Talk:College Bowl

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[edit] Internet?

"If the intent was chilling the invitational circuit, it failed, as these developments and the growing Internet community of quiz bowl players led to an explosion of teams, tournaments, and formats."

How many people used the internet in 1987? Modor 16:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)Modor

  • The perceived difficulties with CBC in terms of coercion were post-1990. At which time there was an internet community of current and former College Bowlers.--Wehwalt 22:07, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits by Moberemb

Moberemb made these changes twice, so I'm putting it to discussion.

Original:

In the 1987 and 1988 regional tournaments, College Bowl was accused of recycling questions from previous tournaments, thereby corrupting the results (questions for tournaments need to be fresh, or certain teams will have an inherent advantage). The 1987 National Tournament, on the Disney Channel, saw additional controversy, as a number of protested matches proved to strain the television format. In addition, the company claimed a copyright on the idea of quizbowl competitions, and attempted to extract a licensing fee from invitational tournaments; threatening to blacklist schools which hosted invitationals and did not pay the licensing fee. If the intent was chilling the invitational circuit, it failed, as these developments and the growing Internet community of quiz bowl players led to an explosion of teams, tournaments, and formats.

In the 1990s with the rise of the Academic Competition Federation and National Academic Quiz Tournaments, both with their own national championships, the leverage of College Bowl Incorporated withered, and several schools "de-affiliated" from College Bowl (which has a higher participation cost). Factors which contributed to this included restrictive eligibility rules from CBI, the expense of participation, disagreements regarding the quality and difficulty of the questions used, and other minor rules. Over 200 Colleges and Universities currently participate in College Bowl competitions at some level each year.

College Bowl retains the ACUI contract, and administers the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge at historically black colleges and universities.

Changed to:

College Bowl administers the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge at historically black colleges and universities.

What's the complaint? I have my guesses, but I'd like to hear from Moberemb here. --User:Christopherlin 00:59, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Moberemb seems to be noted College Bowl Inc. senior employee Mary Oberembt, and I suspect her agenda in removing this information ties directly to her having an interest in covering up any bad press about CBI. In other words, her editing is a rather poor attempt to hide relevant information to avoid anything that makes her employer look bad. Shame on you, CBI! ——The preceding unsigned comment was added by 140.180.129.25 (talk • contribs) ..
Accusations without evidence don't belong on Wikipedia. Opinions as to the "withering" of College Bowl are just that, opinions, and also don't belong here. User:Dctuttle 05:19, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
The neutering of relevant information from this page by people with vested personal interests in hiding the facts is a great example of why Wikipedia is useless. Hey let's adopt a NEUTRAL POINT OF VIEW by simply ignoring the fact that these controversies existed! Let's further trust people firmly on one side of those controversies to enforce that "neutrality" on the article because the people on the other side are too busy doing things more productive than babysitting a fake encyclopedia article such as watching astroturf grow.
(Personal attack removed) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.57.146.64 (talk • contribs) .
There is an obvious problem when people employed or formerly employed by College Bowl edit out factual content that could portray them in a bad light. That clearly violates Wikipedia's alleged doctrine of neutrality. I personally don't think that the statements excised by Moberemb were non-neutral, as two other formats did rise, College Bowl's influence did wane, and people did have those problems. The statements reflect the sentiments of those that departed from College Bowl, not on the broad speculation of a single writer. The passage should be included, and CBI personnel employshould be ashamed of themselves for attempting to censor objective additions to an article on which there is no way they can be objective.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.62.104.19 (talk • contribs) 12:13 (UTC13 April 2006)
Let it be known that according to dctuttle's wikipedia user profile, he is apparently a regular staffer at local CBI tournaments and hasn't played active circuit quiz bowl since the 1980's. I doubt he has the degree of familiarity with NAQT/ACF and the circuit as a whole as he seems to claim in his profile. Clearly he is not either a neutral or informed source, and it's sort of silly that he can hold up the presentation of legitimate information solely because it offends his personal pro-CBI bias and affiliation with the organization. I move that the text which Mary Oberembt deceptively tried to block since it could have hurt the verifiable financial interests she has in the company be reinstated, since it's becoming clear from the flow of this talk page that Mr. Tuttle is just a single biased source with an agenda. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 140.180.144.31 (talk • contribs) .
I concur with these rationale. If you so wish, add them back. However, just to make sure those determined to make a squeaky-clean image of CBI don't get away with future reverts, please cite relevant and credible sources. --KHill-LTown 05:15, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
(Above, 140.180.129.25 attempted to identify a user in 'meatspace', and calling into question user's motives. There's a good point in there, under the ad hominem line of thinking. --Christopherlin 08:35, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you understand what the phrase "ad hominem" means. The fact that David C. Tuttle is affiliated with College Bowl is extremely relevant to his credibility here. It's not an irrelevant attempt to discredit him with a personal attack. Furthermore, his motives should be called into question. One can "assume good faith" in line with that idiotic policy when one has no information, but when there is ample evidence that the user is not, in fact, contributing in good faith, assumptions should end. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.57.146.64 (talk • contribs) .

Actually, I looked up ad hominem before posting that, to make doubly sure. Specifically, Ad hominem#Ad hominem circumstantial: "Of course Moberemb would remove and play down criticisms of CBI, she works for them!" So (although I agree) I'm trying to stay off that line of thinking, even though it's there.
Which policy are you saying is idiotic? Assume good faith? No personal attacks?
I understand and agree that Dctuttle's affiliation is relevant. Not so much toward credibility, but (potential) bias. What are you citing as evidence? Show instead of tell. (I'm trying to act as Devil's Advocate here.)
I think the criticism section should have facts about opinions and present them as such. So that's what the idea behind discussing things here is. I hope that's clearer than mud, as it looks to me. --Christopherlin 06:16, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the original page that I'm sure the Wiki article was plagiarized from specifically notes that obvious self-interest regarding relevant claims is of course meaningful. The Wiki page totally inverts the meaning of its source material, probably because Wikipedia sucks: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumstantial-ad-hominem.html

Assuming good faith is idiotic because the way that academic review works is to attempt to do your best to criticize and falsify, not to simply accept whatever some random idiot on the Internet says. And this is not even a neutral person, it's someone who we know has a bias. Assuming good faith in his case would be assuming a falsehood. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.57.146.64 (talk • contribs) .

Just to be clear, I do think that Moberemb edited with bias and acted in bad faith. Large-scale deletions are generally treated as vandalism. The same of critical material then becomes POV pushing. Dctuttle on the other hand at least left a meaningful edit summary and discussed it on talk (though is now not present).
Assuming good faith has flaws. It doesn't mean that you have to continue to blindly assume so in light of evidence of intentions (in this case, whitewashing and POV pushing).
Wikipedia has flaws. It looks like you care about bias, plagiarism and the other ways that Wikipedia sucks. This is where I encourage you to get more involved (time permitting). I noticed you made an edit back in March noting that Wikipedia articles are plargiarized. The process for that is through Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Or just edit the article to paraphrase, and cite the source. It's a lot of work, but every little bit helps. YMMV. --Christopherlin 17:48, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV problems

Dctuttle, good call on toning down the wording. Still, there are points that ought to be covered, citing reliable sources and all. I think it's verifiable that College Bowl is more expensive than the other circuits. Did they assert copyright over the quizbowl format?

Here are the old passages, for discussion:

(new) ... In addition, the company claimed a copyright on the idea of quizbowl competitions, and attempted to extract a licensing fee from invitational tournaments; threatening to blacklist schools which hosted invitationals and did not pay the licensing fee. ...

(old) In the 1990s with the rise of the Academic Competition Federation and National Academic Quiz Tournaments, both with their own national championships, the leverage of College Bowl Incorporated withered, and several schools "de-affiliated" from College Bowl (which has a higher participation cost). Factors which contributed to this included restrictive eligibility rules from CBI, the expense of participation, disagreements regarding the quality and difficulty of the questions used, and other minor rules. ...

CBI costing more than ACF, NAQT, or circuit events is verifiable. Eligibility rules can be compared without saying that they are more restrictive. When I have more time, I'll go through the CBI documents. --User:Christopherlin 06:54, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

While I am a party to the complaint, so won't post anymore on the article, I will point out the recycling and copyright claim issues were in the air in the 1980s, and probably could be seen in the bulletin boards alt.college.college-bowl in the 1990s. At any rate [1] (1989) clearly identifies the copyright claim problem in an interview I did with Mentis, a company out of Fresno that was attempting to compete for the ACUI contract. For recycling evidence (as opposed to accusation of recycling), all you need to do is look at tournament questions in multiple years, not so hard to do if your school has CBI archives (though of course the contract with CBI required you destroy old questions). User:dml 15:32, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
The use of the word "copyright" is incorrect when referring to College Bowl's claims. Questions themselves fall under copyright protection, but the name College Bowl is a trademark and the format, in their argument, fell under the category of "trade dress". The idea of "trade dress" does exist in the legal lexicon -- see "Taco Cabana vs. Two Pesos", it's a very interesting read, and though it was short on precedent and not a matter of settled law, it was far from the black-and-white issue that many on the circuit claimed it was.
The language of "threatening to blacklist schools" is vague and inflammatory - companies who seek to protect their trademarks are required to put forth efforts to do so or forfeit future legal claims. What College Bowl did was just what a trademark lawyer would have said they should do to protect their claims. It often involves a zealous defense with claims of more than it might win in a court of law, but all a court would do is strike the non-enforceable elements and keep the enforceable ones. We non-lawyers generally don't understand that and react accordingly. Also, there is the issue of what exactly is meant by "blacklisting" and what the "threat" is to a school, beyond not allowing them to license College Bowl.
The claims of the "withering of leverage" of College Bowl are ambiguous and specious - they are certain to be magnified by those who frequent the circuit, which represents the majority of teams that withdrew but represent only a relatively small fraction of schools who play College Bowl nationwide. Some parts of the country have seen declines in participation (along with the other events at games tournaments that ACU-I sponsors), but others are at levels similar to 10-15 years ago, and over 64 HBCU teams are now on board with the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge. And games wax and wane in popularity -- witness ACF's actual suspension of active status in the '90s and circuit events that die off due to lack of organization or participation. These things are just not Wikipedia material unless the game shuts down and becomes history.
As for recycling of questions, Mr. Levinson does point out that there is no legitimate way to confirm or deny this, as old questions are supposed to be destroyed after five years per the licensing agreement, and we're talking about accusations going back 15 years or more.
Those who have issues with College Bowl's game play rules and eligibility requirements are stating their preference for a different game - College Bowl's rules are the same as they've been for over 20 years. The only eligibility requirement tweaks in the last 20 years have been to level the playing field between undergraduate-only schools and research universities and to otherwise promote undergraduate participation in an event that was being more and more dominated by graduate students and by those more appropriately positioned in ACF, NAQT, or the circuit. To put it succinctly, College Bowl didn't change, you did :-).
Dctuttle 05:42, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I would rate the departure of 1/5 or so of CBCI's affiliated schools to be worthy of at least some mention. Pretending there was not SOME controversy during the 1990s is simply denying reality. While Random College is the same as (Harvard/Swarthmore/Maryland/Virginia/any of the other schools who have deaffiliated) in terms of CBCI's bottom line, to ignore the existence of a massive contrversy during the 1990s regarding CBCI's questions, treatment of players at tournaments, etc., is disingenious to the utmost. I believe that CBCI employees have a right to say "Look! We've changed!" and list ways in which they have, but the Great Exodus of the mid/late 1990s is certainly a milestone event in CBCI's history. Shawn Pickrell 11:27, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
It is not the case, as DCtuttle says, that CBI's rules have remained the same for over twenty years. Just looking at the eligibility rules, CBI cut down on the number of grad students permitted per team from unlimited to two (1986) to one (sometime post 1990). Other formats have no limit.--Wehwalt 14:07, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

Okay, this seemed to work better than edit warring and personal attacks on another article I watch, so here goes. There is a criticism section, which is inherently and admittedly POV. Now, wikipedians and quizbowlers (and the intersection thereof), I task it to you to find sources for these criticisms. Now, as they predate the explosion in the Internet, it will be more difficult. Potential conflicts of interest aside, one user brought up the point that the criticsm that had been there and has been restored was unsourced. But what to do with this? Do you cut it out or tag it as unsourced?

I think that these are valid criticisms, but that they should be backed up. Some relevant links are WP:CITE, WP:RS, and WP:OR. --Christopherlin 08:24, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, if there is now an "NPOV" criticism section, does that make mentioning current criticism of CBI fair game in its entry? Examples include, but are not limited to, the presence of a heavy amount of pop culture and general knowledge relative to that of academic contact, authoritarian conduct rules at Nationals (e.g. a common complaint is that players aren't allowed to leave the room to go to the bathroom without persmission in the time immediately before rounds), the de facto segregation of African American players through the existence of the parallel Honda tournament, and a Nationals field that is typically far weaker than those of ACF and NAQT nationals because the most involved quiz bowl players tend to boycott CBI (e.g. CBI's 2004/2005 champions, Minnesota, finished in the bottom bracket at the NAQT national tournaments of both years, behind a long list of teams that didn't even choose to attend a CBI tournament).
These all can be backed up with statisics or links to long discussion threads showing the existence of many actively involved quiz bowl players who have these grievances with CBI. Am I right in saying that "NPOV" is violated only when critical remarks are presented as unchallenged fact and not when presenting the fact that substantial criticism of a subject does exist? If that is the case, I plan on adding those criticisms and providing sources for them sometime in the future. After all, there is a substantial difference between the way laymen (e.g. school administrators) view CBI and the way that people who are actively participating in college quiz bowl view it, and I think this disconnect is worthy of being mentioned.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 140.180.144.31 (talk • contribs) .

I believe, from my point of view, that is totally neutral Point of View, Mysmartmouth

Facts about opinions, yeah. Other facts team performance are fair. Distributions are facts. The history of NAQT and ACF are tied to that of CBI, addressing the concerns of quizbowlers.
Calling it "segregation" is a bit much. Is there a reason historically black colleges can't play College Bowl? Last I saw, there was no "colored quizbowl". I'd love to see HBCs compete in other quizbowl events. --Christopherlin 06:33, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Until 1999, there was a reason that the HBCUs couldn't play -- to be eligible for the HCASC, the players had to agree to forgo participating in any other academic tournaments not run by CBI, and had to choose to play in either the HCASC or the regular CBI tournaments, not both. Since the HCASC offers substantial cash prizes to the winning schools, most schools chose it, and so CBI effectively created a racially segregated world for quizbowl. Under pressure from both HCASC participants and the hosts of other tournaments, the rule was finally lifted, and more and more HBCUs are sending teams to non-CBI tournaments. Pinball22 17:16, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Winners

Someone might want to fix 1991, it is identical to 1987 (and verify the rest) dml 22:52, 1 May 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Is There a Need/Demand for a Picture?

I have a B&W non-copyright picture of a winning College Bowl team, 1962. Would it be useful for the site. If so, how do I post it, as I am a wordsmith, not a picture monger? Bellagio99 13:08, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Addendum to 1994 Results

I've previously sent a reminder about the 1994 NCT situation to College Bowl; however, I think they have a database behind their records page and are incapable of adding an explanatory note. No such problem here.

The article is correct in that Virginia lost to Chicago in the finals; however, BYU actually finished the round robin in second place but forfeited their place in the Sunday championship series for religious reasons. I was an eyewitness to this as a member of the Cornell team at that NCT, so that might be one source; the Usenet discussion here corroborates this.

Rdunlap1125 (talk) 01:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I don't question you, I was there. I certainly have no objection to an explanatory note at the end of the list of results. As for getting satisfaction out of CBI, fuggetaboutit. I'm still sore about the '87 nationals.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)