I believe your point has been addressed quite in detail, just not with agreement (so I understand if you don't feel it has been). First, the badgelet was not announced or created retroactively - it was known to all possible recipients before the first day of the race. There were just very good reasons not to make this a siteweide announcement but only a limited one. Secondly, your point that it is the only badge that isn't achievable to everyone is not correct - any player who joined us after July 2, 2010 is forever denied the Best in Class award.

The completist aspect of badge collection is also known and this has very much been taken into account when creating the structure of the Tower of Challenges. A "complete" collection of challenges is the beginner hall, the six gem colors, the prismatic staircase and the level awards. It does NOT include the annex or the retired badges which you might consider extra credit. Maybe this should be made a bit clearer somewhere. Criteria for "annexing" an award are:

- It cannot actively be worked towards. This for example applies to the Experienced-Veteran-Old Timer series.
- It can at any one time be worked towards or held only by a limited group. This applies to Volunteer, Leader and, yes, the Race. If it hadn't been marked retired, it would be an Annex award.
- Its award is not guaranteed by any amount of skill or persistence. This applies to anything random - Lucky Duck, Perfect Score, Fantasy Knockout and Crystal Ball. In each of these, you can play forever with best skill and timing and still never win.

It seemed to be the concensus of most, if not all of the racers that the editors involved be awarded the mini badge too. The number of quizzes that were generated and which needed to go online ASAP was **ahem** amazing. This task must have been made a little easier for the editors (at least this time around) because the racers were mostly seasoned authors. The majority of corrections needed seemed to be when a team ahead of you submitted a question very similar to one of yours.

Tizzabelle must have been thinking the laws of relativity had imploded when four Bhutan quizzes landed on her doorstep within hours of each other. Is there a Thunder Dragon badge anywhere?

If there are going to be future races, especially since a lot of people may very well enter just for the badgelet, it may be prudent to limit entry to people who have already authored x number of quizzes. At the moment you need to have authored five quizzes before you can lead a team quiz, so the precedent has already been set.

As for the issue of the badge not being announced until the race had begun, I can see the wisdom in this, at least for the inaugral race (and I'm not just saying that because I'm in line for one). The details of the race was put on the author chat board and Kyle did notify team leaders about the race as well. So yes, it was open to everyone but it only attracted those dedicated to the task of writing. Or those who are slightly crazy- the jury is still out on that one.

At the end of the day peole, it's a mini badge. It's not a full badge with attached level. Each team wrote at least 24 quizzes in a matter of weeks, and sometimes two or three in a day. The race began on Jan 1, and it's still underway two months later (almost finished though). So it isn't an easy badge to get. It certainly was interesting though, just like Kyle promised it would be.

Wes has given a detailed response to your comments, Stedman, so I don't feel I can add much. I do think it's useful that you raised the query, though, as it has clarified the thinking behind it. It's unlikely that you are the only player to feel it can be seen as 'unfair' and the explanation is here and available to everyone.

With regard to the editors, I fully support the idea of a badgelet for the editors. Maybe even their own special one: 'I edited during the race, and survived', with a white flag instead of the chequered one.

I'm certainly not angling for this - I was very happy to work with Kyle on ensuring the quizzes went through as quickly as possible, and the way in which he discussed it in advance and warned us when to expect the deluge was exemplary. It did mean a lot of work, though - editing each quiz needed just as much attention to detail as any other - not all of them went online without having to be sent back.



Yes, I think a rod for someone's back may have been created here - and the ones who will have to bear the blows will be the Editors, who may find themselves having to deal with a much larger number of not-quite-up-to-scratch quizzes. It may be best not to have any more Races, or at least not award any badgelet, to keep the existing one really exclusive.

Or maybe a little smiley face with a wet towel round the head!

Is that a smile or a grimace?

By the way, I have included a paragraph on the very issue of badge completist collecting in the "FunTrivia user manual" I am working on creating, so something really good did come out of this already and we hopefully shouldn't have players complaining about being unable to get Best in Class, Volunteer, Race or the always elusive Ducky

Terry has stated that it is a one time special badgelet and will never be awarded again. I hope it stays that way. As for the future, I would also prefer no more races. On the one hand, there was a deluge and time pressure (it was after all a race and to say there was no time pressure is non sequitur) .. and on the other hand racers found they were held up in some categories, where editors were slower than those in other categories. That's why the Sports category was not included in the race; it was omitted at my request.

I was watching "The West Wing" today and the new Miss World (in the show, not the real one) made an appearance. You'll never guess where she was from.. yep, she was Miss Bhutan!

I would add support for a badge for the editors as without them the Race just wouldn't have worked as well as it did.

Tizzabelle - you realise that Bhutan is going to haunt you now.

This is certainly true. How about it then, powers-that-be? There does seem to be quite a lot of support



And I for one start twitching whenever I see a World Heritage Site or Ancient Wonder in the news

Editors get a FULL badge, "volunteer".

And this is not "available to everyone" either. A small number of people who we select as moderators or editors can get this badge. We can go for many months at a time without requiring new volunteers.

Stedman, I just checked and we're both safe. Bhutan has no UNESCO World Heritage Sites!

But then of course there are already full badges for making quizzes as well.

And admittedly not everyone is selected to be an editor or moderator, but in theory any member of FunTrivia, if they met all the criteria of longevity, quality of writing etc, could get the call.

I realise I've probably already dragged this one out well past its sell-by date, but it's great that FT allows us to chat round the issues in a polite and reasonable manner, like the mature intelligent adults we are. It's one of the things I value most about this place.

I probably should get back to work - although it always seems like an imposition having to work on February 29th, when I don't get an additional day's pay! Hey ho!

Lol-- I'm taking the day off to look for an apartment. Leap day? More like another day to run errands.

Kyle Thank You for conceiving of, handling the clues and I am sure doing more then most could possibly know behind the scenes.

Terry, Thank You for giving your blessing to this challenge and having faith in Kyles grand idea.

Thank You to the editors who agreed to have their categories used for hte race, who have worked with the quiz writers, especially in some real obscure areas of your categories, with the volumne of quizzes and the speed in which those quizzes were sent to your categories, which I don't think anyone could have expected.


That being said, I found only one time during this race where I was a bit confused at the amount of time it was taking a quiz from our team to go through the queue, which makes it by far the excpetion rather than the rule and these things do happen.

Kyle's rules had a race member needing to have at least one quiz online, unless they received special permission from Kyle, which one of my team mates requested and received from Kyle.

Another team mate had only one quiz online at the start of the race.

These two members both have 4 quizzes each online during the race, 3 of those 8 quizzes aren't even part of the race.

As much as it may come naturally to some, quiz writing, especially to the standards of this site doesn't always come easy.

I still look at the first quiz I ever got online, cringe when reading it and just want to rework it, to make it better.

I personally had gotten away from quiz writing, but was picking up the writing bug again for this challenge.

Some of the Obscure places we were sent on this wonderful journey were just as tough for us as it was for Editors to follow, so this may have caused more corrections than would normally be needed.

The obscure areas of knowledge have made the race all the better and challenging.

Sure there are some tweaks, not overhauls, which could make this smoother for all, but if you can, let others enjoy this experience in the future at some point.

It may also be a good idea to amend the text on the Challenges Homepage. The number of challenges has just been updated to read "207", to include the latest non-available badgelet, so it now reads:

"Welcome to FunTrivia's Tower of Challenges! It features seven halls with 207 challenges - some large, some small, some tough and some easy. While every player can attempt every one of the challenges, we recommend that you concentrate on those appropriate for your experience level because you may otherwise just end up frustrated."

Could I suggest that there is now a certain irony (ok, a massive amount of irony) in the inclusion of the phrase "every player can attempt EVERY ONE of the challenges"?

And is it actually 207? I could only count 206...

Intro - 17
Topaz - 22
Garnet - 25
Emerald - 27
Sapphire - 26
Ruby - 30
Diamond - 24
Prismatic - 7
Annex - 16
Retired - 2
Level Bonuses - 10

Total - 206


Or is there another badge that is so rare and exclusive that it isn't even listed?

Well, every player can attempt every non-retired challenge

The issue with the hidden challenge is well-known: The number was too high by one place ever since the page was created. The 207th challenge is however so secret that not even Terry has found it.

I agree that there should be an update to also exclude the retired challenges from the main count - so it should read "204 challenges every player can attempt (plus 2 retired and no longer available)". However only Terry can change this - I have access only to the challenge descriptions, not the names, section headers or any of the fixed pages.