Talk:Scripps National Spelling Bee

message: Its been clearly stated on ESPN and ABC that any contestant the exceeds the 30 second Finish Time time limit, is eliminated from the bee.  Here is what someone posted in the article:
judges will not consider any letters given by the speller after the end of Finish Time.
Whoever put that, didn't read what he/she was writing.  If you are still spelling when Finish Time ends, and the judges will not acknowledge any more letters after Finish Time, then the speller is eliminated cause the spelling of the word will be deamed incorrect.
A speller is not "not necessarily eliminated" if they exaust Finish Time, the speller is eliminated.
Dickclarkfan1 14:41, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Misc

message: I removed the links to individual winning spellers here earlier, and I see someone has put them back. I don't think there's good reason to do this. Will they ever have articles that go beyond "Mary Smith won the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2007"? For most of these people, this is the only information that could possibly belong in an encyclopedia article about them. Most of the national bee contestants are preteen kids without fascinating biographies who just happen to spell really well (OK, some of them place nationally in other academic contests as well), and all of the relevant information is already included in this article. They then mostly go on to be above-average but still unencyclopedic adults. (Yes, I know a few of the people on this list, and I like them, but that's not grounds for an article. :-)) Redirects I'd go for, but I don't see the need for redlinks. The only exceptions I'd say are Rebecca Sealfon, whose eccentricities gave her some more time in the popular culture spotlight, and Nupur Lala, who played a prominent role in Spellbound. I don't see any reason to encourage the creation of articles for the others; I'm going to go ahead and make the redlinks into redirects here. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 03:38, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Linking spellers

message: Shouldn't a list of every winner be included? It is a matter of consistency; a list with only the recent winners followed by a list of all the words does not make sense. In the process, Eleassar's long-standing request for a combination of both lists could be fulfilled. If no one offers any thoughts, I will go ahead and combine the lists while adding the rest of the past spellers. — Webdinger BLAH | SZ 02:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's possible for the bee dates to fall on May 31 and June 1. --HansTAR 00:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As it has this year. David Spector (talk) 22:53, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why no list of all winners? 

message: The made for TV film, The Girl Who Spelled Freedom, could probably use a mention alongside the other films discussed.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.189.244.210 (talk) 06:23, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing Movie Reference 

message: After much editing and formatting, I think we can remove the cleanup tag from this article.  Please discuss if there are specific cleanup issues that need to be addressed. Vernon 19:15, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the article is good now. Thanks for working so hard on it! — † Webdinger BLAH | SZ 19:47, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed cleanup tag 

message: Isn't this time-delayed? Hasn't been a minute since she spelled it! :)  70.178.93.149 02:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Well, that was fast. 

message: I noticed "Elizabeth Rice" redirects to this page, when I tried clicking on her name in an article about Odd Girl Out. I see that an Elizabeth Ann Rice won the spelling bee in 1939, but I'm pretty sure that's not the teenaged actress from the 2005 TV movie, so... the redirect doesn't make much sense. Teknomage 19:10, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I nominated the redirect Elizabeth Rice for deletion.  --Rob 23:09, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Elizabeth Rice

message: Could someone please rewrite the paragraph that begins "Defenders of the current bee format..." without the "ex post"s and "ex ante"s?  Alphabetagamma 03:14, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: RE: Confusing argument in the "Criticism" section

message: In the History section there exists the sentence, "The bee is held in late May and/or early June..." Using the "and/or" is possibly confusing as "and" is inclusive and could be read as "in late May and early June" suggesting it is sometimes held in such a manner. I have a feeling this isn't what's meant by this, though I'm not a bee expert (and thus I changed my mind in correcting it myself). I suggest the sentence being rephrased to something less confusing. Fieryrogue 20:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Memorial week" is less accessible to a non-US audience, thus it is better to give dates. Explaining why the competition is on those dates can include a reference to Memorial Day, but dates should be given greater prominence within the article. Suggested wording would be: "The bee is held in late May and/or early June during Memorial Day Week..." --<SPAN STYLE="font-family:monospace; color:#008800; background-color:#ffffcc; border:1px solid #ff4444;"> B.D.Mills </SPAN> (T, C) 00:54, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: and/or

message: The article says O'Dorney is the third homeschooler to win.
I count four:  Sealfon, Thampy, Conley, O'Dorney.
Am I wrong about any one of these?
:I believe that the year Conley won, he attended a private school.  The year before that, when he came in second, he was a homeschooler.  Here's a homeschooling article that mentions it: http://www.homeschoolzone.com/faces/spelling.htm  Lauracs 17:46, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Homeschoolers 

message: Is the Speller Nation paragraph in this article appropriate?  It doesn't seem particularly notable.  It's nice that one of the winners came from this group, but since it's not directly connected with the Scripps Bee, I don't think it belongs here.  I see that, looking through the history, that the paragraph has already been shortened significantly. Lauracs 18:01, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Speller nation

message: User:Hexcoinc has added information about the Hexco study products to this page as well as the Spelling bee page.  I feel this information violates the following Wikipedia policies:
* WP:SOAPBOX - advertising their services, self-promotion
* WP:NOT#LINK - too many links to personal website
*  WP:SELFPUB - although this refers to biographies, the Hexco information appears to have been written by someone associated with the company itself, and not by a third party.
I originally deleted the information, but reinstated it so it could be put up for discussion. Lauracs (talk) 16:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hexco information 

message: Under criticisms, this paragraph appears in the article:
"Unfair Element of Chance"
"A critic may argue that the contest's format does not guarantee that the speller with the greatest vocabulary (of correctly spelled words) will win due to the element of chance involved in the competition. The word list for the competition is chosen in advance and spellers may deem some words less challenging than others. This leaves open the possibility that the speller with the greatest vocabulary could lose to a competitor with a smaller, but different vocabulary."
This is a good subject to include, but I find this paragraph to be rather opaque.  Among other things, it seems to imply "vocabulary" means the words one knows how to spell.
I hope it is rewritten.Daqu (talk) 18:24, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Paragraph needs rewriting

message: You can start here!:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform
This contest and other spelling tests reinforce and reward awkward historical spellings, which often have very little connection with actual pronunciation.  In phonetic spelling (e.g. "fonetik speling"), words are spelled similar to the way they sound.  Current 'proper' spelling is based mostly on memorization, which consumes a lot of learning hours and brain space.  Phonetic spelling has been advocated by many as a superior system.  For example, many teachers cannot really explain to students why the word "tough" should not be spelled "tuf".Ykral (talk) 13:52, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Perpetuation of a poor spelling system

message: It would be nice to see mentioned the month this competition takes place.24.62.113.87 (talk) 15:24, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  When does "The Bee" take place? 

message: They should be mentioned here, not swept away by "English language freaks".  There are other pages re spelling reform and the Simplified Spelling Society that protests this event, which should clearly be referenced in this article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.85.14.106 (talk) 11:01, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Again, where are the criticisms of this event? 

message: Under Prizes, the statement "They also recieve a $250-$500 watch by Omega or Rolex" was recently added, but this information is incorrect. The current list of national spelling bee prizes can be found on the Prizes page at the SNSB website. 
I have a COI with the organization, so I would rather not edit the page myself. Could another editor verify the list of prizes above and make the correction? Mhick (talk) 12:54, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prizes - Incorrect Information 

message: There are a bunch of articles on individual competitions at :Category:Scripps National Spelling Bee, and I started to try to tidy some of them up (example: 4th Scripps National Spelling Bee). However, some of the statements (i.e., location and sponsorship) in the individual articles seem to contradict the statements in the main article, and, I then noticed that the individual articles use this main article as a citation, which they should not. I am not going to touch any more of those until we can get some clarity. Does anyone have any comments or insights on this? KConWiki (talk) 11:57, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Individual articles on competitions

message: I am linking spelling bees 1-34 (1925-1961), which already have articles, to the list of champions page as well as creating some articles to fill in the 35-77 (1962-2004) gap. An article for bee 62 (1989) has already been created. Hopefully the articles for 1-34 will be "beefed up" over time. I previously made the article for bee 82 (2009) immediately at the conclusion of that spelling bee. If the early and recent bees deserve articles, all 87 do. 1779Days (talk) 06:32, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Filling in the article gap 

message: Source after source say that The Courier-Journal organized the National Spelling Bee and hosted it the first year (1925), and that Scripps Howard took over in 1941.  Does this mean The Courier Journal hosted the bee from 1926-40?  All the individual bee articles for these years don't make this clear. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 00:25, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who hosted the bee from 1926-40 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Sean Conley (physician) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 23:50, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress