Don't know if there is a thread on this elsewhere, but what happens if i see an error
in a quiz and submit correction but that account is no longer active or has been inactive
for a while?

If you submit it through the Correction Note system, an editor will deal with it.

If you submit it through some other type of note, nothing will happen because no one will see it. If you post about it here or on some other forum, an editor may take care of it, but it will be way more time consuming and difficult.

The CN system is set up to take care of these problems easily. I'd say that about 60% of corrections are to inactive accounts.

Yes, i always use the CN system but I was led to believe that the correction goes to the author rather than an editor.

It goes to the account of the author, but the editors all see them as well to ensure that authors actually look at and address them.

Which brings me back to my original question. If the particular author is inactive, what happens about the correction? Is it just left, or will an editor look into it and decide if action needs to be taken?

Which brings me back to Agony's original reply to your original question.

Is there a way to have the Point Tree send corrections the same way regular quizzes do? Currently another page opens up asking for the question number. The To address line has the name of the author in it. There is no way to know the number of the question in the regular quiz and if the correction is sent to an inactive author then the correction will not be seen by an editor and no correction will be made.

Apologies for brining another topic to the thread but the heading and general discussion of where correction notices are sent to fit.

The correction will still be seen by an editor. I've just sent a note from Point Tree as a test, and it has turned up where I expected it to show. If you send a note using the correction note system, an editor will see it. (Knowing the number of the question, while helpful, is not essential.)

______

Spanishliz (Editor in Movies, Geography, Brain Teasers and Crosswords)

Editors see every single correction sent to quizzes (and single questions) in the categories where they edit. There is also a tag that tells us how long it is since the original quiz author has been on the site, so we can readily identify corrections that we need to deal with, as opposed to those that an active author will handle for themselves (after which it still gets checked to make sure the handling was appropriate). Corrections to archived quizzes need to be made by an editor, anyway - an active author who receives a correction on an archived quiz has to inform the editors about what they consider to be an appropriate change, if any.

My follow up was more concerned with how it is 'dealt with' by the editor if the author is inactive and therefore can't
address it.
Is there any correspondence with the person who submitted the original correction when a decision has
been made either way? Thanks

Sorry, i was in the middle of composing my reply so didn't see that you had responded. Thank you

I have on occasion communicated with the person sending the correction note, if there's a reason to. Most things we can Google to see if a correction is valid and what, if any, fix would be appropriate.

Editors do concern themselves with ensuring that quizzes are able to stay online indefinitely, so even if an author goes away from the site for a prolonged period of time (or forever), we take it upon ourselves to try our best to make the corrections to keep people playing the content.

If the issues are unfixable from our end, the quiz will be taken offline. Some time down the line it will be fixed or deleted.

I would say that I really only contact the original sender of the correction note under a few circumstances:

1. The correction note isn't very clear, but I recognize there is an issue and need to contact the sender for a clarification.

2. If the original author is gone and the note sender seems very knowledgeable about the topic at hand, I may ask for their advice about changing or rewording the question.

3. The note sender makes a comment in the correction about their concern that the question will not get looked at or fixed.

In the last circumstance, I really just want to reassure the player that we do look at correction notes. If we fix a simple typo, however, it isn't really a good use of our time to send the original sender a note explaining what we changed. The fixes speak (or no longer speak!) for themselves.

The way our system is set up, it's time consuming to send a note to the player. It can be done, but it means an extra couple of steps. I can spend that time contacting players, or I can spend it dealing with more CNs, and maybe editing a quiz or two.

I very rarely contact the player. One reason I might is if the player is clearly going off on a wrong path, and I want to rein them in now rather than later. If, for example, they are sending abusive CNs. Or if they clearly have a completely erroneous idea of what our site is, and what we do. As an example, we'll occasionally get a note from someone who has played a quiz about a musician, who apparently thinks the quiz was written by that musician, so they are sending fan notes to the quiz.

As for what we do about the correction.... We use our judgement, and act accordingly. Sometimes that means doing nothing. Sometimes it means changing a word or two in the question, or an incorrect option, to make the question clearer. Sometimes it means changing the question entirely. Sometimes it means taking the quiz offline.

BTW, having to deal with CNs on quizzes where the author is no longer available explains some of the things editors might ask you to do, when writing a quiz. If experience - most of the editors have dealt with thousands upon thousands of these things - tells us that including certain information or wording your question a certain way will minimize how many CNs are sent, and how hard they are to deal with, we're going to ask for that.

That's why players sending CN's are welcome to propose an alternative, if they feel up to it.

Thanks for all the explanations and clarification everyone.

If a CN is sent and nothing has been done, even after a few years, what then? I've noticed several legitimate errors have been left undone.

How many errors in this question below? Should it be corrected or ignored?

The Yankee Clipper was then nickname of who?

Is it an error that only appears in the dailies/hourlies, or is it an error that hasn't been fixed in the quiz proper? A spelling error like the one in that question (that's the only real error in there) would easily be fixed by an editor, likely before an author even sees it, if a correction notice were sent in.

Well, there are two errors actually but Kyle's point is true - an editor would fix that one in a minute, so something must have gone askew in the process. Send it in again.

The errors I have found uncorrected are all in the original quizzes. CNs were sent on all of them over 5 years ago.

Is there not two errors in the above question?
The Yankees Clipper was who? - would be correct as a predicate pronoun following a linking verb.
But isn't it "the nickname of whom" because it's the object of the preposition?

Okay, if you remember sending CNs over five years ago on those errors my guess is the CNs got lost in the system during an upgrade. Why not send new CNs?

Sometimes I can't remember what I had for breakfast. No way I'd remember sending a note on something on here 5 years. Kudos to you and your awesome memory!

The question has been found and amended.

Lol, not my memory on that one. I wrote some of my CNs down back then and recently found my list. That one had two CNs sent over 3 months apart. Both were lost? I kept track of over 200 CNs that year and there are still over 30 similar ones to be dealt with.