An Overview of Online Quiz Bowl

So now lots of people have coronavirus and everything is getting cancelled. Fantastic! Now there's more time for us to play quiz bowl! What's that you said? Quiz bowl tournaments are cancelled too? Well maybe that would be an issue if online quiz bowl wasn't a thing.

Don't get me wrong, not being able to play quiz bowl in person sucks, but this is what crises are for: forcing us to flex our bigger brains to create solutions and make our situation overall suck less (at least from an optimist's perspective). As more people are practicing social distancing, it becomes much easier to practice and play against people from your own school or anywhere across the country too. Since for a lot of players this may be a new experience, here's a basic overview of online quiz bowl.

Nearly all online quiz bowl tournaments and practices are held on the platform Discord. Discord is essentially a communication platform that's a combination of Slack and Skype. When you are invited to a specific server to play quiz bowl, you are able to join a group voice call and text messaging channel. The server owner is able to restrict which voice and text channels you are able to access to increase security (we'll get to this later). You are able to access Discord either on a web browser (at discordapp.com) or by downloading the application on either your computer or phone. (note: like many other platforms using discord requires you to make an account first).

If you get on Discord and a practice is happening, many people may be in a voice call at once. Everyone should mute their mics (by pressing the microphone button) so that they don't drown out the reader. When the moderator reads a question and you know the answer, you can just type "buzz" into the text channel to buzz. Keep in mind that your internet connection may be faster or slower than others, and due to how the messages process, your buzz may show up before others even if other people do not see that on their end. The moderator then acknowledges the first person they see on their end to buzz for them to answer. Because of this issue, it is important that if you buzz, you wait for the moderator to acknowledge you before you type or say your answer in the call just in case.

In order to confer on bonuses if you are reading them, one general convention is to do so in lowercase and direct answers in all capital letters. Keep in mind that oftentimes bonuses in online games or practices take much longer than they do in person, so some online tournaments may discard them altogether in favor of playing more tossups.

Online tournament directors generally have the same responsibilities as in person tournament directors. They need to find moderators to read questions, find a set and a date to mirror, and appropriately segregate games into different channels such that only people who are supposed to be in that channel are able to see it. However the responsibility of finding and booking rooms to host a tournament are waived, which is nice and helps drive costs down.

Unfortunately, the biggest issue with online tournaments is the prevalence of cheating. Very rarely do people use video calls during these tournaments for a multitude of reasons, and so it is very easy for someone to be looking up answers behind their screen. For obvious reasons, you should not cheat in online games and practices just as you should not be cheating in real life. The competitive integrity of quiz bowl is very important, and with so many online tournaments about to be hosted in the near future, it should be very clear: NO CHEATING.

So given how the greater world has been shaking up recently, we've all had to deal with changing the structure of our lives. Thankfully, online quiz bowl does exist, and it give us all an outlet to still interact with our friends from all over. After you're done practicing or playing online, you can still hang out and chat with people on discord servers just like you can in person. The future may be scary and uncertain, but what it is not the end. People are clever and adaptable, and you are a human too (I hope)! Somehow some way, even when the world around us changes, everything stays in one way or another.

Stay safe and have a great day everyone!

By Nick Zhang, Teterboro