You likely recall that a few weeks back, the "National Trivia Association," (NTA) a company affiliated with The Live Network which sometimes claims to be a mere membership organization, erased any reference to non-NTA quizzes in Philadelphia from the Wikipedia entry on Quizzo.I restored the entry to its original condition and added a few facts about the quiz in this city which the NTA chose to alter. Don't just take my word for this, check the History on the entry. I wouldn't have even known anything about the NTA or TLA if it weren't for the fact that the vandal signed in as "thelivenetwork" while doing it.
I then blogged about what happened, and about the extraordinary claims on the NTA's site, many of which suggest business practices I doubt would survive anti-trust action in the courts. A quizmaster and a bar owner then wrote me that they were not affiliated with the NTA despite being listed as such on the NTA site.
After erasing any mention of me from Wikipedia, NTA head (and possibly only employee) Andrew Weilgus (pictured, above left) appears to be wounded that I didn't have the "courtesy" to contact him politely about violating Wikipedia rules and attacking my web presence - and many other peoples' - unprovoked. Apparently I should've responded to his attack by doing nothing, or inviting him to high tea. His email was titled "Let's clear some things up." Yes, let's...
If the NTA is simply there to promote quizzo generally out of some love for the game, why erase established quizmasters from the web? This is an especially good point if Weilgus' claim that membership is free and open to all is to be taken seriously. And what's with the "exclusive regions" if all that's intended is helping more people play, and helping someone like me out? If Weilgus had the tiniest bit of interest in helping promote quizzes in Philadelphia, he would have invited me to join the NTA instead of erasing me from Wikipedia. Instead of using the Wikipedia link to this site to contact me, he erased the link!
Our brief email correspondence is reproduced below in its entirety. I can't emphasize enough that all of my assertions as to what the NTA is and does come directly from their FAQ page. Thus he's either being less than truthful about his company on his website or in his emails and on Wikipedia. (One example is that the FAQ page states that bars pay the NTA for membership and that only teams that play NTA quizzes qualify for their events. On their Wikipedia entry and below, he suggests that both are free and open to everyone.)
In case the NTA FAQ page magically changes in the next couple of days to make me look like a liar, here's the Google cache of that page from November 25, 2007.
All errors in the original.
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Andrew Weilgus wrote: Dear Quiz Master Chris,
I would like to clear up several issues with regard to your bashing of
our organization. The National Trivia Association is NOT in any way
shape or form trying to "corner the local Quizzo" market as you claim in
your blog. While we do run a version of the game, our main purpose is to
help local Quizzo games PROMOTE themselves by being listed in our
directory. The only qualifications we require to list a game as
"official or sanctioned" is that they have been playing a version of the
game for more then 6 months at a local establishment. We do not collect
any money for listing the games and almost all sites we list are
independent quiz games that we simply try to help organize an accurate
list of. In the upcoming months we are getting set to launch a new
social networking website which gives quiz masters extra tools to keep
score of their quiz games and to promote a national competition between
over 600 venues who play various forms of pub trivia.
As far as the wikipedia entry goes, we have every right to promote the
dozens of quizzo games that go on across the country and the fact that
you seized control of that site to promote your information while
repealing ours makes you look like the "the man" I have no desire to
start a war with a local quiz host, i respect what you do and i have no
intention of ever interfering with your right to do it (as your don't
tread on me flag would indicate) simply put all you had to do was send
us an email and i would have been happy to explain our company focus. I
do take great offense to you altering our wikipedia entry on National
Trivia Association, you had zero right to do that and again, if you had
the courtesy to send us an email with your concerns i could have cleared
them up the first time. I would appreciate you clearing this up with
your blog community if you see fit, but rest assured we have no desire
to change the way quizzo exists, we simply are trying to help promote
the game nation wide.
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My response:
Andrew -
I'm going to blog about this too.
I have every right to edit Wikipedia entries; everyone does as long as they follow the rules. You clearly don't understand the Wikipedia concept; everything they post rules-wise states that the site isn't there for you to promote yourself without criticism.
That I have an absolute right to edit any entry within certain guidelines is evidenced by the fact that the Wikipedia moderation staff allowed my entries and reversed your vandalism. This is also the reason that your NTA Wikipedia entry has been marked by moderators, not by me, as being in violation of their rules as nothing more than a self-promotional ad.
You didn't follow the rules when you erased me and others from the Quizzo entry. Clearly you're just pissed off that I caught that and made you comply with the rules of the Wikipedia project. Had you left well enough alone and not signed in as "thelivenetwork" when erasing me I never would have known or cared about the NTA.
Please stop playing the victim. You did something aggressive and anti-competitve, you were stopped and then I blogged about it, which is likely embarrassing. That sound you hear is me playing the smallest violin in the world. Almost everything I wrote about you I pulled off of your own website. If that's embarrassing, change the way you do things, don't blame the messenger.
Thus far two of the quizmasters you have listed on your site have stated that they're not affiliated with you and they requested that I remove mention of them in conjunction with you. What kind of organization are you running?
According to your own website (http://www.nationaltrivia.com/faq.htm) you aren't simply a membership organization that promotes. According to your FAQ, you're a business that charges bars (or quizmasters?) to be in your network and which distributes questions centrally. That might not be true, but you want it to be, and I'm not having any of it.
As The Live Network is a live event promotion company, and it's clear to me that the only reason you or anyone else would attempt this sort of centralization is to eventually collect money from it. You are a business,or are trying to set yourself up as one. You have also suggested that you have some bizarre right to divide areas of quizzo exclusivity, which is a flat out illegal business practice.
Pub quizzes have been around forever and don't need centralization. It's patently ridiculous to make a league out of all this, especially one that requires people to pay you. As I pointed out on Wikipedia - and I imagine this got up your nose - you don't even have a legal right to the word "quizzo." You have as much right to declare a quiz "official" or "sanctioned" as I do to make someone a Knight of the British Empire.
Don't give me any crap about doing things "as a courtesy" to you. You attacked my web presence and I defended myself, probably faster and better than you planned around. Let the lesson be: Don't screw with me again.
Hopefully this "clears things up."
Yours,
Chris
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