With all the talk about games participation aside, I must admit it doesn't feel the most tactful to ask if a website is going to last. I know there are lots of steps that Terry has taken to update and modernize the site, and there are more in the process.

It just all feels a little bit like going into a friend's shop and asking, "So how long is this place actually going to stay in business?"

If I may return to the topic of the The Daily Game for a minute. I think there are reasons why participation in that particular game has gone down, reasons that don't necessarily make it a bellwether for FunTrivia per se. The Daily Game has changed a lot in the last decade or so, and has sort of been under-promoted. One big, big change was de-emphasizing regions. That seems to have occurred in various steps, including removing the International games and associated badge and the regional boards. Then listing the Duels first among the Games sort of knocked the Daily Game from its prominent place (to me anyway -- it felt like it was the "home" game or central game of FunTrivia).

I'm a little fuzzy on all the history because there were periods when I didn't play, and some of the changes happened before I joined and/or started playing games in earnest, but for all these changes to Daily Game and to FT, that is perhaps a better explanation for the downturn in participation of the Daily Game.

Having said that, perhaps it would be a good idea to come up with a way to promote the Daily Game. Perhaps throw in a couple of badges or badgelets? Or add some kind of mini-game for Gold Members?

I rather like the Point Tree and My Daily Quiz. I try to play them every day or week.

Hey, maybe some kind of badgelet (or full badge) for the Point Tree might be a good idea? Something with tiers for number of games played?

I concur. It is forward. And the methodology is really just poor. Wesley and other commenters are correct. Games become less interesting over time. People win all the badges and they stop playing them and they go do crosswords, or they do quizzes, or they do something else to earn some other badges that they haven't got yet. And some people just come to play quizzes. And some come just for GC. There isn't a neat metric that is going to capture all of those participants and so picking a game here, a game there, and then concluding that this is evidence of a decline... Well correlation does not equal causation and lack of evidence is not evidence of a lack.

I like them too. It seems perceptions differ. Point Tree is a quick, easy way for me to add almost a certain 1500 points to my score in less than around 5 minutes, and sometimes as much as 1800 or more points. That's the easiest 1800 points you'll earn in your life and that's why it doesn't count to your daily score. I tend not to play Daily, in case it comes up in Daily Challenges, which it is especially wont to do. If I play Daily Quiz before looking at my challenges, then I'm likely to mess up my chance of finishing the challenge for that day, not that I do them every day anyway. Some days I just don't do them.

Oh, and it just dawned on me, I forgot to play Duel yesterday, meaning I have to wait until next month to try and get my next tier. Very well, if there's one game I hate it's Duel. Sorry to be a humbug about that, I know a lot of people love that game but in my defense it hates me back.

Am I wrong or am I wrong? A game where even a 990 doesn't ensure you winning... something's a bit messed up about the odds on that game isn't there? Not that a 990 is anything to write home about. There are a few categories where they're eminently possible. But the agony of defeat in that game especially painful when you just hit them out of the park after being on a losing streak in a day and then you hit a 985 or 990 and you lose that one too.

But just to get on my soapbox a minute, the last time I tried to add a tier, I ended up winning all 15 in a day that month! What a surprise that was. I never would have thought starting that day when I can barely crack 50% that I would have a shot at the minibadge. I knew the categories all but a few looked very, very up my alley. So these long-term tiers actually have ancillary effects of allowing you to accidentally unlock achievements that you were never directly aiming for.

Well I should specify, the reason I hate Duel so much is I'm really kind of ADHD and in Quiz Mode I just start clicking uncontrollably sometimes, like I can't even pause and read the question. I'll read the first line or so or skim it then guess in so many cases. I have to like almost take deep breaths and say oms or something before playing it or I spazz out. Anyway, this is a personal issue, not a site issue. Just wanted to say that so you know I'm not blaming the site or anybody for my problems. This is purely a personal problem that only affects me in this game. In GC or the hourlies and dailies where there's a page layout I can much more easily control my tendency for hyperactivity and contain it, whereas Quiz Mode you click and you're penalized right then and there. The page layout allows you to pick your answers before submitting the entire page and I just do better in these games. I guess in theory there's no reason there couldn't be a page layout for Duel but this would be cumbersome to ask Terry to do that because I'm a klutz and it's not affecting anyone else, it would be very selfish to even suggest that. Plus there are probably programming issues regarding how the questions are retrieved from the question bank that may actually make it a very difficult thing to handle, programmatically speaking.

That sounds wonderful! And I like the idea of only the best stats showing in the profile (so the person with with worst score or fewest badges or whatever won't be embarrassed).


One very nice thing that will come of this change is that teams will no longer have to worry about getting too many people, no more of that worry if one person pushes the team over the line into the Larger league. Some teams are very vigilant about keeping numbers small; after the change, they won't have to be.

"I rather like the Point Tree and My Daily Quiz. I try to play them every day or week"

So which games are these two superior to?

I would never play either unless they were involved in some type of daily challenge, that says a lot about them. I could throw crystal ball into that bracket too but although I dislike the game I see it as something different and interesting. It is a well thought out game so I gave it credit for adding a lot to the site even though I won't play that.

Point tree and daily quiz consist of questions seen elsewhere but in a less interesting format, non competitive and therefore just for points. Well... earning FT points becomes redundant once you reach the higher levels and so do these two games.

Each to their own though!

"It just all feels a little bit like going into a friend's shop and asking, "So how long is this place actually going to stay in business?"

If only that were least tactful or the rudest thing any customer has ever come into a shop I've worked in or managed and said to me then I'd be super happy.

I'm generalising now, not digging at you HairyBear because I think you asked a reasonable question and I'm glad to see Terry answer it and what anyone else thinks including me is fairly irrelevant, but I think people/customers will usually think of themselves first. They often come into my places of work and don't really see a person with feelings stood there serving them. They are thinking of themselves and what are we going to do for them today (or how we are not doing enough for them today). Not everybody is going to stop and debate themselves as to whether they are causing offence or asking tactful questions. They are interested in what is on offer and sometimes they might be wondering what the future holds if they continue to frequent your business. I learned long ago that it's not (usually) personal and you just can't afford to take it personally or you just go home from work every day feeling miserable.

Having worked in retail, I agree with you to an extent. Some people are wonderful; some people do exactly what you suggest.


I know we've reiterated in this thread already, but I can assure that a lot of planning goes on behind the scenes, both short and long term, to develop the site from various angles (writing, gaming, playing, building, etc.). Things will inevitably change (all sites do). I think at one point I brought up the possibility that we were going to replace Fill Me In entirely due to low player totals. I think we've solved that to an extent, but such are the types of changes we do look at to freshen things up. We do have to think about balance, especially with the amount of games we have, because there is so. much. to. do. around here.

'

I don't about "superior", but I rediscovered these games, whereas I have forsaken GC and The Duel for the most part. I also enjoy "The Monster Quiz" and I try to play "Gold Madness" when I remember.

This is just me, but I will no longer renew my GM because almost exactly 6 years ago I asked if the Private Tournaments were going to get an overhaul and was assured here in the forums that yes it was planned. That was 6 years ago and still nothing has been done that I can see. It's still full of old and stale questions, no new questions (that I can see) have been added in those 6 years, there's questions with spelling and/or grammatical errors, and quite frankly, some of them are just wrong. I don't know how much time or effort it would take to add the no doubt thousands of quizzes that have been made to the database that the Private Tourneys pull from, but something needs to be done. But sadly it seems that a certain group of old members are just obsessed with badges and their standing and whatever and things like the PT's get nothing done. I play in 2 different ones (PT's) every day, so I can see that nothing has been done and that nothing will ever be done.

So that is the reason this former GM holder will never renew, at least until someone who isn't in the clique is paid a little attention to, because unfortunately those seem to be the only people that get what they want/need/suggest around here. Sorry if this sounds confrontational, because it's not meant to be, but as a long time member and former GM holder, it's absolutely frustrating.

Private tournaments have indeed been neglected, but that's because they make up a very small part of the site. There simply have been other pressing things to work on that affect more people. It has nothing to do with "a clique". It's simply that the rest of the site gets way more traffic, and so has nearly all the focus in terms of upgrades, maintenance, new features, etc. It's triage.

That said, the private tournaments are a mess and do need to be fixed. I can't promise a timeframe, but the intent is still to update them and upgrade them to make them a lot better.

I can sympathise with this if the private tourneys are the most important part of your site interaction. Playing a private tourney that I was invited to join back in 2004 was how I eventually discovered the site after exclusively playing the private tourney for a couple of years I finally realised there was more to the site and the rest is history.

I don’t play that private tourney anymore because participation dwindled down to 1 or 2 and eventually to none. I do play our team PT though and from the outside it seems like it is almost identical to the game I first played in 2004! I might be wrong, but if it is close enough to make me think that then it certainly has not been improved.

It’s never mattered to me though because the PTs seem such an unimportant aspect compared to all the other really great games and quizzes on the site. That’s not to dismiss the fact that you enjoy them so much, just personal preference.

I would say that I really don’t agree about a clique that dictates direction of travel on the site. I would say that there is a vocal minority that strongly resists any type of suggested change to anything on the site and greets any potential improvements with intense negativity. But I really don’t think that they have much influence on the site owner as, again to me looking from the outside, he seems to make improvements as he sees fit.

I dare say, although I might be wrong, that the reason the PTs have not been updated is that it is somehow way more effort and trouble for very little gain. I don’t know the numbers, but presumably traffic through the PTs is low and leads to fewer sign ups than ever? Only one person can answer me that, but surely if the PTs were bringing in the GMs then they would get updated. For what it’s worth I hope they do.

p.s. the order of priorities right now:

- turning the site HTTPS (working on it right now) to get rid of the annoying "site is unsecure" messages.

- adding a couple of GM features to keep GM interest up (I do this at least once a year, every year)

- tweaking team games and teams to make team play better

- private tournaments UI update and fixes. Merging with the live databases. Also want to add the interactive mode as an optional form of play in these games.

Sounds great.

I must say that I think you do a magnificent job in continuing to make this site a fantastic place for m to waste time that I ought to be spending on more worthwhile pursuits! I’m not one to part with money easily but I always think of Gold Membership here as tremendous value when I look at my time spent per day on the site.

Funtrivia is easily my favourite website. Credit where it is due. So... now that I’ve finished sucking up I’ll go play another quiz that I don’t really have time for.

This is the way I was introduced to the site, as well. I belonged to several chat groups that had private tournaments. At some point, I became curious, and looked around, and discovered the rest of Fun Trivia.

If dwindling membership is a problem...
If you are trying to attract new members...
Private tournaments are one way to do it, but they have to be quality. Unfortunately, they have a lot of information that is out of date. Yesterday, I had a question that seemed to think Pluto was a planet. If I were new to the site, via a private tournament, and got questions like that, it's unlikely I'd explore further.

Upgrading the private tournaments really does matter!

Terry probably has a pretty good grasp of the numbers and I believe him if he says that private tournaments make up a small fraction of the traffic. Of course part of that may be due to the fact that there's not really that much to do - a typical interaction with a private tournament is 3 pages: Game main page, question page and answer page. Then, every so many days, you might check scores or buy an award for bucks, but that's about it.

Still, I don't see many private tournaments gathering members (most have a small group of daily players, but no new joins) and they're also doing a bad job drawing people into the rest of the site - while it's only a click away, it's not enticing. Neither is the interaction with separate user databases for the private and main games easy to grasp and I imaging that a number of players might actually check the main site but then get frustrated at the fact that their account does not work (and they've been warned in big letters against making more than one). This is probably in need of improvement for when the private games are updated (and, I guess, email trivia needs that even worse. That game in all its supposed simplicity is generating so many support calls it's not funny and again does not make an enticing entry point for a main site signup.)

As to thelancinator: I understand your thinking, but you are probably a member of a minority here. Here's why: Most gold members or those who consider getting a membership will first and foremost look at what they get for their payment. Private tournaments are not part of that equation - not only are the private games free, but gold privileges don't carry over there due to the separation. As the most prominent example, even if you have a gold membership, a private game will give you an ad. Those games are not even part of the main experience - you have to register separately even if you have a gold account. In fairnesss, you should consider them more of a bonus offering to everyone (regardless of membership status) than a feature of the site you paid for (or not as the case may be) - or you can consider them an ad / trial for the site, although I'll admit they're currently doing a pretty lousy job in that role.

Right now, the priority must be the HTTPS conversion. The browser message (which is just awful and overly alarming) does turn away new players, causes dissatisfaction among existing players (many of them paying) and the lack of HTTPS hurts search ranks, reducing visibility of the site including email and private games. If anything is threatening the continued wellbeing of FT, it's that one thing. Unfortunately, that's also one really big projects. FT contains tens of thousands of links that need to be adapted and cleaned up, along with the infrastructure for the encryption, certificate renewal and all that's behind this deceptively simple one letter in the URL. Imagine the effects if something similar to the Firefox add-on bug happened to FT and were to cause players to lose out on a day in the GC / duels / KO / a monthly / a badge hunt / whatever goal they are working on - especially as Terry likely would not be able to solve it as quickly as the thousands-strong developer community of Firefox.

We're glad for all the feedback, but ultimately it's the administrators, the game developers, and, in the final instance Terry, who will have to discuss, decide and allocate resources the best way we can for the entire community - which, I may add, is still well over 10,000 strong in terms of daily play and significantly higher when you add in those who only play every few days.

HTTPS is taking longer than it should because I'm using it as a good excuse to finally deal with 20 years of old pages, complicated redirects, etc that have built up over time. Just deleted 3000 pages from the quiz index of old directories that have since been modified or deleted.

Wow, Terry! Three thousand?

I very happily stumbled across FunTrivia in the year 2000 (class 0...when classes were a thing.) I have taken some breaks over time, but I keep coming back. And while real life doesn't permit me to take full advantage of everything this site has to offer, I do love everything about it. If I could play all the games every day, I would. That is why I've been a gold member for the past 12 years.

I've also run a private tournament since 2007. We've averaged over 50 players a month for a long long time, and I'm always thinking of ways to keep it interesting and fun. I do know a handful of players have come to FunTrivia but not sure how many of those translated to gold memberships. I do think that might be easier if private tournaments were kept up a little better and if the crossover was perhaps a little easier. But I also see it as a bonus, a bonus I'm grateful to have. Other things take priority, I get that. When those fixes come, I'll be grateful.

PS. I'd be willing to pay a nominal fee for private tournament gold membership, if that were ever a thing and came with perks for administrators (no ads, in game badges, access to more question pools, additional customization like color packages or time penalties, etc.)