Single questions have only 17 out of the 20 categories. The missing ones are Brain Teasers, For Children and Video Games. So you don't need to cover any of those three.

If you'd rather write a question that would normally fall in one of those three, you do have options for the last two (Brain Teasers are right out):

A question that you would put into a For Children quiz goes into the category it would topically fit into. For example a SpongeBob question (normally TV for Kids) would be TV.

Sufficiently generic video game questions such as "What kind of game genre is the 'DOOM' series?" are acceptable in Entertainment. You should only ask questions that even a person with a very passing familiarity of the game would have a chance answering.

The remark "Video Games are Entertainment, not Hobbies" was based on the fact that this is the most common categorization error in single questions by far: People see "games" under Hobbies and send their VG questions that way.

One thing to keep an eye on when doing The Grill is to check and see which category the question is accepted in. I submitted a question in General that I felt was a combination of Hobbies, World, and Religion, but since it was primarily Hobbies, the editor moved it there and I now have credit for Hobbies but not General. I knew that this was a possibility so I held off on submitting a Hobbies question since I'm probably only going for tier 1, but also want to warn others to check their progress by category within the badge.

That's a good point - editors will be moving these questions around according to where they think they fit. Where you submit a question is not guaranteed to be its category.

Moral of the good point: Have more than one question ready for different categories.

Hi - asked this in the Chat but figured I'd bring it here as I looked again at my list of Accepted single questions for The Grill and I do have at least one that has been accepted in all 17 categories that have been written July 13 and after. It looks like I've met all criteria so do I need to just be patient, could they still be moved around to other categories, or is there another reason?

Which date of acceptance is the earliest that will count toward the GRILL challenge?

I'm in the same boat. Probably just something Terry needs to kick to get started.



July 13.

*** NOTE: The awarding of "The Grill" is not entirely coded yet. I will do this on Monday. Anyone who meets requirements for any tiers will receive their badges then. ***

Great thank you!

Grill awards are now being awarded every 12 hours. Congrats to all grillers!

To that end I have a question. Three times I have submitted a question to People, one was moved to World and two others to Humanities. According to the description of what constitutes people in the pull-down menu of the submission form, it is "artists, explorers, politicians, writers, quotes, etc." I wrote three questions explicitly about exactly three of those, yet they were moved. If I write about a scientist, will it be moved to Sci/Tech? If I quote an author, will it moved to Literature? It makes no sense and it is arbitrary.

It is not arbitrary, it depends on the actual slant of the question. If you submit a question to Literature quoting an author, using quote about something that is not directly linked to their writing, it will be moved to People. Mark Twain and golf springs to mind. If the question is about their literary work and is submitted to People, it will be moved to Literature. People will accept a question about where Mark Twain lived for much of his later life, but if you use that idea to ask a question about 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court', it will be moved to Literature.

P.S. Pretty much every politician question is going to be moved to World.

Much like quizzes, asking an editor where a question belongs is always an option, though until we see the completed question, there is always a possibility it can be moved. The categorization of single questions is based almost completely on how we categorize quizzes, so looking at People category quizzes would be a good place to see what kind of questions would go there.

Not to mention this is a challenge with specific quantities. If your People questions are moved to another section, then they're saving you work in those sections down the line, especially if your intent is to reach the higher tiers.

As for 'what works win certain categories', we have resources available-- like the Author's Lounge board-- where questions like these can be asked and people can help.

For what it's worth, I've had questions moved out of History and People in the past week; I've also been moving submissions out of the Entertainment queue for miscategorization. It's gonna happen.

What are you using as the cutoff for the GRILL challenge? As soon as I read Wesley's announcement of the GRILL, I submitted several questions that day, which to my surprise were approved within a few hours. I have counted up all my questions submitted & approved in the days since that point, and I've had all 17 categories since July 22, but it's now the 25th and it hasn't been rewarded. I am not counting things that I submitted before I read Wesley's challenge; only things I wrote and submitted since then.

If you look at the challenge, it will show you exactly what questions have been accepted and where, and which are in the queue. I have the challenge pinned to the front page so I can check at a glance. You have, presumably, seen this since you know that some of your questions were moved to different categories. Your name isn't on the list of winners, so it seems probable that you are missing a category even though you think you covered it.

I have a Grill question as well. "Recently Accepted Submissions" (under "My Submissions" in QAC) lists exactly five single questions. According to both it and the Grill checklist, I have a total of four -- one "Accepted" point in four categories, and zero "Pending" points.

All five were submitted and accepted well after the Grill started. If someone would explain the discrepancy, I'd very much appreciate the help.

George

I just sent you a message with a possible answer, but this is a good place to help others with the same query. It is most likely that one of them moved to a different category when it was placed online, so you now have two in the same category, and the five questions only cover four categories. You can check to see what category each question is in by going to the Question Post page, then click the link to My Contributions: All Accepted Submissions. That screen tells you the category, so you can see which one moved.

Thank you again for the help, L_T. I checked out the page. I'm officially baffled, so I hope someone can shed some light on this:

I have five recently accepted questions -- each one officially in a different category. They are Literature, People, Sports, Humanities, and Religion.

But Religion isn't being counted on my Grill checklist.

Have you possibly first submitted the Religion question before July 13? (either because of a wait or a resubmit). Then it wouldn't count.

I apologize; I meant to say "it feels arbitrary", because I could not fathom it.

So for a submission to People, it must be about a famous person, but something about them other than their primary work? Is that correct?

OK, THANK YOU! That date is what I had asked for in a previous post. And now, the system can see what date you submitted the question... but is there a way for the end user to see that info? In our list of submitted, I see the last date modified, but I do not believe it shows submission date (if I'm wrong, sorry in advance).

I don't think you can see that in the end user view. Editors see the age of a question (which is from the first submit) in days so they could back-calculate, but I doubt there is an easy way to see the date.

Simple fix though - write a new one. You want more than one tier anyway, so it's not much of a difference :P

Today I won a new badge but it did not seem to me that my level had altered, is there a time delay on that, or is there any way of checking. I was sure I was on 143 but it is still telling me my next level is 144??

Level from badges is dynamically calculated from your badge count - it doesn't technically update. As soon as you get a new badge, it rises automatically.

The only reason a badge doesn't result in a level upgrade is if you also lose one at the same time such as with Point King replacing Point Prince. Most likely you misremembered your old level - that tends to happen especially when you look at points where it shows the next level, not the current one.