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Apologies for misunderstanding you, Kyle! I just assumed you were disheartened by the prevalence of AI use. Thanks for clarifying. Having read your post more carefully, I can see what you mean. I wasn't aware that there was already significant pushback against AI in industries like animation, gaming and filmmaking. I just use it for asking the odd question here and there, you see, and asking follow-up questions when necessary. You obviously know more about it than me. I think I've mentioned before that I find it very difficult to make information sound interesting when I'm basically just writing facts about something. I genuinely struggle with that and think my information sections look pretty boring. I bore myself when I read it! :D Yet, I can't think of any other way to write it. I don't know if other authors have that problem. I just try to do my best.

Only two days since I last got this Challenge. Yes, it's still hot.

It isn't that it's different from the way things used to be; I'm not aiming to look at the site through rose-coloured glasses and say 'it was better then'. I think you misunderstand my comments because I'm not disheartened. I genuinely and generally believe that use of LLMs are going to diminish significantly in use over time because I think that they're going to be flash-in-the-pan-- the more you shoehorn tech in where no one asked for it, the more pushback and disinterest you're going to get-- and I think that there's no good replacement for people putting in real effort. I see more people laid off from their jobs having adopted AI than I've seen be able to leverage it to meaningful gain, and I've seen people outright drop engaging with AI creatives. Look at the reactions in the animation, gaming, and filmmaking industries. Even today, people are tearing down Martin Scorsese for comment he's making about replacing Art Direction with AI. What I see is that AI is used as a crutch that produces impersonal content. The difference is that when authors used to write quizzes about subjects they didn't have insight into before, they went out of their way to dig for that info to improve their understanding (or not, but that always shows) when instead, nowadays, there's a sense that a lot of people settle for whatever an LLM is giving them. This creates content with a lack of personal depth and lack of contextual depth and nuance (ie. naivety towards the content), and where authors would be more proactive about asking others for how to better convey themselves in the past, I find that some (not all) are ambivalent towards this. Again-- this isn't disheartening. It just is. Some authors can not be bothered. Editors are in the position of having to edit either way-- that's the job-- but the nature of authors' work, for some, has changed and it comes with a different mindset. If we're not going to be able to work beyond the base guidelines with an author, it means that there's a plateau in how much we can work with them to improve standards and expectations (not just for them, but everyone, because all quizzes contribute to the baseline). It means that instead of having open dialogue about how to write, we have to be more intently-focused on the details. I'm more obliged to send back quizzes for typos and quotation marks around titles in these cases because if someone has indicated they're using the tools to cover this already, and there's nowhere else to go in terms of improvement, then they should be meeting that expectation, otherwise that author's quizzes are always going to have the same issues over and over and over (and it will always be the basics or general, unwavering formulaity). I repeat-- this is not all authors. I have great open dialogue with many authors and I see that other editors are having these too. I just see that that's where the general shift is occurring. Whether it's better than the general hostility we used to face from some early authors about the quality of their work (info sections saying 'No info.' over and over or everything being personal opinion like 'N*Sync is the best I love them.') might be debatable. To other editors' points in here, our restrictions have absolutely loosened. We allow quizzes on virtually every subject, and when I started here, many of the most popular were blocked for new authors entirely-- a consequence of the glut and poor quality of them. These days, if an author sends a quiz of repeat questions, I'll just tell them "hey, let's loosen this up a bit." If they don't, I doubt they'll be interested in the long haul anyways.

I've played trivia quizzes for years, but not online. I've also done every quiz show on TV for many years. I never thought about quiz websites. In fact, I didn't know they existed until I came across FunTrivia purely by accident one day. I only intended to play some quizzes, but I got hooked and, after a week's free trial, became a Gold member, because you get access to lots of things. Worth the money. ;) I did, out of curiosity, very briefly explore other quiz sites like Sporcle and Jetpunk. However, they didn't appeal to me. There's something about them I dislike. I can't put my finger on precisely what it is. I would say that they lack character somehow. Perhaps other people can understand what I mean by that. Needless to say, I haven't revisited them. Anyway, I'm really enjoying learning about the history of FunTrivia. :)

'The dark side', Rossian? Lol! That made me laugh! I have never argued with any editor. I take on board what they say, because they know best what's required for quizzes. Some of my quizzes were improved by doing what they suggested. I try to do my best. I have made some mistakes in the past and am trying to avoid repeating them! I enjoy writing quizzes. I tried a few times using a friend's desktop computer. What a disaster, because I can't control a mouse. I always misaim and click on the wrong things! :( I prefer touchscreens. I play on my phone. Accuracy isn't a problem because I use my S Pen. The only disadvantage is that it limits my speed, as it takes ages to scroll. I just accept that I'm never going to achieve higher tiers in games like Piece of Cake. There is no way I can do it in 22 seconds. My fastest time, a one-off, was 28 seconds. Even if I know every answer, I normally take 31-34 seconds going at full speed.

Yes, I understand what you mean, Kyle, and I agree that it must have been much better back then when people had no access to AI chatbots. I can also appreciate why FunTrivia would like to retain that standard. After all, nothing beats a human writing in their own natural style, and I can see how their writing would be recognised by you. I mainly use ChatGPT for personal enquiries, asking about things I'm interested in, subjects I come across here and there. I did use it occasionally when looking for information related to quizzes I was writing. It pops up in my browser. However, I found it unreliable, because it sometimes hallucinates and makes up a lot of sheer, unadulterated nonsense! I stopped even looking at it because of that. I guess it must be very disheartening for editors now having to edit quizzes which rely heavily on AI-generated material, because it's so different from how things used to be. Also, as you pointed out, the errors it produces require extra work. However, on the plus side, long-term authors are continuing to write in their own style. I mostly use Wikipedia, as it seems to give accurate information. I know what you mean about plagiarism. I make sure I don't copy anything verbatim. I do find it difficult at times having to make sure everything is entirely in my own words. It's easy to slip up if you're not careful. Anyway, let's hope FunTrivia continues providing great quizzes for a long time. :)

I joined in 2005 when an earlier quiz site I'd played on for a few years (TFFA) was taken over and then closed down. It was definitely in the dial-up days and if anyone rang you the internet went down. My first quizzes were written in 2009 in Brain Teasers when information wasn't a requirement. I went back to them and added that relatively recently. I used a desktop then, and still do as I was doing some part time work from home until only a couple of years ago. I have a laptop as well and can, but prefer not to, play on my phone. When photo quizzes became an option, only editors could create them. Players had to earn the right - I wasn't on the dark side in those days. Generally, the site is probably more relaxed now that when I started while also maintaining strict standards especially in quiz creation and behaviour in interactions between players.

Desktops, yes. Most people wrote quizzes based on first-hand experiences on topics (and many still do). Research was done through search engines and, again, first-hand sources (and I would say most still do). Keep in mind this doesn't just mean 'experts in their field', though that did happen-- it means people wrote on things they engaged with directly, like fans of boy bands or people who watched every episode of 'The Simpsons'. There was also more prevalent plagiarism in submissions. This still does happen on occasion. I worry less about that these days, as an editor, than I do authors submitting quizzes that leverage AI heavily because I still see a lot of these submissions come in touting that AI as research when it's aggregating incorrect data. From the editing side, I see a lot more authors believing that AI research is economizing and optimizing the work when really it leads to more headaches and homogenizes authenticity. In the 2000s and 2010s we developed a lot of authors who you could identify from their writing because their voices came through so strong in their manner of speaking. As a player I could easily pick a quiz at random and know that it came from dcpddc478 or pu2-ke-qi-ri or rowena8482 because their distinctive writing styles or approaches to research were detectible. These days there are still clear signs of from this from long-established authors (which is wonderful), but at some point after COVID, it feels like the idea of prolificacy stopped attaching to that eagerness to develop, and it's tough to see how and where to respark that in light of the fact that people seem unwilling or uninterested in taking a step in the 'how can I take my writing to the next level' direction when AI is right there to just do the thing. I'm still here going on Wikipedia deep-dives, reading the books, pulling ideas from podcasts, reading amateur reviews, and going into the WayBack Machine to find dated resources for some quizzes. I'm not sure I'm ever going to be willing to throw the enjoyment I get (and find) from the research process away and into the hands of an aggregate that's never going to give me more than the most surface-level approach. There was a time when that was the norm. I'm not interested in being cynical and saying that time is long-gone; best I can do is support that for those who share the same interest.

Did people play on desktop PCs back then? The iPhone wasn't invented until 2007, so there were no smartphones at all in the early days of FunTrivia. Most people would have been on dial-up internet too, which seems almost unimaginable now. There was no YouTube either, as that didn't launch until 2005. What search engines did people use? Google was still very new in 2000, and people were mostly using things like AltaVista, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves! There were definitely no AI assistants like ChatGPT! How things have changed! Those of you who have been members from the beginning must see a huge difference. I would have loved to have joined at the start. I often look at the forums and read the posts from way back, trying to get the feel of what the site was like over the years. It's great that it's still going strong in 2026. Here's to many more years! I wonder what other technological advances we're going to see as the years go by.

Scotland's matches are at a horrible time in the UK!

Directed here by Daily Challenge again. Read all of the posts above, and most of you sound very smart and very interesting. Bravo/Brava to you all!

The wind is relatively calm today. Yesterday it kept blowing over my plants in containers, and may have destroyed my sugar snap peas completely. Guess I am just lucky the power didn't go out, although the internet was sketchy.

Here we go, the FIFA Football World Cup will shortly be upon us. Wall to wall televised matches where you can watch grown men writhe in agony as soon as they are tackled, hoping to persuade officials to discipline 'offending' players to gain an advantage. Most of these players are paid obscene amounts of money, yet they possess little skill in many cases. Perhaps they should take a leaf out of the manner in which players of rugby union conduct themselves, a much more physical game. When they are tackled, often resulting in serious injuries they don't start whingeing, but rather attempt to play on, even after an abrasion has required stitching. Woe is me, football is the most popular sport in the UK so I will have to grin and bear it!

Playmate1111, very seldom do I win 11. Eight today! Only 96 to go to the next level.

Life's been good to me so far!??

I have one the other day, given after doing a hourly quiz, nothing since.

Well now you've got twice as much stuff: good luck!

I have been busy in the progress of moving and you never know how much stuff you have until you move.

What a good start to my day. I shared my breakfast (a bowl of watermelon) with my little Chihuahua mix, Sophia, the Queen of the World, and now we are cuddled up listening to the rain while playing FT. It really doesn’t get any better than this, does it?

It's another beautiful sunny day here along the banks of the Merrimack river.