about those issues, the AdCo is 8 people, not just Jeremy Gibbs.

At the very most, I guess that you could complain that Mr. Gibbs never either tried to defend MSHSAA's rules or criticize them. That's rather unfortunate, but in the face of waves of criticism from people with a greatly exaggerated view of Missouri Quiz Bowl, that is understandable. You have to admit, some of the arguments being made about Missouri on the HSQuizBowl thread do seem to edge into the realm of hysteria--is there any evidence whatsoever that MSHSAA would athletically sanction a school whose Quiz Bowl team broke a MSHSAA rule?

Also, to note, you can hardly say that Gibbs "[got] us strapped with Questions Galore." Again, that was a MSHSAA choice--and there was only one bid, remember? (as far as the evidence exists)

Also, most importantly, let's step back for a second here. What exactly do you want Mr. Gibbs to do? He can't change the MSHSAA rules/distribution about Quiz Bowl. He can't select a question writer (even if a better one does bid). The most he can do is promote our ideas to the Advisory Committee, try to talk it into supporting them, vote for them, and send that recommendation to MSHSAA. Saying that he's a liar when he doesn't do anything more than that after you unrealistically expected more hardly seems fair.

And also, just to note, if you take the absence of an electronic response to one's criticism about Quiz Bowl as lying, then Matt Weiner is a liar too. He told me "If you want to ask someone to explain good quizbowl to you, I can help you over e-mail." And so, I sent an email. Admittedly, it was long, and reflected the fact that I didn't know good Quiz Bowl all that well, but that doesn't deny the fact that I never got a response to it. Responding to my email (if only with something like "Hey, check out the QB Wiki for info about good Quiz Bowl") certainly seems to be something far more within Matt Weiner's power than changing the fundamentals of MSHSAA Quiz Bowl is within Jeremy Gibbs' power, especially since Matt Weiner is obviously far more enthusiastic about communicating electronically about Quiz Bowl than Jeremy Gibbs is (or at least has more time to).

Edit: I'm not saying that Matt Weiner is actually a liar (in the deeply negative tone that that word has been used in this topic), I'm making the point that failing to respond to someone because that person seems excessively unreasonable even after you say you're going to respond is not lying in the serious sense that Charlie is arguing.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... arbroil</a>, Apr 1 2009, 06:38:09 PM.</div>

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Charbroil »

Hey! I never realized that we might actually get a Dees vs. Gibbs thread! :D

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by FishyFreshman »

The issue with Gibbs is not that we enjoy attacking him, or even whether or not he can do a whole lot to help us. The problem is that he says he is open to suggestions, and that he wants to improve quizbowl, but then does nothing at all to do so. He said it just now when he refused to look at our complaints simply because we were complaining. When something is bad, and no one complains, it will never get fixed. He asked for suggestions, and we gave them. And there he is not even reading them. It would be better if he just came out and said that he doesn't care what we think and if we try and tell him he will ignore us and keep doing what he has been.

Also, the Bush analogy just doesn't work. At least now I assume you wanted it to. His approval rating was trashed, and most people were fed up with him and his organization. Great analogy in that case.

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Charlie Dees
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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Charlie Dees »

I'll be going through more point by point Charles, but right off the top of my head a couple thigns that pop out at me are the fact that whether or not MSHSAA would sanction the rest of the school's programs, sanctioning is 100% where they get their power. And there have been real threats made in other activities about it (I remember Kyle Hill discussing MSHSAA briefly sanctioning some school in south KC like Raytown maybe for a silly rules violation, although we'd need him here to talk about it, and there was a lawsuit filed over MSHSAA sanctioning teams that had swimmers prepare with their private clubs in St. Louis), so not only does the presence of the sanctioning threat alone explain why this is atrocious, the fact that there is some history of MSHSAA enforcing different sanctions in other activities makes it believable that they would crack down if some team decided to ignore the rules. It is not a gross overreaction for people from everywhere else in the country to say "that is horrendous" when their experience is so much healthier. Your first exposure to quizbowl is in Missouri, so your perception is that this is the status quo, and even though you've started to change that, I guarantee you that the reason you are not simply outraged like everyone should be about this is because you still have some desensitization to the matter. Do not blow this off as over the top, because the rules actually are outrageous and the reaction was spot on. On a different note, attacking Matt Weiner as a liar, whatever the circumstances, is humorously irrelevant and is actually one of those dreaded ad hominem attacks you accused me of - smearing someone else who is only sort of a topic of debate in order to distract attention from the actual person who is being talked about does not cut it argument-wise. Also, while it is irrelevant to the discussion, given the nature of that thread I'd be shocked if Matt felt it worth his time to email you because your position there seemed more entrenched than it probably was, and there was a whole other discussion going on. I would suggest bringing it up to him again if you want a response. In any case, the situation you are describing seems to me to be hardly as important a problem as Gibbs not addressing points being brought up that he has a responsibility as a person on the Advisory Committee and generally as someone who initially claimed to be interested in learning about what the problems were that everyone was railing against. The question Matt asked him is a very important one, and a very direct one, no matter what the mood may be behind it.

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Jeffrey Hill »

ashkenaziCD wrote:(I remember Kyle Hill discussing MSHSAA briefly sanctioning some school in south KC like Raytown maybe for a silly rules violation, although we'd need him here to talk about it, and there was a lawsuit filed over MSHSAA sanctioning teams that had swimmers prepare with their private clubs in St. Louis)
Here are two posts by Kyle I can find about attempting to sanction entire programs for stupid reasons:
Grandview forgot to pay parking bills at the Hearnes Center
Heard that two schools were sanctioned because they didn't pay parking bills
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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Charbroil »

FishyFreshman wrote:The problem is that he says he is open to suggestions, and that he wants to improve quizbowl, but then does nothing at all to do so. He said it just now when he refused to look at our complaints simply because we were complaining.
Well of course--my post is contingent on the assumption that he actually reviewed the suggestions we wrote (as he said in his response to Jeffrey's post), and will act on them to the best of his ability. I think that this is a different issue from the one on HSQuizBowl, where I believe he stopped responding because he felt the criticism was no longer constructive (I disagree, but it is understandable, and hardly falls into the category of lying).

[quote=""Charlie Dees""]I'll be going through more point by point Charles, but right off the top of my head a couple thigns that pop out at me are the fact that whether or not MSHSAA would sanction the rest of the school's programs, sanctioning is 100% where they get their power. And there have been real threats made in other activities about it[/quote]
Gotcha. Okay, then--the sanctioning thing seems much more plausible now. I'd still say that I wouldn't assume that MSHSAA would sanction a program for a non-fiscal infraction (it's one thing to ignore an eligibility rule, another to not pay one's bills), but I certainly agree that it's something to keep in mind as a negative mark against MSHSAA.

[quote=""Charlie Dees""]On a different note, attacking Matt Weiner as a liar, whatever the circumstances, is humorously irrelevant and is actually one of those dreaded ad hominem attacks you accused me of[/quote]
You missed the point of my comment. I didn't mean that I actually felt that Matt Weiner was a liar (in the serious sense you mean) for not replying to my email, I was just making the point that not responding electronically to someone one feels is intractably wrong and/or unreasonable doesn't make an individual a liar or malicious. I was just taking your logic and applying it to someone you obviously respect greatly (for good reasons) to show how that way of looking at things is flawed.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... arbroil</a>, Apr 1 2009, 06:39:08 PM.</div>

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Charlie Dees
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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Charlie Dees »

You seem to have very much missed the point of the whole lying thing. I'm not saying GIbbs needs to be constantly updating these threads, and I'm not saying he needs to be reading 24/7. What I am saying is that when he pledges to do something, he should actually follow through with it, and that when he says "I am going to listen to these posts and then bring them to the table to fix problems with MSHSAA" and magically in August nothing changes about MSHSAA, and there is not a peep from GIbbs to say "I tried to fight for these good things but they just didn't get through," then people get justified in thinking "he promised one thing and doesn't seem to have done anything to deliver, so he's a liar unless he comes out and says something to help us understand what went on better." Similarly, I actually got a hold of your email to Matt Weiner just now and nowhere do you ask him for being instructed about what he thinks good quizbowl is, so it is even more unjustified to drag his name through this mud, since the content is much more along the lines of continuing to argue your old stances from the thread. No asking for a response means you'll probably get no response, so Matt never lied.

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Charbroil »

Oh, come on. I'm not trying to drag Matt's name through the mud--again, I'm making the point that just because someone doesn't respond to something when they prompt you for input doesn't mean they're lying.

And seriously, while I have no problems with Matt not responding to my email--like I said, a lot of my arguments were made out of ignorance, and I understand their being ignored--it's absurd to say that I shouldn't have expected a response because I didn't ask for one. People don't write several hundred word emails in the expectation that the other person will read it and not respond--saying that I should assume such and then turning around and saying that Coach Gibbs is lying because he never officially reported in with a statement of how he tried to fight for good Quiz Bowl after he did so is absurd.

Besides, how ambiguous is the statement "If you want to ask someone to explain good quizbowl to you, I can help you over e-mail?" (from the original HSQB thread) That hardly seems to imply a request for an email with no expectation of a response.

But just to make thing clear--I do not think Matt Weiner is a liar. All I was trying to say is that if you are going to call someone a liar for soliciting a response online and then not responding, there are going to be a lot of liars out there--some of whom in unexpected places.

Anyway, back to my original point of how it's not really fair to dog Coach Gibbs for not responding to the forum posts we've directed at him. While Coach Gibbs should probably describe how he has tried to work for good QB in the AdCo, it's not as if his failing to do so means that he maliciously deceived people by soliciting good QB advice and then not acting on it. This is especially true since Gibbs has mentioned how he disliked the idea of giving the bid to Questions Galore and said so in the Advisory Committee meeting, and given that it's only been two or three days since the original request for advice.




<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... arbroil</a>, Apr 1 2009, 08:21:38 PM.</div>

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by FishyFreshman »

Charbroil wrote:While Coach Gibbs should probably describe how he has tried to work for good QB in the AdCo, it's not as if his failing to do so means that he maliciously deceived people by soliciting good QB advice and then not acting on it. This is especially true since Gibbs has mentioned how he disliked the idea of giving the bid to Questions Galore and said so in the Advisory Committee meeting, and given that it's only been two or three days since the original request for advice.
Except that he has asked for input before, with the same results. In my opinion, if he says he wants to improve quizbowl, and receives the general consensus on what would help, and then does nothing at all, that is pretty deceitful.

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by Charbroil »

True--if he does that, then it would be deceitful. However, since we don't know whether he did that (or what happened at the meeting at all), it hardly seems fair to hound him for not paying attention to the most recent round of advice, especially given that Gibbs has implied (in his often mentioned anecdote about how he stated that QG was a step backwards) that he at least argued against QG.

It's true that we don't know whether he did anything about the other issues we disagree with, though given that he's said that the AdCo has been working on repealing the 14 tournament limit (and he's reported that in a positive sense), it seems as if he has been.

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by FishyFreshman »

This new attitude he has about being happy with everything that's going on because he isn't a whiner is not a step in the right direction. Nor is stating that coaches will be happy with anything because they still get to work with smart kids. It gives the impression that he's not working to change anything at all.

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Post by Charbroil »

*Shrug* Pretty much, what he seems to be saying is that he appreciates Quiz Bowl for what it is, flaws aside. I definitely agree with you in saying that if that turns into complaisance with all that current MO Quiz Bowl is, there's a problem.

Besides, that statement was made after Charlie originally followed Gibbs onto the JV State topic to see if he had read the recommendations and then called him a liar (the two things I disagreed with which prompted my post which Charlie and I are arguing about). Certainly, Coach Gibbs should definitely take up our comments before the AdCo and then tell us what became of that.

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by WillHack »

The "8 people decide everything" set-up seems pretty silly in light of all these problems. It would make more sense if the body of coaches made all the rules. Not that this is an innovative statement or anything.

Anyone else notice how disagreements always seem to fall along STL vs. KC lines?

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Lack of response to criticism of MSHSAA

Post by FishyFreshman »

I think the disagreements fall more along "people who want quizbowl to get a lot better vs people who either don't see the problem or don't like better quizbowl" lines. Charles H and Gibbs are pretty much the only people from St Louis that consistently argue against us, and even Charles generally agrees with us.

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