Here's the complete results of the email survey of current players I conducted over the past week regarding three "issues" over which NAQT takes criticism, and where I wanted to get a better idea of whether player opinion was actually being reflected by the volume of public posts or not. 80 responses were received in total. Full text of all comments were sent to all NAQT members. Results are given below in square brackets. Some players' comments did not constitute a vote for one particular option given, and I have interpreted as best I could -- in several instances recording half a vote for one position and half a vote for another. Eric H. --------------- "Please begin by telling me who you are, what school you play for, and whether you did or did not play in at least one of the NAQT collegiate events (CCT, SCT, ICT) during 1999/2000." [This was not a useful distinction as it turned out; all but two of the 80 responses received were from people who played in one or more of the NAQT collegiate events this year.] QUESTION 1: Would you prefer that NAQT continue to use timed play for its standard collegiate events, or switch to untimed play, with a set number of tossups in each match? A. strongly prefer timed [23 or 28.8%] B. mildly prefer timed [21 or 26.2%] C. I'm neutral [6.5 or 8.1%] D. mildly prefer untimed [16.5 or 20.6%] E. stongly prefer untimed [13 or 16.3%] [At least one person recommended sticking with timed matches for the ICT, run directly by NAQT, but allowing host-option on playing timed or untimed for the IFTs and SCTs.] Issue 2: Tossup answerability and the issue of giveaways unrelated to the rest of the question. Please consider this situation: an NAQT editor is confronted with a submitted tossup question which he or she believes will go unanswered by a majority of teams at a given event if limited to clues relating to the actual subject -- there exists no "giveaway" about the subject itself that is likely to suggest the right answer to any but a small minority of players. [Assume the editor's judgment about this is in fact correct.] However, the editor sees that the tossup can be made answerable by adding, at the end, a much easier clue that jumps to another subject area altogether. (An example taken from recent discussion might be a tossup on the Biblical character Gomer, given an ending like "who shares her name with a certain resident of Mayberry.") This example aside, assume that the actual facts are that the question will go largely unanswered if no such clue is added, that 90% of teams who will be present at the event could answer the question correctly if such a "switch-subject" giveaway is tacked on, and that in most cases it will be answered in that case by a buzzer race. QUESTION 2: Which of the following comes closest to your general opinion of such situations? A. the question should not be used (at least as a tossup); tossups that the majority of teams cannot answer should not generally be used, but neither should a switch-subject way-easier clue be added. [21.5 or 26.9%] B. the question should be used, without adding a switch-subject way-easier clue; it is fine to have tossups that few can answer, and hooray for those few who can. Unanswered tossups are a lesser evil than buzzer races on a final switch-subject clue. [19.5 or 24.4%] C. the question should be used, adding a switch-subject way-easier clue to make the question answerable, even if the most-frequent result is a buzzer race. Buzzer races on a final switch-subject clue are a lesser evil than unanswered tossups. [39 or 48.8%]
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