The time between the acceptance of questions for the Question Quest and their appearance in the New Questions Game seems to be longer than ever. Right now, I've got a question submitted back in May that still hasn't been played yet (and of course all the questions submitted since then have not been played yet either).

Is there a problem with my questions, or is the waiting list to appear in New Questions Game just very long, or is it something else?

Without comment on the right or wrong of it, that wait seems par for the course. The Q I've had run for the past week says it was last modified (which I take as the date it was accepted) of May 26.
Sorry I suggested an answer, not being an editor. But this Post seemed like a Feedback one and not strictly a Q&A Authoring one.

There is often a long waiting time for Question Quest questions. Since there is a limited number of questions that can go into the game at a time, that means that more players are submitting questions, and there are more questions to go around. While the wait can be frustrating, it can be seen as a good thing, namely that we are not running out of questions and starting to see numerous repeats all the time.

There may also be a concern with category. If your quiz is in a category that has a significant quantity of single questions, then it might be held up to ensure a better spread of content. We don't want a quiz with 10 Music questions in a row, for instance.

All single questions get through the game eventually; if it hasn't shown up yet, it will.

The QQ home page lists that we have surpassed 100,500 Single Question submissions in the past year alone!

That number is inaccurate, and hopefully Terry can change it.

How long does it typically take now? Three months seems excessive.

There is nothing excessive about it. The queue is based on how many people are submitting questions. You can rest assured that your question has been accepted and will be played eventually.

There is also no definitive answer to your question as Kyle had just pointed out. Some categories are held back a little bit since they get a high volume of questions compared to other categories. This makes it impossible to figure out exactly what week your question will be played.

I am not sure if Terry would want to increase the number of divisions or the number of questions per quiz in the New Question Game. Those would really be the only options for questions to be played more quickly. But that could have adverse effects that we don't really know about and that Terry considered when making the game.

Not simply to echo what Trident says, I also don't think it's excessive. In fact, I look at it as a good thing since it's a clear sign that the game is getting a good influx of single questions and serving its purpose. You can all look forward to more new content to better flesh out the dailies and hourlies (and more). The longer the wait, the more to look forward to as the site evolves.

Yes, it means a longer wait for your ratings to come in, but you can't have one without the other. Unfortunately, this game is for the players as much as it's for the authors.



Exactly this. Tampering with the rate of question dispersal could mean we run out much faster, which means we could face times where there aren't enough questions in the game. This means that, sure, you get your ratings fast, but we face droughts where the game is virtually unplayable, or instances where the same questions keep getting played for much longer stretches of time. No matter which way we pull the meter, there's a complaint about the game.

In the end, the wait for peoples' questions to be rated is vastly less important than ensuring the game can keep running at a good rate.



At the end of all of this, if you are consistently submitting questions-- as players who are more inclined to pay close attention to their rankings and percentages are apt to do since they're not casual submitters-- then there will be consistency seeing your submissions online. Start the chain and submit consistently, and the chain will continue through the other side.

Regretting the use of the word excessive; just want to know how long we can expect it take for a question to go thru the queue now. Does anyone have a ballpark figure?

-g.

I cited from last week's experience. That should be considered a current wait estimate. In fact my previous 7 submissions were a 3 month wait each, were staggered in 1 week intervals and they were in 6 different categories. After acceptance, none were delayed for corrections. All followed the pattern: submit, accept, wait 3 months, get rated.

I am kind of curious how the new question schedule works. Once upon a time, questions would get played about 400 times and have a 6-week waiting time. Now they have a 3-month waiting time but only get played 300 times. Are fewer people playing it these days?

It is longer than 3 months, as my May question has not been played yet. Does any editor or administrator know how long the wait is?

I wasn't asking anyone to defend the system or anything. I just want to know how long to expect it to take.

Thanks.

Due to different categories having different volumes and the collection of authors submitting different amounts of questions month to month, it is impossible to know exactly when a question will be played. Some players have given their own personal anecdotes offering a time of approximately three months. This seems to be a good general average to put on it. But that is no guarantee.

June, July August. Three months

Late May - Late June = 1st month;
Late June - Late July = 2nd month;
Late July - Late August = 3rd month.

Middle May accepted? I think you found one of the over-submitted categories that take 3.5 months. You have 134 rated questions so you should be aware of the lag time.

From mehaul's last comment it sounds like you are a fairly prolific writer of questions. If you write them at a reasonably steady rate, you can get a pretty good running estimate of the current wait or how soon a question will hatch by the,

"My Contributions: All Accepted Submissions" link on the single Q submission page. On that list, each question has a date off to the right side "Last Modified" or something similar...and they are listed in chronological order (newest to oldest) by that date. The aforementioned jockeying for order to balance categories is done internally before that list is made I think because in my experience it just goes straight up that list regardless of category when building the sets for a new week.

For additional reference points in case the one you are asking about is your only question from around that timeframe, I have three questions active this week (well I am down to two now...one got culled because %correct was too low. I was thinking maybe it should get a hint while writing but I generally don't like giving hints so wanted to see if it would fly unaided. Hindsight...dangit) The modified dates of those three are May 31 (two questions) and June 1. My next unplayed question is listed as June 8..and historically speaking from tracking on that page, I expect the June 8 question will launch next week.

So peek at your question on that list and see what modified date it is under. If it is somewhere before ~June 9 you should see it come out with next week's launch on August 31, or certainly the week after. If it is later into June you can estimate when it will launch accordingly with week long chunks of additional time. (The following launch (Sept 7) should cover questions listed through ~June 15. The Sept 14 launch through ~June 22, and so on)

To mirror trident's warning above, I want to stress these are only estimates which assume submission rate matches play rate over the period in question. Obviously there can be some ebb and flow there and those dates lose accuracy further and further out from present, but it seems to have held fairly steady recently.

If you are wondering about the launch dates and didnt know, The New Question week runs Wednesday through Tuesday

I think the counter is accurate but it simply was never set up to drop back to zero each year, so it represents the total of accepted questions in game history not just for the current year. A really easy fix might be just to change the text before the number to read "Total Questions submitted to date" or something like that.

This being said, the number we have for editors back in the queue does not reach that total-- I presume because questions have been pulled since.

Should I? As I stated in the original post, the lag time is longer than it used to be. That is why I was asking how long it is now. If I knew how long it is now, I wouldn't have asked.

There is a several-month gap between my May question and the one before it. When I was writing back in January, it didn't seem to take as long. Perhaps I wasn't paying attention by then. Certainly in 2013-2015 it seemed shorter.

When someone ask a question, and someone else tells the questioner that he should already know the answer, that is about as unhelpful as anyone can be. Please assume the person is asking in good faith.

Based on my previous experience, it should have played before now. Ergo I asked the question.

Anyway, the question was recently played (some time after my original post and before this one). So I guess the answer is that the wait time has increased from 6-8 weeks to 3 months.

Though it still doesn't tell me if three months is typical or unusual. I only know now that that particular question took about 3 months. Is three months typical now?

The process is automated; we can't make it quicker or longer unless Terry changes it. As we've said, this does cause issues either way (whether it slows down or speeds up), so whatever you're experiencing right now is typical based on the amount of questions still waiting.

If it seems longer than it was, then it's because more people have been submitting. And that's a good thing!

I think the play/rate days were cited above. If your Q was placed for rating before this, it means that its play run ended last Wednesday, the day you began this post and right at the 3 month mark!

Now this post isn't to insult. Some of your other recent posts indicate you may be having cache clearing troubles. Take this case, if you were looking at an "Accepted Contributions" page from a few weeks ago that hadn't updated itself with the new info upon loading the page, you would have missed that the Q was in play and review last week. I know I was watching out for any of your Qs coming up to let you know that it was out there and you were missing current info. If you have others coming up, watch to see if your Accepted contributions list shows them changing.

As I said in an earlier post, the "excessive" bit was an unfortunate choice of words. What I was trying to convey is that it takes longer than it used to. And this bears out with my observation because it used to take 6-8 weeks, and now it takes 3 months or so. (It's not a caching issue with my browser. I noticed the play a little while ago, but only now got 'round to the Forums to address/update the issue.)

And I am not asking anyone to go faster. Please don't think that. I just wanted to know if three months is typical. If so, then that's that. If not, then is there something odd or problematic about my questions? That's all I'm trying to find out. If three months is what it's taking everyone, then I know there isn't a problem.

There is another gap now between my May question and my first June question, so if it takes 3 months, then I know not to expect to see it played until after mid-September.

And yes, if so many people are submitting questions that the queue-time has lengthened, then that's wonderful for the growth of FunTrivia! But of course, it could also be that fewer people are playing the New Questions game, which is not so good for the health of the site in general. I gather that it's some of each.

Cheers.

I didn't repost those answers because of the use of the word 'excessive', but because they answered the question-- the time it takes your question to go through the game right now is based on the amount of submissions being submitted (and a number of other factors) which indicates that the current wait time is typical based on the quantity sitting between the queue and the game.

As for Mehaul's theory, you're right Grace-- this has nothing to do with browser caches-- if your questions go through the game your question list will update to match whatever's happening (as it always has).

If there's something odd or problematic with your questions you will have them sent back to you. Until then, they're just in the pile to be used.

Grace not seeing an updated "Accepted Contributions" page that showed her question was currently in the week's mix, definitely could be a cache problem. I don't want to research them but a few of her other posts are about pages not displaying in what would be a correct manner. Again, points to a browser definition problem and I'd start by going over all her cache settings, favorite site settings and other particulars that have to do with displaying the varied content from a single site like this one.