Re: Ethical dilemma

• From: steinhice <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 02:25:01 -0000
• Message-ID: <aol71t+p5ss_at_...>

First, to the critics: cut Jason some slack -- at least he asked 
before he acted, and that's an improvement over some memorable 
incidents in the past.

Anyhow, here are my thoughts: For any kind of tournament, steer clear 
of the Stanford Archive (it's too widely known to be usable except as 
intended, for practice material.)  But there are other ways to get 
those questions without having to write a whole tournament's worth.  
One is a mirror arrangement, where you use someone else's questions 
(ideally from a tournament held the same weekend as yours) and pay a 
cut of each entry fee to the question provider.  Another is that some 
folks (like, say, *me*) need fresh questions for so many tournaments 
that we will trade a full tournament's worth for one or two rounds of 
original material. 

For an intramural tournament like the one you propose, I see no 
problem with using questions from a tournament elsewhere that's 
already been held, so long as the questions aren't publicly available. 
 I similarly recycle questions picked from our tournaments for 
mini-tournaments at Mensa gatherings (though that's for free.)  I 
can't speak for anyone else, but I'd trade a set of high school 
questions (which would be about right for an intramural tournament for 
novices) or trash questions (which you'd need to edit to an easier 
level of difficutly, but which might be a better draw) for two rounds' 
worth of original questions I could keep for our spring high school 
tournament.  




--- In quizbowl_at_y..., scoobyhed <no_reply_at_y...> wrote:
> Hey everyone,
> I'm from the dirt-poor and small Tulane team.  We just started last 
> year and need some cash, real bad.  I had 2 ideas.  The first was 
> knocking over a gas station, but we are all feeble dorks so that 
> wouldn't work.  The second was to hold a frat/sorority tournament.
> My question is, would it be ethical to use (in part) questions from 
> the Stanford Archive in our tournament?  It is strictly for 
> fundraising purposes, and all writers would be credited.  Our team 
is 
> too small to write a large number of packets for a tournament.
> 
> Also, would anyone out there like to donate some easy packets for 
the 
> tournament, or some cash for our struggling team?
> 
> Any help is appreciated.
> Jason
> jhorn2 <at> tulane.edu