continued from previous post... -The NAC, and other tournaments run directly by QU such as QuizNet, have many strange rules, most notably "one protest per team per game." That's right--if you already used your protest demanding that "Ferris Wheel" be taken for "Ferris", you can't do anything at all, even if, for example, "George Washington" is listed as the answer to "What is the capital of Italy?" -There is absolutely no consistency in QU questions. They come in two types: insultingly easy and pointlessly hard, the latter not being in-depth academic subjects a la ACF but rather random, inane trivia. -Typical questions sold by QU to high school tournaments and used at the NAC have many faults, including a lack of pyramidal structure, vague or incorrect desired answers, and "essay questions" (why does... type lead-ins) judged by moderators who may not be experts in the field and cannot fairly evaluate answers. -Many schools, including several who abandoned the NAC because of it, have accused Beall of playing favorites with matches and the tournament due to personal bias and an attempt to create drama in order to get back on television. -He recycles questions between QU events, even when the same teams play both. In my senior year of high school, three questions from a QuizNet match in which we participated appeared at a tournament set a week later used at a tournament we played. -There at least five documented QU questions which are copied word-for-word (minus FTP) from the Stanford Archive. I would not be surprised if this plagiarism problem was more widespread, as all instances thusfar known were discovered by chance. I will be mining the QU questions I have for other copied questions soon. Anyone else is welcome to add to the list... --M.W.
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