New Scaratings

This is a thread to discuss a number of issues STRO has brought up regarding what he believes are my many failings. Given my personal and professional time constraints and the volume of the issues presented, I do not have the time to address them point-by-point right now, but I will do so in the coming days as time allows. In the meantime, this thread is here for people to discuss these issues so the Hybrid Play and Tournaments thread can remain a thread about, well, hybrid play and tournaments. As always, everyone should feel free to jump in.

_________________
Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

Sic semper Anonis?

I am reminded of a bad review I received years ago from an ex-friend in a conversation wwith others>

EF: He's very weird and he does not dress well.

Me (when told of the comment): I do so dress well.

_________________
Merkin

Since ANON created this thread without republishing or even linking the cause for this thread, I will
remedy yet another of his failings and post a copy of the two posts detailing more of them. Shame on you!

(First post)
First, by far the biggest issue here is not a bad rule but a bad rulemaker. When you have someone who makes and breaks rules without explaining them to or even mentioning them to anyone and deems himself accountable only to his teammates (if even that), we have a much bigger problem than banning a single team using Zoom from playing in a tournament.

I will now post a piece I wrote in early November which attempts to explain in detail all the problems with this rule and its rulemaker. Subsequent posts will detail what we've learned after using the Hybrid for four plus months, and what we can do to improve the situation. I will also go over any reasonable and maybe not-so-reasonable concerns about this, and answer any questions you might have. Please, ask, or at least say something! We have too many topics where there are hundred of views and three posts. Speak, silent majority!

(Second post)
(This was written back in early November, and some of the references refer to matters as they stood back then, or posts written by Anon back then.)

I apologize in advance for the length of this, but this is like trying to keep track of the claims of George Santos: it is long. complicated and ugly. When you review the history of this telecommunications rule, you quickly conclude that the real problem is not a ruling but the ruler. It's not a matter of "What did he do wrong?" It's more like "Did he do anything right?" As he constantly reminds us, there is a dark spirit that lies within, and it has made a baffling, muddled mess of this situation with a stew of dogmatism, ineptitude and sneakiness with a side order of bias.

Like most of you, I never gave the rules more than a glance the last number of years, even when I was running a contest. When I saw the "telecommunications" phrase, I thought it was a old-fashioned way of saying "Internet." After all, it was part of a rule about reference materials. I considered running a contest as one of the prices a winning team had to pay for winning the contest, along with paying to mail the trophy to the next winner. Do the minor accounting, keep track of the scores, make a couple observations, congratulate the winners, make a decision on the rare occasion one was necessary. I thought this mostly a housekeeping chore, not a power.

During these exchanges, it has become clear the current gamerunner views himself not as a houseminder but Lord of the Tournament, more like Chairman Xi (or maybe a more tyrannical Miss Grundy) than bookkeeper. His disparagement of democracy and any other such affront to his personal rule goes without saying, but let me point out some other similarities.

2011: A Bad Year
Let's go back to 2011. It is discovered that the ever-present time lag issue can be exploited with a cell phone. So what does Chairman Anon do? He bans all telecommunications besides the Buzztime app in the bar! No explanation of the change, no request for comment. Doesn't this seem just like a Chinese COVID lockdown order?

There are good reasons why rule-making agencies explain changes and request comments: it catches overlooked mistakes and problems. There was none of that here, so no one got the chance to point out any problems, like these:

He banned the wrong thing: If you want to make an activity illegal, you make the activity illegal. This rule does not make use of a time lag illegal. It does not even mention the words "time lag"! So what does it do instead? It does not prohibit the action; it prohibits the instrument. It is like trying to stop drunk driving, not by making drunk driving a crime, but by banning cars.

He illegalized wetware: The core principle of the initial anti-computing rules was "Answers should only come from human heads" It's simple, clear, and it covers computers and time lag and split schedules. Illegalizing "telecommunications" does something quite different: It makes otherwise legitimate wetware illegal. People providing answers is no longer good enough; it must be people providing answers inside the bar. Wetware used to be equal; with this rule, some wetware is more equal than others. Why? What is the difference between getting an answer from someone over at the next barstool and getting that answer from someone over the phone? If the principle is "Answers should only come from human heads," the answer is "Nothing."

Isn't that an awfully big change for a housekeeper to make, especially without explaining the need for it or asking for comment or even pointing out the change?

Poor English: The phrasing and arrangement of this rule is also poor. All versions of the rule clump in telecommunications with reference materials, categorizing people as a type of reference material. The original 2011 version at least conveys the writer's fervent desire to ban anything and everything not originating in the bar . Later versions do not:

2011: All answers must be solely provided by the collective brainpower of the assembled team at the location without the use of any reference materials of any kind (or telecommunication from outside the location).

2015 and after: As has become customary for this tournament, it is for wetware teams only. This means no computers and no references of any kind are to be used during gameplay, either paper or electronic (or telecommunication from outside the location).

Here is STRO reading this more recent version with a team playing remotely:

Wetware only? That's us. No reference materials? We're good to go. What's this telecommunications stuff? Well, it's part of a prohibition on reference materials, so it must be about using the Internet to retrieve answers. We're fine there, too.

A rule that can be easily misinterpreted is a bad rule. We had no idea that we were doing anything against any rules until we used the hybrid, long after we came in third place in a tournament run by the same person with the same rules. The 2015 rules can be interpreted to ban the use of Buzztime itself (which requires both computers and telecommunications to be used during gameplay).

Finally, the writer seems to think that "assembled" means only "gathered in a single place." Not so. It can also mean "gathered for a purpose," which fits remote and hybrid play fine.

How should this have been handled?

If you want to ban the use of any technique which uses the time lag to provide correct answers, you write a rule that says "You cannot use any technique which uses the time lag to provide you, directly or indirectly, with correct answers."

If you still want to ban the use of telecommunications, you cannot ban it on the basis that it violates the "Answers should only come from human heads" principle, because it doesn't. If you want to do this competently, you come up with a different reason for the ban, and state it as a different rule. You do not bolt it on at the end of a sentence talking about reference materials, because that looks incompetent, sneaky, or both.

As a justification for this rule, we hear about a selfless sacrifice by a team not calling an ex-teammate in France around 3am for answers. Some of you might also be wondering, "This rule has been on the books all this time, why the complaint now?"

The problem with bringing "Phone-a-friend" from Millionaire to Buzztime is not that it is evil but that it is not effective. All that matters when you get an answer from elsewhere, good, bad or indifferent, is the amount of time it takes you to get the answer from whoever wherever compared to the amount of time the game gives you to enter an answer. Parsing then conveying at least the gist of a question over the phone, then (usually) relaying the answer from the phone is time-consuming (and also occupies the attention of a second player), so giving that up is not any big sacrifice. While it can sometimes work in Showdown, which has longer intervals and rounds with no timed point reduction, it is inefficient even for Showdown and ineffective for the other, faster-paced games. That would have gotten old quick for FROG croaking out answers, especially when the croaking would start at 2:30am local time.

So for most of the time since the rule's creation; it prohibited an ineffective activity. It was a dead letter rule.

On the other hand, Zoom, etc. is much, much better than a phone for getting an answer from somewhere else. Fully remote play with Zoom has no time issue. and you can hear answers from multiple people at the same time. The Hybrid at Herrill's is far less efficient than fully remote at home, but it's still better than the phone. Zoom is a much more credible Terror from Beyond the Bar than any phone.

2022: A Worse One

Moving on . . . after the French lament, we suddenly get this pivot and the gamerunner tells us that telecommunications is actually OK . . . when my team needed it during COVID, as long as we don't play using it in a tournament with The Rule (which is beginning to sound like one of the Ten Commandments, only more important, by the end of the piece). But once it was back to normal for my team, it was back to me scheduling tournaments with The Rule.

I see. A crisis is over when it's over for you. Yes, you said something about a "critical mass" of sites being available. Really? What's that? Obviously can't include NYC and Washington and many other places. The only critical mass that seemed to count when you restarted was the majority of your team that voted to restart it.

Yet, the first time the Rule is dusted-off post-Covid, and the first time the Rule could have been actually used in a real situation, it wasn't. An exemption is granted to an orphaned team for the Brainbuster tournament. In October, we were told, "As I think you know, we agreed to grant your team an exemption for the Brainbuster tournament based entirely on the fact that it—alone among all of the other teams—had no actual brick-and-mortar location in NY at which to play."

The exempter goes on, "However inconvenient Herrill Lanes may be for some of you, it is an actual brick-and-mortar location at which a quorum of people play. As the basis for the exemption no longer exists, so does the exemption."

Except . . . I didn't know. There was no record of this in Scaratings or my emails, or PMs or head, so I asked. The answer we got was "I didn't tell anyone outside of someone who asked, not even you, mostly because I did not want others to notice and I didn't want to encourage others to do the same." The only regret he seemed to have was granting the exemption, not covering it up. This is like Nixon going on national television and announcing "I ordered the Watergate break-in because I was afraid of losing the election. I guess I should have stopped the election instead."

Just to make this perfectly clear, here is a chronology:
1) Tournament is announced.
2) STRO, having no idea there is a rule banning his team's participation, applies for entry.
3) Chairman Anon, not aware that STRO is not aware of his precious Rule, decides to grant an exemption to the Rule, but does not tell STRO nor the other participants. He only puts Lighthouse in, and only discloses the exemption privately to someone who asked privately after seeing Lighthouse included on the tournament list. STRO has no idea an exemption was granted bercause he had no idea one was needed and was never told otherwise.
4) Fast forward to September. STRO comes up with Hybrid and tries it out. Chairman Anon notices, thinks Mad River has found a new home and contacts STRO by private email. STRO corrects that impression and explains Hybrid to him. Chairman Anon states that Hybrid will not be kosher for Sandbag Tournament, blaming his team for that. STRO is pretty stunned at this interpretation of the rule and starts researching history of it. STRO also prepares lenghty descriptions and justifications for Hybrid and formally requests inclusion in Sandbag to get an on-the-record decision. Chairman Anon prepares such, citing previous rules and decisions for which there is no record. STRO inquires, response reveals secret history of the exception to Rule.

So the only actual expressions of this exception is a private email to someone and the sort-of expression of a rule made after applying for a different tournament. Before going into the substance of this, a few words about the process: this is not acceptable behavior. If there had been any mechanism for removing you, we would demanded it back then. You do not make secret decisions and implement them hoping no one will notice. You are supposed to be accountable for the decisions you make and you do that by revealing them to affected parties, no matter how whatever you think your position makes you. And no, transparent does not mean invisible. This is like Trump declassifying documents in his head. You make that kind of decision, you post it publicly. Period.

Getting back to substance, we have had an Unknown Rule and an Invisible Exemption, differing pieces of which were made known to different individual/groups at different times, but usually long after it was supposed to take effect.

Unknown Rule: To play in one of my tournaments, your entire team must go to a Buzztime location if there is one in your state and if a "quorum" can get to that location.
Invisible Exemption: The ruler may exempt a team from The Rule if the state requirement is not met.

Putting aside the unknowableness and invisibility of this, is the state requirement a good rule? No, because it chooses a nonrational basis for granting an exemption. A rational basis for an exemption could be the physical distance to a location, or the length of travel time. A state border is no impediment to travel in-and-of itself, while states can be . . . big. Buffalo is about 300 miles from New York. Cincinnati is over 200 miles away from Cleveland.

Did the former Mad River team meet the Invisible Exception to the Unknown Rule for the Buzztime Tournament?

I don't know, because the Invisible Exception as stated to somebody else in March was not the same as the one stated to all of us in October ; the March version did not mention a specific state requirement or quorum rule. Did those requirements exist in the mind of the rulemaker before October? Sorry, but I can't do telepathy and if I could, I can only assume that would also fall under the telecommunications ban if I played Showdown with it.

Back in March, there actually were a few locations in New York State. Most were a couple hundred miles away. One was closer, just a 4 1/2 hour commute under perfect conditions, but if you do not make perfect connections the instant Showdown is over (have cab there, get in cab, travel 3 miles to railroad station and get on platform . . . in about 5 minutes), you have to wait over three hours for the next train and get home at 3am. Surely no one could expect mostly elderly people to take that trip frequently for anything outside of chemotherapy, but maybe not. That was no reason not to go according to the October rules . . . except for, maybe, this quorum requirement. Now only if we knew what a "quorum" was . . . .

After a keyword scan on Scaratings, I discovered that "quorum" has been used a few times to describe at least 5/6 boxes in play for a premium game, which is the basis for calculating a location score.

This creates a Catch-22 for a team like us: if you can't get to a place in your state, you cannot see nor play the game. But if one or two of you, or maybe you and a local manage to get to a place and play six boxes, then you are disqualified because your whole team is then required to go to the bar rather than have some play remotely under this quorum rule.

But, if this rule had actually been made known to everyone with the Sandbag tournament announcement, we could have told you we would play with five boxes and you would have had no choice but to accept us under the Invisible Exception. And, unless you can show that these rules were posted anywhere outside of your imagination, we could have demanded that you include us in this tournament and calculate our scores with the top five scores as just compensation for you not following your own rules.
Unless . . . the Invisible Rule is actually the Inapplicable Rule because if the October rules apply to March (never mind ex post facto), there was a location in New York State where a few brave souls undeterred by a return trip that would challenge James Bond could travel and . . . get their team disqualified if they played a box too many. So we shouldn't have gotten that medal after all.
Are you dazed and confused enough? Is this the person you want making rules and decisions for you, especially when he keeps them under his Mad Hatter hat?

Really, folks, if your housekeeper made such a mess of things, then tried to cover it up, what would you do with him/her?

And this was a ruling that was in our favor!

I apologize for wasting so much of the readers' remaining time on Earth with this, but imagine how I feel expending far more time trying to make sense of this. This is what happens when someone makes things up on the fly without thinking them out and not telling anyone.

But what matters more here is the human element. I began my discussion of Hybrid Showdown by talking about Dorothy and her wish to play Showdown again. The answer to her is "I don't care if you're over eighty years old with a bad knee and have to commute five hours to play Showdown, get thee to the bowling alley if you want to play in any tournament of mine."

Man, that's cruel. Yes, there is indeed a dark spirit that lies beneath.

It was not that way on March 15, 2020, when it was a question of how far your team had to travel to play Showdown at the beginning of COVID, when you said, "I think our closest location is Zooky's Sports Tavern in New Brighton, PA--about 1 1/2 hours from my house. I suspect it will be a tough sell for the team ." Then again, the Invisible Exception for some inconceivable reason implicitly precludes interstate transport. But if it didn't, I'm sure some new Unseen Invention would have popped up.

Would it have been reasonable to have expected anyone to travel so far, especially at the dawn of COVID? No, of course not, that would have been inhumane. But so is insisting on this from people with no nearby place to play due to the consequences of COVID.

Why?

When you go through this, you keep asking yourself, "What could be the reason, the motivation that compels such slavish adherence to this bar fetish?" This is more than "This is the way we've always done it." This is more like preventing blasphemy and sacrilege.

I asked for reasons, but what I got was fears. A lot of fears, lightly disguised, but still fears. Fear that some Zoomatics would fiendishly recruit Ken Jennings or James Holzhauer or some world coalition to join them (read to beat Red Fox). Fear that other teams could use this to gang up on Danny K's (read Red Fox). Fear that somebody somewhere might be looking up answers somehow somewhere off-camera (read to beat Red Fox)

Some of this could easily be handled by a rule: You could specify that a player could only play on one team per tournament. Some of this is just prejudice; to presume that people playing remotely are more prone to cheat than those playing at a bar is just the same-old Fear of the Unfamiliar, except the Unfamiliar isn't immigrants or blacks, but Zoomies. (You do get video on Zoom, which makes that sort of effort more noticeable, and again, it's the speed of the game that's the biggest factor here). Now maybe you're that sneaky and think everyone else is, too, but history gives us actual examples of teams using computers at the bar loudly and proudly for years. I would have far better reason than you have to say "National West Covina and Inglewood have used computers in bars. Let's ban bars from tournaments." Some is just excessive self-centeredness: if it were advertised in the media that Ken Jennings and/or James Holzhauer were playing Buzztime, that would be GREAT for the game, might even guarantee its continued existence, EVEN if it meant Red Fox losing a tournament.

But if you're afraid of being knocked off your pedestal, if anything new or different might be a threat to the status quo, lots of things look like threats. Ask Chairman Xi.

A corollary to this fear is the desire to protect your group by preventing others from gaining the same advantages through other means that you currently enjoy . Red Fox has an unusually large contingent of players, which is rarely if ever matched by its competitors. While I think Zoom, etc. is self-limiting when it comes to creating mega-numerous teams (see https://www.rieti.go.jp/en/special/p_a_w/177.html for some research on this) , it certainly could be used to create bigger, better teams.

And if it did, so what? Isn't that the nature of competition? If something new would be good for the game but bad for your team, do you say, "Let it be," or do you ban it?

I took a look at Red Fox's statistics to get an idea as to what those advantages are. What you notice immediately is that there are far more boxes playing Brainbuster than Showdown: usually 25-31 for Brainbuster, (as many as 40), 15-20 for Showdown. It's very, very unlikely that the extra Brainbuster players regularly decide to go home after that game. It is very, very unlikely that Red Fox has 25+ boxes and a bunch are put away at 8:30. It's possible that some or all of the excess boxes are players' second boxes, but photos of the Red Fox team show rather more than 15-18 players. The most reasonable assumption is that the number of boxes playing Showdown are the current number if working boxes at the place and there are somewhat to a lot more players than boxes for Showdown.

Who gets to play Showdown? How are the excess players playing Brainbuster?

To answer the first, about a dozen handles play Showdown almost every time they play Brainbuster. About a half-dozen get to play Showdown about half the time, and about five show up regularly and almost never get to play Showdown. The doghouse bunch have handles like MIGUEL, BHUTAN, WIGINS and TREIZE. They are almost always there for Brainbuster, but almost never there for Showdown. I don't think these are second boxes, most of them have pictures rather different from those of the regular players.

Then there is the mystery of DROLL. You've heard of DROLL; he was the Napkin Hall-of-Famer who moved to Chicago. You would think DROLL would be one of those sure-to-play players, but while he was at Red Fox, he had 18 Brainbuster games to his credit in the past six months (as of early November), but had not played a single game of Showdown during that time.

Moving on, so how are the excess players playing Brainbuster, and where? There are only two possibilities:

1) Because a few players almost never get to play Showdown after Brainbuster, and a few more play sometimes, it is conceivable that some are playing remotely. If that is the case, the score patterns indicate they are not playing by themselves (their scores are often near the top), so there would have to be some form of Hybrid in operations. Is that convincing evidence? No, but when you see handles like MIGUEL and BHUTAN and WIGINS and TREIZE almost never get a chance to play Showdown while others almost always do, it makes you wonder.

2) More likely, everyone is at the bar; the excess players play Brainbuster on their phones, and most stay to provide answers in Showdown. This would be in accordance with the current rules, but let's compare what they do to what the Mad River people do in the Hybrid:
Red Fox: For Brainbuster: Play game on phone, shout out answers. For Showdown: Shout out answers to people with boxes.
Mad River: For Brainbuster: Play game on phone, shout out answers. For Showdown: Shout out answers to people with boxes.

Both groups are doing the exact same thing. The only difference is that the second group is doing it over a video link.

Does the video link somehow violate the "Answers should only come from human heads" principle? No.
Is there anything about the video link that inherently creates cheating? No.
Could the use of video threaten the status quo? Yes.
Could it be used to match quantity/quality advantages held by certain members of the status quo. Yes.
If the answer to 1 and 2 are "No," is it sufficient reason to ban a technique if the answers to 3 and 4 are Yes?
You answer that. Not ANON. Not the Fellowship. Not me.

The prevention of potential threats to Red Fox looks to be the real rationale for the slavish adherence to the dubious rule, though there seems to be more than self-interest in play here. There seems to be a visceral repulsion to the concept going back to 2011, a repulsion untempered by actually doing it when his team had no choice. There seems to be at least a hefty dose of xenophobia flavoring this, maybe more.

The main issue for me is establishing the legitimacy of these styles of remote play, not necessarily qualification for a particular tournament. Under normal circumstances, it would be reasonable to allow some time for a decision. But this person made up his mind on this back in 2011, and I didn't hear anything about getting the opinions of others when I was told "No" in September . Is there a difference between getting an answer from someone in the bar and getting that answer from someone outside the bar? He's been saying "Yes" for the last 11 years. None of the fears he listed as reasons to reject this will go away any time soon or ever, and all of his fears boil down to "This could dethrone us!" which is not a reason to ban anything. Add to that this person's actions that state "I don't even have to tell you about decisions I make that affect you!" and I have little hope that any promised review for the next tournament will be any more open to change than Chairman Xi's Party Congress.

You can't claim to be acting on the behalf of the other teams, then refuse to ask them about the issue. After you hide decisions and give us Invisible Exceptions and Unknown Rules based on Nonrational "reasons," you shouldn't then claim to "avoid arbitrariness and capriciousness." Finally, after you confess to making a decision without announcing it to the participants, it is laughable to claim to be worried about being unfair to participating teams.

Word Games

The term "fair play" is cited a lot. It's not mentioned or defined in the rules, though by now we should expect invisible rules. My experience has taught me that when people use the word "fair," it usually means "better for me." The real issue is not "fair play," but who decides what fair play is. For instance. I have heard from multiple people the opinion that Red Fox playing with 30 or 40 people is not fair. Like beauty, fair play is in the eyes of the beholder, and when the beholder/ruler reminds you more some combo of the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts more than any other giant of jurisprudence, that ought to bother you, especially when the guiding principle seems to be "What's good for Red Fox is good for America."

Nor is "fair play" the only phrase endangered by the Alice-in-Wonderland treatment. "Cheating" is another. In another rule revision slipped in without any explanation, the ruler may ban/disqualifying a team for "any form of cheating." There is no definition of cheating in even the most general sense, which means cheating is anything the Through the Looking Glass ruler feels like calling cheating. Well, yes, this does happen in the real world, usually the Third one. In contrast. competent rules define these terms so as to keep those enforcing the rules from making up reasons to support their arbitrary and capricious decisions. Not surprisingly, when asked about this, the ruler did not seem to comprehend the concept that rules ought to limit the power of the ruler.

Is it good when the person running a little contest thinks himself the sole authority? No, but it's not surprising. Is it good when that person puts the interest of his team ahead of the overall good? No, but again, not a shock. But when that power-that-be refers to past events and rulings that did not happen and those rules that actually exist are either faulty or make little sense at all, we have a bigger problem than whether or not a particular team gets to use video to play in a particular tournament. Do you really want a judge who reminds you of something out of Lewis Carroll?
I'll put it this way. The judge made two decisions about my team. One was in our favor; one was against. We find how the judge handled the one we won far worse than the one we lost. That's bad.

I understand that nobody wants to be bothered with this stuff, but that's how those who want to be bothered with this stuff get control, and that's why they want to be bothered..
So what can be done? These tournaments are a small chore, normally requiring a few minor tasks. There was no perceived need for a lot of rules governing the activity because there was usually so little to do. Unfortunately, the lack of rules has been interpreted by a few to mean, "I can do anything I want." Anything?

Many conceivable situations have no answer in our lack of rules. For instance, what if you need to get rid of someone? Let's say a gamerunner loses a tournament and says. "They cheated. We won. See you next year." What do you do, and who decides?

General consensus is a good principle to base rules upon. You can hardly have that if you aren't even told about rules and decisions that affect you. No rulemaker is perfect. Certainly it wouldn't hurt to explain changes to people and give them a chance to have their say about it? After all, this is America, not China.

More thoughts about this in future posts. Thank you for your patience.

_________________
“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

Thanks to STRO for saving me time by reposting his comments here. Given the length of his original posts (more than 5000 words), I’m afraid I will have to answer in a series of posts, taking one section at a time, as time allows. I’ll begin at the beginning.



I don’t think I can be held responsible for your misinterpretation of the word “telecommunication.” The word was chosen quite deliberately. If you read it otherwise, that’s on you. This bears on the next five subheadings (2011: A Bad Year, He banned the wrong thing, He illegalized wetware, Poor English, A rule that can be easily misinterpreted…).

At issue here is the banning of telecommunication from outside the location starting in the 2011 rules. I fundamentally disagree with the premise that we “banned the wrong thing.” Read the rule again:

“All answers must be solely provided by the collective brainpower of the assembled team at the location without the use of any reference materials of any kind (or telecommunication from outside the location).”

The heart and intent of the rule is not the last part of the sentence (reference materials), but the first part of the sentence: that answers must be “solely provided by collective brainpower of the assembled team at the location.” Yes, it was meant to ban exploiting the lag. Yes, it is meant to ban borging (and even paper references). However, it is ALSO meant to ban any answers from outside the location (including “phone-a-friend” answers, etc.). Banning the use of telecommunications was not a case of “poor English,” it very succinctly and efficiently served the heart and intent of the rule.

A larger, and I think equally important, issue here is the complete and utter lack of controversy regarding this rule, both at the time and ever since. In 2011 there was literally more discussion about a non-existent rule regarding playing in the nude than there was regarding the telecommunication rule (i.e., zero comments). In fact, I cannot find of a single instance of anyone complaining about or challenging this rule in all of the years since until your challenge last fall. And this is not because people were shy about expressing opinions on rules back in the day, either (you probably well remember the huge blow-up over the Kalamazoo Crew’s rules just the year before). Much as you may wish it to be otherwise, this is not, nor has it ever been in the past, a controversial rule. The fact that other tournament commissioners have chosen to include it, too, speaks to its general acceptance.

Regarding last year's Brainbuster Tournament, I have already addressed this both last fall:

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4105 (see in particular Oct. 10)

And in the other recent thread:

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4119 (see in particular Feb. 3)

So there is not much new to add here. Regarding last year's Sandbag Tournament, I guess there is some new stuff--or at least stuff that would be new to other people. As you mentioned, I wrote to you last September welcoming your team back to in-person play after noticing Herrill Lanes on the board that week. You described hybrid play to me, and then I responded with a heads-up about the telecommunications issue. Lest you think I am somehow being "sneaky" in summarizing it here, I will paste the email in its entirety:

"Thanks for the update, Ed. I really am glad that there is at least a place to play there now, and the 1 1/2 hours each way shows a rare dedication. Here's hoping an even more convenient place shows us sometime soon.

I'm going to be honest here in saying I'm not sure how the team would feel about a setup like this entering the Sandbag Tournament. One of the pieces of boilerplate in the rules has long been a prohibition of computers or outside communication (which, you may remember, was kind of the raison d'etre of the tournament in the first place). No one would quibble in the least with you and the other folks at Herrill Lanes joining: in fact I know they would welcome it--we really have missed you. But Zooming in people for a tournament might be a bridge too far for the team.

Please do give my best to the team, and tell Tom I said hi. I hope to see you on the boards next week, too--preferably somewhere not too far behind us .

Thanks again for the update,

Kevin"

I am kind of glad you brought all of this up because it gives me the chance to ask you something about which I have been curious ever since. This email was sent Sept. 15, and from that point on you were (what seems now to be quite uncharacteristically) silent. There was never any response to the email, no immediate response when the rules were posted a few days later, and then no response again until two days before the tournament started. If you felt so strongly about this--and clearly you did and still do--why the 3 1/2-week delay in responding?

That's about it for me today. I'll pick up where I left off as time allows, probably tomorrow at this point.

_________________
Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

Entirely too much to go through. That is way too long Ed, no one will read that past the 2nd or 3rd point.

_________________
BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

You most certainly can be held responsible for misinterpretation when you write a poor sentence. The sentence is about banning reference materials, but then you clump in telecommunications in a parenthesis following the words "reference material." Most readers would infer that telecommunications had to do with reference material, and it is a natural enough inference to make given the Internet, but you mean any and all electro-communication. In 2011, you at least make it clear that you only want brains in the bar, but that vanishes in later versions, confusing matters even more, to the point where it looks like your ban of telecommunications includes Buzztime itself. Of course, competent authorities avoid these problems by notifying their public of a rule change and explaining what it means, but noooo, we can't do that, can we?

To claim that the rule has a tradition of acceptance is to pretzel-twist history. The 2011 McCarthy rule was deemed so important by your successors that . . . it was dropped entirely. It only came back when you came back, and you were even volunteering to handle gamerunning for others, apparently to keep your precious rules alive. Eventually, it was subsumed into a cut-and-paste routine, and while I cannot speak for others, if I had known what you meant, that rule would have been rewritten on the spot. It is not difficult for a rule to be controversial when it is never used.

Per the Brainbuster tournament, the first chance you had to use your wonderful rule, you broke it instead, and kept that a secret to all affected. Now there was good reason to do that, and you would have been well within your rights to modify rules and explain to the participants the reason for the change, but noooo, instead you made secret exceptions and private exceptions to the secret exceptions and did everything except the right thing for the participants, and you still don't seem to have a clue that you did those people wrong with your coverup.

Per the September emails, I described it here in my long post:

Fast forward to September. STRO comes up with Hybrid and tries it out. Chairman Anon notices, thinks Mad River has found a new home and contacts STRO by private email. STRO corrects that impression and explains Hybrid to him. Chairman Anon states that Hybrid will not be kosher for Sandbag Tournament, blaming his team for that. STRO is pretty stunned at this interpretation of the rule and starts researching history of it. STRO also prepares lenghty descriptions and justifications for Hybrid and formally requests inclusion in Sandbag to get an on-the-record decision. Chairman Anon prepares such, citing previous rules and decisions for which there is no record. STRO inquires, response reveals secret history of the exception to Rule.

No, I did not respond to your email because I decided that all further communication needed to be done on the record.

Now I have a question for you: Why haven't you resigned because of your behavior during the Brainbuster coverup?

To repeat from the long post: You do not make secret decisions and implement them hoping no one will notice. You are supposed to be accountable for the decisions you make and you do that by revealing them to affected parties, no matter how whatever you think your position makes you.

_________________
“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

Picking up on some of the other larger issues STRO has mentioned, the main overarching ones include issues of accountability and democracy. Taking each in turn, then:

Accountability: STRO asks if I feel accountable to my team. The answer is yes. The team is always consulted on major issues, including tournament rules and your team’s exemption in last year’s Brainbuster Tournament. On the occasions when we host a tournament, usually a couple of weeks before the rules are written and posted, I give a heads-up—either in the weekly update, or at Trivia on Tuesday, or both—that we will be discussing the rules at trivia the next week. I encourage people to bring their ideas, including tournament themes and alternative structures for the tournament (e.g., group play, repechage, etc.) to discuss. This past time—as they have every time since at least 2014—they voted instead to ratify the previous year’s rules. This should be unsurprising, of course—these rules have worked well and have been utterly uncontroversial for almost a decade in numerous tournaments.

As far as accountability to the larger playership goes, I guess all I can say is that I have been exactly as accountable to the playership as literally every other tournament commissioner—including you—has been over the last 25 years. You must know that there is no process or structure for this kind of accountability, and there never has been. In fact, even what we’ve been doing here—consulting with the playership on ScaRatings and the Facebook pages on the hybrid play issue—is an exceptionally-rare event, and something that you did not do when you were tournament commissioner in 2019 and chose to use rules that were virtually identical to the ones about which you are now complaining.

This speaks to the other issue of democracy. Much as you may wish it were otherwise, running these tournaments has never been a democracy under any past tournament commissioner, including you. I suspect there are two major reasons for this: purposeful design and pragmatics.

As mentioned earlier, the ability to make the rules was actually considered to be one of the privileges granted to the winning team—along with the trophy—since the early days of the McCarthy Cup. In other words, it was not a bug, it was a feature. In the early days, winning teams would often use this feature to give themselves the number one seed and/or first-round byes regardless of their current performance. When folks complained about this—or any other rule, for that matter—they were told something to the effect of, “If you don’t like it, then win the tournament and write a different rule.” Some people may not have liked it, but what was the alternative? Here is where pragmatics comes in.

Way back in the days of the old Buzztime Forums, a proposal was mooted to have the community come up with the rules instead. It immediately ran into a practical problem, and one that undermines the IRS/NSA metaphor you used. Government agencies have a recognized and generally-accepted higher authority: the federal government. No such higher authority or ratifying body exists for the Buzztime playership. Even if we somehow tried to come up with such a body, how would it be chosen, and how could it possibly claim to represent triviadom or claim its general acceptance? The ensuing debate over the proposal could not reach anything approaching consensus on this issue. It was on these rocks that this idea foundered; and this was at a time when the Buzztime Forums could at least claim something like a representative sample of Buzztime players. The same cannot be said for this forum or the multiple Facebook players group pages.

The thing is, despite the lack of a higher authority or democracy, these tournaments have over the years reached something approaching a general consensus about the rules. Sure, there has been some grumbling from time to time when a team has chosen different kind of bracketing schemes or reseeding teams after each knockout round, but the heart of these rules has become so uncontroversial that they have been carried over in principle among multiple different teams and commissioners, including you. This kind of playership consensus is as close to democracy as we are likely to get for now.

This has been borne out by the results of these threads on ScaRatings and the cross-posted links on the Facebook players group pages. As of this morning, the overwhelming consensus from those who have chosen to respond ranges from “no” to “hell no.” Of the thirteen unique people who expressed an opinion anywhere, eleven people expressed opinions against hybrid play either by posting a response (9) or liking (thumbs up, heart) such opinions (2). Two people, including Bud here, thought it ought to be allowed perhaps with some restrictions, and especially for teams like yours that has no convenient place to play. Clearly, this is a small sample size (which points to the difficulties in trying to somehow create a representative body of Buzztime players), but for the folks that chose to participate, the result is unambiguous. This should not be surprising, as there has literally been not a single person who has complained publicly about the telecommunication rule for more than a decade until you did last fall.

Bearing all of this in mind, then, imagine if one player—and only one player—demanded just two days before the start of a tournament that a rule that all of the other teams had agreed to, and that had been accepted by consensus and without a single complaint for years, be changed radically and unilaterally in a way that specifically benefitted his team. Can’t you see that for the Tournament Commissioner to bend to such a demand would be far more unaccountable, undemocratic, and tyrannical than anything you have described?

_________________
Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

So here’s where we are: I have, multiple times, owned up to and apologized for my mistake last spring. I have acceded to STRO’s request to consult the playership on this rule. I have acceded to his request to respond to the issues he raised in his 5,000-word essay. He may not like or agree with the results of my consultations or my responses, but there’s not much I can do about that.

I have also probably already spent far more time on this issue than my family and professional responsibilities ought to have allowed. No offense intended, but if the choice is between family, work, or continuing to respond to you here, you will always come in third in that scenario.

Besides, I’m not sure if there is much more to be gained here. The surprising truth of the matter is that I like you, Ed, and have for a long time. I know the feeling is not mutual, but I do. You are a person of strong convictions and a passionate advocate for your team, both characteristics I admire and can identify with. For as long as we have been communicating—more than 15 years now, I think—I knew that on the occasions when we might butt heads over something you would bring a reasoned, rational response led and supported by data. While the debates might have gotten heated at times, they generally avoided personal invective.

Because of this, I don’t know what makes me feel sadder right now: the prospect that you have resorted to ad hominem attacks, or the prospect that you might actually believe the caricature you have presented here. Whichever is the case, though, the result is the same: any further debate with someone in either category is futile. You are better than this, Ed. I KNOW you are.

So this is my valedictory to this thread. I’m sure you will have plenty more to say, but I am done here. I wish you well, Ed; but more than that, I wish you peace.

_________________
Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

Without trying to deny the truth of that, think about the ramifications of that in general life.

Maybe I should have offered this as a summary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vJNp5asqc

_________________
“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

What a shame. No stamina. When this began and I started putting together the story of this rule, trying to make sense of what you said and did,
inbetween the frequent WTFs, I spent so much time shaking my head at what I was seeing and trying to make sense out of nonsense.
It was especially bad back then because I had never seen anyone say and do these kinds of things outside of Lewis Carroll. But now we all have: George Santos. I must concede, he has you beat, but I definitely see a resemblance. Your responses to this are pure Santos: gloss over the bad stuff, say everyone's like you, take a distracting shot here and there, even drag your family into it.

I've been accused of an ad hominem attack. No shit, Sherlock. I announced that at the start, "First, by far the biggest issue here is not a bad rule but a bad rulemaker. When you have someone who makes and breaks rules without explaining them to or even mentioning them to anyone and deems himself accountable only to his teammates (if even that), we have a much bigger problem than banning a single team using Zoom from playing in a tournament." Then I wrote 5,000 words backing that up. Lot of material.

For those who thought my piece too long, here's the supershort version: He's sneaky; doesn't keep people informed. He doesn't think things out or write them down well. He makes up things out of the blue and lies. This does not make for a good gamerunner.

Again, George Santos can help us understand. Do people want him to resign because of his position on any issue? No. They want him gone because he's George Santos.

OK, you refuse to answer this, no surprise there. Let me approach this another way. I'm writing a new draft of rules for these tournaments. These rules will state what is allowable or not, clearly. These rules will cover remote and hybrid play in a way that should satisfy the rational concerns of most. Most importantly, it will change how gamerunners are selected, require them in a number of ways to be accountable to the players, and provide for their removal for cause. Most importantly, I will invite, not avoid, public comment on them. After that, I think it would behoove you to adopt them as your own because if you don't, they're going to haunt you.

I'll get to your specific responses inbetween doing other things, which may take a while. Let me put out some good rules for a change!

_________________
“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

Fuck the What??

Just to cover a number of comments in two posts, for the record:



If "the heart and intent of the rule" was the first part of the sentence, then why did you get rid of it in later years? I've already pointed out that "assembled" does not have just one meaning. As I said, "The original 2011 version at least conveys the writer's fervent desire to ban anything and everything not originating in the bar. Later versions do not"

You just demonstrated your use of poor English with "Banning the use of telecommunications was not a case of “poor English.” That's a dangling participle. If you want to ban any or all telecommunication for the purpose of obtaining answers (I hope you didn't want to ban calls to loved ones in the hospital, too), you write a separate sentence like "All forms of telecommunications made for the purpose of obtaining answers during a game is prohibited." When you write "no references of any kind during gameplay, either paper or electronic (or telecommunication from outside the location)" you are lumping in telecommunication as a reference, which makes a great deal of sense when talking about the Internet, but not people.

You wanted to ban all these things, why didn't you say that? Why hide it? I am banning A, B, C, D, and E, whatever. Why not? Scar doesn't charge you by the word.



This reminds me of the story about a cemetery manager who wanted to do something other employees didn't like, so one day he went out and told the tombstones about it. When he came back, he told everyone, "I got the OK. Nobody objected".

This was a rule that was slipped in without any notice or explanation. It was a rule that was entirely dropped by your immediate successors and only came back when you came back. I would have rewritten it on the spot when I was gamerunner if I had understood what you meant to say. But most importantly, when was it ever used???? You could have slid in some opaque language that would have banned dinosaurs from Showdown, and that would have uncontroversial too. Silence does not equal consent, especially when unawareness is a strong contender. I am aware of . . . one person who ever mentioned that rule correctly in posts. That was a dead letter law until cheap video, COVID and the collapse in the number of Buzztime changed the world, and even you and your team had to use that terrible telecommunications to keep together for a time.

You say you can't find a single complaint or challenge to The Rule prior to last fall? Then what was me applying for the Brainbuster tournament? That was just as much a challenge as anything I did in October; the only difference being I had no idea I was challenging anything. But any challenges I made to that rule were nothing compared to what YOU did. You BROKE it, what greater challenge can there be? Well, keeping it a secret then making up this muddle of exception and claimed statements you never made and rules out of Looking Glass was a pretty good try.

Really, if this had the enthusiastic support of the masses, where are they? Why aren't they here voicing their support for you? Back in the day, West Covina had plenty of people supporting their computer use. They might have even had more supporters then than the anti-computer people. But here, so far the vote is Stro 1 Anon 0. You're claiming 9 people approving of you on Badbart, but who knows the context of those answers? Did they see what I had to say?

There have been hundreds of views of these topics so far, but just a few comments, and only one expressing an opinion on the subject. The overwhelming winner so far is "I don't know and I don't care."



I see. You say your team was consulted on the Brainbuster exemption. Did they tell you to keep that secret from all the participants, including the exempted team? If they did, why did they do so? If they didn't, why didn't you consult them?

Your claim about your team ratifying the previous year's rules since 2014 is demonstrably untrue; the wording of the rule in question changed between 2014 and 2015 for those tournaments you ran, which should not have happened if your team merely OKd the previous years' rules. Or do you keep things secret from them, too?

More troubling is the degree of power your team has in this process. Sometimes you make it sound like they make the decisions, sometimes not. My experience with various teams tells me that most team members know little and care less about the overall Buzztime world, and are even less accountable to it than you So, can your team overrule you? What if your team loses a tournament and decides that the winner cheated. Are you obliged to follow their decision?



Please show us another time when a gamerunner made secret decisions breaking the cited rules and didn't tell anyone.

To me, it is simply a given that if you run a public activity, you tell the participants what the rules are and if you need to make a decision that falls outside these rules, or change a rule, you tell them what that decision or rule change is and why you made it. I do not recall any other gamerunner who violated that rule, but I do recall it being followed.

Of course, you have to make that kind of decision before you have to tell people about it, and gamerunners often don't have to make that kind of decision; that was the case when I did that. As I have cited repeatedly, I copy-and-pasted that rule thinking it meant something quite different than what you said it meant due to your poor phrasing.



The last time I read someone justifying the necessity of his personal tyranny; it was Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. Here, it is: "I have no boss. I will never get a boss. I must rule." But there is a way; it's called the rule of law. The rules are your boss. If you say "Only I can make the rules," well, that can be changed. I mean, really, we're not contemplating parliamentary votes on every question. Is requiring public disclosure and opportunity for comment on changes and explanations of all your actions so outrageous? If it is, why?

The private tournaments have long had a libertarian flavor to them; it was normally a minor bookkeeping task and treated as such. They were created as a reaction to computer use by teams like West Covina, who initially had considerable support back in the day. There certainly was no consensus against computer use back then, but that didn't stop anti-computer people from creating competitions for themselves; consensus be damned. These tournaments were a revolt against rule by consensus.

What do we have here? We have someone who responds to a real issue by banning anything and everything he doesn't like, without telling anyone. Unintentionally or not, he writes the rule in a way that can easily be misinterpreted, and subsequent revisions make it even worse. However, since it was never actually used, it didn't cause problems. When that rule was written, there was well over 3,000 Buzztime locations. Then came the loss of BWW, then Covid lockdowns, then Buzztime being sold just before it went bankruThe number of locations plummeted to around 800. Suddenly, remote play became the only way to play for a while, including for Mr. Anti-telecommunications. Eventually, that went away for some, but the damage had been done, and large chunks of the country had no place to play: New York City being one of them.

Now when a New York team that had been playing remotely quite publicly and completely unaware that they would be breaking any tournament rule, applied to play, providing the first chance for Tournament Tsar to actually apply his beloved rule, you would think that he would either apply the rule or, given all the new circumstances, modify it and inform the participants about it. Either choice was fully within his power. He did neither. Instead, he broke his own rule, made a secret exception in his head and told no one about it. Now he is telling you that that's the way it has to be, and you can do nothing about it.


This is a case of gross neglect. He neglects to mention that his rule was dropped entirely by his immediately successors. He neglects my repeated statements that I would have rewritten the rule on the spot if I had realized what it was supposed to say. But these are trivial compared to neglecting to mention that the only time this rule so sanctified by consensus applied, HE BROKE IT, then tried to hide it.



I think you are referring to Badbart on Facebook, you did make some reference to that some days back. I would be very interested in seeing those comments myself; I might need to provide those people with some additional information; they ought to hear both sides of the argument, or do you disagree with that, too? Unfortunately, Badbart is a private group, and I found no way to directly join; the page says my application to join (I filled out nothing) is "pending." If someone else would like to tell me and those here who said what there, we would appreciate it.

In the meantime, you could look at Buzztime's Facebook page and start counting the constant laments that there are no locations at which to play, and see how studiously they are ignored.



That was not the first time I applied to you to enroll a team playing remotely. Despite all those reasons you just gave, you approved the first one, and then you made it even worse by not telling the participants about it.

Per making that request on short notice, you did manage to leave out one small detail in that "entire" email: the date. It was September 15, so you knew about this situation close to a month before we formally applied for entry, and you had no problem expressing your opinion on the subject without the slightest mention of any other team besides your own. After your response, I spent considerable time looking into the history of this rule and providing explanations to the rest on Scaratings as to what we were doing and why. I don’t leave people in the dark, unlike you.

_________________
“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

STRO, grow up. Seriously.

Your attacks on ANON are ridiculous. I have known him for over a decade, and your characteristics of him are far, far off base. He consistently acts with integrity. He did slip up previously (a pretty minor incident), and he has apologized multiple times for that. This site is hardly jumping anymore, but the fact that no one - NO ONE - has chimed in and agreed with your point of view during your multi-month rant bonanza is a sign of how wrong you are.

I don't know how this is going to end, but I have seen the comments on BadBart and elsewhere, and more than likely, you are going to lose this fight. The consensus against hybrid play is almost entirely negative, and your team is really the only one in the nation to be playing that way, to my knowledge. If the pandemic were still raging (or taken more seriously) OR if more teams were playing hybrid or not in person, I could absolutely see there being a different consensus, but that's not where we're at.

I very much sympathize with your team's plight - it is confounding that Buzztime has long neglected NYC and its surroundings, and I'm sure that it is far from easy for your teammates and you to travel in person to Herrill Lanes. However, if you are forced to play in person, I hope that you will. No one is asking for you to permanently change your team's model. If you want to play in hybrid mode the other 46-ish weeks of the year, fine. If you really want to play in this tournament, make do for a few weeks and hope that either a) Red Fox doesn't win and/or b) something changes with others' viewpoints over the next 9-12 months. If you want to take your ball and go home, fine.

I would love to know if your teammates feel as vehemently about your inclusion in this tournament as-is as you are. I know xtrain has posted here before. I'm going to say they're nowhere near as rabid as you are.

Calling someone names is easy. Proving it is a lot harder. If you find what I say ridiculous, fine, now prove it, but first you have to read what I've said, which might take you a little while. Then you need to read your ex-teammates material; for instance, he never apologized to the other participants of the Buzztime tournament for his coverup. Just how important can a rule be if the creator and enforcer of the rule breaks it?

I have no idea what was said on Badbart, who said it, and under what circumstances they were said. Maybe you ought to transcribe it and bring it over here. BTW, just where is "elsewhere?"

Insofar as no one has sided with me; you are the first person to side with your former teammate. I have one person who voiced support for letting us play.

I would not be surprised if we are the only ones playing hybrid at the moment; we invented it, and there is a lot of technophobia out there among our senior citizens. But more than a few teams played remotely during the worst of COVID, including yours, and hybrid is just a clumsy version of remote play. .

No, you don't sympathize with our plight. No one with sympathy would force 80-year olds to commute for 4 or 5 hours just to play two games. It takes me almost three hours to do that, and I have just about the easiest ride. How many of your teammates have a three hour, much less four or five hour commute on Tuesday nights? How many of your teammates would be willing to do that if necessary?

But tell me, what great good would be achieved if we were "forced to play in person." No one has given me a real reason for that ban under current circumstances, just a collection of fears. Could you enlighten us on the subject? We've played tournaments playing fully remotely; we even played in an ANON-run tournament. So what is the problem?

Would you like to see this for yourself? We will be short-handed next Tuesday, but I will be happy to send you a Zoom invite so you can see for yourself and you can ask my teammates how they would feel about being forced to attend for a bunch of weeks in a row. BTW, Xtrain and his wife Dorothy are a few of the five hour people.

_________________
“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

The site is not allowing me to add screenshots of the BadBart discussion, so I will do my best to copy/paste here.

ANON posted the following on the 2nd:

"McCarthy Cup/Brainbuster Tournament season is coming up again soon, and a player from the New York team has petitioned alter the rules to allow hybrid play (people at a location broadcasting the game screen via Zoom to other players at home, who could then shout out answers to the people at the location). Because I have promised him that I would survey the player community on this issue, I have started a discussion thread on this on ScaRatings: viewtopic.php...
If you are interested in weighing in on this issue, please do so when you have the chance. We will need to come up with the official rules in a few weeks."

10 individuals responded - nine voted "no" and one voted "yes". AFAIK, none of them post on here (or at least haven't recently).

Some of the responses:

"My vote is no on the virtual assistance. We are out of the pandemic and IMO it would have more honesty and integrity to include only players physically present at the brick and mortar Buzztime venue."

"I would say no as well. Also, have they thought about possible lag time or frozen / lost feed. Get your ass in a seat & support your local bar."

"CATTY in Arizona here. I vote no on the hybrid play idea. When you are sitting at a computer at home, it's too easy to succumb to the temptation to Google. We've played in person for over 25 years, except during the pandemic, and we're not going to change as long as we can still do it. Love and peace."

And so on.

In addition, several members of The Fellowship were at least open to the idea of changing the rules UNTIL they read some of your unhinged ranting - and then they were no longer in favor.

I'm going to follow ANON's lead and bow out after this, since you're clearly still as worked up about this as you were before, and I doubt that will change.

Thank you for relaying at least some of the information from Badbart. Unfortunately, your former teammate messed this up, too, not mentioning that the reason why we are playing this way is because the trip to the location is from 3-5 hours roundtrip for most of our players. Don't you agree that that is something that should have been mentioned?

You said there were nine "no" responses. You provided three excerpts. Could you please provide the same for the other six?

I would gladly answer these people personally, but this is a private Facebook group and the webpage essentially says "Don't call us; we'll call you." Hopefully I will be contacted, but in the meantime, don't you think there's something wrong when only one side gets to present their side of the story?

I am unclear as to why someone who constantly tells us that this is not a democracy is placing such weight on the votes of people who probably are not going to play in the tournaments in question. Would it not make more sense to ask those who have played in Tournament X in the past what they think? They've been silent so far. Or is the only vote that counts is the one you win?

Per those members of the Fellowship, aren't you able to tell me why they changed their minds? Did they have reasons, or is it a knee-jerk "stand by our man" reaction, or just “he does not think we are as wonderful as we know we are”? I must take exception to those who call my comments "unhinged;" the one thing they are is hinged: I tell you exactly why I think what I think, something the other side is not so good at.

Finally, where did you ever learn that the best way to argue is "Call someone a bunch of names, ignore what he has to say about what you have to say, then run away?" Consider the possibility that this approach is counterproductive.

As I've mentioned before, I will shortly put out a set of model rules that will make it clear what is and isn't allowed, and under what circumstances they are allowed or not.

_________________
“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

I don’t have much of a dog in this fight anymore, but as one who has run multiple Showdown tournaments over the years, I feel compelled to weigh in here.

Is playing via Zoom a violation of the rules? By the strictest definition, probably so. Are they gaining an advantage by playing in this manner? No. Does it open the door for the potential to cheat? Yes.

Having associated with their crew for 30 years now I can safely say two things. Do I like each and every person on the team. No. Do I think they would ever cheat? Not a chance. Never gave it a passing thought when proctoring tournaments.

And something else, this team has been around for over 30 years, longer than anyone else except for possibly our crew. They’ve earned the right to be respected. They’ve earned the benefit of the doubt.

Each and every team in any tournament could easily cheat and get away with it so long as someone with a clue and a mouthpiece wasn’t on site during the game. Why should the NYC bunch be any different?

Let them play. I don’t give two shits about what some random person on some random team thinks about it. They don’t know the history of the game. This isn’t rocket science, figure out the wording or whatever the hell the issue is.

STRO,

What exactly in the holy good god damn did you expect from all this? An exception or interpretation that benefits precisely your team? A policy that, if followed by a majority teams, will reduce patronage of the bars thereby leading to the end of Buzztime? A swell from the “silent majority,” resoundingly voting you Trivia Tournament Commissioner For Life? And then everyone would start clapping?

Once you come out of the gate with 5,000 words and name calling, you’re sorta putting all your eggs in one basket, aren’t ya? I negotiate for a living, and there’s no surer way to entrench your opponent’s position than to compare him to dictators of the ages and political clowns of the present. If you meant to win hearts and minds, this ain’t the way.

ANON did present his team with your concerns. He did explain the 3+ hour round trip. He did provide the points you’ve provided (though it took him less than 5000 words). I waited to read this thread until after voting. My concern was and remains that zoom-assembling will reduce patronage to the locations and hasten Buzztime’s inevitable death.

But, now that I have read what you have to say…. Christ, this is sad.

Look, STRO, you’re welcome to assemble via zoom. And to play every game of Showdown and Brainbuster and Sportsball that you and your zoommates want to play. You’re even free to win those games. But, for so long as the team running the tournament at issue doesn’t permit zoom-playing, you’re not eligible to win the tournament.

If you want those rules to change - and they very well might with the way of the world and the fact that any tourney winner could change the rules - I’d suggest you start by not taking yourself so damn seriously. You’ve planted the seeds for your revolution. Let them grow.

Lastly, for the record, there is no need for me to spend the same time defending and rehabilitating ANON’s character that you’ve spent spitting on it. ANON has been an exemplary human being, leader, support system, professor, and friend for the 20 years I’ve known him and for at least as long before then. There are as many people in the world who agree with me as there are words in your diatribe. You doth protest too much. Much too much.

I wish you the best - but only because ANON does and not because I am actually a centered, giving & caring person like he is.

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RABBIT

I'm not bad -- I'm just drawn that way.

I'll have more to say tonight; there are contradictions in what you had to say, but for now:

The issue is not between playing this way and playing in a bar. The issue is between playing this way or not playing at all. I have consistently advocated a system of paid individual subscriptions for the game; like other modern apps. My draft rules restrict the use of these methods to people and teams that have no place to go.

Comments were requested. I commented. What is your problem with that?

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“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

No one is stopping you from playing, STRO. Play on, playette.

I don’t have a problem *that* you commented. I have a problem with the content of it - you don’t need to rewrite history or attack a good person to advocate your position. If you do have to do that, your position is wrong.

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RABBIT

I'm not bad -- I'm just drawn that way.

How about stopping from playing in this tournament?



I went into considerable detail explaining why the reasons and events that made me come to my conclusions. Why don't you? Even good people can do bad things, and we're not talking about Jesus here.

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“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

STRO, no one is stopping you from playing in the tournament. You're stopped from winning if you play in violation of the rules.

Are you asking for the details and reasons that I came to the conclusion that ANON is a good person? It'll take awhile, but I can get a list together for you if that is what you really want.

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RABBIT

I'm not bad -- I'm just drawn that way.

You must take ANON to task; he is not following your rule. Or is this another one of your Invisible Rules that you tell no one about?



No, the part about me rewriting history and attacking a good person. What did I get wrong? Proof, please.

I'll get to the rest of your stuff tomorrow.

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“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

I apologize for your misinterpretation of my comment. No one is stopping you from playing all the games of Showdown - including games that run during the tournament. You are free to play and even to win those games. You are not free to win within the tournament unless you abide by the rules of the tournament. If you’re suggesting ANON intends to blockade your location, disable the playmakers, and guard the door with a shotgun to prevent your team from playing at all… then, yes, that would be news to me. Please advise, as I will take up such vigilantism with our team. It would also disqualify ANON from playing with The Fellowship as he would not be assembled in our NE Ohio location whilst he was so rudely preventing you from entering yours.

As for the rest, I’ll await your further reply. Though I think I already know my response: Die mad about it.

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RABBIT

I'm not bad -- I'm just drawn that way.

We were not allowed to play in the tournament, as you said we were. If you don't know the difference between the words "in" and "during," go back to school.

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“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville