Talk:HSNCT and its Problems

NAQT did not change its timing rules Jonah (talk) 14:12, 6 July 2021 (CDT)

I don't really understand the recent trend of making articles that just summarize HSQB threads when people can read the HSQB threads. If someone wants to write a good piece on like "criticism of the HSNCT" and look at what issues people have raised over time and how NAQT has responded to those issues, with cites to various threads etc., that might make sense. Unlike Wikipedia the QBWiki does not ban "original research" or "synthesis" and I think pages that provide a unified view of the history of some issue (such as HSNCT controversies) would be welcome even if they feel somewhat "essay-like" and less like just reporting a list of facts, so long as they are a somewhat reasonable attempt to communicate something important about quizbowl. But, I don't see what's added by pages like this one, the haircut thread page, or the page on Tuhin's posts other than a new opportunity for people to get upset and argue about the original issue in the edit summaries and the talk page. Matt Weiner (talk) 15:04, 6 July 2021 (CDT)

This one makes mores sense as part of a larger article, I agree, and I wrote it partly with those future developments in mind - will pare this down a bit to remove the summary aspects and eventually write that "criticism of the HSNCT" article. I don't have strong thoughts on the haircut thread, though I think that there is room for context + aftermath that extends beyond the thread itself, but I do think the Tuhin thread provides utility to people who are not on the forums. -Kevin Wang (talk) 16:03, 6 July 2021 (CDT)

I don't feel strongly about any of these, but…

* This page does seem non-critical, but a fair amount of it is significant, and including all that content directly in the 2021 HSNCT page would dominate the page, which I don't think is ideal. And some of the rebuttals don't really appear in the thread or are not especially fleshed out there. The collaborative model of forum threads is very different from that of wikis, and the latter is (IMO) more conducive to improving arguments (including rebuttals).

* To the extent the haircut one is relevant (which I'm not sure about), I think it's probably that people still reference that thread a lot, and the QBWiki might be a good place to accumulate quizbowl culture so newcomers (and out-of-the-loop oldcomers) can figure out what's going on. Yes, one can search HSQB, but it's not a great search feature, and it may be harder to make sense of the results. It could probably be fit within a larger page giving summaries of in-jokes.

* The Tuhin page seems pretty over-the-top to me. I have had a bunch of discussions about it here and by email with various people, and I don't remember what I've said where, but I don't want the QBWiki to be the place for arbitrating grievances or their importance; on the other hand, I do want it to collect and make accessible important knowledge (which includes major misbehavior, IMO), and a detailed writeup may be easier to support with references and quotations than a high-level summary that, by dint of its vagueness, leaves room for debate.

* In general, HSQB threads sort of fade away in significance (except for the ones that become in-jokes), so I think it's plausible to surface important ones fairly prominently on the QBWiki. That can certainly be done by references on pages, but I think it can be valuable to have summaries since some threads really become annoying morasses in terms of going off-topic, devolving into stupidity, becoming tedious, or otherwise being much harder to digest than a well-written recap. It would be nice to keep those relatively short and within other pages, though.

—Jonah (talk) 16:12, 6 July 2021 (CDT)