Fun Trivia - Is It?

I have recently joined Fun Trivia and spent my first few days along with my girlfriend taking loads of movie triv quizzes, which as massive film fans we have enjoyed immensely.

After looking for a quiz on a specific movie and realising there were none available, i thought it would be "fun" to create my own.

Well how wrong was i, having read the rules and regs on creating a quiz, i put together my 10 questions and sent it off to one of the many editors.

I then get a message back from said editor with a list as long as my arm of so called mistakes. Now, i hold my hand up to some/few/many, but surely the odd missing comma or full stop could simply be rectified by the "editor"?

Truth is, i haven't been challenged on my punctuation since i was 15 or 16 years old, i'm 40 now and what with Facebook, mobile phones and posting on footie forums and such, punctuation has kind of taken a back seat and crude abbreviations have crept in to my writing.

As well as punctuation i have been pulled up on my 1.1 info, where i have been repeatedly advised to "tell us a little bit about the character". Thing is, i've done this, ok i haven't gone into massive detail, but surely this is not necessary as it is simply a post question/answer bit of trivia?

Last but not least, i wrote a question asking what state of America the movie was set and in my 1.1 i point out the actual City and state, as well as the fact that there are many references saying as much throughout the movie, but i get a message from the "editor" saying, "this does not help me understand if i got the answer wrong", what???

I recently read an admission from a very famous writer that his punctuation and grammar was "not the greatest" and a big thank you went to his editor for making sense of it all and putting right his mistakes. This is a man who earns millions of dollars selling his books, i just wanted to "have fun" writing a 10 question quiz for an online trivia website.

Sorry for any punctuation or grammatical errors, but i am not an English Professor, sadly.

My post has disappeared?

(sorry, its been moved)

Gazhammer, I do not edit in Movies, and haven't seen your quiz, so I cannot comment on most of your points. But I can say that when a first quiz is submitted with spelling/grammar/punctuation issues, I am quite likely to ask the quiz writer to address them rather than just fixing them myself. I would not send a quiz back for more work if all that needed to be done was to add a comma or two, but if there are content issues that need to be addressed, I will ask the author to make the fixes while they work on it. And if I see multiple errors of expression in each question, I will expect the author to keep working to produce something that is more nearly written in standard English. This request is primarily about helping the author produce better quizzes in the future by being aware of what is expected.

You might find it helpful to remember that we have a lot of older quizzes on the site which were written at a time when standards weren't as high as they are now,especially in terms of the inclusion of extra information. Many old quizzes have little or even no extra information, current quizzes are expected to provide more substantial information. In Literature, the stated minimum is two or three sentences, but many quizzes have more than that. Players who want to learn from the quiz will appreciate the effort you put in; others will just skip over it.

I understand what your saying, but grammar and punctuation issues(i rarely/never misspell) are very minor errors and would take literally seconds to fix.

As for the 1.1's i mention, what is more interesting...

1. "Characters name" likes to wear sharp suits and is rather egotistical. BORING

Or

2. The Director wanted "famous actors name" for the part, but he was busy with another movie, luckily for "another actor" this gave him his big break and is now somewhat of a Hollywood legend. Fun and interesting

I went for option 2, but have been told that's wrong???

Although I do edit in Movies, I won't comment on the editing of this particular quiz, as that is between you and your editor. I would also direct you to the topic in this forum entitled "Disputes with editors", which explains that this is NOT the place to air disagreements with editors.

As to the general points you have raised, while it is possible for grammar and punctuation issues to be minor errors requiring only seconds to fix, that is a question of degree. If a quiz contains far too many of such errors, these "seconds" start to add up rather quickly. Multiply that by the number of similar submissions in a popular category like Movies, which attracts more than its fair share of first time authors, and it isn't hard to imagine a large chunk of an editor's time being consumed with correcting such errors.

Since you seem to have a liking for comparisons, here's one. Which of these is the better approach?

1. Editors should make all corrections for grammar and punctuation issues and never point out these errors to quiz authors, so that they never have the opportunity to learn or improve, thereby ensuring that these errors will almost certainly be repeated by the same author in every future quiz submission, thereby necessitating more time spent by the editors correcting such errors.

Or

2. Editors DO point out systemic errors in grammar and punctuation, thereby giving authors the chance to correct these issues and produce better quiz submissions in the future.

Or even

3. Quiz authors should carefully proofread their quiz submissions for grammar and punctuation issues, which by your own admission take literally mere seconds to fix.

I would go for option 3 if I can get it, but would settle for option 2.

First off, my post has been moved, granted i may have posted it in the wrong place initially, but it has since been moved here by who i can only imagine must be one of the moderators.

Secondly, why have editors if they are not there to edit?

Thirdly, not all people are punctually or grammatically aware, as i've said, even some famous writers admit to such shortcomings.

Just saying

They do edit, as both of the previous posters other than yourself, gazhammer, are editors. L_T said she will fix minor errors on a seasoned author. Many mistakes are made on first time quizzes as some do not read the guidelines and others have substandard work submitted. I have had a few questions tweaked because they'd sound better structurally, and I've been on the quiz side for 11½ years. No one is perfect, and they are not expecting you to be. They will work with you, provided you reciprocate.

I have, twice already, next time i'll post what the editor say's and you can see for yourself.

Like Looney_tunes, I'm not a movie editor but I do agree with everything L_T and jmorrow have said. I can't speak for any of the other editors but one thing I love about editing is when a new author presents a quiz which isn't quite up to scratch and I give them some ideas on improving it. Some authors take the ball and run with it, presenting a quiz that is now four times as good as the original. It makes this editor's heart sing a little. I know that when you start writing quizzes the guidelines can seem Draconian (my first quiz was rejected because of one typo) but I have learnt from every quiz I've written and many of the quizzes I've edited. Try working with the editor a little more and perhaps you'll turn out a masterpiece. As per the quote from jmorrow, here's a link to the relevant thread.
http://www.funtrivia.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/294252/Disputes_with_editors#Post294252

Please do not do this. As jmorrow has already pointed out, this is not the proper venue for settling disputes/grievances with editors.

I think you're forgetting that this is a service provided for free to all members of the site. We accept that there are going to be authors who require a little bit more help, and one of the things that we try to do is work with these authors and help them improve so that their next submissions will not require the same errors to be fixed over and over again--it wastes your time, having to fix them, and it wastes our time, pointing them out. It would waste even more time if we didn't point them out, and fixed them ourselves, only to have to do it again the next time that author submits a quiz.

Our time should be divided equally between all members: if there is an author who is unwilling to work co-operatively with us and repeatedly wastes our time, this is problematic because it means that everyone else will have to wait longer for their submissions to be seen.

In honesty, the messages between you and your editor need to stay between yourselves. It sounds to me as if you think the editor is wrong, which is far from the truth. These editors weren't picked because they want to solely reject quizzes (however they do if the quiz's structure is substandard), but they were picked because they know what will or will not work. Some of these editors have been editing since I became a member. Talk to your editor in a private message session, and ask for help.

A lot of the editors here have been editing since well before many of us were even members. They know what works and what doesn't. Even experienced authors are not perfect, I'm sure Tizzabelle won't mind me saying that she and I worked for some time on a Brain Twist I did recently. It's not a category I often write in and she was endlessly patient with me and by working together we got it on line. Thing to bear in mind is there is a world of difference between a discussion and an argument. If you don't understand why your editor is rejecting something or wants something changed then politely ask them to explain a bit more. But whatever you do please don't publish the messages here, these should remain private between the two of you.

I'd like to present a little bit of a side of quizzes from a quiz maker and quiz player perspective.



I don't know what your question is that goes along with the interesting info you've provided, but in the interesting info of quizzes (the ones I would rate Good or Excellent) I look for info that is both interesting AND explains why the correct answer is the correct answer and/or why all the incorrect answers are incorrect. Just because you add an interesting fact does not mean that it's relevant.




Also from a quiz-playing perspective...I would much rather play a quiz that is written well than one that is full of grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes. If I see mistakes, on content or spelling/grammar/punctuation, in a quiz (especially a new one) I will often times send a correction note to the author. Writing quizzes using well-written English is not just an expectation of the editors to put quizzes online. No one wants to play a quiz that was placed online with a bunch of errors, because the questions/info would be hard to understand. People would surely rate a quiz with so many errors as "Poor" or "Very Poor". You would also get tons of correction notices from players pouring into your inbox, and no quiz author wants to open their inbox to correction notices. Also, if your quiz goes online poorly written, and players rate it badly, you are not likely to see it played many times in the future. It will slip quickly to the bottom on the page and people won't even notice it anymore, let alone play it. Quiz takers want to play well-written quizzes, and in all honesty, they deserve to get well-written quizzes from the authors.

From a quiz author perspective...It's often best for you if you treat your editors with respect. They have tons and tons of experience playing and authoring on the site and they know what will be well received and will not be well received by quiz players. If you repeatedly send poorly written quizzes that take a lot of time to edit, your quizzes will drop farther and farther down the queue, and it will take longer and longer for them to be placed online. It's also a good thing to keep in mind that FunTrivia's editors are VOLUNTEERS. This means that, unlike a magazine or book editor who is paid to edit written works, FunTrivia's editors are spending their own free time out of their own busy schedules to edit your quiz. It's not fair to them to ask them to edit your quiz down to the last punctuation mark. It is up to the author to proofread the quiz for such mistakes before it is submitted for editor review. It's much faster for you to proofread than to have to play tag with your editor, and get the quiz sent back multiple times.




I'm with Tizzabelle on this one. I recently submitted a quiz to Humanities, which seemed fine to me at the time, but it was sent back to me by looney_tunes. Two of her suggestions, were corrections that were very easily fixed, and that I must have skimmed over in the guidelines and forgot about when I was proofreading. These took me all of 2 seconds to fix myself, which is fine. Looney_tunes also sent me back a suggestion about rewriting my quiz questions so that someone less familiar with the musical could still have fun playing the quiz. I left the quiz alone for a while, trying to figure out how to reword the questions. I contacted looney_tunes to ask for suggestions, and she gave me some great feedback in return (notice this was just a note I sent, I did not resubmit the quiz at this point). I then decided that the only way to fix the problem that looney_tunes brought to my attention was to entirely reword my questions and interesting info. I also had to change some of the answer choices to fit better, and I completely changed one of the questions altogether. This took me several hours of work, but it was well worth it, and I am so much more proud of the work I did than I was on the first quiz I submitted! This quiz went online two weeks ago and got excellent reviews from the players!

An "editor"s job is not to edit your quiz the way you edit your essay, eg. spelling, grammar, punctuation. An editor is there to check content, and essentially to ensure that it is up to scratch and can get online. They do not sit in front of their computer changing spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. The author should edit their own work for spelling, grammar, etc mistakes.



So, great authors, struggling authors alike all have their moments. That's true. However, the author did not say that his editor did every minute detail and corrected all the small grammatical errors. Pointing it out and leaving it to the author IS a way of "putting right" an author's mistakes. Editors on Funtrivia are voluntary, and they are in a higher position than we authors are. They aren't here to clean up after you and fix your mistakes, they are here to correct you so you can change your mistakes and learn from them yourself.

Not having been on this site long myself, it is possible that I'm not completely clear on editors' position, but one thing is for sure, editors aren't to be expected to tidy up after you. And by "you", I mean authors.

Hi Gazhammer,

If proofreading is not a strength, have you tried pasting your quiz questions into a word document and running the spell check?

It can feel frustrating to have work returned to you but any "rejection" slips I have received have been tactful and helpful, and I think we have to view the editor's role as one of support and guidance, helping us to make better quizzes rather than making our quizzes for us.

I speak as someone who has yet to write an acceptable question, lol!

When I play a quiz, the fun is sometimes marred a little when a glaring mistake appears or the question or the added information is not as good as it could be. It's surprising how even a small typo can undermine the credibility & fun of a quiz.

A finely crafted quiz is a joy to play, I am sure you agree, and I bet the most highly rated quizzes on this site all took several attempts and some hard work before they were published. It's just par for the course, not personal.

Even the greatest writers make typos, as you say, but the greatest OF the greatest writers spend months or years re-writing their work before publication!

Good luck with your quiz.

Gazhammer--Perhaps you are not really aware of how much time it takes to review and respond to the MULTITUDE of quizzes editors receive on a regular basis. You must realize they are not only editing for free, they also have actual lives, and their sole purpose in life is not to be at the disposal of every quiz author. And speaking for myself, as both a quiz author and quiz taker, I find grammatical and usage errors highly distracting, sometimes to the point that they inhibit understanding. You obviously understand what you wish to say, but it is only through following the rules of standard English that you can be assured your readers understand, too.

I think the most important thing to remember is that a rejection from an editor is not a malicious, personal attack. Early on, I remember feeling put out by an editor's suggestion and it put me off writing for a short while, but I eventually realized that to the editors, most of us at the beginning are usernames to them; they don't know us personally, and so their judgment is based on what has been submitted, i.e. the quiz, and not who has submitted it. Their job is to uphold the excellent standard of the site, and sometimes this means giving a quiz back to the author what can feel like so many times, but ultimately I think fixing your own errors is the best way to learn, and prevents the same mistakes in the future. For the record, in that early quiz of mine, I took on board the suggestion from the editor, and the question was improved a lot and I'm happy with the overall quiz. It's not "editors vs. authors", but a team of both working to keep the site in high standard, and not at the level you can see on sites without editorial input.

As much as I would have preferred to have this conversation in private, I expect you have been waiting to hear from me.

If punctuation marks were the only thing that needed changing in your quiz, I would have indeed made the changes for you. Since the quiz had to be returned for other changes, I chose to point them out to you because the initial request to check punctuation did not yield the required changes.
Instead of assuming you were ignoring me, I interpreted (rightly as it turns out) that you were unsure of what needed changing and I chose to point this out, so that future submissions wouldn't have the same problems.
If you stop and think about it, it took me longer to try and help you than it would have done to make the changes myself. What would have taken even less time would have been for me to simply repeat that correct punctuation was required and leave it to you to figure it out. I chose to try and help.

As has been already mentioned, we are volunteers and our job is not to take a rough piece of work and polish it up for you. Yes we are here to help, but a certain level of writing skill is expected. If you continue to produce quizzes that have that many errors (as has also already been pointed out) your submissions will slip further and further down the queue.

In regards to the I.I., in the first Correction Note I asked that there be at least some I.I. that supports the answer. For most questions you did this, but for a couple you did not. If you also want to add something other interesting fact, you are certainly welcome to include that.
Experience has shown us that questions that do not have the answer supported are ones that get the most Correction Notes. If a player answers incorrectly and is convinced that they are right, these few, sometimes boring, words might be enough for them to think 'oh right, now I remember' and not fire off a Correction Note which you would then have to deal with.

In future, please approach individual editors with complaints and issues and not go public with them. This is the first indication I had that you were unhappy with the process.
If you are not satisfied with trying to work it out, then do take it to an administrator or even the head editor of the category.

skunkee - I wanted to converse privately, but your correction message disappeared when i sent my corrected quiz back.

I have since found(i'm new here and still learning what's what) that i can go back to your message via the "my quizzes - edit) option.

I shall now try to contact you via the "reply to player who sent note" option.

As another editor, I just want to add a word about the editors' role here at FT.

gazhammer is correct that if he were submitting to a publishing house, it would be the job of the copy editor to find and correct all the little errors that creep into a written work. We don't have copy editors here - authors are expected to do their own proof reading.

Our job is instead to make sure that submitted quizzes meet the standards that have evolved over time here, and to give guidance to authors about what works and what doesn't work in an online quiz. Rejection notes are not personal, and everyone gets them. I'd estimate that only a couple hundred of the thousands of authors here have had their first quiz accepted with no revisions requested.

It's a little disconcerting, I know, for an adult to have his/her work critiqued as if it were the ninth grade all over again. Please remember though that we don't know you. We don't know if you are a successful professional or a kid of thirteen, if your errors are simple carelessness or an unfamiliarity with standard English.

We won't write your quiz for you, but our mailboxes are always open - please always feel free to discuss any aspect of your quiz with your editor.

Edit: not an editor here, just expressing opinion as a happy camper in Lake Fun Trivia Day Care.

When I come across missing or misplaced punctuation It makes me have to re-read several times what has been presented and then make a guess at what the intended statement was meant to express. In untimed quizzes this isn't a problem you think? Well, just as the editors are volunteering their time (and sometimes fail to catch those errant commas) and their private time is valuable, so too do I consider my time valuable. I would appreciate not having to go over questions several times (my eyes start to hurt trying to read the meaning).
For your questions I would consider what has been said about proofing and using a spell check in a word processor to add greatly to your success as an author (who cares what some millionaire author gets by with, he's not here). And as to Interesting Info (I/I, please not I.I), try to provide what the category editor has requested even if you don't think it's that good. They handle the category and know what sells. Heed their advice or someone will knock on your door in the middle of the...just kidding there. Your example of the second choice actor getting the role sounds an awful lot like a copied statement not even humorized or prettied up in any way. Why did the first actor turn it down? What did the second choice bring to the role? Making a statement about going on to stardom is a celebrity I/I not a Movie one (imho).

Just a quick two points:

1. The quote "give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he can eat for the rest of his life" is true here. I'd rather teach the authors to use proper grammar, the differences between its/it's, and how to properly use question marks so the rest of the author's quizzes down the line will need little or no editing in the future. If I just make the changes myself, how is the author expected to learn?

2. You can always see the notes attached to your quiz if you click on the title of the quiz and then on the 'quiz notes' link. That way you can see the editor's name and quickly send the editor a note as well.

Does that go for the difference between says and say's?

Also your/you're, plural versus possessive forms, and all the rest of the apostrophe catastrophe.

I would echo everything that my fellow editors have contributed to this thread and add just one thing more. It is always important to remember that authors and editors work as a team to achieve the same objective. And that objective is to produce a quality quiz for players to enjoy. Getting there may not always be fun for the author, it may not always be fun for the editor but hopefully the final outcome is that the quiz is fun for the player to play.

Having strict guidelines and enforcing them is part of achieving that final outcome.

Right, here we go then, skunkee has handed the baton on to jmorrow, who's first sentence is to inform me that the words "movie" and "starring" do not require capitalization.

Guess what, i searched my entire quiz and not one of these words are capitalized???

Is everyone STILL ready to jump on the editor bandwagon and tell ME that I'M the one in the wrong?

I think i'll just stick to ANSWERING questions, at least this part IS fun.

I've now played hundreds of quizzes here and found countless spelling mistakes and poorly written questions, has this taken the fun out of it? quite simply, NO!

Since you persist in airing this in a public forum, even after having your attention drawn to the forum's policies on disputes with editors, I will provide my answer in this forum.

As has been explained to you at least twice now by two different editors, the words "movie" and "starring" that you have incorrectly capitalized are found in your quiz introduction. Last I checked, the quiz introduction forms part of the "entire quiz".

I will also add that "fun" is a completely subjective thing. One man's meat and all that.

Seems that we need to add the whole who's/whose confusion to that list of conundrums.

Just saying.

Jmorrow mentions where in your quiz these words are capitalized in his note to you. :s




I hope you've been sending corrections in for these.



A great deal of the corrections noted on your quiz are meticulously itemized for the reasons that previous editors have already stated-- we're trying to set you up to improve for future submissions and to adapt to the site's guidelines. I'm not trying to sound argumentative or confrontational or anything, but the tools have been provided, question by question, in an attempt to make your quiz (a) more palatable based on the ins, outs, and what-works of hundreds (if not thousands) of submissions we've seen go online in the past and (b) up to snuff with the expectations of grammar rules and the site/category guidelines.

Quiz-writing is not for everybody (as much as we love to see people joining in); we do expect a bit of back-and-forth in the beginning but effort needs to be put in from both sides-- cooperatively-- if we wish to see quizzes go online.

Editors are very much willing to help-- Jmorrow would not have taken over the editing process if this wasn't true-- but we can't write authors' quizzes for them. We're glad to help improve your quiz and correct surface errors (provided there aren't an overwhelming amount) but what each editor puts into another author's quiz is completely up to them. We get a good number of submissions in a day and the editors work on their own real-life free time to see them online; to make all the fixes to one quiz could take a great deal of time, and that would be unfair to the other authors waiting in line.

...that and it wouldn't really be the original author's work by the end.


This thread should probably be closed.

If your/you're/you are attempting to embarrass me by pointing out my English language shortcomings feel free.

Had i been an English Professor or professional writer, i may well have bitten, but as i have not studied the English language since i was 15/16(i'm now 40) and earn a living as a Roofer, it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

That was not my intention; I was simply responding in the forum you had chosen. I am perfectly prepared to proceed with the editing of your quiz through direct messages, where there should be zero opportunities for embarrassment, since there will be no audience. The choice is yours.

If you still feel that you are being victimized here, I will say this. You were the one who started this thread with what can only be described as an open attempt at ridiculing your previous editor's efforts in helping you with your quiz. If I caused any offense with my words, I sincerely apologize. However, I have always been a firm believer in the following saying: What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

That said, I remain willing to work with you on your quiz. As has already been mentioned in this thread, the author-editor dynamic is a cooperative one, and it is up to you to decide what you would like to have reciprocated in this relationship - cooperation, or something else entirely.

I have sent you an updated and hopefully finished quiz, if you feel it is still not worthy of the site i will gladly bin it.

Cheers

I’ve had about three or four quizzes rejected by the editors and I'm an English teacher, so it really doesn't matter what your occupation is. If you don't create a quiz that is up to standard, then it isn't going to be accepted. I think many funtrivia members have had this happen to them.

The editors are here to help. They want to see great quizzes go online so we can all enjoy them. They certainly don't go out of their way to cause problems so that quizzes don't go online.

I suggest instead of carrying on in this thread, you go back and fix your quiz up. If you don’t want to do that, then get over it and keep playing your games and try to have some fun. That’s what this site is all about after all, I think that’s why it’s called funtrivia

Eventually I created another quiz and it was accepted with only one correction, then a week later I had another accepted with no corrections. I’m currently writing my third quiz, and, if it gets sent back, then there is a reason.

Why don’t you join a team and get to know the members, and then get one of them to proofread your quiz? A fresh set of eyeballs is always good

This page:
http://www.funtrivia.com/ql.cfm?cat=3533
either linked here, or accessed through the Home Page Left side Bar Quizzes - General Knowlege - Index - Quiz Authoring Guidelines, is a valuable source of information about all the little bits and pieces that need to be considered, or are FT's rules for ambiguous situations. I know I found the subcategories listed at the bottom of the page helpful in understanding the rules (they also serve to form a basis for Corrective Notes). Seeing what the rules are can help explain why a certain request was made sometimes. Please don't give up.

Thank you for sharing that link, mehaul, as that page can certainly be useful for new and experienced authors alike. Keep in mind, however, that this list isn't be-all and end-all. Many of the site's Quiz Creation Guidelines are posted here, but there are also category guidelines and there may be something that doesn't work in a quiz that's not listed anywhere and it's only the editors' previous experience with a similar situation that shows it is a problem at all.

We're not trying to harass anyone with quiz rejections, we just have a lot of experience with what does and does not work. And honestly, which would you rather have? One rejection note now from an editor who points out how the problem can be fixed (or wording improved, etc.), or tens of correction notes later on from players who are confused/annoyed because of an issue that might have been taken care of earlier on?

Doesn't matter what your occupation is, nor does it after how many quizzes you already have online. I have383 online and still get them. Rumor has it that Kyle, with 1400, also gets the rare correction note.

Apostrophe catastrophe. Love that phrase. :P

I think jmorrow and gazhammer can take this this up in private from here on.