ACF - Stereotypes

Suby10 · Thu, 12 Apr 2001 17:34:58 -0700

I wanted to comment on something Tom Chuck said
that echoes an opinion held by many in QB and simply
is not true. This elitist notion of ACF, at least as
long as I've known those involved in it, has never
been true.

Let me relate the reason why I
gravitated toward it, which will hopefully help elucidate my
point of view and banish some of these preconceived
notions. When I first began participating in QB, I
responded to a call for packets by Andrew for one of the
Wahoo tournaments. Looking back on those questions, I
can see that they were pretty bad, yet Andrew didn't
criticize me for them, he offered friendly advice on how to
improve my questions. 

That first year I also
noticed Matt Colvin making a concerted effort with
several posts/articles on how one could improve as a
player and even offering to give some of his materials
so people could do so. These things, combined with a
few others, helped me realize one thing very quickly
- I liked ACF's fundamental notions of fairness in
question writing, and more importantly I saw that I could
get good by putting a modicum of effort into it. I'm
not knocking anyone who chooses simply to pursue the
social aspect of QB or a "weekend warrior" approach, but
for me getting better meant winning more, which made
the game more fun for me. I also noticed that by
writing questions and getting better at ACF, I got a lot
better at NAQT.

What this heartwarming story
means to you the new player, or jaded veteran is this:
the ACF people do not want to stump you and they do
not want keep you down. They want you to improve and
if you ask us, we'll be happy to help you get
better.
I think some resentment stems from some people who
don't like to see others "working" at QB, and I also
realize that many ACF partisans have contributed to the
illwill by knocking people who don't "work" at QB.
Believe me that this latter stance is not the view of
ACF's members and never has been.

Another issue
raised has been that of closing ranks or restricting
access. This again is simply not true. What is true is
that ACF in the last couple of years has only survived
because of a few dedicated people, who made the mistake
of not being as open as they should have been.
Honestly though, look at it from our side - we run two
tournaments a year, for which we have to determine editors.
That's really all there is to ACF and it's not like
there's anything to hide even if we wanted to. Unlike
NAQT we have no other business, other than these two
tournaments. Andrew, Dave, and I don't sit around thinking of
ways to rig questions so only our favorite teams will
win, or conceive a playoff format that will eliminate
all upsets. In fact as I said ours is an organization
that is basically not for profit (the work put into
editing does not come close to equalling the fees gained
in return, believe me) and really only plans two
things a year; so we're basically only in operation from
late November, when editing for Regionals starts
through April when Nationals finishes. We do nothing
else, so it's not like there's a lot to plot
about.

In the next message I wanted to tackle question
difficulty and then I'll leave you all alone.

Subash