Talk:College Bowl

message: "If the intent was chilling the invitational circuit, it failed, as these developments and the growing Internet community of quiz bowl players led to an explosion of teams, tournaments, and formats."
How many people used the internet in 1987? Modor 16:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Internet?

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

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

message: I've previously sent a reminder about the 1994 NCT situation to College Bowl; however, I think they have a database behind their records page and are incapable of adding an explanatory note.  No such problem here.
The article is correct in that Virginia lost to Chicago in the finals; however, BYU actually finished the round robin in second place but forfeited their place in the Sunday championship series for religious reasons.  I was an eyewitness to this as a member of the Cornell team at that NCT, so that might be one source; the Usenet discussion here corroborates this.
Rdunlap1125 (talk) 01:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, I don't question you, I was there.  I certainly have no objection to an explanatory note at the end of the list of results.  As for getting satisfaction out of CBI, fuggetaboutit.  I'm still sore about the '87 nationals.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Addendum to 1994 Results

message: I feel the the article is too occupied with the the College Bowl quizbowl format that existed from 1978 to 2008. The intro should be written to especially reflect the College Bowl television program.  --Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 01:01, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Focus of the article 

message: I'm Tom Michael, and I have participated in quiz bowl, especially College Bowl, as a player, volunteer, coach, employee, or consultant since the 1981-82 academic year. I was employed by the College Bowl Company and worked on College Bowl, Honda Campus All-Star Challenge, and Celtel and Zain Africa Challenges from June, 2006 through November, 2011. Currently, I occasionally serve as a paid consultant to Honda Campus All-Star Challenge and Richard Reid Productions. I also run the College Bowl Valhalla Facebook group, dedicated to exploring and preserving the early history of quiz bowl. I'm here to contribute information that will improve the quality of the College Bowl, HCASC, Africa Challenge and related quiz bowl pages, and also to contribute to unrelated pages that interest me.
I have reviewed Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and will abide by them. Due to conflict of interest rules, my edits will be restricted to talk pages for quiz-bowl related matters, and I will not engage in editing directly any quiz bowl-related article. Instead, I will volunteer information on the talk pages, and ask for Wikipedians' help. I am especially interested in working with a Wikipedia editor to improve the College Bowl, HCASC, and Africa Challenge page by adding numerous requested citations and helping identify unsourceable or incorrect statements. I can also work with College Bowl Company and my extensive personal collection to provide some photos for release into the public domain for illustration, and can assist with providing sources and information for the requested expansion of the section on G.E. College Bowl.
 
If you want to contact me about anything, and especially if you're an editor who would like to work with me to improve these pages, please leave a note on my talk page, or email me at tfm@africachallenge.com. --Tom Michael 02:09, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction and offer of assistance 

message: As noted above in Talk and on my own editor page, I have a WP:COI with this topic and will not make edits directly. There is much I can do, however, to help improve this page; especially when it comes to adding sources and getting photos into public domain. I'll suggest this a bit at a time. Here's how I suggest improving the History section:
1) Call it "Early History" or "Origin and College Quiz Bowl" - the TV section on G.E. College Bowl is also history.
2) Replace the first sentence about the USO show origin story. Don Reid told that story to a lot of people - including me the first time I met him (original research, sorry :)) - but as the introduction to the 2011 University Challenge Quiz Book notes, there is some dispute about this. Exactly where Don got the idea is the subject of ongoing research, and the outcome is unknown. A better sentence, which can be sourced, is "Don Reid presented the general idea for a quiz between college teams to John Moses, and in 1953 the co-creators developed the format along with John Moses employee Allen Ludden." Sources: Grant Tinker, Tinker in Television, and Grant Tinker, interview with the archives of American Television, parts 1 & 2 of 10 at http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/grant-tinker . Leave the second sentence about Tinker intact. His involvement becomes relevant again later in the article with the 1983 NBC Television special.
3) The paragraph about the format can be entirely sourced from Carol Nasr's 1970 College Bowl Quiz Book, which is already mentioned at the bottom of the page. Chapter "How to Play" pages 1-4. "Only the captain was allowed to give the answer [on bonuses]" is not correct: the "Captain" as a formal position didn't exist until the second season of the G.E. College Bowl TV show. Anyone could give a bonus answer in theory; in cases of disagreement among team members the Captain decided which answer was the team's official one (Nasr, p. 2).
4) All but the last sentence of the third paragraph of this section can be sourced from http://www.collegebowl.com/gecollegebowlradioresultrptdlg.asp . The last sentence of the third paragraph is an unsourced observation, but I think an accurate, obvious, and noncontroversial one.
Tom Michael 21:07, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested edits for History section 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: On behalf of College Bowl, I am proposing article updates as part of my work at Web Weaving. Due to conflict of interest, I'd like to avoid direct editing and ask uninvolved editors to review the suggestions for accuracy and neutrality. Client has provided feedback to ensure accuracy. 
1. Expanding Introduction to fix inaccuracies, provide better information, as well as add information about Campus All Star Challenge & Africa Challenge. New proposed introduction;
College Bowl (also known as General Electric (G.E.) College Bowl) is a radio, television, and student quiz show. College Bowl first aired on American radio stations in 1953 as College Quiz Bowl. It then moved to American television broadcast networks, airing 1959 to 1963 on CBS and from 1963 to 1970 on NBC. In 1977, the president of College Bowl, Richard Reid, developed it into a non-televised national championship competition on campuses across America through an affiliation with the Association of College Unions International (ACUI), that lasted for 31 years. In 1989, College Bowl introduced a (sponsored) version of College Bowl for Historically Black Colleges (HBCUs) called Honda Campus All-Star Challenge (HCASC) that is ongoing. In 2007, College Bowl produced a new version and format of the game as an international championship in Africa, called Africa Challenge (Celtel Africa Challenge, Zain Africa Challenge). The College Bowl Campus Program and National Championship ran until 2008. In November 2020, NBCUniversal announced a revival of the show, developed from the format of Honda Campus All-Star Challenge and Africa Challenge, with Peyton Manning as host and a ten-episode run has been ordered.[1]
--
References for Honda Campus All-Star Challenge and Africa Challenge are already cited on their wiki pages. 
2. In "Television" section, correct inaccuracy with network TV information;
 -•	Alumni Fun, which appeared on all three major TV networks in the 1960s and featured former college students 
Should be changed to: 
 -•	Alumni Fun, which appeared on ABC and CBSTV networks in the 1960s and featured former college students
Thank you for your help! Please let me know if there are any issues with these requests or how they could be improved if necessary. 
Jerohrer (talk) 03:26, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit request to update and expand article 

message: Hello! I am coming today to request edits of the Criticism section of this wiki. I know the discussion around the Criticism has been controversial before, which is why I'd prefer another editor review and make the the requested changes. The reason we continue to seek changes for this section is due to the fact the references to the alleged incidents are from biased sources with conflicts of interest, written in non-neutral point of view, and personal opinions with no actual proof provided.
The article links three different sources: a Slate article from 2012, a quiz bowl newsletter from 1988, and the book Brainiac (2006) by Ken Jennings. Each of these sources has significant issues and the problems with Brainiac will be dealt with the most thoroughly, as the book is the essence of being written from a non-neutral point of view, biased, and by an employee of a competitor of College Bowl, and therefore, should not be used as a source on anything about the College Bowl program, the College Bowl Company, or any of its associated productions.
I am going to start with the easiest to refute issues and end with the bias/conflict of interest issues. 
1: Requesting Removal of The 1987 National Tournament on the Disney Channel saw additional controversy, as a number of protested matches proved to strain the television format.
Reason: There is no mention of the 1987 Disney Channel tournament in any of the listed sources. I am unclear about how this information ended up on this page in the first place, since the "references" do not mention this at all. This Washington Post article details information about the Disney Channel Tournament, with no mention of issues or controversy. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/tv/1987/09/20/quick-recall-and-competition/ff2e64a3-6d49-4d23-9137-99678a73f86e/ As well as this LA Times Article, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-10-11-me-13302-story.html, which also does not mention any issues with the Tournament. 
If someone can provide a resource confirming this 'controversy', I will retract this removal request, but at this time it appears to be unsourced and false information and should be removed. 
2: Requesting removal or edit of In the 1987 regional tournament, College Bowl was accused of recycling questions from previous tournaments, thereby possibly compromising the integrity of results.
Reason: This sentence is not written in a Neutral point of view, according to Wikipedia's guidelines. "Accused", "compromising the integrity of results" is a purposefully negative interpretation of events. The actual article referenced says "...when the teams arrived, they discovered that those were the questions reused by the "College" Bowl Co. this year, and so the regional was postponed until different questions could be obtained." https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~quizbowl/newsletters/Buzzer3.html
It only documents one incident, in one of 15 regions; which was quickly caught and new questions were issued. I argue that a single, poorly documented incident in a single year, is not notable enough to warrant being mentioned as a "Criticism". I believe it was brought up in bad faith and should also be removed. However, if other editors prefer, it could also be reedited to directly quote the actual article, instead of the negative wording being used now. 
3: Disallow information cited from Brainiac by Ken Jennings, https://archive.org/details/brainiac00kenj, and removal of remaining 'criticisms' due to lack of sources, opinion being stated as fact, bias, and conflict of interest.  
Reason: The additional information in the Criticism Section are opinion pieces cited from the book Brainiac, by Ken Jennings. Additionally, the Slate article only has one paragraph focuses on criticism of College Bowl and is a direct pull quote from Ken Jennings’ Brainiac(pages 33-34). No other sources are mentioned for this information, meaning these two references are essentially one and the same. 
The main issue with this source is that is Mr. Jennings was a writer and editor for National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT), a direct competitor of College Bowl. Mr. Jennings is a well-published writer on quiz bowl and knowledge games in general, and where he has been required to disclose his conflicts of interest, he has often been open about them. Unfortunately, that disclosure is found nowhere his book Brainiac and the cited source on Wikipedia. It is easy to see how earlier Wikipedia editors missed the undisclosed bias. In his book, Mr. Jenning's complaints and issues with College Bowl are not sourced, they are purely personal opinion. Notably, the personal opinion of someone working with College Bowl's direct competitor at the time. 
According to Wikipedia:ASSERT's information, "The text of Wikipedia articles should assert facts, but not assert opinions as fact." 
In this case, Ken Jennings opinion's are being cited as fact, with no additional proof. If other editors believe this section should remain, it needs to reediting to directly attribute these opinions to Ken Jennings and note his conflict of interest, instead of presenting them like fact. If there were issues with false accusations of Copyright infringement, which I am unable to find references for, it should be presented in a neutral point of view.
I would appreciate any help from other editors with the above issues. I am open to discussion about the best way to proceed with having these issues edited or removed. Thank you so much for your time Jerohrer (talk) 19:17, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  You're literally being paid by College Bowl to edit this page and you want other people's contributions removed for "bias"? And the part that it "biased" just happens to be the entire criticism section, even though the backlash against College Bowl's demeaning treatment of players and nonexistent quality standards is the entire story of the development of college quizbowl over a 30-year period? Do I have this right?  Quizindex (talk) 23:48, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello! Thanks for your input. I believe I explained all of the reasoning in my edit request. 1. That some of the cited information doesn't have sources, like the Disney Tournament. 2. The section about question recycling could quote the actual source, which would be more accurate, instead of the negative wording being currently used. 3. The issue with the other sections of criticism is how they are being cited as fact, when they are really the opinions of Ken Jennings, who happens to be an employee of College Bowl's competitor. At the very least, that information should be edited to say they are Ken Jennings's opinions, like I mentioned above, as per Wikipedia:ASSERT's information. As you have demonstrated, there are some people with negative biases towards College Bowl; but I understand it would be frowned upon if I touched that section myself, which is why I am looking for help from a neutral party. Jerohrer (talk) 18:26, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit request to Remove/Edit Criticism Section 

message: This game has become very mythologized, but is there a reliable cite for it being considered a particularly big upset or news story at the time? If you watch the available recordings of other episode of the 1960s TV show it doesn't seem that either women as participants, or smaller colleges beating more traditionally prestigious schools, were particularly unusual. I get the sense that there is an over-focus on this match because it is one of the few full-length color games of the original College Bowl show that is available for free on Youtube.  Quizindex (talk) 10:42, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Agnes Scott v Princeton 

message: Most of the section about the 2021 edition on NBC is completely unsourced and appears to be just be written by someone who watched the show (or got the results directly from the show’s web site), and is overly detailed to boot.  In the interest of Wikipedia integrity, I’m going to delete anything that isn’t properly referenced, unless someone of course can come up with secondary sources for them. NewkirkPlaza (talk) 20:37, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  2021 edition sourcing 

message: Until my edit 20 minute ago there was more space than normal between the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of the British version section, as if a passage had been deleted. I removed what appeared to be the superfluous empty line. Mcljlm (talk) 14:39, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extra space removed