As the standards of quiz writing have changed through the years, I am finding it difficult to rate quizzes according to the standards that were in place at that time. An example of that is: "The Music of Lennon/McCartney By Man With No Name
Category: Songs by The Beatles" . It was placed online in 2003. How does one fairly rate these type of quizzes? Would this type of quiz been accepted today by the editors?

I can only say what I do myself, but since rating is a subjective and personal exercise, I'm not sure there is any right or wrong here. I tend to rate a quiz as if it were written today. I know it isn't the author's fault that the rules have changed, but I rate it against the other quizzes in the same category that I can also play. It's kind of like how classic movies have survived. The ones we still watch today are the cream of the crop, but many more films were released at the time that are no longer well thought of. So older quizzes with no II tend to get a poor rating from me. Every once in a while, I will come across a good quiz, which though it has no II, the questions themselves are clever and well written. In those cases, I rate it accordingly, probably about average instead of poor.

[edited to correct typos and add clarification].

I agree with Sue. I rate them according to the current standards.

I see the same things happen to my own quizzes. Many of my older ones tend to fall in the rankings over time, but some of them have managed to keep their sunnies for many years. As an author, I hate to see them drop in popularity, but the reality is that it is to be expected as they aren't played as often anymore and there are newer, better quizzes to compare them to. I can still feel good about the fact that they were once considered good quizzes, so I don't get bothered by it. If anything, it challenges me to write a better one next time that can withstand the tests of time.

This is an unrelated question, but I've noticed a recent phenomenon related to rating changes that has surprised me. A few of my quizzes which appeared to be doing very well have sunk rapidly in their ratings. I guess it is possible that someone or a few someones who didn't like a quiz of mine they played could have gone and played more and rated them poorly, but that seems strange to me. Has anyone else ever noticed something like this?

I did not see this evolution, but apparently at least a dozen of my quizzes have lost their sunnies. And oddly enough one of those lost sunnies has dropped to 57,600th place where the threshold is around 25,400.

But I don' t believe the theory of one individual trying to downgrade quizzes. As far as I know, only one rating by each named person is taken into account - and guests may not rate at all.

Maybe some of our niche quizzes have been put in the spotlight by a certain event (quiz of the hour) and have thus seen many players not familiar with / not very interested in the subject.

And some of my titles tend to attract quizzers that are not interested in the subject. For instance, "Heavy Metal" was not written for those who like the music style, but for amateur chemists.

Odd things happen. I had a quiz that was in the top 10,000 when it came off new and before I knew what happened it was down to the 29 thousands.

My lowest ranked quiz (the only one in 6 digits) had sunnies when it was first ranked. That was a spectacular fall from grace!

While the number of ratings is small (certainly while it is under 100), a few ratings that differ significantly from the others can make a significant change in the ranking because the ranking is based on the average of the ratings. (I would try to demonstrate this with some arithmetic, but since we don't actually know the numbers allocated to each word in the rating system, and how, if at all, they might be weighted in the calculation algorithm, it would be speculative at best.)

I've seen quizzes plummet in the ratings when they are featured, too. And remember when we first gave extra points for rating quizzes which had been online for months, without ratings? Most of my quizzes took a beating there - I figure it was the "don't know anything about the subject" factor. All those lovely little subtle jokes that only a fellow aficionado would understand, all those clever incorrect answer options giving sly hints - that all went right over the heads of those players, and they failed to see how great the quizzes really were.

That's my story, anyway.....

I typically don't look at ratings once the quiz has it's 20. So I haven't seen my own quizzes rise/drop all that dramatically.

The one exception being on one brain maladies, It was in the top 1000 on the site at one point, then the badgelet (it was a commission) was released, it was played in much wider fashion and is now ranked in the 40,000s.

I'm not overly worried about it though. I write either for me, or for the challenges/games here. So the ratings don't bother me too much.


When rating a quiz myself, I start assuming they are "average" and rate up or (rarely) down from there based on quality. I don't factor in when it was published. I rate only based on how it was when I played it. I also only rate based on enjoyability of the quiz, and don't factor in if I find small typos or other type errors, those can happen to anyone.