--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Matt Weiner" <darwins_bulldog1138_at_y...> wrote: > I'll let the numbers speak for themselves on your other points, but this > calls for a response. I am not "fortunate" (nor am I "amazingly" good but > that's another topic) to be a competent quizbowl player. I was barely able > to break 20 ppg on high school questions before my senior year way back > when. I simply read packets, read books that come up (oh noes real > knowledge!), and wrote questions until I got better. It's nothing anyone > else couldn't do and it goes to the heart of this debate. Don't sell yourself short, Matt, you're actually quite talented at this game. I understand that you worked extremely hard to get better, but few people have your recall ability, which is something you can't learn, no matter how many packets you read. Whether you think so or not, you are more talented at quizbowl than most people. >No, someone off > the street may not be able to score 300 points on an ACF packet, nor can he > do that on an NAQT packet or at an independently run invitational (which is > now part of ACF according to your series of ad hoc hypotheses designed to > protect your original wrong statement). However, ACF, by its straightforward > academic nature, is the easiest format to get better on. You can't get > better at CBI, ever, because it tests random trivia and speed. You can get > somewhat better at NAQT by acquiring academic knowledge in the ACF matter, > but you will also have to waste your time memorizing things with no inherent > value like "the 50 most recognizable smells" and "countries that are the > size of US states." Everyone has a chance to win at ACF if they put the work > in. People are turned off not because this is untrue but because they feel > that, as they were high school bigshots who had a 4.0 GPA, they clearly know > everything coming into college and are entitled to be handed the tournament > trophy every time without putting in additional work. Can you back that up with actual examples, or are you just making that up? Like I said earlier, my experience has been that people aren't turned off by not winning tournaments (most people actually understand that only one team can win and that it probably won't be theirs), but the fact that the questions are out of reach for anyone who doesn't play quizbowl. Over the years, quizbowl questions have gone further and further away from being about things that people actually learn in college and more about things that haven't been asked about before in quizbowl. In other words, since almost all of the easier stuff has been asked already and there are enough people around that have already heard them five times, more obscure topics have to be written about in order to allow more experienced players to continue to compete. This tends to annoy people who come to quizbowl tournaments hoping to be tested on things that they can actually be expected to know as college students, and frankly, I think that they're right for feeling that way. > Anyone who truly wants > to play without the level of commitment needed for ACF has more NAQT, CBI, > trash, and poorly run invitational tournaments than one person could > possibly get to in a single year. People who quit quizbowl outright because > of the alleged difficulty of 3 out of the 50 tournaments held each year are > just whiny, spoiled brats who are looking for any excuse, no matter how > inconsistent, and whom quizbowl can certainly do without. Gee, and here I was allowing anyone to play at Rochester when all along I should have been telling them that they could just go home. I mean, if people think that questions are too hard, we shouldn't try to encourage them to make criticisms of the questions to try to change things, or even make changes themselves; nope, we should tell them that quizbowl can do without them. No, Matt, you're wrong; that's not the quizbowl I grew up playing, and it's not the quizbowl that I've tried to include people in at Rochester. This isn't your game, Matt, and just because people dislike their experiences so much that they're willing to walk away rather than continue playing doesn't make them whiny or spoiled; it makes them people we should be trying to convince to stay. This game should be for everyone, even if they dislike ACF and ACF-style tournaments; but if these tournaments cause such a bad impression on people that they're not even willing to try something else, then something is going wrong. As I've stated several times, I have never seen people walk away from NAQT or CBI tournaments feeling as dejected and ready to quit as they do when they leave ACF tournaments or invitationals that model themselves after ACF, because they just don't think that there is anything in quizbowl for them. Well, I think there is. ACF itself has taken steps to try to correct this problem by starting up ACF Fall, which is great of them, and that's why the people who have edited ACF tournaments the past few years have been such valuable members of the quizbowl world: because they have tried to include people, something which you're apparently not interested in. You've done a lot of work in quizbowl these past few years, Matt, but you're wrong; it's not people who walk away from the game that quizbowl can do without, it's you and your close-minded ideas.
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