Why flame wars are a good thing (1 of 2)

maqt_charlatan · Fri, 11 May 2001 08:48:46 -0700

Before the anonymous users pre-empted further
discussion and ruined what was a good old-fashioned flame
war, I think a lot of good points were brought up in
the whole Breakfast at Tiffany's thread. Let me bring
two up again in order to show that there is real
value to this type of discussion. BTW, to those of you
who complained about the noise or offensive posts, if
you don't like what you're reading, it only takes a
second to hit "next" and not have to ever look at it
again. I'm not defending the value of every post to this
club, but if we start deleting every message that may
offend someone, this will just end up being a club for
tournament announcements(something we probably need anyway
in lieu of qb-announce).

First, in his
response to my original message, Steve said that I was
taking a swipe at the competition, implying that he
thought that NAQT and ACF were in competition. When I
replied, I told him that I did not consider them to be in
competition. In his next message, Steve made two points: 1) My
perceived swipe at NAQT suggests that I think that the
formats are in competition. Suggestion is not the same as
truth, and is in fact wrong in this case. Steve's second
point is more valid: 2) "it's fairly easy to deduce it:
with budgets so small and only so many tournaments a
team can go to, some teams have to choose one over the
other. So, duh, they are in some form of competition."
On the surface, this deduction has truth to it.
However, I think the more substantial point is being
missed: the real competition that is going on is between
the each school and its SGA (or whatever gives it
money). Many schools that wanted to go to ACF nationals
this year couldn't because of a lack of money. Did the
NAQT corporation tell the schools, "come to the NAQT
ICT this year instead of ACF or we will never let you
play at an NAQT tournament again?" Not likely. If two
groups were really in competition, then each would be
using whatever tactics necessary in order to squash the
other. NAQT could use all sorts of underhanded methods
to get rid of ACF if they wished to. So why haven't
they? ACF and NAQT provide different and mostly
orthogonal services to the circuit. I don't think either
group would want to see the other go away. If I were
editing ACF nationals next year, the question I would ask
myself is not "How can I get all those schools that went
to the NAQT ICT last year to come to ACF Nationals
instead," but rather, "How can I get those schools to come
to the NAQT ICT _and_ ACF Nationals?" I think that's
the more healthy attitude and the point that Steve
seems to have missed. Any personal comments I make
about the quality of NAQT questions are because I have
a genuine interest in seeing a constantly improving
product from NAQT. Yeah, I could do it in a more tactful
way but then nothing ever gets
accomplished.

(continued)