I guess I'll be the first to express strong disagreement with the proposal that each question in a submitted quizbowl pack should include a mark to identify the author. Matt raises a couple of valid objections, but this plan would also have the harmful effect of discouraging question writing among new players. Almost all of us started off as bad writers, and as tournament editors we've seen some howlers that made us _really_ want to know who was responsible for them. Fortunately for the writers, their individual identities have remained anonymous, and any embarrassment they might have felt was kept in-house where it belongs. I can also see editors rearranging or throwing out or keeping questions in a packet based at least partially on whether they like or dislike the individual authors of the questions. Not that this doesn't happen already, but if the editors can actually see the name of each writer, and the writers know this, then the writers are much more likely to take editing decisions personally. A question packet should be the result of a team effort. If the tournament staff want to know who submitted a particular question, they can always ask the team. And if for some reason the team doesn't want to tell, they shouldn't be forced to do so. Sanctions for plagiarism or fabrication or other high crimes and misdemeanors might then be imposed on the team as a whole, which in turn might or might not discipline the offender using its own internal procedures.
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