Pretty new here, especially with authoring quizzes and I was wondering how you create a photo quiz?
I can't seem to find any option for it.

Right now, the ability is open to a selection of authors - I think it's only editors just now, but someone will correct me, if not.

Ah ok, thanks for the help

Reeshy is correct; only the editors have the ability.

Someday, it will perhaps be open to a very small percentage of exceptional authors, but right now, only editors have the ability.

This has been the situation since I joined nearly two years ago. Are the rest of us ever going to get the opportunity to put together photo quizzes?

I know that there are copyright concerns, but we are all supposed to be intelligent people here in fun trivia and I doubt that anyone would be foolish enough to try to 'sneak' an image past the editors.

While we're at it, can someone tell me how long it is before members are given the ability to write crosswords as well?

As much as we do keep saying 'soon, it will happen', that's all we can keep saying. It will happen, no matter how limited it will be for authors (by which I mean it will not be open to everybody). Terry has said to me (very, very recently) that it's on his list.



Members are given the ability to write crosswords; they've been able to for years. We just reserve the ability for our more prolific authors. Crosswords are much harder to create, edit, and place online than quizzes in my opinion.

The copyright issues are complicated - I'll freely admit that even though I've been in on every discussion on the matter, I'm not 100% sure I understand it completely. It's not a question of trusting the authors, but more one of understanding it thoroughly ourselves, and being able to communicate it properly.

INFINITELY more difficult. Even though I have the ability, and LOVE writing crosswords, it is very difficult. I currently have a celebrities crossword in the works (I'm working on having a crossword in every category), but I keep pushing it off because it's so difficult to make. To make clues with as few of words as possible, make sure to make a clue for EVERYTHING, limit the number of two letter words you use, but also making sure you use as much of the board as possible, and crossing at least 50% of every word used, that's difficult! Sometimes I rely on those 2 letter words, but you can't have too many.


Anyway, long paragraph short, crosswords are tough. :P There are almost always corrections on my crosswords, even for little things like missing a small clue or whatnot.

It is certainly not a matter of thinking that authors will try to sneak things through, but rather that it is incredibly easy to select an image that does not have exactly the right licensing for us to use. Several of my earliest attempts used images that I thought looked like one of the right licenses, but which were in fact not. And I thought I knew what I was doing! A correction note saying you have to replace some or all of your images is even more devastating than one about the written content, as it can mean needing to rewrite substantial portions of the quiz as well as finding a new image. (There speaks bitter experience.)

I am still struggling to complete my first attempt - the technical requirements make a crossword MUCH harder than a quiz!

Is copyright really that difficult?

If I have a PC full of pictures that I have taken myself, then I own the copyright for those pictures. If I use them in a fun trivia quiz then, surely, the copyright or at least the authority to use those pictures transfers to fun trivia. As I understand from the site rules, once I author a quiz and have it published here, that quiz then becomes the property of fun trivia. I would imagine that the same would apply to any images contained therein?

Or am I being to simplistic?

Yes, but people can also grab pictures from the internet - we have no way of knowing the pictures were actually yours to begin with.

Crosswords are also much harder to edit - a proven track record of ability and willingness to understand and follow guidelines and instructions is essential.

And you have to be willing to receive a correction that may change the ENTIRE puzzle. Lol. Has happened to me before.

Sisterseagull, you may take a picture of a construction site. That picture is yours. The image of the building belongs to the builder and architect. You can put the picture on a shelf or in a scrapbook but you cannot transfer the image to a third party. Unless of course you have the written permission from the people in the photo and the architect releasing you from copyright. It's probably getting the permission from those in the photo, workers in this case, who are a captive subject at the time of imaging and could have been approached for permission to reproduce their likenesses that limits reproduction abilities, unlike a crowd at a carnival where no expectation of privacy is expected. If you have a picture of a tree, has the tree's owner given you permission to transfer an image of his property? About the only image you control without running into legal ramifications involving (th)ose/em/at is when you take a picture of a mirror.
There are some image search engines being developed that will search the web for duplicate, enlarged and photoshopped images. When that software becomes available at a reasonable cost, I'm sure it'll make photo-quiz work here much easier and open to more authors.
Also, the laws vary from country to country (though an international equalizing effort is underway). Since FT is an international site, it needs to be sure that what was imaged in country A and used by an author from country B doesn't leave the site open to actions by someone in country C.



EDIT: But while the attention is here, think about video quizzes! The rights to use music or other themed motion videos as question parts may be easier to obtain than permission to use static photos, since that industry has set up extensive rights awareness/usage language and abilities. If it's gotten on youtube it ought to be okay to use!

If this were the case, most of the images I have in photo quizzes now would not be usable. That's similar to saying 'if I post an image of the Empire State Building, I must get written consent from the owners'. That's not really how it works.

There are a lot of different rules and licenses to be looked at while working out the kinks of the photo quiz process and a lot of them are not specific enough to understand at first glance. Some of the grey areas are reasons why we're not ready to open them up yet.

If a picture of the Empire State Building is posted for a quiz, we probably won't get the NY State Tourism Board sending angry emails. However, if we pull an image of the Empire State Building from an image bank or a Google Image Search we can't use it unless it's of a specific license. You may notice that most of the images in photo quizzes are only from certain sites. This is because we are only allowed public domain photos, personal images (most of which our editors tried early on, such as my Cuba quiz), and images under a very specific Creative Commons license (Attribution). Even this Attribution license has its own grey areas. We can not post a 'no-derivitaves' licensed photo. We can not post a 'non-commercial' photo because we offer gold membership. We are not allowed to post an 'Attibution-Sharealike' image. And on and on and on.

SisterSeagull would very likely be able to use his own images when we launch this thing provided they don't contain copyrighted images (eg. consumer products, mascots, etc.) and they don't include portraits of people (for example, he shouldn't be posting his family photograph in front of the Statue of Liberty). SisterSeagull does need to know that once the pictures have been posted to FunTrivia, we are to take them under the 'our property' heading, just as we would for quizzes and crosswords. This makes it all the more important; we can't accept photos which would cause problems. If they slip past the radar, we could be held accountable.

In the case of personal photos, we really do have to take the person's word for it; my Cuba photos were all taken by my Nikon on vacation a couple years back. People knew I went; in the template I noted that they were mine. Same with the stick figures quizzes. I drew them and uploaded them.

But you know-- grey areas.




They already do, but this isn't the concern-- the concern is licensing.




When things cost more money, it doesn't make it easier or more open for a fair number of us.




That's not really correct. Videos get pulled from there all the time by major companies. Music is even worse. The fear of piracy and copying for videos is astounding and there's a reason why so many major TV networks show streams of their shows online (on their websites) as opposed to on sites like YouTube. Further, just because someone posts their videos to YouTube doesn't make it yours to use for derivative works. For critique, perhaps. For a site that offers gold membership for a price, absolutely not.


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Photo quizzes will come. The editors do want to see what some of our players can do with them (we know the ideas are out there). We can not, however, dive headlong into them. It does seem like time is dragging on it (and it may be) but it's a pretty big venture; no site on the internet would offer a trivia experience like we do (they don't now). We need to be 100% ready and we just don't seem to be.

It is, however, on Terry's list. As has already been said.