The symptom: You may have seen messages from various authors on various forums that questions seem to be taking a long time before they get rated and released, causing a bit of frustration among the authors.

The cause: we are getting more good questions submitted than ever (a very good thing!) but on the other hand, there has been a slight decline in New Question Game play (not that good). Both combine to a backlog slowly building up. The number of plays required for a question to make it through the game has already been decreased, but this is not enough.

The cure: if you're not already doing so anyway, please give our authors the two minutes of your daily time to play and rate their works in the New Question Game. If we just get 10% more players, we should start seeing that backlog clear out quite well (and you will benefit from having had a chance to memorize those new questions before you see them in an hourly on top of gaining some decent points).

Thanks!

Wes

People respond well to incentives. How about adding more challenges related to the New Question Game?

That would be something only Terry can do. I don't have that power - I can only encourage and motivate. (But then there is an inherent incentive - everyone gets their questions through faster!)

Terry, in case you are listening and need an idea:

New Question Power (Full badge / Ruby)

Score 500 or more points in the New Question Game 100 times. Only days on which you rate at least 8 questions afterwards count towards this badge.

Nice idea Wes!

Is there any way of telling what percentage of players who log in on a particular day play the new question game? If it's already 80%, another 10% might be tough. I suspect that percentage is much lower than 80 though.

We have about 700-800 players per day and the peak number of players online at one time is about ten times that number. The daily total would of course be even higher!

Many times the questions can be insanely obscure. That zaps a lot of the fun out of it. I still play due to the team aspect to the game, but that's pretty much the only reason why.

WesleyCrusher,
Do you have a breakdown on the percentage that take the quiz (all thusly contributing to the % correct figure assigned to a Q&A) and then fail to rate the Qs (impacting the good/bad value)?

If we read backwards on an authors accepted/rated page it says xxx rated the Q, yy% correct and z.zz good/bad. It could be inferred that only those who rated the Q are counted toward the % correct, but I'm guessing it is all who took the Q, whether rated or not, get included in that figure. IOW, the inferred is that the z.zz figure comes from all of the xxx number. That would exclude those who took the Q but didn't submit a rating for the five measely points you get for each evaluation. Raise those points earned for rating a Q and more may visit the game and lend an evaluation. Then set a badge target based on earning those evaluation points (like whozzits: ratits), not on how many they got correct without offering a rating.

Another suggestion for Terry: Please add this game to the Games dropdown at the top of the page.
All the other daily games can be accessed from the dropdown, but the New Question Game is only on the home page. A lot of days I forget to play this one because I'm going to the games dropdown and not always going to the home page. (I've gotten better at remembering since I have a question approved that isn't in the game yet.)

I play the new question game every day. It's a game I enjoy.

If the number of new writers keeps going up you could have a structural problem on your hand that might not be solved by a couple of new players. Wouldn't it be possible to extend the number of questions from 10 to 15? Or another idea: give people the possibility to play twice every day (like the GC). I also second Julia's idea about the dropdown.

If players aren't rating because they don't think the tenth of a second it takes is worth it for five points, they won't rate for fifty points either. Anyway, do we want the opinions of those who only rate because of the points?

There, I have just played it for the first time.

Maybe something as simple as a cumulative scoreboard for the top 100 people rating the most questions would work.

Also, I see we have a lot more submissions now, so I can lower the time that a question is in the game rotation so that we go through questions faster. I increased the time 6 months ago since we were dropping low on new qns, but things seemed to have moved in the opposite direction since.

My sentiments exactly, agony. I couldn't have said it any better.

Fifty points for taking and rating a quiz is way out of proportion to the points that can be earned in other games. People do care about two things here it seems: Points and Badges. Granting a badge for being part of expanding the Q dB seems appropriate. There are two to be earned on the writer side of the equation. Put one on the taker/rater side and I'm sure more will play and rate.

Instead of adding points, couldn't you just make the daily team points (the only reason I play) contingent on ratings? In other words, to have a score count, ratings must be completed.

Here's an example of the crazy obscurity some of these questions have.

6. With the withdrawal of the last coalition combat troops from Iraq on December 15, 2011, how many US Medal of Honor recipients were there during the 8 year 9 month conflict?

4
1
2
5

I have NO idea how anybody is supposed to know that.

The NQG rules said it was to be expected that 80% should be able to answer the question. In many tough questions, like that one, the answers are often set to lead to the correct response, getting correct replies in that ballpark and thus you learn. But when no clues to the answer are given, that is too obscure a question. More like 2% would know the answer meaning a 25% correct result would have been purely from guessing.
The Question is time dependent also. Some injured combatants may yet receive the award even after the Coalition has left the battlefield. It is disrespectful to only expect that the question only pertains to those given by the withdrawal date. That number is not tracked (only the total is) What is tracked are the total attributable to the conflict as a whole. And as of now, that number may change.

And that question exemplifies my issue with many of the questions, which is not enough information given. Does the question mean the people who won the Medal of Honor for their service during the conflict, or since the specific time period was mentioned, would it also include Tibor Rubin, who won the award in 2005, but was actually a Holocaust survivor who fought in the Korean War. Answers fitting both possibilities are there as choices.

I received this question too and frankly, found it a bad question, but then you mark it as such, and if there's an ambiguity, then submit a correction note. To play 10 questions once a day isn't really a lot to ask but it makes such a difference to the time it takes to have questions rated by the game.

Hi Wesley,

Your request has not fallen on deaf ears. I am one of the people that stopped playing the New Question Game. I'm not really sure why, but I will play it everyday from now on, and I'll post this on my team's message board, and encourage my teammates to begin playing, if they aren't already. Hope this helps.

Dawn

I agree with Julia103 that the site navigation is inconsistent -- a few games are unavailable from the menus. In particular:

1) The New Question Game
2) My Daily Quiz
3) The 195 Day Bus Ride

All of these should be available from a dropdown menu somehow.

Yes, as reeshy says - mark those poor questions as "poor", and send corrections if you find something wrong.

Maybe something like another Champion Badge? That would give a long term goal and incentive to keep players playing over the long term. Just a thought!

Please add the Mind Melt to that list...nice to have them all in both places.

It's located below the Daily Game on the pulldown menu.

I play New Questions every day and the difficulty varies, one day I'll be asked about things I've never watched, read, or listened to. Then the next day it will be more general and easier questions. I usually rate Average, but I will rate Excellent or Poor if I think it deserves that rating.

Did somebody mention new badges? That will drive participation up!

Oh and P.S. while Mind Melt is brought up, should the NEW button on the homepage beside Mind Melt be removed, there are players who have played the game 750 times!

Oooooh a new badge - I love getting new badges. They're just like new shoes.

I love getting badges too but I don't want to see people getting badges just for rating questions - there is the danger that there are those people who will just rush through and mark them all average without even really reading them just to get the badge.

The authours spend time and effort writing these questions and they deserve them to be rated properly. (Or don't spend much time and effort and don't deserve an average!)

Maybe something to encourage people to play the game more frequantly (and hope that they will automatically rate them fairly after) rather than the emphasis on ratings.

I agree with Midget40 - I wouldn't like to see a badge solely for rating, but wouldn't be averse to one that encourages participation, but then it must be considered that if rating isn't necessary for a new badge, then many players just won't bother.

There already is a badge awarded for rating. It is the Rating Badge. It is awarded for rating (after playing) 500 quizzes. If there, shouldn't single questions get similar treatment? 500 quizzes is around 5000 questions. But since the quizzes can be taken in multiple chunks each day, That quiz rater badge can be given in the couple of months taking them time frame. A similar time frame on single questions (since we can only do 10/day) would be at around 600 questions (60 days x 10/day).
If the speed raters are in it for just the badge they'd most likely stop doing unthinking ratings once they have the badge. Every Question presented in that time frame would have the same amount of that against them so it would all average out in time.