Spanishliz, going to "the show" conjures up a very different image for me. "The Show" was our local Agricultural Show, where Dad and Uncle Don won ribbons for their wool, and Mum judged the Handicraft sections, and won prizes for her knitting & cooking while my aunt won in the flower section, and occasionally, I won a ribbon or two in the Riding classes.

The half a dozen stalls that made up Sideshow Alley were fascinating.. fifty years later, I still remember going through the Haunted House with my cousins, and while we weren't allowed to go in, the boxers from George Stewart' troupe used to stand outside and challenge the locals... the Octopus, Merry Go Round & Ferris Wheel...

You saw everyone there, from the local member of Parliament to neighbours and friends, to cousins you only saw once a year... everyone went to the Show.

Just briefly wishing to state this concerning my idea I mentioned recently and that people said would be difficult to implement.

I've spoken to a friend of mine who's well versed in all things website authoring, and he stated that it would be a relative easy thing to do.

All new quizzes (either individual questions or quizzes as a whole) can have an extra field for geographical location to enter by the quiz author, as I originally thought.

As regards to the questions already submitted - he said that people taking the quizzes can enter a 'geographical tags' after quizzes are completed (akin to error report submissions) for an incentive of say, 1 point per question tagged with a country.

The backlog of questions will eventually get tagged over time and saves admin having to do this.

So, I guess it is technically possible to implement such a system, but judging by the 'tone' of the posts here, there would appear to be no desire to level the playing field regards question bias towards any one particular country.

Quick question. What happens when there's a quiz with zero country bias? Nothing to tag in that case.

A similar issue could arise if the quiz consists of a mixture of different countries, such as is frequently the case in some Geography subcategories.

I don't think it's a matter so much of not wanting to "level the playing field". I think it would be great if we had more questions in the pools involving countries other than the U.S. But as editors and Terry (as the site administrator), we only receive content that is then put through an editing process and published online. We don't demand that more British or Australian or Canadian or South African, etc. quizzes be published. It is up to the quiz-writers to decide on what they want to write.

In terms of the technically possible, there is likely a way to implement such a system, but who knows how involved such an implementation would take when there is not a terrific demand for such a thing. I, for one, would prefer the webmaster to spend his time designing new games and concepts for the site than to create a complete overhaul of the system.

There is a notion out there that Americans can be self-involved and not care about other cultures, "America-centricity," if you would. But I don't think that is what is going on here. Instead, we simply have to deal with what we get in terms of submissions. If the majority of them deal with American topics, then the majority of questions you will get will be related to American topics. It's an old chestnut when we say "well, write more non-American topics!" But it is true. Our quiz-writers determine our content.

Might I suggest an alternative to the personal "you should write more quizzes" approach. The following link is to the Quiz Author Lounge which is a board that is meant to better our quizzes and their standards. I am sure that if you get a community of quiz-makers to help submit quizzes on non-American topics, it will be much more effective in terms of leveling the playing field than an odd algorithm that may produce wild results and end up as more work for the editors:

http://www.funtrivia.com/bb.cfm?boardid=2222222

@ kaddersgirl - I guess it would be deemed to be geographically free so could be used as a wildcard so to speak.

I'm just voicing my opinion is all.

There will always be more American related questions here than any other country, but that isn't the point of my idea.

My idea was to ensure, for the daily/hourly games (and global challenges - where I have come across an inordinate amount of MLB questions as bonus subjects to the point that it is taking the michael) where such quizzes do not have any bias towards any one country.

Getting more non-american questions isn't the short-term answer, addressing the issue of changing the formula used in selecting the quizzes is.

But bias itself is biased. Questions you deem as "too American" may not be so to other people. As it was pointed out above (somewhere), just because a quiz is on an American topic doesn't mean that other people don't know about it. American TV shows for example. People all around the world have seen 'Friends'. Excluding those questions (or many of them) from an hourly quiz where the topic is Television isn't going to please everyone around the world. And there are many Americans who are as clueless about MLB as you are.

Never mind "the answer" - I don't think that there's a problem. I don't think that there's anything wrong with the majority of questions being American and I don't think that there's anything wrong with more American questions turning up in hourlies.

Sure, we all get frustrated when we get questions on what number shirt some American football player wore on some random game, but we get these types of obscure and, in some cases, completely useless questions from all different countries. "Who got eliminated in the 3rd week of Big Brother?", "Which person won a gold medal in the 1944 Olympics for Australia in 100m freestyle?" etc.

I don't like the idea of calling my question English, or American or even "geographically free". It doesn't seem like it's a worthwhile thing. In some quizzes, people will state in the intro "Note: American/English/Canadian etc. bias". I think that is sufficient enough. In hourlies, it is and always has been complete luck with what questions you get and that is perfectly fine.

EDIT: I didn't see guitargoddess' post before I wrote this, but I completely agree with it. Look at my avatar and my signature. You can see that I like "The Simpsons". I am English. What country is "The Simpsons" made and set in? It's definitely not England and not even in Europe.

I get your point AdamM7, and always have done - I even pointed that out in a previous post.

But to my mind, there is an issue of fairness, however different people perceive it.

For example, if we have two teams competing in a quiz over three rounds (say USA Vs Europe). It would be deemed fair to have round 1 on American subjects, Round 2 on European, and round 3 on various subjects.

Not to have all three rounds on American subjects, which is 'similar' to what I (and I alone) notice about the daily/hourly games. Yes there are non-American questions appearing (obscure or otherwise) but the FREQUENCY of american questions that occurs is alarmingly slanted.

It is an exagerated point I make here but one which somewhat makes my point clearer to a degree.

(on another point - attempting the UK Hourly quizzes brings up some extremely NON-UK questions which leaves me gobsmacked as how they could be classed as UK but thats another whinge I have.)

I freely admit that I'm not the best at answering quizzes but I do want to get to the top level of the Global Challenge, and just want to have a fair crack at it which isn't what I perceive to be getting.

Judging by what I have seen, this is a subject that WILL be picked up every now and then (and yes, people will always choose what quizzes THEY want to tackle) but when it comes to the daily/hourly quizzes, I guess everyone will just have to put up with the bias that is there whether they like it or not - it is something which becomes clearer by the day that will simply not be addressed.

english_gent, there will most likely always be more US-based question due to the majority of members hailing from the US. I am also in that count, but I did author a quiz that covered a subject from Canada, the UK, and Australia, with only one US-based question in it, so American authors can do other subjects, but as we know US-based facts and figures moreso than anything else, there will be more US-based questions. I'll know more about baseball than I will cricket (I still wonder how one person scores 200 or more runs in cricket), and more about gridiron football than soccer. It doesn't mean I can't learn other subjects, whether it be UK, Australia, France, etc.

I cannot remember where the post is, but someone posted that about 55% of the membership or people that peruse this site are from the US. Looking at the alexa site, today shows 46.2% are from the US (see here).



I am the reverse of this. I know far more about MLB than I do Friends. I barely know who played on the show (I'm not sure I can even name all six), much less who played which character.

But we don't have teams competing in that way. In nearly all games on this site, you compete against other players and teams regardless of their country, and there is little one on one competition other than in the knock out.

If you want to increase the amount of questions on UK and European subjects, then that would discriminate against the Americans, who are in the majority on this site.

My only concern about the American bias of the site is the occasional assumption that other countries don't exist - a quiz about Civil War should not necessarily be exclusively about the American Civil War; I believe quite a few countries have had them!

Of all the teams I see (the ones than tend to do well in team games and such) none of them have exclusive membership to only one country. A majority of the teams have members from all over the world, and almost every team I would bet covers at least two countries in their membership. I know you're trying to make a point with your above statement, but it would never happen that way, because the site, and the teams, are integrated.

@ dg_dave - I know there will always be more US questions than any other. I've already said this in previous posts and I have no objection to that aspect, believe me.

All I'm wanting to address is the formula used in compiling the questions for the daily/hourly quizzes which a lot of people I would think wish to compete more fairly.

Maybe I am in a minority, and if so - fair enough.

AND @ dippo - I KNOW that's not how teams work here at Funtrivia. I was merely attempting to explain the principle of fairness as how I see it, and somehow explaining (poorly so it seems) how I perceived it to this site in regard to the daily/hourly quizzes.

It seems that it is one view held here, that if it's not broken, then why fix it - which is fine as far as it goes and it doesn't matter who says that (American or otherwise).

However, even if the site originally was aimed at Americans, because of the way the internet works nowadays, any website cannot restrict itself to any one geographical area (with the exception to possibly television channels etc. To say now that this site is still solely for the use of Americans would be somewhat daft, espcially as more and more non americans are members/visitors to this site (dg_dave quoted a figure of 46.2% of todays visitors being Americans - but bear in mind statistics can say anything you want it to).

All I'm putting forth is simply an idea I had which possibly could address an imbalance that I saw. Thats it - simple as. Just my opinion.

Anyone else is fully entitled to their opinion as well.

I know - some people will say if I don't like it, then maybe I should clear off.

Well, it's a possibility to be sure but, at the moment all I can say it that whilst I will be staying with this site, I am now wiser as to which quizzes I can and will take, and sadly it will mean some of the fun of this site will disappear because I will not be able to achieve some of the badges I had wished to go after.

And that for me, and hopefully for the admin team too, is something to give some thought to, because if this happens to me (and I'm just an ordinary Joe) then whats to say it won't happen (won't have happened) to others.

All I wanted to do is help get this site to improve and be better for the future, but as I've said, maybe I am just in a minority.

Everybody have fun now

Dave, the characters were Chandler, Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy, Doc, Rachel, Monica, and Bashful. I think

The last show of "Friends" I saw, had Duchess, Marie, Toulouse and Berlioz. There was also a Tom O'Malley. Lol.

english_gent, I hope you will stay and persevere. I don't think that you will be blocked at getting any of the badges due to the bias. When I look at the list of badge recipients, they are from all over the world. Even in the KO where people are pitted one on one, many times the non-US player wins a KO match, so the question content is not providing too much of an advantage in terms of geography. I am clueless at sports, no matter where they are played, and you will find that many US players are not as good at world geography than players from the rest of the world. Most US players find the questions harder and harder in the GC as they move up the ranks, and there are more and more non-US questions. This translates to things becoming easier for those with a general culture (as we say in Colombia for non ethno-centric knowledge) that is broader than just the US. Give it a chance and let us know how it goes.

Sue (who lives in the US now and also did as a child, but lived the majority of her adult life outside of the US in South America)

The website does NOT restrict itself to any geographical area and it is NOT solely for the use of Americans and nobody is saying that. It remains, however, an American-based site. We gladly accept questions and quizzes about any country or culture, and everyone from everywhere is welcome to join, with the caveat that it is an American site. I don't see how you can willingly join and participate in an American-based website and complain that it's too American.

If you were accepted as a contestant on a regular US-based episode "Jeopardy", would you very well expect them to rearrange their questions to be not-American? You shouldn't, because it's an American show. Just as this is an American website. The only difference here is that the system doesn't purposely choose to give you American-oriented questions. It chooses at random from the questions available in the database. The database is largely American-oriented. That's the way it is.

And the longer you play, the more of the information becomes familiar. The colleges attended by various professional athletes of whom I have never heard doesn't stick, but I have become familiar with a whole lot of state flora and fauna, as well as their commemorative coins. These bits of information lodge right beside Zodiac dates and traits, flowers and gems associated with each month, and anniversary traditional gifts as things i never cared about until I started playing here, but which I have had to learn.

@ guitargoddess - A question please. Where does it specifically say on this site that it is an american based one??? (and I'm not talking about the forums).

AND by accepting money from people all over the world, surely you can no longer abide by saying it is simply an american site??

Also, the other thing I have also noticed is simply when presented with a suggestion, in this case, mine. Most people have either said, "nah, it won't work. It is as it is and Tough" or words to that effect.

I'm not a bad guy here, although I'm beginning to get the feeling that people are jumping on me for wanting to help "improve" (or change) the site (in my eyes at least).

Actually, maybe that's not completely fair to say that.

Just people seem to think it's easier to pooh-pooh any idea then say "Well, you might have a point, but I wouldn't know how to move forward with this, if at all" type of response.

@ guitar-goddess - you analogy about being a contestant in a US base 'Jeopardy' is correct and quite rightly too 'When in Rome....' and all that, but note that in my example, I wasn't restricting it to country. Was just suggesting how something should be FAIR.

That's all I'm trying to raise the awareness about....Fairness - Well, in my eyes anyway.

Others will disagree - that's only to be expected.

Anyway, I've said more than enough on this subject. It's not getting anywhere, and I'm not one for banging my head against the wall pointlessly - I'm getting a headache

I don't know that it explicitly says anywhere that the site is American-based, but if you read the Terms of Service there are several references to US law and there is a US address listed as the copyright holder. And it just is. The owner and webmaster is based out of the US. Edited to add: actually it really doesn't matter if the site is 'officially' US based since it's not the website owner who contributes all the content but the users, and there is no restriction on submitting non-American material. What matters is that over the course of the history of this site, the majority of contributors have been American or other people writing on American topics.

Money is accepted from people all over the world because every one is welcome. But no site can possibly be made entirely 'fair' for every type of person out there.

You're not the "bad guy" for making suggestions, but this has come up ad nauseum over the years. There is no perfect solution, and frankly there isn't really a "problem". No one or hardly anyone can excel at every single subject or every single game on this site, or be able to win every single badge; some games really favour speed and some people just can't compete in that regard. People who can't see well may have a bit of trouble with photo quizzes. We also have vocabulary-based games; for people for whom English isn't there first language, those are challenging. Should we remove those games? Must they be reconfigured to be more fair for that group of people? I don't think so. I mean English IS my first language and the badge that has eluded me for years and years here is the Word Wizard!

I guess to me the bottom line is that there are some things that can't or won't be 'fixed', because there's no need. People in this thread were pooh-poohing the old 'write questions on other topics' suggestion, but really, that's the best 'solution' there is. If the questions in any given category are 95% American, lower that percentage. It may not ever happen, but it COULD if there were enough international authors who cared to work on it.

No one is forced to be a paid member; if anyone feels that there isn't enough here they can do well in, they don't need to fork over any money.

On the matter of responding to suggestions -

Terry is quite responsive to suggestions from members about improvements or changes needed to the site. Over the years there have been dozens if not hundreds of member suggestions acted upon.

In general, though, changes that involve giving more work to either Terry or the other staff, or increasing the number of things authors must do in order to get quizzes online, are only put in place if it is clear there will be an overall benefit to the majority of users.

In this case, that benefit is not at all clear. Most American users don't need it. A sizable portion of non-American users don't need it - I'm not an American myself, and most definitely would not approve of a change of this sort, as stated earlier.

There is always enough work to be done around here that we are unlikely to put a lot of effort into making a change that the majority of users would see no need for - we have other, higher, priorities. Anyone who has played the country-specific games can see that categorizing questions by country is not quite as easy as it looks - we worked quite hard at this, and it didn't really turn out all that well. We realize that on this issue, this website is less than perfect. We have other imperfections, however, that seem more solvable and that will get the attention first.

I would like to add that most of the senior staff are not Americans. We do work quite hard behind the scenes at evening the playing field where we can and at making sure questions that assume everyone in the world lives in the US do not go online.

I agree completely with what agony said. I don't think this is a case of a suggestion being dismissed out of hand, or a general refusal to implement improvements on the site. Everyone who has responded in this thread has provided their reasons for their views, and it seems clear that most people simply don't see the need for this particular improvement.

english_gent, you have pointed out that because of the way the Internet works these days, no website should restrict itself by geographical area. I'm just curious, but why doesn't this inclusive and open-minded attitude apply to your trivia-playing habits? Doesn't your suggested improvement boil down to just that - a self-imposed restriction on the types of questions you would like to see in the games that you play on the site, based on geographical area?

I don't usually contribute to this thread because I don't really understand this perennial complaint about geographical bias. When I play a game on the site, I don't see each question as having an "American", "British", "Australian" or "neutral" bias. To me, the question is either about a topic I am familiar with, or it isn't. If I know the topic, I have a fighting chance at getting the answer right. If I don't, I play the question anyway, as I might just learn something new or interesting.

If the topic just doesn't hold any interest for me, I'll try to avoid the topic if I can, and if I can't, and I can't get over the fact that these questions will show up in certain games or tournaments on the site, well, I'll simply avoid playing those games or tournaments. There is already so much to do on this site, and Terry is adding more all the time, that I've never had a problem with this approach. And I have accepted long ago that there will just be some badges that I simply cannot win. Does that make the site less enjoyable somehow? Not really. As guitargoddess has said, it is impossible to please everyone all of the time.

[/quote]If the topic just doesn't hold any interest for me, I'll try to avoid the topic if I can, and if I can't, and I can't get over the fact that these questions will show up in certain games or tournaments on the site, well, I'll simply avoid playing those games or tournaments. [/quote]

Well put, jmorrow. My thoughts exactly !

Edited to add.. sorry, nt sure how to do the quote thingy !

I'm one of those who didn't want the change simply because I like the variety of questions and the new things I learn on the site. This has nothing to do with how easy or difficult it may be to implement the geographical suggestion.

For newcomers it may seem like the American bias is too huge and impossible to get past but spending some time playing the games will prove it's not so bad. When I look at the top 10 Badge winners list in the Hall of Fame, only 2 out of the 10 are Americans while the rest are British, Australians, Canadians, Europeans and Asians. It's not possible to get in the top 10 without winning a majority of the hourly/daily game badges, so the fact that there are so many non-Americans proves that though there may be a bias in the question pool, it is not such a huge disadvantage for the players.

Despite having being born and brought up in India, I have ended up winning categories like US Presidents, US Govt, Mixed UK, Africa etc. It's mostly because of the stuff I've learned playing here. On the other hand, I can never do well enough in the Movies category of the Pot of Gold. Give me a Bollywood quiz and I would've probably had that badge on Day 1 but I'm just not that familiar with Hollywood/British movies and actors. That's something I have to live with and I'm ok with that.

Just take out the "/" in your first quote "[ ]" and that should work. Only include the "/" in the end quote.

Or, rather than just starting typing in the box, click on "reply" under the previous post. You'll get a box with a lot of symbols at the top. Click on the " and put your copied bit that you want to quote in the space that comes up.

Or click on "Quote", and select the text you want to quote, deleting the rest. The open and close brackets are automatically supplied, and you have the window displayed so that you can also do clever stuff like bold, smilies, etc. At the end of the quoted bit, hit enter then type your response.

Edited to add: how clever, it even produces scroll bars if there is too much text to fit - I never noticed that before.

Thank you all

Good question, and to a degree, everyone naturally imposes upon themselves a self-restriction on which quizzes to play, mainly by their own limits of knowledge, but not always.

But my answer to your question is simply no. When it comes to selecting quizzes of your own choice, I do not look to have anything different to the current status quo.

However, when it comes to participating in the Daily/Hourly quizzes, due to the random nature of the quiz selections, this is the part that I believe there is an imbalance which I was pointing out here, and putting forth an idea of how to address.

I'm sure most of us are competing in the Global Challenge and I would like to have to be able to get to the top level, but in my opinion (and I sure someone will correct if I'm wrong) but if questions are bias and it stands to reason that more americans will get more answers correct, then the likelihood will be that too many people will get to the top level before me and therefore finish the challenge (have I got that right?).

Admittedly, it seems a small thing but I do like the aspect of badges and want to compete. Yes, I will have to learn more, and yes - more american based subjects too (but not American Sports thanks all the same). Either that or simply to forget about it all. It's that simple.

I hope that helps clarify my position.