In one of the quizzes today (address: http://www.funtrivia.com/mixedquiz/playquiz.cfm?qid=315432&ignore=1327490940 ), listed category being Harder Animals, this question (apparently from Hobbies/Games) came up:

1. You and your opponents each have a pencil and a pad listing 12 different subjects, and every once in a while someone rolls a lettered icosahedron. You must be playing:
Your Answer: Scattergories
In each round of Scattergories someone rolls a 20-sided die (icosahedron) to determine what letter each of your answers to the listed categories on your workpad must begin with. -Spaudrey

I see no way this came from a question out of the Animals category. The rest of the quiz questions clearly were about animals. Expecting such and finding this as Q#1 was disconcerting. Is it tune up time for quizbot?

I checked it - the question is, in the database, correctly stored as a Hobbies question. It must thus be a problem in the selection algorithm.

For Terry to check: The above mentioned is Question #3227 by Spaudrey.

Thank you WesleyCrusher.

This came up a bit ago in a Harder Sci/Tech Newest Mixed Quiz (I thought it might be from World, Auto World, Specific Cars, but nowhere in Sci/Tech is a car Cactegory

http://www.funtrivia.com/mixedquiz/playquiz.cfm?qid=315432&ignore=1327699860

Sci / Tech Mixture. Player lout62001 asks:
2. Which of the following is not a Volkswagen model?
Acura
Jetta
Touareg
Passat

Lout62001 shows as a "User Not Found"

Another one for Terry.

It's question #9896 stored in the World category.

This from Today's World
http://www.funtrivia.com/mixedquiz/playquiz.cfm?qid=315432&ignore=1327852020

#7. World Mixture. Player stedman asks:
What name is given to a musical composition for eight instruments or voices?
Duet
Concerto
Symphony
Octet
Answer: Octet
The name derives from the Latin prefix "octo", meaning eight. Hence also "octagon", for an eight-sided shape or object, and "octopus", an eight-limbed creature. -stedman

This Q is probably from Music or General.

Edit: Thank you too gtho4

This from a History Quiz:
http://www.funtrivia.com/mixedquiz/playquiz.cfm?qid=315433&ignore=1327857180

#4. History Mixture. Player kjaisb asks:
What is No. 20 on the periodic table of elements, known for being an important part in our bones and teeth?
Zinc
Iron
Calcium
Oxygen
Answer: Calcium
Calcium is an alkaline earth metal, and is preceded by potassium and succeeded by scandium. It reacts easily with oxygen in air. -kjaisb


This is possibly from Sci'Tech or General

It appears the selection alrogithm is fine. Some questions are in the wrong pools in the first place though.

The periodic table question above is QN 30227, category "History". Certainly it's miscategorized originally, but it is being pulled from the correct pool (I have put it in science).

The original question in this thread is also in the database as an Animals question, so it was pulled correctly too. It was just originally miscategorized.

Terry, there must be a problem in the database or the QQ editor interface then - whenever we receive one of these questions as editors, they appear just in the category they are supposed to be in from their content. I have specifically tested the first question by sending a CN and then actioning it and it showed to me as a perfectly valid Hobbies question.

Wes

Thanks and good luck with the de-worming or de-bugging, whichever.

Terry,

as I had a sudden hunch on what might cause this issue of a small number of questions consistently appearing in a wrong category in spite of showing up right in the edit screen, I quickly entered a test case for you to look at once the server is stable again.

The question number is #59618; it is about a minor "Star Trek: The Next Generation" character. If that one's shown as Hobbies in the database, my hunch was correct

Wes

Just FYI: thanks to Wesley's observations I have fixed a categorization bug in the database.

Hopefully all of the categorization issues with the "single questions" are now fixed.

Please keep an eye out and report to this thread over the next few days!

Thank you and let's hope I can have the brain surgeon pull all the shunts I had to install to handle cross categorization. My brain Optimizing/Maintenance bill was growing sizable.

This may be wrong. I wrote this one and am fairly certain it was in the General category but here it is in Entertainment. Shoes are entertainment?

http://www.funtrivia.com/mixedquiz/playquiz.cfm?qid=315431&ignore=1328284020
#4. Entertainment Mixture. Player mehaul asks:
With just a strap between the two innermost toes to hold them on the foot, what do you call this type of shoe?
flip-flops
wing tips
pool socks
sneaker
Your Answer: flip-flops
The name derives from the noise they make when the foot goes through its walking motion. The shoe drops then slaps up against the sole of the foot making a flopping sound. Can you think of other articles of clothing named for the sound they make? -mehaul

While looking at my FT Qs Submitted list to see if the category was listed there, I note that no category assignment accompanies the authors list of Single Questions. Is there a way that info could be added to the entries so authors can see if their submissions are where they expected them to be?

Well, the questions ultimately get put where the editors want to put them. Whether this one is in the right place or not is a question for the general category editor...

Shoes would go in a subcategory of Entertainment (Beauty Accessories and Fashion) for a full quiz, so that seems fine to me for a single question, too.

mehaul, http://www.funtrivia.com/questionpost_me3.cfm does list the category - it's in the right box above the ratings.

As to the categorization, I have yet to write a single question that would fall under General - I always found a specific category for each of my questions. Most quizzes in General include questions from multiple categories, so unless you write a question with clues from several categories, it will rarely be General. The main exception would be if you target one of General's topic-related subcategories e.g. "Superstitions and Magic".

I see that category posted now. Thank you WesleyCrusher. I guess that bug is dead, just still twitching a bit.

I just took Harder World and I ran into this question of mine:

Joseph Juran, a Quality Analysis expert, promoted a theory about the distribution of wealth named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. What did this theory make as an observation?
(I mixed the answers up)
Most money is spent five times
Voodoo economics works
20% own 80% of the wealth
The fatter you are, the wealthier

(And in the righthand box)
World
Modified Dec 05 11
Played 174 times
Difficulty: 80% got it correct.
User rating (0.29): good

:::::::::
How did this get to be considered hard? And in my New Q listing it says the same number of plays but, it has been at that number (174) for over a week now. Is this in limbo because the play results don't match a harder rating?

I think the hard game uses mostly questions from 60 to 80 percent correct, but this range was chosen based on questions taken from quizzes. Since most quiz plays are by people with at least a passing interest in the topic, you will see much higher correct percentages in quiz questions than in singles if they are both at the same difficulty.

Conversely, the same correct percent on a single usually means a much easier question than on a quiz question, but they are still grouped in the same bracket.

edit: I copied the question from my list of accepted Qs, ergo the reference above to 'the righthand side' un-edit

I thought the Newest Mixed Quizzes were taken from the new Single Question database. 60-79% (<80) would seem okay for Harder (and below that for Tricky) and 80-99% for no cited difficulty quizzes in that arena.
I think it's been asked before but there do seem to be Qs popping up in these Newest Mixed Quizzes before the rating/evaluation has run its course (I cite an example above). If they are getting used outside the New Question Game before the eval is complete, who is setting an undeserved/earned difficulty value to them? The New Question Game is how those values were to be determined I thought.
Edit: This question was in the rating regimen for two days then ratings stopped coming in over a week ago.

Misunderstood one part of your question - I thought you were referring to Smartest (the "harder" hourly) which uses a mix of quiz and single questions.

As to the rating, the number of times a question gets played in the NQG is not a constant value but a function of the queue length for the game. Since we currently have 6 weeks and higher waits for questions to get to that place, they tend to stay shorter. This isn't that big a deal, usually after 100 plays, there's very little movement in the stats.

This Q hasn't been added to my Question Quest good Qs total in the week but that is aside from the Newest Mixed Quiz part of the situation. It just tells me that the rating process seems to be interrupted for some reason. It is confusing.

The question should have been added earlier along the way - I think all questions with 30 or more ratings are already counted (which can lead to your count fluctuating if they drop in or out of range)

Here it is a day later and seemingly contrary to what some have said about plays outside the New Question Game counting towards the # of plays in the rating, my accepted Q list still says 174 plays. It didn't even add in the one play I made on it in Newest Mixed Quizzes Harder World. I find this as possibly unfair to the question. Once it's seen outside the NQG and then goes back into it (and for no apparent changes) some will say "I've seen this before" and rate it as if it was copied, or, say there was something wrong with this that it got put back into evaluation so it mustn't be a good Q and rate it poorly.

This question just appeared in the New Mixed Quiz: Sci/Tech for the second time I've seen it in a few days (So evidently no CNs were submitted on it). The author, ToeKneeK hasn't been seen in six months so maybe an editor could fix it in some way? The problem is that Slide rules (slip sticks) were an indispensible tool for surveyors. Without carrying a book of sine/cosine/tangent tables and a thick scratch pad to do calculations on, surveys would take all day. The question includes surveying as a possible answer in addition to the accepted math calculations. Even though it could be used to help figure out batch ratio adjustments, I'd offer baking a viable third incorrect answer instead of surveying. (Analog measurements often need conversions to alternate measure nomenclatures so analog measurements could also be a good answer! For that substitute weaving?) Since the question is open ended (what were they used for?) meaning chair leveling could be a correct answer, maybe drop the question?

Slide rules fell into disuse in the 1970s. What were they used for?

analog measurements
mathematical calculations
PCVs (pressure control valves at refineries)
surveying

Editors don't access QQ questions unless a CN is submitted on them. Unlike quizzes, we cannot browse to find them and make corrections, even if there is something that needs attention. Maybe someone with more powers than a mere editor could address this, if they have time - there are a lot of other matters that require attention! If a player submits a CN, the correction can be considered by an editor.

I would suggest that there haven't been any CNs because most players do not think of how each answer could possible by analysed so as to make it a possible answer. Slide rules were used for mathematical calculations - the fact that some of the incorrect options include activities in which these calculations might be required does not change that. I recall playing that question and not even considering that there was a problem, as I fondly stroked my slide rule in its case, and assured it I had not forgotten all those years of loyal service.

mehaul, the fact that the author is long-gone doesn't matter.
Please send a Correction Note for any errors you see; so that an editor can can deal with it.

[ I've just found it and sent a CN, referenced back to this thread ]

Thank you for the effort.

I think the author meant to say slide-rules don't get used much now. "Disuse" is inaccurate, but I have never used a slide-rule. In Physics class, I used a TI Scientfific Calculaotr with trig functions. I can't remember the model. It was grey-blue. This was 1989-91. It's been a long time!