I pretty much agree with Steve's post. The Ghetto Warz packets were read in the chatroom recently, the unanimous consent was that they were pretty painful to play. I'm not here to deride USC's editing ability, but more to challenge some pretty blatant misconceptions of how one should write and edit questions for a tournament. 1. Without a doubt the editor's chief job is to ensure the quality of the questions. If this involves drastically rewriting packets and perhaps disappointing their authors, then so be it. I think it's far worse to punish all the players by letting them hear the packets endure bad questions that could determine the outcome of matches and the tournament. An editor should try to use as much of a submitted packet as he can, but has to make sure the quality is good, question subjects are balanced, and the difficulty is consistent. Not to sound rude, but if you really have such an issue with your packets being edited, perhaps you should try to work more at improving your question writing abilities so an editor won't need to make as many changes. If you're willing, it's not hard to find people or sources to help out. 2. Canon expansion should be never be used as an excuse to justify writing poor questions on overly obscure subjects that almost nobody can expect to know. Steve did a pretty good job of explaining that point, but just to elaborate, while there certainly are worthy subjects that the canon has glossed over so far, it seems that "canon expansion" done by players who don't know have enough experience or ability at question writing translates to "asking about insignificant niche material that I study/enjoy, but won't be gettable by anyone else, for the purpose of self-aggrandizement" (Chen's gloating over his "stump the chump" medieval female writer tossup makes that example look like a pretty clear case of the latter). Again, while the well thought out addition of significant subjects to the canon (preferably through bonuses, not tossups) is always welcome, the canon is by no means empty and bland in its current state such that it constantly needs to be stretched out to far out corners. After all, there has yet to be a player or team that knows the entire contents of the canon. 3. When writing, you can't limit yourself to only what you know. It's not fair to, say, literature majors who have to suffer because you can't be bothered to write on something that's not sci-fi or preteen lit. It's also not fair to yourself, if you're actually playing this game to learn things. Perhaps the most important element of a good packet is all-around balance in subject areas, because then the results will show who the better team is, not whose strengths happened to come up in bulk during the round. If you're running a tournament and need to cover subject areas you just completely don't understand, either suck it up and do some research while trying to keep things balanced or get someone who knows the subject well to help you out. You can always find the latter in the circuit if you ask. Now, I hope you guys do run more tournaments in the future, but seriously consider the above suggestions when doing so, instead of taking the easy way out and leaving poor questions in or just writing on your specialties. Good luck in the future, though, and don't be afraid or unwilling to ask for help or advice if it's needed.
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