The Rating badge is also only for gold members, as regular members cannot play more than 100 quizzes. The New Question Game can be played by anyone, and a lot (but by no means all) of those non-golds may rate a question poorly just for the sake of obtaining a badge.

I don't think rating alone should do the trick - I just think it should be another prerequisite to the badge that you don't skip that step. That's why I suggested the version based on a moderate score (that at least requires trying) and then rating.

So, a badge seems warranted. And, as Dave says, its issuance should show some responsibility to the site, which paying members are want to do, implying it should be a gold member badge.

The submission of new questions is available to all members, as is the playing of the New Question game. I think that should a badge be awarded, then it should be available to all, and not just gold members! That would be like saying 'We want your questions, but you aint getting a rating badge'. That's just 'not cricket'!

Is a breakdown on membership status of NQG submitters available? Then there's the aspect of some who were gold when submitted but were regular when the Q was rated and vice versa. Judging from the presence of avatars on the "Thank you for rating and thank these folk for submitting the Qs" page, it used to be almost all Golds doing the submissions but lately it's getting near to fifty-fifty with the edge to the golds (and some golds keep a bag as an avatar which shows as a regular/no avatar on that page).

edit: Going by the accepted Q towards the QQ badges list, it is easily 2/3rds gold doing the submissions and again the non golds are some lapsed golds and some who will be golds.

Any badge that we make with the express purpose to increase NQG participation would obviously have to be for all members. Restricting it to Golds (and thus not extending the extra motivation to the regulars) would undermine the very reason to make it in the first place!

Not sayin ye nor nay on that, but I would like to clarify an earlier presentaion in a post that there is a badge already for golds in the game (heck I'll even grant that it's an open badge but it was stated there's only one). But here's the state of the game regarding badges. There are three available. Open to all. They are for 50 accepted Qs, 50 scored/rated highly Qs and for 100 scored rated highly Qs. Why can't one be for gold members? We're doing most of the writing and ranking.

Edit: Wesley, you stated there were 700 playing the game each day? How many are golds? How many ranking inputs are generated each day? I'll wager a thousand angstroms that the number of golds is close to the number of rankings each day. In light of three badges already for anybody, I think the number of rankings being performed would increase with a gold badge offered. Heck, it might lead to a few new memberships.

Edit 2: Think of the Qs as Guild constitution/contract items or amendments. Anyone can write one, even non guild members. It goes to committee for a decision on merit (editors). If accepted, it then goes before the whole guild (in this case the paid membership edit: okay and some temporary visitors allowed to take part) for ratification. Why not give those guild members a token to show they voted? It doesn't go to the general public to decide what the guild should contain (and is accepted ultimately with the King's permission, of course).

I think some sort of incentive may be needed, as others have suggested.

I must admit that I haven't been as good about playing this recently. And I think the reason is that it actually takes quite a long time to go through the process of rating each question.

To do it properly, you do need to re-read each one, think about its difficulty, interest, quality of writing, whether the interesting information is interesting and/or helpful, whether you have seen the question before...and any other factors specific to the question. And by the time you have done this for each question, it feels like a lot of work.

OK, you only have to do it once a day, and out of the total amount of time our regular players spend on FT it isn't very much, but it still feels like a bit more effort than is justified by what you get out of it.

Does anyone else feel the same, or similar?

Yes, stedman.

If I don't feel I can be objective; I don't rate. It goes for quizzes as well. There's a fine line between good, bad and average, but I do use all 3 of them. There are questions you ask like... "This is interesting, but it's way too obscure" or "I like the rest of the question, but the answer choices were too close".. and so on. Sometimes I don't have the mental focus to be asking all of those questions or read properly, so I don't rate then.

I don't know about a badge. It will give you the quantity... but at the cost of quality ratings. I think. Points don't motivate me, but perhaps incrementing the points might motivate others.

Yes, adding a new badge would solve the problem... For a month of so. Then all the powerhouse players will again drop the game and never return until a new badge is available to them.



4. If you don't know the answer, and the answers are all numbers, always choose the second highest number. It is almost always the correct answer.


Of course, upon research, I have discovered that is incorrect. Sigh. The answer is either 1 or 2. I do not know the exact number (as mentioned, how would you?), but I did find research that during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only 10 members were given the medal, 3 of which were alive upon receiving it. So it stands to reason that there couldn't be 4 there during the withdrawal of the last coalition.... It has to be 1 or 2.

In any case, I completely agree that this question is far too difficult and should not be in the game. Sigh. Even Google couldn't find the answer.


Also, I, too would like to tell Wesley that his post has made me decide to start playing the game as often as I can. As soon as I finish checking the forums, I will go play the new question game. I am also on the authoring end, and I realize there is a need for more players. I had two questions submitted and waiting for what seemed like an eternity (it seemed so long because I only needed one more to be rated for a badge, and two were in the line for months...)

I will begin playing the game as often as possible.


The game also used to run every 6 hours, because we had so many submissions... Maybe we could put it on the same rotation as Global Challenge for a while; two games a day, 12 hours each? Twice as many players (the regulars would surely play both games a day) would rid us of that nasty queue quite quickly. Part of the reason I do not often write the questions is due to the long queue, so this would be greatly appreciated.

Actually, Salami, I think you were more or less right. I believe there were four given for service in the Iraq War. So, if that is really what the question asked, your system worked. The dicey part is in the wording of the question. Because more awards were given during that time period, just not for service in Iraq.

I think the number of awards GIVEN was not what was being asked... But how many were present at that particular ceremony on December 15. Since most who receive the medal of honor were not alive, they were therefore not present. Since only 3 were actually still alive, there could not possibly have been 4 present.

I think this is definitely a question deserving a correction note, should we ever come across it again. We are all clearly reading it in completely different ways.... And no matter which way we read it in, it is an impossible question that is unanswerable.

Or implement those bronze/silver/gold upgrades and have something that the powerhouses can spend years on without a level inflation issue - most of them are doing it for the shinies, not the three-digit number

I will ask this again, why not just make the ratings a requirement for your score counting? No badge needed, and if you want the team points, you will rate the questions.

Being forced to rate would probably only decrease participation among those who already play. Remember that NQG gets two numbers - goodness and difficulty and those who don't rate still contribute to difficulty scores. By forcing them, we'd lose those.

Don't force but provide incentives

Regarding the question about Medals of Honor awarded 'due' to the Iraq war,
this table is from the Wikipedia article on the subject. I didn't think the answer was there until I noticed that the table's right side was shy a bottom entry. This made me realize the column was chopped halfway down and made into a four column table instead of a two. If you read across to the right from Iraq War, you will see a 4. The table also progresses through time by going left to right, down, left to right, down, etc.

From Wikipedia, Medal of Honor:


from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor

This following info is from a linked article "List of Medal of Honor Recipients" indicating that it is the Department of Veterans' Affairs that is the keeper of the list:


(Sorry Wes, the bracket'code' didn't work ideally. Had to insert spacers for alignment. Will be bringing body of knowledge in for some body work.)

I consider "New Question" to be the most important game I play on here each day and my civic duty to play (just like voting in elections). Any score I get in the game is irrelevant, it's all about the ratings.

I have a simple rating system:
Good - "I should have known that" or "Gee, I wish I'd known that"
Poor - "May the brain cells I just wasted reading this be the first to die on my next visit to the bar"
Average - everything else

In addition, any question which requires viewing a SPECIFIC episode of a tv series, or about a minute detail of a book or movie gets an AUTOMATIC Poor (whether I know the answer or not). I only Google to make sure I miss the Poor questions and avoid accidentally getting them right.

59 guys during the Boxer Rebellion?! I had no idea!

Why would you purposefully ensure you get the answer wrong? This will just skew the % correct because you didn't like the question, but the ratings are for you to say whether you liked the question or not.

Of course these obscure questions will have enough players googling it for the RIGHT answer, so he's most likely not causing any damage with it. It's a rather unusual way of expressing disdain, but probably not one to be overly concerned about.

True enough! I just found it strange.

Actually, I think the best way to make this game more of a test of knowledge and eliminate the incentive to do research (which skews the results) would be to just give everyone the same number of points if they play and rate the game. Something like the International games where time and getting the questions wrong doesn't matter. There would probably have to be a minimum time for results to count (to keep people from just clicking through and not reading the questions). And the Mixed game could take this game's place as far as "Team of the Year".

Maybe we could have both - the main game with a certain level of competitiveness and a second one where interested players can play an extra 10 or 20 questions per day in Flash game mode (like the system-compiled quizzes) for some points with the majority of the score coming from just playing and rating and just a token amount for actually getting them right. Prerequisite to play that one would be to have played the NQG set already (so that the system would know which set NOT to give to the player).

The link to start that could be right at the bottom of the "thanks for your ratings" page with a "Want to play more new questions?" teaser.

Me too. I figure it's fair to have a question that assumes, say, that we know that Sheldon and Leonard are characters in "Big Bang Theory" but not a question asking what they did in a specific show.

My feeling is that to encourage rating quizzes or questions for a bonus becomes very problemetic for the reasons mentioned above. Would there be a way to give additional weight to those that have rated quizzes and questions over time? I do not even feel the weight criteria formula needs to be public. Just a thought.

I play the New Question Game everyday and always rate the questions. Many questions are absolutely great, a few are a bit "ho hum".

If people have gone out of their way to create questions, then at least we can show our support for this achievement by playing the game and rating the questions.

I really can't understand why people aren't playing this game, it's terrific

I play the game everyday too. I also take rating the questions seriously but I do wish we could have 4 catagories instead of 3.

I wont rate any 'poor' unless they're really bad but I also wont rate any 'good' unless they're really good which leaves a whole heap stuck in 'average'.

I would like to see an 'excellant' in there so I could reserve that for those really special questions but it would leave me more room to differentiate between all those stuck in my 'average' catagory of which some are very ho-hum (but people have put the effort in) to my quite good (but don't reach the level of those I put in my highest catagory).

I also think there is something not quite right about needing a certain percentage of people to get it right to be indicative of a 'worthy' question.

Surely with trivia the really important issue with a question is not who gets it right the first time they play it but who gets it right the SECOND time they do. This indicates that it taught us something and that that something was interesting enough for us to remember. That to me is a GREAT question.

I think that the point of needing a certain percentage of correct answers is to gauge where the question can fit into some of the hourly games. If a question has a large percentage of correct answers and a reasonably high rating it is suitable for the Easy Hourly (Piece of Cake) game, for example.

Most people who play that game regularly must have noticed that the question pool for some categories is woefully limited.

Nail on the head.

My understanding is that highly rated questions ("Good" ones) that are quite difficult do get used, just in different games. They're not eligible for the QQ badge, because the purpose of that badge is to encourage questions of moderate difficulty.