I’ve contributed to the JI Sports 3 ML this offseason, and apparently it’s gotten a lot of flack from some LLamas. I understand if you are upset about some of the individual questions and I realize that some of those had errors, which we’ve said we regret not catching. And if there’s one category of sports that might have been underrepresented in the ML it’s boxing/MMA, so I understand being disappointed there weren’t more questions about that.
However, some of the backlash feels out of line and unnecessary for a MiniLeague, a voluntary opt-in contest that provides bonus content for the time in between LL seasons. I’ve heard it’s either too difficult at some points, or not difficult enough other times. Some people think there’s not enough about non-major sports; others have said there’s too much about them. One person tried to mansplain the ModKos scale to me on the message board by using a meme from a classic movie. Now people are parsing through some individual LLamas’ answers just to try and prove their points, or posting polls about whether or not something is a sport in order to undermine a question. Hearing the ML referred to as a “disaster” when we were barely halfway through it really was frustrating as well. Finally, LearnedLeague is a US-based trivia league, and the contributors were American, and as a result these questions will by default trend more American-focused than a quiz based in a different country.
Look. Sorry if this ML hasn’t been your thing. I haven’t loved every ML I’ve participated in either. But this is something we’ve put together for free because we love the topic and we love the league and want to provide some good offseason entertainment. And I think some of the commentary has been unfair and ungrateful of the work that we’ve done on it, and that BehrendD has done as the editor. I know all of us have different schedules especially in the summer (I edited a few of my questions while I was on a trip to France), but I think overall we’ve put together a good product that lived up to the billing of a ModKos X ML.
I’m not posting this as some sort of “victory lap” as one message board poster claimed, I’m just trying to defend that putting together a 78-question ML is not an easy task. This is especially true in a wide breadth topic like sports, where it’s tough to narrow down while keeping the quiz equitable and balanced, as well as making sure women’s sports were well-represented, which we really wanted to keep in mind.
I’ve been smithing One-Days and contributing to MLs for over a decade now, but this experience is making me reconsider that for the future, which is unfortunate because it really is a labor of love.
I can't believe the flak that this ML has drawn here and on the Message Boards. I understand exactly where you're coming from, Ben, and agree with pretty much everything. When you're putting out a quiz you want people to enjoy it and/or learn from it or even in this case, be challenged by it.
You know that not everything you put out there is going to be well-liked by the players and of course you want to make sure it's fair and accurate. But, things happen. Errors are made or not corrected. That sucks for the players, but also for the smiths. But it's also not life or death.
This ML is pretty much exactly what I thought it would be and was hoping for. And I just pulled a 0(0) in a Sports ML - a subject I think I'm pretty strong in. It's been authored by veteran quizzers, whom I all greatly respect. I am sure that no one wants it to be errorfree more than they do.
Some MLs are - as Ben said - not for everyone. Some are disappointing when you're playing them. That said, it's two weeks. You can mentally check out on it if you feel strongly. It will pass and the regular season will return.
I don't feel like the negative tone of all of this is shared by the majority of the quizzing community, but man, it sure is the loudest right now. And that's a bummer.
I thought this mini league would be tough, and I'm not disappointed! I knew that going in based on the ModKos X label, and yet somehow I'm in third place (though without much chance of making the finals - I'm fine with that, as I have no right to be there based on this performance).
I'm inclined to be reasonably forgiving when it comes to the Smiths and the job they do in putting this together. Sure, there have been a couple of fumbles (to use appropriate sports parlance), but I have to appreciate the time and effort in a job that's done for the love of the hobby. This is quizzing, not some other head-scratching topic with actual consequences like housing affordability or avoiding a world war. I, for one, send my thanks to the organizers of this ML and enjoy the learning opportunity!
I play every ML regardless of topic but if there's a topic I would opt out of, it would be sports (and country music). My goal is not to come in last, which I may be able to achieve - going into MD11 I'm in 11th place! Another 0(0)-0(0) tie will keep me there! I wouldn't say I've ENJOYED this ML but it's been an interesting peek into sportsland and a valuable exercise in doing something I'm terrible at. I agree that the commentary has been unfair so I just wanted to say I appreciate your work. And thank you for making sure women's sports were represented. Of the four questions I got right, three of them were women and the fourth was Dancing With the Stars.
Plenty's been said about the content and editorial choices of the MiniLeague, so I'm just belatedly chiming in to note that the Commissioner wrote once that something like 80% of LLamas have never visited the LL message boards, and of the ones who have, only a very tiny slice of folks regularly post. Not to say that anyone's complaints are invalid (or that the non-posters are all necessarily pleased), but I do think it bears remembering, on LL and elsewhere, that the feedback you actually receive is a tiny, tiny slice of the experience folks actually have.
Four out of the eleven regular season match days have had an obvious error in the content of one of the questions, and there hasn’t been sufficient explanation as to why a question was completely changed from advance access to main match day.
I will agree there’s been a lot of BS snark on the boards (the less said about someone quoting The Princess Bride meme in 2023, the better). However, whatever process that led to this set of questions being delivered during the ML just didn’t work, and commentary from the smiths that doesn’t address that is not ideal here.
It fundamentally comes down to the fact that 36% of match days have been broken and it’s just not been fun to play as a result. Considering ML slots are finite, that’s not good enough.
I didn't have any input on the Advanced Access question in this ML. But I will say it's not unprecedented in regular LL either - I played an Advanced Access question about the part of the ear 2 years ago, and the wording was changed to something easier on the main match day, which would've affected the result of the match for me. (For context this was the MC Hammer/part of the ear question which did not have the "trouser trendsetter" reference on the Advanced Access.)
Keep in mind the complaints about the U.S bias is coming from people who play LL *knowing* it's a U.S based/biased league. I'm one of them - I know in four regular seasons I'll get 10% to 15% less than an American quizzer of similar knowledge. That's fine. The complaint isn't that the ML was U.S-biased, it's that it was, to a large extent, utterly inaccessible to non-Americans.
You seemingly made an effort for the quiz to contain content about women, Paralympians etc. Great. It's not unreasonable to expect accommodation for non-Americans too. You say the Smiths were all American, as if there was no option to choose a non-American. You would have been inundated with offers. Keep in mind the only other ML currently running is Country Music which will be overwhelmingly American.
Have you considered why you've been smithing these things for a decade yet apparently never had a reaction like this? Doesn't that suggest that, rather than LLers being assholes, this ML was flawed? We're not looking to tar and feather you. If you just said 'This wasn't our best moment but we hope found enough overall to enjoy it' people would move on. I enjoy reading your daily LL summaries but you don't come across well here.
I'm on the record (see my long-ago LL Message Board arguments with ObstgartenM) as being a supporter of smiths - as you said, it's a labor of love and you're giving to the community. For this reason I feel smiths should get the benefit of the doubt, and I support people's right to write what they want, difficulty-wise. However, even I can't support smithing questions that are factually incorrect, or which give away the answer in the image. One or even two mistakes out of 78 are forgivable - to err is human - but four editing errors leads to a bad taste in the mouth of the participants. I get that it's depressing to create something and get negative feedback, but when you repeatedly break the #1 rule of trivia writing - questions should be associated with an unambiguous, correct answer - I'm sorry to say that you've earned the criticism.
There was also at least one question whose wording completely changed post-release - the 'Who is this pitcher?' one originally said he won a big award in 1965 when he hadn't. I submitted before that wording changed and I didn't have early access.
College bowl runs off of player/team submitted packets. This stuff isn't impossibly hard to perform, especially with a team of 9 to make 78 questions.
Putting together a 78-question ML is not an easy task, but it is one that you collectively have done badly. The amount of outright errors in the questions would be disappointing from a single smith - from a collection of people it's actively bad. Much as you want to say "it's free we're doing this out of the goodness of our hearts", by making this ML you've a) taken a spot from another potential submission and b) made sure nobody can do a Just Images Sport ML for many seasons. To me, that carries a certain level of responsibility to make sure that even if the content isn't to peoples' tastes, the basic standards of question writing like "ensure your questions are factually accurate" are still upheld, and by that metric you have definitely failed. This self-pitying "making me reconsider that for the future" doesn't cut any ice.
I can't believe the flak that this ML has drawn here and on the Message Boards. I understand exactly where you're coming from, Ben, and agree with pretty much everything. When you're putting out a quiz you want people to enjoy it and/or learn from it or even in this case, be challenged by it.
You know that not everything you put out there is going to be well-liked by the players and of course you want to make sure it's fair and accurate. But, things happen. Errors are made or not corrected. That sucks for the players, but also for the smiths. But it's also not life or death.
This ML is pretty much exactly what I thought it would be and was hoping for. And I just pulled a 0(0) in a Sports ML - a subject I think I'm pretty strong in. It's been authored by veteran quizzers, whom I all greatly respect. I am sure that no one wants it to be errorfree more than they do.
Some MLs are - as Ben said - not for everyone. Some are disappointing when you're playing them. That said, it's two weeks. You can mentally check out on it if you feel strongly. It will pass and the regular season will return.
I don't feel like the negative tone of all of this is shared by the majority of the quizzing community, but man, it sure is the loudest right now. And that's a bummer.
I thought this mini league would be tough, and I'm not disappointed! I knew that going in based on the ModKos X label, and yet somehow I'm in third place (though without much chance of making the finals - I'm fine with that, as I have no right to be there based on this performance).
I'm inclined to be reasonably forgiving when it comes to the Smiths and the job they do in putting this together. Sure, there have been a couple of fumbles (to use appropriate sports parlance), but I have to appreciate the time and effort in a job that's done for the love of the hobby. This is quizzing, not some other head-scratching topic with actual consequences like housing affordability or avoiding a world war. I, for one, send my thanks to the organizers of this ML and enjoy the learning opportunity!
I play every ML regardless of topic but if there's a topic I would opt out of, it would be sports (and country music). My goal is not to come in last, which I may be able to achieve - going into MD11 I'm in 11th place! Another 0(0)-0(0) tie will keep me there! I wouldn't say I've ENJOYED this ML but it's been an interesting peek into sportsland and a valuable exercise in doing something I'm terrible at. I agree that the commentary has been unfair so I just wanted to say I appreciate your work. And thank you for making sure women's sports were represented. Of the four questions I got right, three of them were women and the fourth was Dancing With the Stars.
Plenty's been said about the content and editorial choices of the MiniLeague, so I'm just belatedly chiming in to note that the Commissioner wrote once that something like 80% of LLamas have never visited the LL message boards, and of the ones who have, only a very tiny slice of folks regularly post. Not to say that anyone's complaints are invalid (or that the non-posters are all necessarily pleased), but I do think it bears remembering, on LL and elsewhere, that the feedback you actually receive is a tiny, tiny slice of the experience folks actually have.
Four out of the eleven regular season match days have had an obvious error in the content of one of the questions, and there hasn’t been sufficient explanation as to why a question was completely changed from advance access to main match day.
I will agree there’s been a lot of BS snark on the boards (the less said about someone quoting The Princess Bride meme in 2023, the better). However, whatever process that led to this set of questions being delivered during the ML just didn’t work, and commentary from the smiths that doesn’t address that is not ideal here.
It fundamentally comes down to the fact that 36% of match days have been broken and it’s just not been fun to play as a result. Considering ML slots are finite, that’s not good enough.
I didn't have any input on the Advanced Access question in this ML. But I will say it's not unprecedented in regular LL either - I played an Advanced Access question about the part of the ear 2 years ago, and the wording was changed to something easier on the main match day, which would've affected the result of the match for me. (For context this was the MC Hammer/part of the ear question which did not have the "trouser trendsetter" reference on the Advanced Access.)
Keep in mind the complaints about the U.S bias is coming from people who play LL *knowing* it's a U.S based/biased league. I'm one of them - I know in four regular seasons I'll get 10% to 15% less than an American quizzer of similar knowledge. That's fine. The complaint isn't that the ML was U.S-biased, it's that it was, to a large extent, utterly inaccessible to non-Americans.
You seemingly made an effort for the quiz to contain content about women, Paralympians etc. Great. It's not unreasonable to expect accommodation for non-Americans too. You say the Smiths were all American, as if there was no option to choose a non-American. You would have been inundated with offers. Keep in mind the only other ML currently running is Country Music which will be overwhelmingly American.
Have you considered why you've been smithing these things for a decade yet apparently never had a reaction like this? Doesn't that suggest that, rather than LLers being assholes, this ML was flawed? We're not looking to tar and feather you. If you just said 'This wasn't our best moment but we hope found enough overall to enjoy it' people would move on. I enjoy reading your daily LL summaries but you don't come across well here.
I'm on the record (see my long-ago LL Message Board arguments with ObstgartenM) as being a supporter of smiths - as you said, it's a labor of love and you're giving to the community. For this reason I feel smiths should get the benefit of the doubt, and I support people's right to write what they want, difficulty-wise. However, even I can't support smithing questions that are factually incorrect, or which give away the answer in the image. One or even two mistakes out of 78 are forgivable - to err is human - but four editing errors leads to a bad taste in the mouth of the participants. I get that it's depressing to create something and get negative feedback, but when you repeatedly break the #1 rule of trivia writing - questions should be associated with an unambiguous, correct answer - I'm sorry to say that you've earned the criticism.
There was also at least one question whose wording completely changed post-release - the 'Who is this pitcher?' one originally said he won a big award in 1965 when he hadn't. I submitted before that wording changed and I didn't have early access.
College bowl runs off of player/team submitted packets. This stuff isn't impossibly hard to perform, especially with a team of 9 to make 78 questions.
Putting together a 78-question ML is not an easy task, but it is one that you collectively have done badly. The amount of outright errors in the questions would be disappointing from a single smith - from a collection of people it's actively bad. Much as you want to say "it's free we're doing this out of the goodness of our hearts", by making this ML you've a) taken a spot from another potential submission and b) made sure nobody can do a Just Images Sport ML for many seasons. To me, that carries a certain level of responsibility to make sure that even if the content isn't to peoples' tastes, the basic standards of question writing like "ensure your questions are factually accurate" are still upheld, and by that metric you have definitely failed. This self-pitying "making me reconsider that for the future" doesn't cut any ice.