Subject: History of Fun Trivia
Posted by: bernie73
Date: Jun 26 20
In the last few days, I have looking at the bits and pieces of history of FunTrivia that I've been able to glean from old forum posts. This led me to think that there's a lot of that history on the site and in a few off site locations and in the brains of the long-time (and sometimes not so long-time) members, but its not gathered in one place. As time goes on, and members leave the site or pass away, that history will slowly become lost. Maybe not the highest priority, but that information may be of interest to members in the future. Perhaps there might be interest in creating some sort of database or single thread with this information in various categories. Some of the questions that might be answered include:
Who wrote the first standard-format quiz and what was it about?
Who wrote the first photo quiz and what was it about?
Who wrote the first matching quiz and what was it about?
When and why were five-question quizzes phased out?
How did single questions develop and is there a connection to the end of five-question quizzes?
When and why did interesting information become required?
How did the various hourly and daily games develop? How did they change over time?
How and why did retired daily and hourly games become retired?
How did the badges develop over time? Have some been retired? Have requirements changed for some of them?
Who wrote the first crossword puzzle and what was it about?
How did gold membership develop over time?
How did the forums and board develop? [I think the oldest boards are older than most/all of the games and may be older than the quizzes themselves.]
This is by no means a comprehensive list, but simply examples of questions.
Any thoughts on this?
Posted by: bernie73
Date: Jun 26 20
In the last few days, I have looking at the bits and pieces of history of FunTrivia that I've been able to glean from old forum posts. This led me to think that there's a lot of that history on the site and in a few off site locations and in the brains of the long-time (and sometimes not so long-time) members, but its not gathered in one place. As time goes on, and members leave the site or pass away, that history will slowly become lost. Maybe not the highest priority, but that information may be of interest to members in the future. Perhaps there might be interest in creating some sort of database or single thread with this information in various categories. Some of the questions that might be answered include:
Who wrote the first standard-format quiz and what was it about?
Who wrote the first photo quiz and what was it about?
Who wrote the first matching quiz and what was it about?
When and why were five-question quizzes phased out?
How did single questions develop and is there a connection to the end of five-question quizzes?
When and why did interesting information become required?
How did the various hourly and daily games develop? How did they change over time?
How and why did retired daily and hourly games become retired?
How did the badges develop over time? Have some been retired? Have requirements changed for some of them?
Who wrote the first crossword puzzle and what was it about?
How did gold membership develop over time?
How did the forums and board develop? [I think the oldest boards are older than most/all of the games and may be older than the quizzes themselves.]
This is by no means a comprehensive list, but simply examples of questions.
Any thoughts on this?
56 replies. On page 1 of 3 pages. 1 2 3
FatherSteve 
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I think this is a scathingly brilliant idea which is absolutely worth the pursuit. I wonder about the questions you raise and many many more. One small impediment to such a work is the chosen anonymity of members. There seems to be some fervency surrounding the preservation of that anonymity which, I suspect, is predicated upon some bad experience in the distant past. If my hunch is correct, there may be push back on anything which might tend to reopen elder wounds. I think there also might be some statistical information, perhaps in Terry's possession, which would be interesting such as how many new people joined each year, how have the number of gold memberships grown or waned, that sort of thing. If this notion catches the fancy of any of the players who read this forum, it might make sense to raise it on the other fora, as well. Reply #1. Jun 26 20, 11:59 AM |
flopsymopsy
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The first quiz was in the General category, it was called "Trivia Quiz", and it was written by Terry. It's offline now so you can't play it but it went online on 19 February 2000, so over twenty years ago. However, the site is older than that; the Archive for Useless Facts and Trivia was launched in 1995 and was indexed in the same year by Yahoo! The site got its own domain as FunTrivia.com in 1999 - there are players on FT who have been registered ever since then. Reply #2. Jun 26 20, 1:05 PM |
agony
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I know one of these. There is no connection between the end of five Q quizzes, and single questions. The two things were never discussed together or linked in any way. Single questions were, as I recall, Terry's idea, while the editors decided we didn't want any more five question quizzes because they were almost always terrible. They were almost invariably chosen only by authors who wanted to find the easiest possible path to getting a quiz online, which is not a good indication of quiz quality. Reply #3. Jun 26 20, 1:06 PM |
MiraJane
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Terry created the first two match quizzes. Both were in the History category. Reply #4. Jun 26 20, 1:24 PM |
bernie73
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Wow, plenty of interesting so far. There are so many more questions, but ot seems overwhelming to ask them all at once. I thought that posting questions here might encourage some members to tell their own stories, which would make privacy issues less of a concern. I started with one forum so as not to spam this post. I give permission for any member to cut and paste the my full initial post on this thread in any FunTrivia forum or foray deemed appropriate. Reply #5. Jun 26 20, 3:03 PM |
| agony
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This next thing I'm pretty sure is true, but I might be forgetting something - if anyone remembers differently, please correct me. As I recall, the Quizmakers Guild was the first to write team quizzes (well before there was a special template for them) and as far as I can make out, it was this one. https://www.funtrivia.com/trivia-quiz/General/Guild-Potpourri-192376.html The Guild didn't think to start keeping a list until ten years on, that's why some of this is a little hazy. Reply #6. Jun 26 20, 3:29 PM |
namrewsna
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(( "How did the badges develop over time? Have some been retired? Have requirements changed for some of them?" )) The board brass would have to answer the first part of this. Some have been retired. Some were designed as limited time seasonal specials or "race to the finish" style limited engagements. Others just became obsolete as the nature of the site evolved. At the bottom of the challenges page is a "retired" section of badges. Requirements have changed on many and for various reasons. If this idea takes flight you could set up an entire thread to start listing them. One common motivator for such change was when the tiering system was introduced. It was retrofitted onto many long standing badges and to do so sometimes forced change on the the basic (tier 0) requirement. For example, the endurance badge used to be offered only to the highest scorer for the entire day. Reply #7. Jun 26 20, 3:47 PM |
| bernie73
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Some of what I've read about quiz writing in the year 2000. (Long time members/moderators/editors, please tell me if I'm interpreting the evidence incorrectly.) Quiz writing began in February 2020. Terry's quiz (#1) was the first online. The lowest number quiz you can currently access is #4. For the first few weeks there were no editors--members just published quizzes as wished. There were quiz correction notes near the beginning, but I'm not certain how they were sent or collected. Interesting Information was encouraged from the near the beginning but not required. What was included in II also changed. I got the impression that simply posting a URL for where you found information was satisfactory. The first editors working with authors were chosen about one month after quizzes began being published. The 20 root (top level) categories weren't all established at the same time. Entertainment was initially a "super-category" that included Movies and Television. Other categories would later combine: Environment, Education, Business, and Politics were categories. Most categories had single editors and some editors covered several quizzes. A larger number of quizzes were deleted than in more recent years. Some of this was by quiz writers removing individual quizzes and some came from editors deleting templates when authors refused (after several requests) to make corrections/changes. Also, I have the impression that authors were often deleting templates rather than clearing and reusing them. That could be part of why there are about 150,000 quizzes on the site but the template numbers are over 400,000. In general, the quality of quizzes was lower than at present. Even in 2000 there were several authors who were producing excellent quizzes. However, some of those early quizzes had a large number of spelling and grammar, factual errors unknowable questions (what color is my hair), and "obnoxious" phrasing: "this is an easy one...It is obviously..." The quiz authoring forum had over a dozen threads talking about criteria for quiz writing. The editors were "fixing" individual quizzes as they saw correction notices on them. With that, it was an exciting time az the number of quizzes was exploding. I've heard that Terry initially hoped for 50 or so quizzes a week. Instead, higher thresholds were reached quickly: May 8--2,000 quizzes, Mayc25--2,500 quizzes, June 6--3,000 quizzes, June 22--4,000 quizzes, Sept. 5--6,000+ quizzes. Has there ever been another five month period when 6,000 quizzes went online? Two complaints that were voiced about quizzes in 2000 were the same as 2020. Some people felt too many quizzes were US-focused (including ones that were presented as more general. Also, some complained that too many quizzes were about music, movies, and television. There also seemed to be some blurring of lines between quizzes and games, though that may have been the opinion of individual members rather than official. Reply #8. Jun 26 20, 5:36 PM |
| agony
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We track quizzes online by quarters (three months) so I can't answer that question, but I can say that there have been several quarters where more than 3000 quizzes went online. I started editing in August of 2003, and we were still allowing a few questions per quiz with no info at that time. Within quite a short time after I started, say about six months, we decided to insist on info for every question. Brain Teasers took a few years longer to mandate info. Reply #9. Jun 26 20, 7:04 PM |
| bernie73
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In several places on the website I've seen the screen captures of FunTrivia held in the Wayback Machine, but today I managed to find the Wayback Machine's captures of "The Archive of Useless Facts", the predecessor to FunTrivia's Archive https://web.archive.org/web/19980515000000*/http://trivia.lsds.com/ This pushes it back to 1998. Reply #10. Jul 14 20, 10:07 AM |
rossian
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The biggest change that I'm aware of is in Global Challenge. When I started playing, there were four sets each day, changing every six hours., so most players could play only three of the sets. The first time I reached Immortal, I had to stay up until 2 a.m. UK time to play - if I hadn't, I'd have missed out and been overtaken by the players behind me. Then it changed to three sets, which meant more people could play all of them before the current arrangement of only two sets. It's still a slog, but rather easier than it used to be. I'm not bitter - I only think about the difficulty of staying up until the early hours a couple of times a day now! Reply #11. Jul 15 20, 4:27 AM |
gogetem
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I have been reading this topic and I was wondering if the site actually started earlier than 1999. I was thinking that I first signed up before then when it had just started. Maybe it's just my bad memory. Reply #12. Jul 21 20, 5:27 PM |
kyleisalive
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Re: "Terry created the first two match quizzes. Both were in the History category." This...isn't true. Terry has two Match Quizzes, but one's in Geography and the other is in World. Besides that, I think I was first in the queue with a quiz in General. Terry put it online. Reply #13. Jul 21 20, 5:40 PM |
| kyleisalive
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Re: "That could be part of why there are about 150,000 quizzes on the site but the template numbers are over 400,000." Well besides deletion, there are a lot of templates that were created and not even touched (still are). For a long time, only a small fraction of quizzes ever made it online. These days that number has changed significantly, especially with more people writing in quarantine. Reply #14. Jul 21 20, 5:58 PM |
| kyleisalive
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Re: "The 20 root (top level) categories weren't all established at the same time." Video Games was part of Seasonal. Reply #15. Jul 21 20, 6:02 PM |
| DireWolf74
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Got my Atari 7800 at Christmas like everyone else. Is that considered seasonal? :-) Reply #16. Jul 21 20, 6:47 PM |
| bernie73
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Thanks to everyone that has responded. I have started a virtual blog to share some of the information that I have found so far. Feel free to take a look and let me know where I'm right and wrong. https://www.funtrivia.com/bb.cfm Reply #17. Aug 04 20, 5:55 AM |
| MiraJane
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Re: Terry's Match quizzes Guess I was remembering his test match quizzes. Reply #18. Aug 04 20, 12:35 PM |
| FatherSteve
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bernie Does that link work? When I click on it, it takes to a vast blue screen with nothing on it. Reply #19. Aug 05 20, 4:27 PM |
| bernie73
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FatherSteve, See if this link works better. If not the blog is currently near the top of the list. https://www.funtrivia.com/bb.cfm?action=details&qnid=31215&boardid=1111111 Reply #20. Aug 05 20, 4:40 PM |
56 replies. On page 1 of 3 pages. 1 2 3
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