I've just had a look at the top ten in normal mode in GC. The top ranked player, as she so often is, is jules44 from the UK. The top ten (as a snapshot now, as it will change a bit) has 4 players from the UK, 3 from the USA, one each from Canada, South Africa and Sweden, so the perceived bias doesn't really show in those statistics.

The answer is really to keep playing regularly and choose your topics wisely, especially in GC. I avoid sport, television and movies as much as I possibly can as that's where my knowledge is weakest.

The badges are achievable - look at the Hall of Fame most badges and you will find that two of the top three are UK players, and the top ten includes Canadians, Australians and other countries too.

Terms of Service, scroll down to the second paragraph from the bottom if you don't want to read all of it.

Thank you Kind Lady

After reading all of this about how questions are accepted from 'all over the world' may I just point out that myself (and others) have been made to change certain questions because they could be a problem for American players.

I must point out that this is NOT my experience with most editors at all but it has happened.

I was warned by a few non US quiz writers before it happened to me but honestly thought they were being oversensitive or had an axe to grind.

This was the only comment on the question - there were no grammar or spelling issues etc but I could not get them online without changing them to make them more "US friendly".

Even though I'm English Australian the majority of my quizzes are not - in fact I think I only have one Australian specific quiz and that's a history one.

And when writing the single questions( if you want to actually get them to count towards a badge) the sad fact is that you have to give them a US slant to get the percentages right.

In contrast to the last post, I have had two single questions rejected by editors simply because they were U.S. specific and therefore likely too difficult for players from other parts of the world. I truly believe the editors do their best to make as many questions as possible accessible to the vast majority of players, but it simply is not reasonable or realistic to expect the site to be altered/overhauled to reflect an equal distribution of questions from around the globe. And in the 11 months I've been participating in quizzes and games on this site, I've learned a fair amount about other countries' cultures and histories. That, to me at least, has been the biggest benefit of playing funtrivia. Sure, I wish we could get rid of stupid sports questions like "What was the score in Superbowl whatever," and even dumber questions involving a minor celebrity's birthday, but I realize many of these types of questions are from many years ago when standards were lower. I think we just need to accept that nothing is perfect, and appreciate the enormous variety funtrivia offers at free or minimal cost.

This same thing happened to me. I also once got a note from an editor who was editing my quiz, saying that I should alter my quiz to make it more accessible to a global audience. She was right.

I've never found any suggestion from an editor to be specifically "geographically biased" (as in US vs the rest of the world), but more along the lines of "playability". For instance, in a movie quiz, maybe I didn't provide enough info in the question for NON-movie goers to have a slight chance at guessing the correct answer. People from all over the world attend movies produced in countries from all over the world. Non-movie goers don't. It has nothing to do with a certain country really.

I can't think of a more important place to stress "playability" than the Single Questions. After all, the ones you get credit for usually have a high number of people getting them correct (in general, speaking of "fairness/nonfairness", there are probably very few people who rate the q on its "interesting" value, rather than whether they got it right or not lol - sad to say, it's general human nature I suppose). What next? Should the raters have to say where they are from too, as well as the question writers having to designate a perceived bias? Anyway, if you get suggestions in THAT challenge, be thankful and make the changes. Honestly, the editors have YOUR (as well as the site's) best interests at heart.

Expecting the whole world to conform to one's OWN version of "fairness" is not FAIR at all. There are people playing here who are legally blind and LOADS of people whose first language is NOT English. I could name several other personal situations that would make it disadvantageous to playing here. None of them have anything to do with "place of birth" unless it's a case of local economics/technology. Do you hear them complaining? Nope.

As for earning badges, the people with the most of them are from ALL parts of the world. I have a few and I can assure you that I didn't need all the questions to be about Canada in order to get them lol (I mean, how many q's about curling could we stand? giggles). I certainly didn't purposefully seek out Canadian based quizzes for ANY of them.

I don't know about other folks, but I like to learn new stuff. When I travel to other countries, I want to eat their food and see how they live. I don't complain that there isn't a Tim Horton's there lol. Otherwise I might just as well stay at home and watch National Geographic on TV while eating pizza. I don't learn a SINGLE THING by playing ONLY the subjects I'm familiar with. And I like surprises, so I'll leave with this overused (but I think it kinda fits) quote:

"Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get"

I just want to make clear that Tim Horton doughnuts are - thankfully - widely available in Belfast!

You know, I've been to Canada a bunch of times and have yet to have eaten at a Tim Hortons. Of course, I live in Georgia, the home of Krispy Kremes, and don't really like donuts! I guess it's my California roots---give me a salad and I'm happy!

The doughnuts at Tim's are not really all that good.

I'm actually not a fan of donuts (we generally spell it "doughnuts" here) except my gramma's homemade, homefried "cake" variety with sugar and cinnamon on top. Unfortunately she's dead now, so perhaps my preferences are based on fond memories. Coffee (and Tim's is usually rather on the strong side) goes right through me in less than an hour along with heart palpitations (sorry for the gory details lol). I've been to Georgia three times (I personally would like to die in Savannah lol) and didn't see what the "fuss" about Krispy Kremes was (no offense meant). Tim's (here anyway) DOES serve other things besides donuts and coffee (unfortunately they stopped serving "stew in a bread bowl" and substituted chili, hardly the same). I'm with you Jabb. Next time you visit here, look us up.

I realise this has become "off-topic", so in an attempt to bring it back, do most folks think that Beatles questions should be designated as STRICTLY British, or are they more of a global nature? I'm thinking the latter and that attempts to make ANY question solely assigned to one geocentric location are totally subjective and are not logical or "do-able". Hair-splitting is not worth anyone's time and just invites more argument. If badges are the major reason a person is here (or is the sole reason for a complaint), then I have to wonder at one's priorities in life.

The Beatles are a very good example, also Shakespeare, Dickens, Agatha Christie, etc etc. And on the American side, we have Jazz, Mark Twain, Stephen King or Chuck Berry.....

If "fixing" this were simply a matter of Terry spending ten minutes coming up with a program and the authors and editors spending a second per quiz clicking a certain button (which it very clearly is not) we would still have a majority of members preferring that it not be fixed at all, because they don't see a problem.

The big bone of contention seems to be Sport, and my guess is that almost all members would have trouble even with the sport of their own countries. Sports trivia is highly stats based, which means that only those who really pay attention to these things know anything about it, no matter where the questions originate. I'm Canadian, and I certainly know more about ice hockey than I do cricket or American college football, but not a whole LOT more. It would be a matter of getting, oh, 12 questions right out of a hundred, as opposed to 1.

Oh, you are totally right, Agony. Even die-hard sports nuts aren't likely to know obscure stats about a player, team, tournament, or year, even when its one of their favorites. I don't really know why people have created quizzes and questions on such insignificant minutiae, unless they are deliberately trying to make the questions impossible to answer, or they are one of those odd individuals who get their jollies with stats and are under the misapprehension that everyone else feels the same.

And Jakeroo, I don't get the raptures over Krispy Kremes, either. When I first moved here from California, one of my fellow teachers practically forced me to try one at a faculty breakfast, insisting I just didn't like donuts because I hadn't had the best. She was sorely disappointed when my response was just, "Ok, they're hot donuts."

Trying to impose nationalities or ethnicities on questions would be tricky in a whole range of areas and in some cases would stir up a hornets' nest - simply in aid of some largely rhetorical 'global level playing field' or whatever. Actually, if people want to be really, really pedantic about 'global equality' then presumably about one-fifth of all questions would have to be about Chinese topics and we'd also need lots more questions about India, too. I've a hunch that the UK would only get a very occasional look-in.

A little example now in addition to those already mentioned. What box or boxes would one tick for Franz Kafka? Czech, German, Austrian or Jewish? All four groups have claimed him ...

One key point has so far been overlooked. This is an English-language site, and well over half of the native speakers of English live in the U.S. That's just the way things up and there's no point in getting aerated about it.

Love it, jabb! I'm not a big donut or doughnut fan either.

Sue

(a late transplant to Georgia, USA via New Jersey, New York State, Mexico and Colombia)

Why are all the train questions (except for that one about the Indian-Pacific in Oz) about British trains and their stations? We have trains and stations in the USA (to me 'American' includes all nations in North and South America).

Because that's what people are submitting! I've no idea if this post is in humor or not, though. :P

Perhaps the UK is full of train spotters?
*Tizzabelle now runs, hides, and assumes another identity*

So I can win a few more expert games?

LOL!

We may have trains, but you sure never hear about people riding on them (except maybe commuters in the NE) but we do have lots of subways!!

Just noticed.

On the title bar, when logged on the Funtrivia site. It says "World's Largest Trivia and Quiz Site" and not "America's".

Just a thought.

Correct. As far as I know, it IS the world's LARGEST trivia and quiz site. McDonald's may be the world's largest hamburger fast food chain, but it is still an American company (wait, it's headquartered in the US, IS it an American company? But this is beside the point.) FT is an American site, yet holds the record of being the biggest trivia and quiz site in the world. Doesn't make it un-American, though.

The Chinese have the world's largest army, it's still Chinese.

And do give it a rest, you're making me ashamed to be British, and after the summer we've just had it's not a feeling I like.

I was thinking of saying something like that.

Being British is nothing to be ashamed about...I could name many Americans who would make me ashamed to be American, but in the end they aren't the country (thank goodness).

And yes, it was an amazing Olympics. And to gloat, we got the most medals.

Yes you did... but I wish Americans would learn to do the medals table properly - it should be based on gold medals won and it means we were third, not fourth! Oh please don't start me on an americanicity rant, lol.

But thank you for the compliment, we've had a wonderful summer.

We're starting to wander far off topic here.

I don't want to close this thread because it's a legitimate topic of discussion, but I think we've pretty thoroughly covered this most recent inquiry.

[

(And do give it a rest, you're making me ashamed to be British) [/quote]

Thank you, Flopsy. I suspect you speak for a good many of us. That poor dead horse has been flogged till there's nothing left but bones!

Yes, it's time to stop the rhetoric.

Honestly agony, I think it should indeed be closed. This topic has been rehashed and rehashed. Personally I think it's time for discussion over.