I'm thinking it's about time that people should have to submit a link for verification with these questions (the same way people need to submit a link with AskFT responses). Quite a few inaccuracies and urban legends have made it past the editors lately and this would give them a chance to do their jobs better (and keep me from having to do it for them).

Checking links, and possibly needing to take the time to investigate further) would substantially increase the editing time required for a single question. If the editor sees a clear error, they will either reject or adjust the question. Otherwise, we rely on players to send in corrections that provide appropriate information so that an informed decision can be made.

Any such link would also have to be removed before the question went online - we do not include links in questions, both because they sometimes go to sites with undesirable advertising, and because they don't always last indefinitely (as is also true for AskFunTrivia, hence the need to check links there for current validity).

The best thing to do in this situation is to send a correction. We do check to see if a question is factual, and I have certainly done my share of researching questions only to find that they are urban legends or common misconceptions. However, we are not experts on every topic, and we appreciate it when players help inform us of such cases. When a correction is sent (especially with a link), I do a much more thorough job of investigating a question.

Sorry if there is a better spot for this, but on a completely unrelated note (or maybe loosely related). I happened to notice one of my single questions launched into the New Question game this week. All was humming along nicely and it saw a pretty typical number of plays on opening Wednesday...but then it seemed to be suspended for all of Thursday. I thought maybe it was in limbo while a correction notice was checked on or something like that but I got no notice and it appears to be back in New Question circulation today. I am just curious how it all works. I haven't tracked all my questions closely and I don't have a huge number which have gone through so maybe this happens sometimes and just hadn't seen it, but it seems unusual based on the few I have watched closely.

Speaking from my own experience tracking my questions, I believe questions which have a very low percentage correct are removed from the New Question game at some point. However, I don't think it's after only one day, but after a few days of being in the pool.

Yeah I have a hard time producing questions which hit the desired 60-85% correct range (I hate giving clues because I can't seem to find a happy middle ground between being little to no help, or a dead giveaway.) So I have certainly run into early removal before. The "too hard" questions seem to drop out after Saturday...I have never seen one pulled this early though, and it wasn't below the 20% correct line of death. Even weirder, it has several plays today so it seems to be restored.

I see. I have no clue then what could have happened in the interim! I don't recall having seen that before.

Could have been a CN. Authors generally don't see them

Aww crap it is 60-95 not 60-85. Maybe I was consoling myself by trying to pretend I was less far off the range. I guess dead giveaway clues wouldn't be so bad afterall

I've always tried dead giveaways, answerman backwards, but I typically find the ending percentage at 96%. lol.

I've had questions appear in NQG, and not get any plays for days, and then reappear and get more plays. Sometimes a month later it seems to be added once again. I suppose the corrections make sense for issues like this, but it still is odd to watch the numbers change randomly like that!

Ok that opens up a follow up question. Somewhere in the instructions I think on the edit screen when you get a correction notice, it says something, not in these words, but to the effect of "edit it to fix this problem or...blowing it up and making it a completely new question is acceptable"....the latter of which I did for one of mine. However it had run through its entire week of New Question play before it got rejected...and now the re-approved "revision" is sitting in my complete pile with it's old stats still attached. Should I expect it to go back in for another pass in New Question, and if so will it just add on to the old stats or reset to zero plays?

When a CN is sent on a question in play, it is often for a minor issue, and will be handled by the editors - the author will probably not even notice it, unless they are monitoring their questions closely and can see the halt in plays before they resume. It then goes back into the new game - no matter how long it has been there already. A question of mine from years ago, when the New Question Quest first started, recently reappeared as a new question in the game. If you rewrote a question and resubmitted it, it should go into the NQ game again, but will still carry its old statistics with it, to which new results will subsequently be added, just as if you had fixed a typo. The game doesn't discriminate as to the extent of the change that was made. Sometimes the CN is deemed invalid, and no change is made; the question still goes back into the NQ game for another pass.

Ahh ok that all makes sense. Thank you looney_tunes and everyone else for responses.

One more thing...if the editor makes a fix behind the scenes, would a new date show to the author on the last date modified field of that question on the "all accepted submissions" page? (That happened to another question of mine which is still pending and I can't remember exactly when I sent it in. I am just trying to get a better sense of approximate wait time between question acceptance and appearance in New Question. I realize that can be tricky to track since there is possibly some time between last author change and question acceptance whereas I assume after editor fixes the question is immediately accepted. But since my production is far from prolific I do still like to keep tabs on each question once they hatch and watch how they are doing and it would nice to have a rough idea when to start checking vs. my current method of checking in often like a kid at the mailbox waiting for the secret decoder ring

Patience is one of the cardinal virtues for authors here! I don't know the answer to your question about how the Date Last Modified field is affected, since I have never looked at it, and wasn't even aware of it's existence! On full quizzes, there is a time stamp that editors can see, but we don't see it for single questions, which are processed by means of an entirely different mechanism.

I can say, though, that the time interval between when a question is accepted and when it appears in the game is extremely variable, as it is affected by a number of factors. These include the number of questions being submitted by others, whether an editor has the time to process a whole lot of questions in a single session (so that they all become available at once instead of trickling in), and possibly the size of the new pool in different categories - the game has some sort of algorithm in place so that it mixes things up a bit, but I have no idea of the details. Also, the questions being used change (I think) once a week, but I forget on which day. If you know the day on which questions are moved in and out of the game, you would be able to check on that day or the next, then relax for another week. Someone who writes a lot of single questions and keeps track of them could probably tell you, but not me.

Ahh ok thanks again. With all those variables it seems like a rule of thumb for the current traffic level might be "at least six weeks, anything more exact than that is pure guesswork."

The major switchout time falls on Tuesday-Wednesday FT time, so you are right this is a particularly frivolous whine since I am not checking every day...just every Wednesday.

Update, just found an answer to my question. Someone altered the wording of a question of mine that was in play past week. I don't know exactly when, but it had to have been pretty recently as I remember the original wording was in place while it was active in New Question. The Last Modified still shows as July 01 so, Editor fixes are not registered there, at least not ones that aren't spurred by a CN, as I assume was the case here.

If it was changed, it was spurred by a CN. Editors cannot see questions once they have been accepted, unless someone sends a CN. Unlike quizzes, these do not go to the author, but are usually handled by an editor. If the editor feels there is a major problem, then they send it back to the author for work. Those are the only CNs on single questions that you see as an author.