--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Matt Weiner" <darwins_bulldog1138_at_y...> wrote: > > Well, except that now Hroswitha's got publicity, so you might as well > > write all the questions you want. > > Giving out points based on reading the message board seems horribly unfair. Do I need to point out when I'm being facetious? I would have thought the tone and content would have accomplished that well enough. I'm not going to resort to smiley faces here. > Likewise, the "people have been answering Hildegard forever, they should > expect the canon to expand towards more obscure medieval female authors" > justification...it's incestuous and prohibitive to new players. Tossups need > to be accessible to the whole field, not just "people who get their > knowledge from old packets." Yes... if someone were saying that, it would be. If someone were confusing that with the considerably more rational "multiple quiz bowl players know Hildegard; in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it should be assumed that multiple players will know Hroswitha, a similar figure of roughly equal importance". Really, "why do people not know Hroswitha?" is only half the question -- the other half is, "why do those same people know Hildegarde"? The easy answer: "Because Hildegard has a more accessible giveaway clue -- 'FTP, etc. etc. from Bingen'." Which is an inherent flaw in the structure of the game, and not one (I think) it's possible to change. The other, more problematic answer: "Because somebody decided to put Hildegard into a packet ten years ago, and she has been kicking around the scene ever since, and I guess people know her now." And really, what can be done about this either? She's there now. Hroswitha isn't. It's impossible to write questions on Hroswitha because they're not going to be answered; it's silly to say, "don't write any more questions on Hildegard, because other medieval authors aren't getting represented." And I'm all for any reasonable proposal to stop the <i>de facto</i> canon from getting skewed in this fashion, but as far as I know, there's no really plausible way in advance, let alone in retrospect like this one. So, I suppose that, for better or worse, that's the balance. Keep asking Hildegard, stop asking Hroswitha. And yeah, this skewing is part of the game too... but that doesn't mean it isn't going to seem a bit off.
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