Steve: What you say about history questions is true, but I believe the original complaint was concerning literature questions. I personally feel that Player A who has read a book (for example, let's say Camus' The Stranger) should beat Player B, who has read a summary about it, to a tossup on it every day of the week. This is, of course assuming that Player A has decent speed and decent recall. However, I must put forth the question which I feel is critical to answering the question of whether or not Player B deserves to beat Player A to the tossup on the book: was quizbowl begun to allow academically-gifted people to show off their knowledge of repeated questions that appear over and over again by studying old ACF packets, or to reward the player who, in the course of everyday life, actually reads the book for his/her benefit, in hopes of becoming more cultured and well-rounded? Sometime last year, I remember reading that NAQT questions were written so that every "educated" person would know them. So my question is, are we writing questions to reward the students of the game of quizbowl or students of literature? Just a thought. Sudheer Treasurer, UIUC Academic Buzzer Team --- In quizbowl_at_y..., berkeleykaplan <no_reply_at_y...> wrote: Questions that are designed with the purpose of giving an > advantage to a mythical player with "deep knowledge" are often poorly > designed. Speaking as a recent history student, I know that many > topics in which I have deep knowledge would have to include boring, > extra-obscure facts in order to systematically advantage the deep > knowledge players. For instance, a question on the Presidential > election of 1860 designed to systematically advantage "deep knowledge" > players from "tangential knowledge" players would probably have to > exclude any information regarding political party names, candidate > names, and any information contained in electoral charts, since that > information is readily accessible to anyone who has read a one page > summary of the election to the exclusion of studying the election in > extensive detail. As a result, a writer trying to form a "well > written question" will have to resort to obscure nonsense for the > first sentence or two which will likely be uninteresting and > unmemorable for the vast majority of teams playing.
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