Woah, that system is quite confusing. I think it can also be rather disconcerting, as to see the number of people who rated you excellent compared to those who rated your poorly can be a bit of a bring down. Can we have the option to select the one that we like the most? Another useful feature would be to try and disable people's ratings if they appear to be purposely rating down highly ranked quizzes. I know this happens a lot...

I'm not sure what you meant by your 'favourite' quizzes, but if you're talking about topics that you like, regardless of quality, I echo Nightmare's comments, I'd just as soon you not play my quizzes... You shouldn't rate based upon whether you like the actual topic because what I like to write about is what I like and is something like a taste in music - everyone has their own opinion.

The quiz ratings, as they were originally intended from what I believe, is to rate the quizzes that were well-written, regardless of the topic. That means how much interesting info, how much time was taken to write the quiz, how original or creative was the topic tackled, was it memorable (in a good way)?

Yes, I do rate quizzes as poor. (Although I don't think I've rated quizzes as a 1...) Why? If it's a quiz where all the questions are phrased the same, the interesting info does nothing but repeat the answer to the question and the quiz could have been slapped together in 2 minutes by anyone sitting down with a libretto or lyrics list in front of them.

I would also like to echo Nightmare's comments, I'd rather anyone that has a peculiar rating system to either not my play my quizzes or to forgo rating them.
Quizzes are not easy to make or get online, many hours are spent researching, stressing over grammar (or is that just me?) and waiting nervously to see if your quiz makes it online, I think most quiz writers would be a little disheartened to have that effort rewarded with a 1 without a good reason.

I totally agree with Nightmare, Ladymacb and Queenie!

Agreed. I don't want to know that less than 20% of the ratings on one of my quizzes were good or excellent...that's a big letdown.
Second...a lot of my quizzes released back in the past year have had their ratings removed and they're now listed as 'New'. This has skewed my ratings entirely, as nearly all of them were rated.

I suspect that Terry, when he removed some rankings by people who invariably rated typical quizzes as "poor" or worse, decided to push up the most egregiously affected quizzes so they would have another shot at being played. Which is a wise sort of thing to do. For a rough "rating system," what appears to work is to add the percentage of "good" vites to *double* the "excellent" votes, discarding all the rest (which gets rids of the "poor" votes being weighted effectively much higher than "excellent" votes, as is the current case). Dave

The new display has been very enlightening for me - thanks, Terry!

Kabdanis,

I am unclear about your post. Are you openly stating that your goal is to play all the quizzes that are released, and with that end still mark you non-favorites lower? Say you play a quiz of mine, on a subject you know nothing about, you'd mark it lower because of content? If so, I think Terry needs to make an option that allows quiz makers to block certain members from playing their quizzes. Just like Ebay allows you to block bidders from your auctions. I realize that the ideas in this thread included Terry making those lower ratings irrelevant from the quiz takers who mostly use those poor or very poor options. But, I think we should also have the option of blocking out people who routinely take our quizzes, just because they're new, and score only 1-3 correctly. Since these folks are taking quizzes purely to up their quiz number totals, they are making it appear as though our quizzes our harder than they really are. I delve into areas I know little about from time to time, but I do not take quizzes on TV shows I've never seen just up the total of quizzes I have taken.

Just an idea to consider.

Wendy

First of all, the good that's come out of this is that Terry's adapted the system to better reflect things.


Then, I do not think this is the intention of Kabdanis at all, Wendy. As he said, writing in English isn't terribly easy for him and sometimes, things come out differently that you intend when you do write in your non native language. He didn't do this to lower anyone's scores as far as I know, but to reward the truly exceptional work regardless of subject matter. Remember, when you're a non native speaker, exceptional writing shines through. The system at that time gave you the options of rating a quiz from one to five (or six, I can never remember) so in order to rate them, he made the default a one. He didn't do this to 'punish' anyone's work, but to reward the truly exceptional work. It's much like the Editors' Choice. We give it out very rarely.

I asked this much earlier in the thread because I was concerned that my own system would be misinterpreted by the automated scoring system. I basically only rate a quiz that really impresses me, and it will have nothing to do with the subject matter. The writing style is the main thing that I rate a quiz on. I could mention authors who have this potential to write a quiz on any subject and still impress me with their writing. I've taken quizzes in every subject area, scored a one, and still rated something high because it was such fun and such a lark to read the quiz.

Do I need encyclopedic information in the blanks? No, I don't. I remember a quiz that came through a few years ago on a group that I didn't know and even though I had very little interest in the subject, I was impressed with the way the person expressed the enthusiasm for the subject.
So writing a paragraph per question isn't even a prerequisite for me noting a quiz is excellent. It's the way it's written, not what is written.


I think his motivations were clearly to reward truly exceptional work, not anything malevolent. We've had people who did that and Terry instituted ways of preventing that. This time is not one of those in my opinion. We're not talking someone who goes around and rates anyone's quiz in an area in which they're competing a one and rates their own quiz the top score and then changes ID and rates it again. No way.


Also, Kabdanis spoke openly here because it was perfectly obvious there were few people who'd taken that many quizzes, so though he might as well speak up.
He himself said that he began the system to reward 'his favorites' but that means, if I understand him correctly, that his default was one or two.


Ok, if your package of cornflakes has an essay contest about why you like them on the back and you send it in, it must meet certain criteria to be accepted. It must have the same format, include a self addressed envelope, be typed, include a drawing, but after that, what distinguishes your entry from another one is something else. Only one or two will be chosen, so, yours will have to meet the basic requirements, but excel in order to be chosen by the judges.
The entries that aren't chosen are ones and the ones that are are the ones that stick out from the crowd.

Kabdanis, if I've misinterpreted your system, I apologize, but, I personally would be honored to have you take my quizzes. You've already stated that you were here out of intellectual curiosity and I respect that as it's why I've stayed here myself.

I think I understand his system and no I don't believe there was any malicious intent but I do think it's a bit off to rate a quiz as very poor (unless of course it is) it would have been a better system for him to have rated those that stood out to him as excellent and leave the others unrated, he would still be giving his favourite quizzes the acknowledgement they deserved without unfairly rating everyone else's efforts. A very poor rating should be reserved for very poor quizzes.

Why would you leave other quizzes unrated? If you have an opinion about the quality of a quiz you might as well rate it. If you don't, only other players' ratings of that quiz will count.

Because the statistics that Terry posted showed that he rated 57000 quizzes as very poor, he was using very poor as a default, it wasn't his opinion that they were very poor, he just didn't think they were excellent. There are 5 choices to choose from, if you have an opinion you will choose one of them. If you are only interested in whether a quiz is excellent (which I have no problem with whatsoever) then I can't see the need to rate all the others as very poor.

The way I see it all Kabdanis did was taking the 1 rating as average. All quizzes at least deserved that rating in his opinion. Instead of only having two rating options above average his system created four. So quizzes rated a 2 in his system were considered above average, just not as much above average as those rated a 3. Makes perfect sense to me.

I think everyone should be allowed to use the rating system the way they want, as long as it's done fairly. Which is what Kabdanis did. It would be unfair to rate every quiz a 1, just so that your own stand out. But that's not what he did. And besides, since he's played almost all of the online quizzes, it doesn't matter anyway. If every quiz gets one extra rating of 1, it doesn't change the rankings at all.

Actually -- it *does* affect rankings. A person who has his or her quiz rated 20 times -- but three of the times it is rated by a "mass quiz taker who rates everything a 1" and who otherwise has (say) 6 excellent ratings and 11 good ratings will have a net rating of 3.85 (roughly average).

Were the three "poor" rankings removed -- the average would be 4.35 -- or one of the highest rankings on the site. I consider that a substantial difference. As the number of rankings increases, the differential decreases -- but the damage has been done *at the start* -- likely enough damage to cause a quiz creator to throw up his or her arms in disgust. And this may well be the case when such maluse of the rating system occurs. Personally, I would change the ratings entirely to "Does the quiz do what the author set out for it to do?" rather than have a cloudy "was it good?" without any objective criteria for one to judge how to rate the quiz.

Dave

Personally, I think this issue has been beaten to death.

There are as many reasons to play a quiz as there are to write one, and I don't really think any of us have the right to say that another person's reasons are wrong. And, once they are released out into the world, quiz authors need to accept that their quizzes are more or less out of their control. You don't get to pick your audience.

Although I look at my ratings, they are not the reason I write quizzes. Mostly I write them to share my passions, and if I can interest another person who maybe knew nothing of the subject before, then that is a bonus. I am pleased when I see that people who obviously knew nothing of the subject play my quizzes - they know something now. Over the long term, one rating, and one low score, blend into the averages.

I also am honoured to have Kabdanis play my quizzes, he has never been anything but a complete gentleman in all my dealings with him.

I'll leave the numbers to others but suffice to say that I have no problems with his system. I think the improvements that Terry's made have been constant over the years and I trust him to keep on making them.

Terry solved a few sticky problems that he's mentioned already in this thread and it has improved the climate.
How to exclude folks creating fake IDS and ranking their own work high and others' low for example. We can breathe easier with that in place.


I won't say that I don't care about my 'sunnies' but, I have quizzes all across the rankings and all the way down to the bottom of the pot. I've learned from this and helped others to avoid it. I probably do more helping of others to avoid this fate than I do my own stuff as I won't bother writing a quiz unless I'm inspired.

The whole thing is make your quiz's first entrance into the pool an auspicious one. This is what I work with people on before it goes online. That first week online is very crucial. Anyone who thinks we're picky doesn't know why we bother. As an editor, I assume that the nitty gritty work is up to you after pointing out the obvious, but crafting that quiz so that the first players are impressed with it, that's the art of writing a quiz.
I assume that people are going to rate it a one unless it's absolutely fabulous. If that quiz isn't speaking to its audience, then, it isn't ready. I took a few at random yesterday that were really good, from the title that said something about the work, and then, the whole thing, they were really good.

Music is one challenging dept to work in for that! You've got the whole gamut in there. When you submit a quiz to us in music and your quiz has potential to score really well, we'll ask you for more information so that its first appearance is impressive. For me, it's more a question of brainstorming ideas than editing.
Even if I know nothing about your artist or subject, I can guide you. In fact, I tend to tell people, if you could show me enthusiasm for some artist I know nothing about, then, you're going to do well with the fans. Ifn something's mentioned that makes me go Google it, then I'll ask you to include that detail. I had one recently where I questioned the clothing the band wore then had to take back the comment when I looked them up as it was relevant to the quiz and really interesting!

If you give us a Beatles quiz submission, and it's not only perfect in terms of facts but also, written with innovation in mind, then, it's not worth putting on. Beatles fans probably give out more ones than anyone and corrections! You don't want to put anything online that isn't ready as it's much harder to do it after it's on than before.

So, I'd concentrate a lot less on whatever systems someone is using to rank you...the trick is to get your quiz rated going out of the chute because of a catchy title and then, questions that make people laugh or scratch their heads in wonder and say they didn't know that.

By the way, I have a few really unique (ok maybe they're weird to some!) things online that were ranked really low but, I did them anyway. I worked on a couple of 'Friends' quizzes and I think they're so weird that the 'Friends' quiz crowd must rate them low when they realize they're not your average quiz. That was the risk I took, but I thought it would be fun to try and write something like that for a more popular category.

I assume that many people are going to rate quizzes low, and try to help people make their quizzes so great that more people who enjoy it will take them to balance that out.

I was looking at those quiz ratings and percentages of people ranking things, and it's just about what I thought. I almost wondered about the poor ratings!

If we were publishing our work and it was reviewed publicly, we'd probably assume that a handful of reviewers were going to give it a raking over the coals and one or two were going to enjoy it, and maybe one would love it.
That's what I assume and when I work with you as an editor, I strive for that good reviewer to see your work.

I don't think this issue is beaten to death, and I more agree with Gamemaster. As an editor with many quizzes online, I have suffered the rath of wannabee authors who either don't or just refuse to read the Quiz Guidelines. Even with all the help they receive, they just give up. Then, take it out on some of my quizzes with dirtbag ratings. I've seen it for years and nobody in the site can dispute this. I say to have an option to block any member that I choose who I feel displays vengence.

This was not the case with the main person whose stats were in this thread however. Plus as I've just said, Terry has worked on ways of preventing this sort of thing and will continue to work on this. He responded with a new system immediately.

I know that I've been the target of 'Revenge ratings' in the past too, but, I guess I trust Terry to take care of individual incidents of this or institute a process of filtering out stats that skew things unfavorably. I can't share too many details but, you'd be surprised at the ratings and who gives a person low ratings! It is not always motivated personally but by a different person's way of rating quality. A four star restaurant critic is going to rate an IN and Out burger differently than a fast food critic.

Terry's already mentioned several aspects and in fact, changed things immediately for the better. For about a week, I think the default was set on average and few noticed when they clicked...not realizing they'd rated the quiz average. Things like that will be ironed out.

I guess I don't worry about the negative effects any ones will have on the body of work I've done here. I'm confident that any revengeful person who's been edited unfavorably by me won't have much of an effect to the success of my work.

I'd never given any thought to vengeful rating, how sad that people would do that! I suppose it could happen to anyone though, not just editors, it's very easy to upset someone in the cyber world. I wouldn't be surprised if I've incurred some players wrath with my forthright comments (I'm a northerner, it's my only excuse for speaking my mind!), I guess it's up to them if they are childish enough to try and get their own back.
I would like to say though, before I take myself off to bed that I have absolutely nothing against Kabdanis, he's free to rate quizzes however he sees fit but that doesn't mean that us quiz writers have to be happy about the fact he rates quizzes as very poor when they aren't. Terry gave us a perfectly good system to use when rating quizzes, If you think a quiz is average then rate it 3 not 1!
that's all folks, I'm off to my bed

Quote:

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I would like to say though, before I take myself off to bed that I have absolutely nothing against Kabdanis, he's free to rate quizzes however he sees fit but that doesn't mean that us quiz writers have to be happy about the fact he rates quizzes as very poor when they aren't. Terry gave us a perfectly good system to use when rating quizzes, If you think a quiz is average then rate it 3 not 1!
that's all folks, I'm off to my bed

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Yep that is exactly what I meant as well. There is/was no 1-5 rating system. The exact ratings were/are set as

Excellent Good Average Poor Very Poor. That effectively makes a "1" as Very Poor. Why would ANYONE chose Very Poor (the words) on mass quizzes? If something IS average, then the word Average is what you click on. If some people who played did not see the words Very Poor, but saw a 1, then I can a little more understand the system. I don't think Kabdanis was at all vindictive. But I do think that picking "Very Poor" on masses of quizzes is wrong. That just makes no sense what so ever. Yes, all are free to do it, it is their choice. I just have to express that I feel it's an odd "default" rating to give on a quiz with a subject that you are not at all familiar with. I say if you do not known the subject matter on thousands of quizzes, they deserve a default of Average (unless the quality of the quiz is lacking greatly), so quiz makers are not penalized for what the quiz taker does not know. I know this HAS to play a role in a very low rating. I know it does, no matter what anyone says here. I am not comfortable having someone play all of my new quizzes and then having them rating as Very Poor. We can all say "ratings are not important", and some can very well mean it, but ill-informed Very Poor ratings are unacceptable to me. If this IS ok with any/all, I just assume the person not rate my quiz at all, or skip taking it altogether. I think the options of Poor and Very Poor should be removed altogether, and not just left out of the counting. If they are not counted, why have them?

Quoting Nightmare's signature:

Quote:

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Your quiz score is not important. What you learned from the quiz is.

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Truer words have not been spoken. What I feel is important on this site is to have fun, hence the name FunTrivia. I'm not out to be the best, or play the most quizzes, nor write the most. I have been a member for almost six years, and I have had a great time on this site, both in QL and the forums. Yes, I would like to have more sunglass quizzes, but I'm not losing any sleep not having 30 or 40 of my quizzes having sunglasses; it just means that I need to do better.

Agony is right in saying, "You don't get to pick your audience." It would be nice if we did, but once a quiz is submitted, it becomes the property of FunTrivia. There's nothing we can do about it.

Nightmare is right in saying that new quiz makers who do have quizzes rejected, simply because they either did not read the guidelines, or simply refused to adhere to them, will retaliate by rating that editor's quizzes poorly. It's the quiz maker's own fault for not listening to the editor in the first place, NOT the editor's. I, myself, am not an editor, but I can agree with points made by all three of the above editors.