Would the preference here be to remove any badges that require ratings thresholds then?

We still aim to have our authors shoot for quality, but to do away with any rewards for achieving that quality, in my opinion, tilts the scale in the other direction.

Going from sunnies to stars helps a ton in mitigating the stress, but if authors are still feeling stressed, there's only going to be so much we can do. If people are getting that stressed and feeling that their solo efforts have become competition in some way, then this might also be the author's perception, and we can only do so much, from our end building the site, to help that.

A few very, very, very rare cases of this should not be the determining factor for removing/altering rewards on a larger scale, otherwise we would be putting the image out there that we're looking for quantity over quality.



Edit to add: I want to reiterate, as I have on many occasions: quiz-writing is only as 'competitive' as people make it. A lot of our authors don't engage with the activity on any sort of basis other than their own (and that's totally cool). There are very, very few Lounge activities that take a competitive spin; all the rest are still solo ventures albeit, sometimes, with time limits. At that point, anyone who's taking it as competitive or feeling that their works need to do better than others instead of stand on their own merits...well, that might be something individual authors are doing to themselves. As we know full well, there are a lot of elements to this that are outside the quiz author's control, and life's too short to worry about the minutiae. Challenges on this site are non-obligatory until the participant makes them obligatory.

If people are engaging wth the Lounge and feeling bad because they're losing a competition against others, then I've done a real disservice in the messaging of what that board is about.

I think it's important to remember that authors who are chasing those badges are a minority, heck, authors who even know what the Lounge is are a minority.

Having a competitive activity available for those who want to pursue it is not the same as making that activity mandatory.

The response I'm hearing around the site is much more "Oh, look, I got some stars!" rather than "Oh, no, now I have to chase *red* stars!"

I am only seeing red star, which are indeed a high bar, mentioned in relation to Tier 7 - Tier 4 is the first one that requires the equivalent of the old Sunnies, so the first three tiers are going to be more accessible. Tier 7 is a high bar in any badge - there are a number of them for which I have long ago resigned myself to the fact that I will never get there, and am happy to have reached Tier 6. Or lower, in some cases. And if some day I happen to fluke that impossible time in a game I am playing as a Team game, bonus.

I would likely require a few reds on T7 if the badge were built this way.

I'll provide some more background here: I already have a full upgrade path for 15 cat (5 and 10 would not get upgrades - they are just introductory to the 15 one) made up which built on having more quizzes per category and, at tier 3+, more categories.

However that is in direct conflict with the author rainbow and Polymath. They would reward the same thing. So I was thinking of keeping the 15 cats one at 15 but scale it by stars.

The most basic level would just require a few stars of any color (essentially replacing the 50% requirement - you could have five blue stars and ten quizzes that would have never qualified under the old system) and then gradually tightening things.

I certainly wouldn't want T7 to be fifteen reds - that's WAY beyond what I'd expect even at that level (and for disclosure - I'd have that one. If I didn't miscount, I have 17 cats red, 2 yellow and one silver). Given the way the tiers work, I see

T1 to T3 only looking for blues
T4 looking for blue and silver
T6 definitely in yellow territory.
T7 with a few reds.

T5? Maybe between 1 and 3 yellows. Or just the all-silver level.

I'll put the issue to a public discussion/vote:

(a) Use the above setup with a color requirement based on real life stats that gives a nice, balanced tier pyramid
(b) Do not upgrade 15 cats at all and leave that job entirely to the Rainbow and Polymath which would then effectively be considered the next step after 15.
(c) Something else (please write your own proposal if you have one).

Here's my 2c, and as Steve Noviello in Dallas says, "spend it wisely"...

T1 - 5 blue, and 15 top 50%
T2 - 10 blue, and 15 top 50%
T3 - 15 blue, and 15 top 50%
T4 - 5 silver, and 10 blue
T5 - 8 silver, 3 blue, and 2 yellow (or if you don't want yellow here - 10 silver and 5 blue)
T6 - 10 silver, 3 yellow, and 1 red
T7 - 15 silver, 7 yellow, and 3 red

Note - if we go by the star route, "50%" will no longer be a thing (that is actually one of the goals of this rebuild - not having a criterion that you can't easily check). You get T1 by having quizzes in 15 categories, out of which some (5 or so) will need stars.

If we decide the star route is what we want, I'll pull stats and determine a table that yields a good progression through tiers, with none being an excessive wall or too close to the previous one.

The only real variable here is - if in doubt, do we favor an even distribution or do we rather introduce a color early, i.e. let's assume for T5, we could use either "15 silver" or "4 yellow, 7 silver, the rest at least blue" because they have similar figures. Which of those would we want? I would personally favor the second one - I feel that "get a yellow in my fourth best category" is the more interesting goal than "get that 15th silver in a category I don't care that much about".

More doable, too. For a lot of authors, a blue in a weak caregory would be the best they could possibly do. And more satisfying than yet another silver in a stronger one.

I'm definitely not a competitive author. I suspect the subjects I choose to write quizzes about are never going to be incredibly popular. I write them, somewhat sporadically, because I want to. However it is nice to see stars as some sort of recognition that they're not all bad. And I was thrilled when I got a thumb. But both of those are a bonus. Why does it matter to have a quiz that is 'better' than anybody else's? And what is 'better' anyway?

Mostly subjective.

Right now we need to decide regarding the 15 Categories badge:

a) Make it tiered using some star based criteria with the details determined later
b) Keep it single-tiered as is and only knock out the 50% thing (which is no longer suitable as there's no easy, accurate way to check for authors)
c) Come up with a different idea for tiers that does not conflict with Polymath and the Rainbow.

(It would be useful if you folks please could vote a / b / c, even if you have additional concerns. And if you vote c, please give a rough idea of what you have in mind).

Shot in the dark:

Tier 1: A quiz online in 15 different categories
Tier 2: A quiz online with a blue star in 15 different categories
Tier 3: A quiz online with a silver star in 5 different categories and a blue star in 10 different categories
Tier 4: A quiz online with a silver star in 10 different categories and a blue star in 5 different categories
Tier 5: A quiz online with a yellow star in 5 different categories and a silver star in 10 different categories
Tier 6: A quiz online with a yellow star in 10 different categories and a silver star in 5 different categories
Tier 7: A quiz online with a red star in 5 different categories and a yellow star in 10 different categories


In the event we nix the Cool Quizzes badges and make something with stars instead, I'd just make it cumulative. Have badgelets for each colour leading to a full badge?

Cool Quizzes remains as is and will be supplemented by a new (easier) "Star Author" that will look for any stars. Neither of them look for categories.

I'd go with A. Some sort of tiers, at least partly dependent on stars in some way. Maybe higher tiers in more than 15 categories, in small increments, like tier five 16, tier six 17. If it were up to me, I'd always allow for a blue star or two, even in the highest tiers.

Speaking as a member who wrote a few quizzes some years ago, some of which now have red and yellow stars, I'd just like to say that I prefer the new stars system over the old numbered quiz rating system: I feel that I have achieved something above average with those quizzes, and it's a lot easier to get an overview of one's achievement. As someone remarked above, and without getting into discussion about changing standards over the years, even quizzes without stars are generally OK, because they have passed the editorial process.

Yes, there are disappointments - quizzes on which a lot of time and effort were spent that just haven't clicked with a wide audience - but, by and large, I write a quiz because the subject interests me and I think I've got my own angle on it. So, I'm only in competition with myself, really.

There are those who feel they have to "win" everything in sight - that's fine, but they haven't failed just because something is out of their reach. There are those who feel that everyone has both the inalienable right and the innate ability to overcome every single challenge (or gain every single badge) - that's unrealistic, because we are never going to be all the same.

As far as gaining badges and/or tiers goes, the chances of my ever writing a quiz in (for example) the Video Games category, let alone getting it accepted, are even more remote that the freezing over of Hell, so I'm not going to garner all those nice little Rainbow badges, or get to "20 Categories". So be it...

Inevitably, whatever system the Administrators/Editors evolve will cause some members to feel hard done by. I'm not sure if the suggestion has appeared anywhere above, as I'm not sufficiently au fait with all of the requirements for badges, but perhaps some consideration could be given to retiring the badges that included the old ranking criteria and sunnies, and starting afresh.

Right now, 213 players have the 15 categories badge. Given that there will be some new owners once the new requirements hit (those who have a handful of stars but fall just short of the 50% mark in a few categories right now), let's assume 250 after the change.

How would this target distribution look to all of you?

T1 - 70 owners (28%)
T2 - 50 owners (20%)
T3 - 40 owners (16%)
T4 - 30 owners (12%)
T5 - 25 owners (10%)
T6 - 20 owners (8%)
T7 - 15 owners (6%)

Actually, there were not many badges that had a rank requirement.

- Cool Quizzes can be continued unchanged. It looked for top 20%, which is now "silver or higher star".
- Adopt had a 60% qualifying threshold - that will get changed to a minimum number of plays or dropped entirely.
- 5, 10 and 15 categories had the 50% threshold which would either be dropped entirely or be replaced by having some stars (so 10 categories could look for 2 or 3 stars of any color). Existing owners would be grandfathered (at tier 1 in the case of the tiered version).

I would go with (b).

I prefer Model A. It provides a framework within which authors can focus their efforts to improve their writing. I am not fussed with the details - they will work as they work. I am keen to see the tiers in place, so I can see what categories need more highly-rated quizzes. I can then put energy into writing better quizzes in those categories, rather than making random choices.

How about instead of requiring a specific number of each star for a given tier, create a point system for the stars and then require a specific number of points for each tier with only your highest rated quiz in each category counting.

So if Blue = 1, Silver = 2, Yellow = 3, and Red = 5, the tiers could be something along the lines of:

Tier 1 = 5 points (and quizzes written in 15 categories). This means that you could do it with one red star, but more likely an assortment of lower stars.
Tier 2 = 15 points
Tier 3 = 20 points
Tier 4 = 25 points
Tier 5 = 35 points
Tier 6 = 45 points
Tier 7 = 55 points

This is almost the same as Kyle's suggestion, except tier 1 requires a few "good" quizzes and tier 6 is harder in order to smooth the transition. But it also allows extra categories with red stars to help make up for deficiencies in other categories.


On a side note, I'm not a big fan of the Yellow star designation. I realize it's in a different place, but it keeps making me thing that the quizzes are in the Celebrity category.

Kinda noticed the same thing, confusing the yellow stars of Celebrities with Gold Stars of ranks. Maybe the rank star could be purple or violet? Or black (call it onyx)? Or a shade of green? Or, alternatively, maybe a different symbol is needed for Celebrities since we are now using stars in a new way?

Why do away with a rank-percentage threshold for adopt-a-quiz candidates? It's not the same as having a rank-percentage threshold for the Fifteen Categories badge. Presumably these candidate quizzes have absentee authors, so it isn't necessary to make it easy for them follow how the quiz was determined to be collected in the quiz-catcher's net (because they are long gone). Terry's software is still keeping track of the statistics (otherwise, there would be no Stars), so it still seems appropriate to use the 60% threshold (or even go lower and use 50%) along with criteria like no i.i., all FITB, not played in the last N-number of years, author not present in the last N-number of years, etc.

The suggestion is that the new quiz may only be required to go online, not meet any particular ranking level. It does not apply to the candidates, which do have to meet the requirements previously advised.

I think I might be misunderstood, or maybe I do not understand you! (the latter more likely!) I was not arguing for keeping a threshold level for Fifteen Categories, but for the quizzes to be snatched by the quiz-catcher and put in the shelter.

Wait, is there a 60% requirement for getting the adopt-a-quiz badge? I thought 60% was the threshold for deciding the candidacy of a quiz for adoption (among the other factors).

What does this 60% figure apply to?

As it was first set up, the Adopt Me! badge required that the refurbished quizzes have a ranking of at least top 60% (or some other figure - it is gone now, so I cannot check, and am relying on Wes's mention of that figure). Now they just have to go online to qualify.

To be eligible for adoption, the quiz has to be a lot worse than not top 60%. It needs to be very poorly rated, written by an author who has not been on the site for at least ten years, have no (or possibly virtually no) information; many candidates also have only 5 questions, but that is not a requirement. The list seems to be working from the bottom of the rankings up, selecting quizzes that qualify as it goes.

Oh, I see. I misunderstood what Wes was talking about. Thanks for clearing that up, looney_tunes!