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Subject: The Archive of FunTrivia History

Posted by: bernie73
Date: Aug 04 20

Purpose of the History Blog

I am writing this blog with the assumption that it is a good idea to know how FunTrivia started and how it has evolved over the years. If you have gotten far enough into the site to read this (and even for some who haven’t), you have hopefully gotten some enjoyment out of this site over the months or years. Over the years, the passing of several prominent members of FunTrivia has emphasized to me that none of us will be part of this site forever. The longer we wait to record this data, the harder it will become. While a fair amount of information can be gleaned from various items on this and other sites, some of this information may only be in the memories of the members.
My proposal, beginning with my next post, is once a week to post an account about a topic related to FunTrivia based on what I have read on this site and others. At that point, I will sit back and let others comment. Hopefully, in some cases this will confirm that I have interpreted the information correctly. In other cases, there may be corrections about information I have interpreted incorrectly. In still other cases, there will be new details and information that I simply did not know about.
As to why do this, I am starting with the idea that it is just interesting to know what the site used to be like. Beyond that, however, I think there is value in knowing how it was done in the past. In the various chat boards and forums, there are periodic suggestions for changes to the site. Some of these changes may been suggested in the past or even used to be the way things worked. It can be helpful to see why your “new idea” was changed or rejected in the past. In some cases, the rationale may still make sense. In other cases, the situation may have changed and what was not feasible before may now be.
In the various accounts I will try to give some sense of where I gathered the information, though maybe not as formally as a history paper. It should be possible for you to go back and look at this evidence also if you wish. Much of what I’m presenting is on the site, but scattered over many locations. It is my hope that we can eventually have a record of the FunTrivia story in one place. I encourage you to comment and share your story of your FunTrivia with us as you are comfortable.

35 replies. On page 1 of 2 pages. 1 2

bernie73

FunTrivia Before Quizzes (Part I)

A brief explanation: I have chosen to use the introduction of the general public being able to create and publish quizzes beginning in February 2000 with Quizzyland as THE key event in the development of FunTrivia. While there are certain features of the site that predate this and are still part of the FunTrivia experience, so much more of the experience come out of various features that owe their existence to those quizzes, not to mention the quizzes themselves.
The website that we now call FunTrivia owes its existence to Terry Ford, who was then a student at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada). (It has been suggested that one of Terry’s reasons for creating the site was gaining familiarity with html.) Though Wikipedia lists a start date for the site in September 1995, most other sources suggest a 1994 start date. FunTrivia was added to Yahoo’s new Trivia category in 1995 after Terry contacted Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang. Through the first few years, the site seemed to serve primarily as a trivia database. Terry stated the goal in 1999: “The goal is to create a central search engine for collecting and finding fringe trivia about everything. I found that quite often finding trivia items on the web through a web search was almost impossible. While the amount of possible trivia is infinite, this site nonetheless intends on collecting strange and interesting facts and trivia from around the world.”
According to the FAQ found on the site in 1999 (which only had five questions), the archive changed named several times: “Archive of Facts, then Terry's Fun Facts, then Your Trivial Life, followed by The Archive of Useless Facts…. [and finally] The Archive of Fun Facts and Trivia.” (Wikipedia’s description of a the title “Archive of Useless Facts and Trivia” seems to combine the last two.) Looking at the December 1998 screen capture of the archive front page (the oldest I have found) suggested that the name change to “The Archive of Useless Facts” occurred in May of 1997 (based on a date there). Based on later screen captures, the change to “The Archive of Fun Facts and Trivia” occurred between February 08 and April 28, 1999, with a Below, I’ve included some figures I’ve found about the size of the archive which show as impressive as the endeavor was, it may still be seen as small by 2020 standards.

Size of the Trivia Archive
08 December 1998: 2000 items in 73 categories (both figures are approximate)
25 January 1999: 3,600 items in 296 categories
03 February 1999: 4,172 items in 334 categories
08 February 1999: 4,210 items in 338 categories
28 April 1999: 6,949 items in 343 categories
11 October 1999: 7,813 items in 343 categories
02 March 2000: 8,447 items in 343 categories

The earliest use of the term “FunTrivia” for the site as a whole I have seen was on the website for February 03, 1999. (My guess is that the change occurred when the site started adding features other than the archive or soon thereafter.) By the end of April 1999, FunTrivia was claiming 100,000 visitors a month. While it was possible to post an item in the archive anonymously, many others chose to publish under a user name allowing a rough record of how many items each person contributed. On August 15, 2000 (slightly beyond the range of this chapter), the most frequent contributor was Fred from USA with 152 items. Tied for sixth was thejazzkickazz with 85 items.
Before early 1999, there seemed to be very limited interaction between individual on the site. One could go to the site and read the various entries in the archive. One could input new items into the archive. (07 March 1999 was the first day that Terry requested that you include your email address with your entry.) If you wanted to dispute an entry or offer a correction, you could communicate with Terry via email FunTrivia did not seem to have interaction than that. There was also a warning that the information in the archive was not necessarily guaranteed to be accurate since it was not feasible for Terry (in the days before any additional volunteers) to check each and every entry.

The Wayback Machine archives for the “The Archive of Useless Trivia” website. The entries for December 1998-February 1999 are most relevant.

https://web.archive.org/web/19981205170448/http://trivia.lsds.com/

Reply #1. Aug 04 20, 5:53 AM

agony

Jazz was still here and was editing when I joined in early 03. If memory serves, he was the first author to write 1000 quizzes.

Reply #2. Aug 04 20, 5:31 PM

satguru

I seem to remember the most popular trivia fact category was toilets, meaning I am not so unusual. I am also responsible for the toilets and toilet paper quiz category as I wrote enough for it to warrant its own.

In case it's not been linked here is the guest book. I posted an entry in the trivia encyclopedia when I arrived, and apparently when I found the guest book it was closed to new entries as I don't have one but did read it at the time, and when I returned to add more facts in 2002 again it was readable but no longer able to add so only had the one.

http://web.archive.org/web/20000815064420/http://www.funtrivia.com/guestbook/guestbook.html

Reply #3. Aug 05 20, 8:45 PM

bernie73

FunTrivia Before Quizzes (Part II)

Early in 1999, the Archive started to include a Message Board for additional communication between visitors to the site (The earlies mention I have seen for this is January 25,1999 in a note where Terry describes a message board. The oldest link I have seen to the message board is February 08, 1999.) Beginning on March 04, 1999, there was a new nightly FunTrivia.com chat hour added (10 EST/7 PST). While I am not certain, I think this version of chat did not last that long. On 22 March 1999, FunTrivia declared itself Y2K compliant. (Kids, ask your parents about this one.) By September, the message boards were replaced by the Forums. On February 11, 1999, FunTrivia created a “What’s New” page.
The earliest forum accounts are dated September 30, 1999 (though I have heard they some accounts are postdated and may have existed before them). One was able to use the same user name to participate in the Weekly Tournament (to be discussed later) to register for the forums. The earliest entry I have read on any of the forums was dated October 05, 1999. This is the earliest list of Forums I have been able to find (October 07, 1999): Tavern, I Need a Trivia Answer!, Useless Facts, Movie Chat, Book Corner, Why is the Sky Blue?, Jokes and Humor, Challenges!, Feedback. Some of these forums still exist in 2020 under the same name, while others may have had a name change or been combined or even eliminated. Since the forums are one of the few features that predate Quizzyland, that might explain why there is a separate login for the forums as opposed to the rest of the site.

There was a Weekly Challenge of trivia for which you could register and compete against other players during 1999 and 2000. You had to log (as observed May 08, 1999) into the site to play, but I think this is not directly connected to the FunTrivia memberships that began in March 2000. The two weekly games that were part of the challenge were “Who Am I” (not related to the current game) and “You Won’t Win”. The challenge described a daily game or games that were part of the challenge but I haven’t found anything about what it/they were. Round #1 of the challenge (a beta or testing round) began on 10 February 1999 while Round #2 began on 17 February with a new round each week. By 13 October 1999 there was a score listing for the competitors with a column for the weekly game, a column for the daily game, and a column for the combined score. Member gtho4 suggested (September 22, 2006) that the Challenge started in February 1999 and finished in October 2000.

Terry described some of the earliest games in this note: “Feb. 11, 1999: This 'What's New' page is new, and will contain updates regarding funky new things that this site has to offer. Right now I'm working on a trivia ladder game, where a new quiz with questions of different degrees of difficult will appear each week. Players earn points for each correct answer, and scores are carried over from week to week. Thus, the highest scoring player will be The FunTrivia Guru. Look for this to appear in the next couple of weeks!” On the next day, Terry issued a general appeal for questions that could be used in the game.

Member snowbird who helped design the Weekly Challenges described the game: “In the weekly, you get five (5) points for each correct answer of the 20 questions.” (28 December 1999). Snowbird gave a longer description of “Who Am I”: “As for the Who Am I, scoring is awarded based on how many clues you require to guess the answer: Monday (1 clue) 30 points, Tuesday (2 clues) 22 points, Wednesday (3 clues) 15 points, Thursday (4 clues) 10 points, Friday (5 clues) 5 points. Nothing gets taken away if you guess wrong, but you only have two guesses. If you think it is a toss up between two people on Monday and you guess both, let's say you think it is either Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett-- your first guess is Boone and that's wrong, so you take another guess (both on Monday) and pick Crockett -- if that is right, you get the 30 points. It depends on which day you guess the right answer as to how many points you get.” (28 December 1999). A previous announcement on 29 August 1999 described snowbird as a previous “trivia guru” who would add the “Who Am I” game.
On 15 March 2010, player McGruff described the tournament: “One day surfing for more trivia, I came upon FT's weekly trivia tournament which was 20 questions, and sometimes it took most of the week to complete. Sounds incredible now, as you could probably google the entire thing in less than 10 minutes, but back then there was a whole lot less internet and you needed to use five or six different search engines to find what little there was to find. I got more use out of the World Book Encyclopedia purchased for my son than he ever did, you know, those expensive multi-volume sets of real paper books with matching dictionaries that look so nice on the shelf. There was no such thing as Wikipedia.”

The challenge seemed to offer some tangible prizes. One entry from November 1999 says that Wassamatryou won a 500 piece puzzle from puzzlehouse.com for winning the daily portion of the challenge , and tim10001 won a candle basket from CandleVision.com for winning the weekly portion. Forum evidence suggests that the Challenge was retired in September 2000, not because of any flaw, but because snowbird was no longer able to produce new rounds and there was no interested replacement.
This set of early “mixed” quizzed appears to be adapted from some of the Weekly Games in the Challenge:

https://www.funtrivia.com/ql.cfm?cat=19338

August 12, 1999: Over 10,000 registered players in the tournament.
September 29, 1999: Over 15,000 registered players in the tournament.
November 15, 1999: Over 19,000 registered players in the tournament
December 17, 1999: Over 21,000 registered players in the tournament

Reply #4. Aug 11 20, 9:40 AM

satguru

Fascinating. Funnily enough I offered myself as the official historian once, but was only aimed at the site since 9/99 when the message boards began, even though I hadn't been there at the time. I barely had an idea what was there before that and having seen it for the first time through your link was actually Terry's own site where the seeds of Funtrivia.com were planted five years earlier. If you have any questions on specific message me as I have quite a long list of details.

Reply #5. Aug 13 20, 7:00 PM

bernie73

FunTrivia Before Quizzes (Part III)

Most interestingly, the site included several features that would seem odd today. There were links provided to other trivia and similar sites such as “Brain Blast” and “Get Puzzled”. There were links to play various video games, divided into mutliplayer games (Checkers, Go, Tic Tac Toe, Reversi, Kono, FunTrivia Challenge) and solo games (Blackjack, Breakout, Bridges, Icebox, Javanoid, Missile Commando, Pacman, Puzzler, Tailgunner, Urbanoids, UFO, Warp), Both lists come from 08 May 1999. There was the ability to participate in a Hockey Fantasy Poll for the 1999-2000 season.

Other early offerings include “The Archive of Jokes and Humor” (added 13 May 1999), “Random Jokes” (added 24 May 1999), “Kartoon Korner” with over 15 cartoons (added 12 August 1999). On 30 September 1999, there was a Cartoon Caption contents. On 30 September, FunTRivia Web Greeting Cards (through GiftFriends.com) were added. Some of these links might be explained by the relatively smaller amount of “FunTrivia” original material at this point.

There were 1 million page views in September 1999 (described as double that six months before). There were 1.7 million page views for January 2000.

The Wayback Machine archives for the “FunTrivia.com” website. The entries for April 1999-November 1999 are the ones largely considered in this chapter.

https://web.archive.org/web/19990428105058/http://funtrivia.com/

Early accolades for the site mentioned by Terry (as mentioned in “What’s New”)
15 February 1999: FunTrivia.com selected as Yahoo pick of the week
01 March 1999: FunTrivia.com was Encyclopedia Brittanica’s site of the day
17 March 1999: FunTrivia.com is Ireland Online’s pick of the day
25 March 1999: Selected as a USA Today Hot Site
25 March 1999: Selected as MediaOne's Site of the Week
25 March 1999: Featured in ABC news's Wolf Files
25 March 1999: Featured on HUMO, The 'Wild' Site
30 March 1999: FunTrivia featured in .net magazine
30 March 1999: FunTrivia was PC Computing Online's (Zdnet) site of the day!
30 March 1999: FunTrivia.com was featured as Netcom Canada's site of the day!
12 April 1999: BellAtlantic.net site of the day
19 April 1999: FunTrivia featured on thirdage.com, and were selected as
jennycybrary.com's site of the day!

Reply #6. Aug 18 20, 8:54 AM

bernie73

Quiz Writing in the Year 2000 (Part I)

(Note: An earlier version of this article appeared on the General Chat Board)

A February 04, 2000 announcement from Terry introduced Quizzyland: “FunTrivia.com presents the opening of the FunTrivia Quizzyland!, a visitor-driven venture which will probably grow substantially over time. It is a new system where visitors can play trivia games and create their own trivia games right online. The games are then available for everyone to enjoy. Feel free to let your creativity go wild! You must currently enter the FunTrivia Open Trivia Project through the FunTrivia Challenge. Login as normal, and a big bold option appears at the top of the screen. Soon there will be a separate entrance straight off the main page for non-challenge players. More news on this to come.”

Quiz writing began in February 2020 with the creation of Quizzyland (sources suggest 19 February 2000 as a start date. As shown, there were earlier references to Quizzyland on though they may have been to an upcoming feature). Which quiz is the oldest seems to be a bit uncertain. Terry's quiz “Trivia Quiz” (#1), dated 19 February 2000 is described as the first online. The lowest number quiz one can commonly access is named “Famous Artists and Works of Art” (#4) by tim10001, also dated 19 February. However, “Fun Wildlife Questions on Mammals” (#3) by dreamweave also is dated 19 February and is accessible. “Charlie Brown and ‘Peanuts’” (#44), written by Jabba_Jinx , was dated 16 February 2000. “Basic General Knowledge” (#42), written by Terry, has a date of 01 January 1970. The date for quiz #42 I think can be dismissed since no version of the site existed before 1994 and Terry himself was not born until several years after 1970. The date for quiz #44 is more interesting since it is so close to the date for quizzes #3 and #4.

Though the previously mentioned mixed quizzes represent weekly quizzes used in 1999/2000, I don’t consider them older as quizzes. They were designed as single-use sets of questions for a game at a single point in time and only later became quizzes as FunTrivia defines the term now. (They are a rare case of “games” adapted to be quizzes rather than—as is usual now—quiz questions that are repurposed as part of games.) “Trivia Quiz” and “Famous Artists and Works of Art” and similar quizzes, in comparison, were designed to available indefinitely and playable more than once. One thing that confuses me is that the first quiz is dated 16 February but a 12 February post by Terry in the forums mentions 117 quizzes online. Does this represent quizzes for which templates had been created but were not yet started/finished/published? Does this represent quizzes that existed off site but not yet had a template created?

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 several weeks after quizzes began being published.
Terry’s call for editors on 28 March 2000 ran as follows: “Well, we're now at over 1000 quizzes, and at the current rate we'll have many thousand by the end of the year. In order to put quizzes online faster and improve quality, etc., I'm checking to see if any of you would be interested in being Category editors. Players that would be invited to such a position would be those who have lots of experience playing our games (say at least 50 games played), and who have created at least 5 games themselves. These people will know what make a good game, and what good trivia is. These people would have reign over a category (such as Sports, Entertainment, or whatever), and be able to browse new submitted games and add them/edit them/move them to the appropriate category. They could also remove poor games and place them offline. In short, they would have full editorial control over a category. Would any of you be interested in such a system? You'd get your name in big happy lights, and become part of the great group of people who help make this site what it is.” As we see here, the term “game” was sometimes used where “quiz would now be used”. Also, with limited opportunity to have been involved with the site before then, the requirements to be an editor in 2000 sound more like what would be required to be an author now.

The earliest reference I have seen to an editor was Roswell being so named on 01 May 2000, though others may been named before him. It is unclear whether Roswell was the editor for a specific category or categories or for all categories. In the first year, it seemed that most root categories had single editors and editors sometimes covered multiple categories individually. Other early editors include IndianPainter (Boy Scout) and crisw.

Candidates for the oldest quiz on FunTrivia
“Fun Wildlife Questions on Mammals” #3, Written by Dreamweave Placed online: Feb. 19, 2000

https://www.funtrivia.com/trivia-quiz/Animals/Fun-Wildlife-Questions-on-Mammals-3.html
“Famous Artists and Works of Art” #4, Written by tim10001 Placed online: Feb. 19, 2000

https://www.funtrivia.com/trivia-quiz/Humanities/Famous-Artists-and-Works-of-Art-4.html
“Basic General Knowledge” #42, Written by terry Placed online: Jan. 01, 1970

https://www.funtrivia.com/trivia-quiz/General/Basic-General-Knowledge-42.html
“Charlie Brown and ‘Peanuts’” #44, Written by Jabba_Jinx Placed online: February 16, 2000

https://www.funtrivia.com/trivia-quiz/Entertainment/Charlie-Brown-and-Peanuts-44.html

Reply #7. Aug 25 20, 5:53 AM

bernie73

Quiz Writing in the Year 2000 (Part II)

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. Science was created as a top-level category on 13 February 2000. For Children was added as a category on 15 February 2000. Humanities and People became top-level categories on 23 March 2000. Religion, Politics, Business, and Health were added as categories on 12 June 2000.
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 (including thejazzkickazz) who were producing excellent quizzes. However, many of those early quizzes by others 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 as the number of quizzes was exploding. I've heard that Terry initially hoped for 5 or so quizzes a week (12 February). (To me this does not seem like an unreasonable prediction when one considers that the archive had acquired under 9,000 facts in close to six years.) Instead, higher thresholds were reached quickly: with individual months often seeing 1,000 or more quizzes. Early and reflective comments from editors seem to suggest that quiz queues numbering in the hundreds were not uncommon. Interesting, early forum threads had members guessing when certain thresholds (3,000 quizzes, 4,000 quizzes, etc.) would be reached. The totals presented below are questions that were part of quizzes and do not include single questions, which would not be part of the site for several years.

13 July 2000 is the first reference I’ve seen to Sunglasses as pertains to quizzes

12 February 2000: 117 quizzes (Terry)
05 March 2000: 600 quizzes (Terry)
21 March 2000: 1,000 quizzes
08 May 2000: 2,000 quizzes (Hungreee)
24 May 2000: 2,400 quizzes (40,000 questions)
25 May 2000: 2,500 quizzes (Terry)
30 May 2000: 2,600+ quizzes
06 June 2000: 3,000 quizzes (Hungreee)
12 June 2000: (50,000 questions)
22 June 2000: 4,000 quizzes (crisw)
17 July 2000: 5,000 quizzes (tenor1az)
05 Sept 2000: 6,000+ quizzes (Terry) (100,000 questions)
25 October 2000: (125,000 questions)
17 Nov 2000: 10,000 quizzes (tim10001)
24 May 2001: c. 25,000 quizzes (tim10001)

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.

February 26, 2000: List of Top-Level Categories: Animals, Brain Teasers, Education, Entertainment, Environment, For Children, General Knowledge, Geography, History, Literature, Mixed, Movies, Music, Science, Sports, Seasonal, Technology, Useless Trivia

May 20, 2000: List of Top-Level categories: Animals, Brain Teasers, Celebrities, Education, Entertainment, For Children, General, Geography, History, Humanities, Literature, Mixed, Movies, Music, Newest, People, Science, Sports, Seasonal, Technology, Television, Useless Trivia, World, Easy

Reply #8. Sep 02 20, 6:48 AM

bernie73

FunTrivia Forums

Admittedly, I don't have as much information here as I do for some other sections, but the Forums were not as big a part of my FunTrivia experience as they were for some others. This would be an appropriate time for those who were/are active in the forums to increase our understanding of how they worked and work. With that, here are some dates to give us a rough timeline of the early years of the Forums.

30 September 1999: First forum memberships ( Include: Annie, #3, BagLady, #5, Dreamweave,
#10, Florescent_nite, #11, Fritztino, #12, Gunslinger, #14, Linda1, #16,
MeKare, #19, etc.)
01 October 1999: First post in “Movies & Television” forum
04 October 1999: First post in “Bookworms” forum
14 October 2000: Forums “Autumn! Autumn! Autumn!,” for fallish discussion, and
“Computer Gaming” for chatting about the latest video games added.
18 October 1999: First post in “Games & Challenges” forum
24 October 1999: Halloween forum added.
25 October 1999: First post in “Writing quizzes & crosswords and Question Quest” forum.
Forum closed 17 December 2017
23 December 1999: First post in “Useful Tips & Tricks” forum
19 January 2000: First post in “Sports Stadium” forum
26 January 2000: New Languages forum
26 January 2000: New Computers and Technology forum
04 April 2000: First post in “Why is the Sky Blue?” forum
26 March 2001: First post in “Music Cellar” forum
24 September 2001: First post in “Computers & Technology” forum
09 November 2001: First post in “The World Around Us” forum
29 December 2001: First post in “Current Events” forum (unreadable entry for 31 December
1969)
01 January 2003: First post in “The FunTrivia Lounge” forum
06 May 2004: First post in “Jokes and Humor” forum
12 January 2006: First post in “Tipping Competition” forum
21 February 2007: First Post in “Our Photos” forum

I may be misinterpreting this, but many of the forums seemed to be most active in their first few years. It was not uncommon to see three or more times as many threads for the period 2000-2009 as for the period 2010-2019. In particular, I notice a real drop of in forum posts beginning in 2004. It is not perhaps coincidence that various games began appearing on the site at that time after several years where the two main features were quizzes and forums.

February 26, 2000: List of forums: Community Forums! New! Join in the conversation in our forums, and meet lots of great people!
FunTrivia Tavern, Need a Trivia Answer!, FunTrivia Challenge!, Useless Facts, Movie Chat, Book Corner, Why is the Sky Blue?, Autumn! Autumn! Autumn!, Computer Gaming!, Jokes and Humor, Challenges! Plus: Feedback - talk to us!

Reply #9. Sep 11 20, 8:15 PM

MiraJane

The drop in Forum posts might also have been due to the introduction of the chat boards and team message boards.

Reply #10. Sep 12 20, 5:33 AM

bernie73

That's probably very true. The forums are the last active piece of the old pre-Quizzyland FunTrivia. It's not surprising that they are the only part of FunTrivia that has a separate log in page.

Reply #11. Sep 13 20, 4:26 AM

BigTriviaDawg

Wow Bernie! This is really cool! I often wondered how all of this came about. Thanks for taking the time to document it. :)

Reply #12. Sep 15 20, 5:16 PM

bernie73

This is the last entry I have for now that looks anything like a chapter. After this its just dates connected with various games and challenges (at least for now)

FunTrivia in the Year 2000

On February 12, 2000: Terry announced: “I'm going to add a generic messaging interface, where you will be able to reply to messages or send msgs to any player. Messages will have a lifetime of 1 month (they will automatically be deleted as soon as they're 1 month old).” Is this the first reference to FunTrivia internal e-mail? The e-mail capability seems to have begun sometime in February/March?
On March 23, 2000:, Terry announced: “ The new 'Ask FunTrivia' area will allow people to ask trivia questions and get responses back quickly. It also gives you trivia fans a new place to test your trivial skills. Some of the questions people are asking aren't easy! Drop by and give it a shot.”
February 16, 2000 – 1.7 million page views for January
October 25, 2000: 125,000 questions, 70,000 players
April 06, 2000 post refers to: “moved upward in categories from trivie newbie up to trivia guru and trivia king and so on” through playing quizzes
Player makebeleaffan first to reach 200,000 points (joined March 4,2000)June 9, 2000 (joined forum Febr. 18, 2000)
Player gammab first to reach 300,000 points (July 12,2000)
Ask FunTrivia running since March 2000
Oldest quizzyland Memberships: March 04, 2000 (Class 0)

Reply #13. Sep 15 20, 6:25 PM

bernie73

Thanks BigTriviaDawg.

Some of what I've listed here is based on what I found in some of the older forum and board posts. Other information came from screen saves of FunTrivia found on the Wayback Machine Has anyone ever seen a screen save of the site before it was called "The Archive of Useless Trivia"?

My next question may be to throw some of the questions I have out here and see what people know.

Reply #14. Sep 15 20, 6:28 PM

satguru

It's taken 20 years for a full history but worth waiting for. The lounge was renamed then but always existed previously as The Funtrivia Tavern where people were invited to throw peanut shells.

Reply #15. Sep 16 20, 8:10 PM

bernie73

The Daily Game

11 May 2009: Regional Game renamed the Daily Game. Players get one of 25 sets. Number of questions increases from 15 to 20. Earn 1-100 Daily Pits per day. 5000 points lead to “Daily Crown” badge. “Regional Achievement” badge renamed “Daily Achievement”. Winner of each of 25 sets gets “Daily Winner” badge. “Daily” badge renamed “Daily Game Champ”

July 12, 2010: Casual mode added in Daily game. July 13, 2010. “Daily Power” badge added for earning 50,000 daily points in the daily game.

02 May 2011: Tweaks to Daily game. Players in Levels 1-20 in question sets together. Players with 50,000 point badge and “Daily Champ” badge placed in own championship divisions (levels 11 and 12). Timed game divisions will score at 20-100 points for each player.

This is the first post that I have on specific badges/activities in FunTrivia. These are specific dates that I have seen when changes were made to what is now known as the Daily. Game. Having joined FunTrivia in late 2007, I myself have vague memories of competing specifically against other players from the same geographic area (in my case, Maryland). I've always wondered why this game changed to take away the geographic element and was not find the reasoning behind this decision.

My weekly posts for the next several months will probably involve looking at specific badges/games/activities on FunTrivia.

Reply #16. Sep 23 20, 4:21 PM

bernie73

FunTrivia Knockout

08 May 2007: Beta testing of “FunTrivia Knockout” game, using Wednesday-Sunday as Monday-Friday for the test.

13 May 2007: Announcement of “FunTrivia Knockout”. May 15 2007 see teammates still in Knockout. May 27 KO subscribers who have a no-show are removed from auto signups. Change in your bracket placement from total FT points to number of KO wins. May 30 announcement of “Knockout Champ” badge given to player who has 50 KOs. Announcement of “Knockout Hero” badge for player with 200 KOs. Dec. 12 Knockout begins awarding 200 points per day of play

January 18, 2010: New chart showing most weekly victories in FunTrivia Knockout

07 December 2010: New Fantasy Fun Trivia Knockout begins. Choose who you think will win from seven selected Knockout Tournaments. Earn fantasy points as follows: +2 for a player who advances, +1 point if advancing player is an underdog (not in the top five most picked for that tournament), +1 point if your player scores the most in that tournament on a given day, +8 if your player wins the tournament. Proposed “Fantasy Winner” badge. “Fantasy 2 of 7” (badgelet), “Fantasy Underdog” (badgelet) pick is non-favored and wins the tournament.

Reply #17. Sep 29 20, 7:36 PM

bernie73

New Question Game

May 26, 2009 Terry begins a discussion about an idea for “submit a question”. Is this the origin of Question Quest? Yes. Idea of 30 points a question and 40 points for some of the “thinner” categories as well as a badge for 100 questions. Later raised to 50 points.

27 May 2009 Introduction of Question Quest. 50 points awarded per question created. “Question Quest” badge for creating 50 questions accepted. “Question Challenge” badge for creating 500 questions accepted. March 04, 2010—Change to 100 points per question accepted. Players with a good record can now submit up to 15 questions at a time, up from 5.

04 June 2009: “New Question” game with a new set every six hours. Play one of 10. “New Question Winner” badge awarded to winner of each of 10 sets at end of six hours. June 09, 2009. Now new question sets every three hours. “Achievement New Question” badge for 10/10 score.?

Reply #18. Oct 14 20, 9:17 AM

Catreona

Thanks, Bernie. This is very interesting.

Reply #19. Dec 24 20, 9:11 PM

bernie73

It's been a while since I've posted anything on this blog, so I thought I would include some notes on the Global Challenge. I believe there's a lot more information out there to add to this.

Global Challenge
15 April 2007: Announcement of “Hardcore Winner” badge. Awarded to a top-10 player in Hardcore division of the Global Challenge
15 July 2007: End of Global Challenge 5
18 July 2007: Start of Global Challenge 6. Ends when 30 players who don not already have the immortal badge hit “immortal”. Ends when top 10 Hardcore players who do not have the Hardcore badge earn it. End of Global Challenge 6 on November 29, 2007
14 January 2008: Global Challenge 7 begins. Ends May 25, 2008
02 June 2008: Global Challenge 8 begins. Ends October 12, 2008.
20 October 2008: Global Challenge 9 begins. Switch to two 12-hour sets per day. Ends February 21, 2009.
16 March 2009: Global Challenge 10 begins. Challenge ends July 21, 2009.
17 August 2009: Global Challenge 11 begins. Challenge ends 20 December 2009.
18 January 2010: Global Challenge 12 begins. Playing asterisk (*) categories increases from 25 points to 100 points if player scores 500 or more on a quiz. 30 May 2010 Challenge ends.
28 June 2010: Global Challenge 13 begins. Four special categories available in each 12 hour set. Slightly higher Braintwist Advancement bonus available at Level 4 and higher +100 point Adventure bonus available at levels 2 and higher. Challenge ends October 30, 2010
20 November 2010: Global Challenge 14 begins. Challenge paused from December 20 to January 02.
16 May 2011: Global Challenge 15 begins. Challenge ends September 18, 2011
17 October 2011: Global Challenge 16 begins. Challenge not paused during holidays.
26 March 2012: Global Challenge 17 begins
28 January 2013: Global Challenge 18 begins.
09 July 2013: Global Challenge 19 begins.
09 December 2013: Global Challenge 21 begins.
18 February 2015: End of Global Challenge 23.
09 March 2015: Global Challenge 24 begins.
03 August 2015: Global Challenge 25 begins.
11 January 2016: Global Challenge 26 begins.
06 June 2016: Global Challenge 27 begins.
24 October 2016: Global Challenge 28 begins.
07 August 2017: Global Challenge 30 begins.
02 January 2018: Global Challenge 31 begins.
29 May 2018: Global Challenge 32 begins.
18 September 2018: Top 100 Players on Global Challenge became Top 125 players
23 October 2018: Global Challenge 33 begins

Reply #20. Mar 06 21, 11:53 AM

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