My interest in finding out exactly what the problem is, in submitting questions, is that if there is something that the editors could do differently that would make the process easier or more pleasant, we'd like to know.

So an answer like "I don't like to write questions" isn't terribly helpful. It doesn't tell me anything.

To me, writing a single question about a subject I have some interest in (so, thinking of something to ask and doing a little research on a subject I like to help come up with good incorrect options, and so I have something to put in the info sections) is easier and more fun than, say, getting a decent score on a quiz on a subject I have zero interest in (playing the quiz multiple times, or doing research on subject I don't like).

So, to me, finding out that many of you are willing to do the second, while being adamantly opposed to doing the first, is difficult to understand.

If the problem, or part of the problem, is the editing process, the editors really want to know that, so we can fix it if possible.

Yeah, I have the same question as agony in essence. A stage with 20 quizzes on a narrow focus feels to me like it should be more of an obstacle (at least to some) than writing just two questions. Personally, given the choice between "write two questions" as a daily and "score some number of points in the Celebrities(*) category", I would always prefer the former.

(*) insert your own favorite "I don't care about this" category instead.

But, it is the only answer I can give.

I truly don't like writing questions... in the same way I do not like cleaning the bathroom. It's not 'daunting', as one responder suggested. It's something I *can* do, but there are many things that I would *rather* do. I would prefer to play 100 video game quizzes (that would make Kyle happy), rather than write one question.

Researching to *play* a quiz is not the same as researching to *write* a quiz. To me, one is much more 'fun' than the other.

It's a "quiz race". Going in the person knows they're going to be taking quizzes and if they don't know that then perhaps they shouldn't be playing that game. It's like taking hourlies or dailies: they will run into questions they don't know but that's part of the fun of it. I mean, in my opinion, I see this place as a learning website but at my own pace with some obstacles. There's a vast difference between just answering a question you know or don't know then having to write one. If you don't know the process it can be nerving. I know it was for me the first and second time I did it. Some people just want to play quizzes, they don't want to write them, for whatever reason. Also, in my opinion, people don't like rejection.

-Nam

Part of what I'm trying to reason is that our editors don't like it either. We want to help avoid them entirely.

I don't know why I came here in 2003, I don't even remember joining. I probably joined, played one game and left. Found this website again in 2009 and been here ever since. I have a busy and hectic life. I come here to relax. I like being challenged but it only goes so far; and if I don't like it I move on to the next thing (here not elsewhere).

I want to be a good literal writer, I am not yet. I feel some editors here are helping me on that. And I know that this website thrives on quizzes and questions but being a poet and critic in the poetry field myself (for 20+ years with almost 100,000 critiques to my name) most people are amateurs. It's more than just writing a question or a quiz, it's being able to take the criticism and/or rejection. The vast majority of people do not like criticism or rejection.

I feel this place needs proofreaders, not just editors. When a person, who is not educated in a particular field, in this case 'writing', and they submit a work, such as a quiz and it's sent back with criticism; people can't take that. They think you're criticising them and not their work. Trust me, I know. I used to get so many death threats. One person in Ohio actually bought a ticket to Orlando to find me. I was like, "There's 15 David Arnold's in Orlando, none of which I am because I don't live in Orlando I live in the Orlando Metropolitan area -- not the same thing, idiot!" He got arrested, sent to prison for a couple of years.

Anyway, just saying...people are sensitive. You have to make it where they want to do it, it's their idea to do it. That's why options are always the best way. So, if they choose to write questions or a quiz instead of taking a marathon of other games and/or quizzes then if they fail and give up then they end up blaming themselves and no one else. They think maybe it's their ability; they criticize themselves and either strive to do better or not.

-Nam

I know you're being a bit jovial here but there's a vast difference between taking a quiz and WRITING a quiz. It's hard to write a quiz on this website. As I state in another reply, I'm a critic of poetry. Been doing it for 15+ years. I mainly critique amateur work; I get e-mails from time to time from known poets but they know me, we're friends and they know how blunt I can be. With amateurs I'm a little more sensitive, I give suggestions on how they could rewrite it, or change something. I never tell them it's wrong, or it's bad (even if it is) and that it just needs fixed. You have to see things from their point-of-view. From their point-of-view: the vast majority of them are not writers. They think they're back in school and they're being graded by the teacher and they hate it.

I have written 17 quizzes here and 33 questions. I loathe every single time I submit one because I know it'll be sent back. The last quiz I submitted got sent back multitudes of times, and I worked very hard on that quiz. I read other quizzes in the same category, read the rules multitudes of times, tried over and over to get it right only for it to be sent back. Now, I can take it. I'm a hard guy (outside this website). By the standards of society I'm uneducated. There are people who are educated not as tough as me, I know, I critique their work all the time. It's not that people don't want to necessarily write quizzes or questions here, though those people exist but that the process can be chaos because writing isn't their field. Literalism isn't my field. I write in metaphor. Writing literal questions with trivia is difficult for me. I'm uneducated (in the society view). What I know, I taught myself. It's hard for me to be taught by someone else when I've been my sole teacher most my life.

That's why I mentioned my educational background. Not all of us are educated as others are. Some people here graduated high school but never went to college. Some people also don't have English as their primary language and they're trying to write a quiz or question in English; that can be disheartening to them. It has to be made to where it's their choice, in my opinion. If it's their choice then the onus is on them. They already know going in, based on the previous games they have to take a lot of quizzes, do some dailies and hourlies etc., when in the second they found they had to write questions some people stopped playing the game. Now, it's an option on writing a quiz in the third game, which is good but if it wasn't: I would have stopped playing, too. Then this website would lose people like me and believe it or not, there's more people like me (the uneducated or barely educated) here than people like you here. My apologies if I was too blunt there.

-Nam

You can't. You need proofreaders. Proofreaders can fix the grammatical errors, and then send it to the Editors. Putting the sole obligation on Editors is too stressful for them. It has to be viewed as a publishing arena; and in a way it actually is because the questions then become the property of the website, no?

-Nam

You're right in the sense that quizzes are 'published' to an extent to be used as property on the site-- that's in our terms and conditions/

As for 'proofreading', 'grammatical errors', and the like, every editor may take a different approach to it. For typos and grammar, we will typically try our best to fix them for the author unless it proves to be a recurring issue or has the possibility of such. If it's something we can fix, we will; we WANT quizzes to go online. We don't want the back-and-forth. Authors certainly don't want the back-and-forth. We're here to make sure quizzes are ready to be played-- indefinitely.

As for sole obligations and whatnot, it's been our job as editors here to ensure authors' quizzes are ready to go online for going onto two decades. In that time we have severely relaxed a lot of our guidelines to try and make authoring accessible. We have authors on here as young as 13-years-old and others who may be six or seven times that age (or more). We have non-English speakers submitting. We have authors with dyslexia. We have others who have vision problems and use speech-to-text programs to write quizzes. We've had authors who type their quizzes in their entirety with their phones.

At one point we used to have four or five editors in the bulk of our categories. Now, in most cases, we have two or three. Our team is prepared for any types of submissions; any topics. Most importantly, our editorial staff is here and who they are, because they are precisely the people who are not going to get stressed out about the job.

If the concern is not submitting because we don't want to put the stress on the editors, I will tell you right now: that is not an issue.

And with single questions, it's even less of an issue. If a question has typos, I'll fix them just so I don't have to send it back for something so small. If every word is misspelled or I can't make sense of the question enough to reword it, that's something different. But every submission we get is looked at with the intent that its end goal is to get online. It's our job to facilitate that.

If you have a hard time motivating yourself to contribute, try to look at quiz (or question) writing not so much as an obstacle than as a chance.

First and foremost, FunTrivia isn't a collection of games, forums or badges. It is a vast collection of trivia questions and answers. When looking at this collection, you will most certainly consider some parts of it overdone and others severely lacking in quantity and possibly quality. You'd want to play more quizzes about [insert topic], but there are none. You would appreciate less [some country] content but instead more [your country].

Well - every time we ask (suggest, plead, offer, etc.) that you to write a quiz or question, there is your chance to take ownership and vote with your keyboard. You are in control of what that question will be about, how it will be written and what info you present. And every time you actually do it, you are increasing the chance that others will write about your favorite topics: People all over the internet are looking for trivia on various subjects. If there actually is something about that subject, they'll find FunTrivia. Some of those who do will stay and some of those will become authors. The one quiz you write this month may well be the very reason you have ten more to play next year!

To use a different image: Whenever you write a quiz or question, you buy a share in FunTrivia's question base. You own a bit of it and you add your vote to the overall control of what it looks like down the line. Or you write nothing and Kyle will extend his ever-growing monopoly by writing another one hundred Pokémon quizzes

"Purchase some stock in the question pool" sounds better than "fight with an editor to get something online", doesn't it? We think so too and we want to help you acquire your shares

About education - I have a high school diploma, and that's it. Most of my life has been spent in service industry jobs - waitress, chambermaid, cook, childcare worker.... Before I came here, I hadn't written anything more challenging than a grocery list since school, and I was in my late forties.

The standard of English that we're looking for is that which would get a twelve year old a "well done!" on their paper. Capital letters at the beginning of sentences, punctuation marks at the end. Subject/verb agreement - "I am" rather than "I is". Using the same tense for each of your three sentences, rather than switching from past to present and back again.

And, as Kyle said, if we find one or two errors per question - even as basic errors as these - we'll usually fix them ourselves.

I feel that a lot of people who come here to play, and who have never written anything here, have an unrealistic idea of how hard it is. Single questions especially have to be pretty darned bad in order to be rejected.

The main thing I reject single questions for is the author not bothering to check that the question hasn't been asked a hundred times before. It's the first step of the submission process, you have to go out of your way to avoid it. Do that before you bother researching, so as to not waste your time on a question that can't be used, and that's pretty much all you have to worry about. If it's in the wrong category, we'll move it for you. Use the writing skills you learned before the sixth grade. It will either be accepted, or you'll get a note something like "Looks good, but such and such an aspect will have to be changed because of such and such a reason".

Anyone who is a dedicated enough member to even know these games exist, has a pretty good idea what a Funtrivia question looks like - that we won't accept "Who's my favourite boy band?" or "Do you like me? Type YES if you do!".

"I tried it and I just don't like it" is, yes, an answer that can't be argued with. But "It's too hard".... that I have trouble understanding. I guess that's just the way my mind works, and why I'm doing what I'm doing - to me, it's not even a little bit hard, it's just fun.

The only quizzes I would send back for grammatical errors or typos are quizzes that are absolutely riddled with them - if it's going to take me an hour to virtually rewrite the quiz, that's not fair on the other authors whose quizzes are waiting patiently for attention. If the quiz needs more work because it doesn't meet the category guidelines, I might ask the author to proofread again and try to fix them while they are working on it. But if it is resubmitted still needing copyediting work done, I generally incorporate that into my editing job. The game is not about demanding perfection in submissions, it's about working as a team to get something "as good as it gets" online. This means that it must be free of inaccuracies, as best I can tell - corrections from players with more expertise may alert me to details of which I was unaware, and I never stop learning new things on a daily basis around here. It also means that I hope I have caught all the typos and grammatical issues, but I do miss some, which players will pick up. And since the language is evolving, and accepted usage changes over time, a number of things that older players (including me) identify as grammatical errors are actually now considered acceptable, and sometimes even the new expectation.

Speaking or writing and grammar. I rarely talk about my career on here for fear of being judged harsher as a writer.

I'm an award winning journalist. I've won more than 300 awards from professional organizations over an nearly 20 year career. I publish stories and photographs by the hundreds every month.

Due to the nature of the news industry, I work without an editor in the real world, and because of that often find typos in stories after hitting the publish button.

(I've rarely shared that here, as I don't want to be seen as a professional writer and be held to that higher standard.)

Writing trivia is a good change of pace even though it's still writing. While I've had a few issues at times when I tried topics or categories I just didn't get, I otherwise rarely get a quiz sent back. But as the editors can attest I'm sure, I have my fair share of typos.

I'm used to writing a million miles a minute and going back later to check, after publishing, sometimes I do that here as well.

Over the years here I've mostly gotten better at checking before I send it in, but every now and again there is a quiz with some glaring typos and it gets rejected.

Not sure that any of that adds to the conversation, just pointing out that even professionals have issues from time to time, so don't worry. Do your best.

And lastly, if I can help you with your quiz writing, feel free to ask.

They certainly do. Everyone makes mistakes. You don't need a background in writing to be able to write though. Many of our authors (and editors) have the background and a lot really don't, and that's fine too.

Not my point, at all. You don't get it, you never will.

-Nam

Based on your last message, your point is that authors need proofreading before they submit to the queue and have their quizzes placed online. And it's too much stress for our editors.

I'm telling you that that's not true.

We don't expect everyone to be world-class writers on all fronts. We're here to get the quiz from the queue to the site proper to be played. If that means proofreading, that's our job. If that means working out grammar and syntax, then that's our job too.

We are going to try our very best to avoid having to send a correction notice. Period.


If I'm still missing the point on what you said, then I have to request more clarification on it. If there's an issue in all of this, it's for the betterment of the site that we seek out a solution. Saying that we simply don't get it and never will implies that this site won't be good enough to pass muster, and that's a bit more concerning than all of the other stuff.

I think we need to accept that there are players who just don't want to write. We can be as helpful as we like, explain what we're looking for and make suggestions but if the interest isn't there, why try to force it?

Kyle loves video games, which do nothing for me. I have friends who love playing bridge. I don't know how to play it. I'm sure I could learn, but I just don't want to. Maybe I'd enjoy both video games and bridge if I tried but I don't have the inclination to try. There are limits to my time and to the things I want to do in that time.

We can hope that some of the points made in this thread might prompt those who are considering writing to take the plunge.

Thanks Wes it was another enjoyable challenge as always.

While we might not find many people answering it in this forum without a bit of asking around, maybe those of you who have teammates affected could point players to it, because this is really the key question and I would like to see some answers. Getting some answers here could really help improve our authoring side:

One thing that would encourage me to do more single question writing is for my questions to be acknowledged through the message system so they can be found more easily. If a question is rejected a notification will show up, but only on a page that I prefer not to visit.

A simple tick box for the Editor EG:
1. Question accepted. It should appear in approximately three months time
2. Question rejected at this time, go to Single Question page to see what can be done
3. Question rejected as it repeats others that already appear

I don't write to many single questions now, because the rules are totally ignored, when the questions are submitted. Below is the condition I refer to.

Many submissions we receive tend to be too difficult for the average player. Ask yourself whether English speakers around the world of varied backgrounds would have a reasonable chance (say, 80%) of getting the question correct. If the answer is no, then the question is too difficult for this form. We encourage you to submit obscure/specific questions in quizzes.


This would mean an average score of 8/10 when people play, just look at the percentage of people who get 8/10 or higher on a daily basis.

I know some people will query what is he moaning about, but the question was asked and that is why I have answered.

That should probably be changed, as we have broadened our reach over the years. We still prefer that you stay away from really obscure, specific stuff, but mostly now we let the players sort that out - if they feel a question is too obscure, they give it a poor rating.

You should also note that the text refers to 8 out of 10 everyday people around the world, not 8 out of 10 trivia fanatics who hone their skills here. It is more a guide as to what will likely be a question that you will later see being used in the timed games than a "rule". If concern about getting the right level of difficulty before you can write a question keeps people from submitting, then it should certainly be changed. As agony said, since we cannot actually make accurate predictions about how a question will play, we usually only reject questions that are either absurdly simple (What color is the sky on a sunny day?) or so obscure that only a very small number of people could possibly answer it (What color is the house on the southeast corner of Lorimer Street and Jessop Street in Greensborough?). The answers are blue and brown, but neither will be a suitable question for an international trivia site. The color of the trams running around the streets of Melbourne, a major city that has a significant number of overseas visitors, whose trams are a well-known feature, might be suitable - I am not prepared to judge that one, and happy to let it go online and see how it goes. If players like it, even if they don't know the answer, it can be used somewhere - the games need a range of levels of difficulty - and if they don't like it, it will head into limbo after going through the New Questions game.

I send the 'This is too obscure' note more often than most I think, primarily because I field the few and far-between Video Games entries in the single-question queue. This is because I was told from the outset to severely limit the VG content in the game due to its unpopularity. This is the same reason we were asked to outright disallow questions about Professional Wrestling in the same game.

That being said, I'm very much open to well-written single-questions about video gaming and am happy to work with an author to make sure it's broad enough to be enjoyable for an international, all-ages audience.

For what it's worth, I prefer having players' answers and votes deciding what questions should stay, than an editor rejecting a question because it is too obscure. There were enough complaints about editor rejections and regional bias when the game started. I know that I always vote well for questions that are well written and I learned something than the bland easy ones which everyone knows. The trick is in finding a balance if you're aiming for the badges. I have a lot of my own questions where the percentage of players who got them correct is less than the required figure but the rating is in the range of 0.3-0.4.