I'm actually surprised to read that there aren't very many qualified people who *want* to be editors. It seems like a position to strive for, especially for people who are very active on the site. I know I've always thought it would be cool to be an editor. But then again, I can also see that because it's a lot of work and a volunteer position, there are probably a few people who might originally think it would be fun and then decide it's not worth their time.

Some people can't be editors because of past actions, even though they want to be now.

(Yep, I speak from experience! Darn those past actions...)

Morrigan

Ah, but you only see the glamour, the power, the excitement.....


The reality is endlessly retyping "Did you not receive my last note? I'm sorry, but everything mentioned there must be......"

Post deleted by stuthehistoryguy

Could I perhaps propose that it might be a good idea to have a separate forum for editors to compare their amusing stories about submissions from us mere mortals. I would respectfully suggest that airing this kind of thing in these forums doesn't exactly encourage new quiz makers.

Mark

Sorry if this seemed to you to mocking the efforts of people earnestly trying to create quizzes. It isn't. It's just giving you the mere tip of the iceberg on the way submissions arrive sometimes and how, some people really haven't got a feel for the site's quizzes at all before they send one in. I keep thinking about how I took three hundred quizzes before I even dared try one and I wrote every day as a matter of course.

I assure you that in six years of working in several areas on the site, the above sentence by Stu is nothing out of the ordinary.
I think we wanted to share a few things to explain why there were so many quizzes that would never appear online but to the non editor it appears as though there is an enormous queue waiting to go online efficiently and rapidly.
And, we STILL try to help them if their writing is anywhere near acceptable.

Most people writing to this forum seek information but the people who write quizzes without any information and just the bare knowledge of how to form a sentence or question and send it to us, are quite different. We're trying to explain why things get clogged with trying to help those who haven't read the guidelines...but I mean really haven't read them! We don't mean a handful of typos, but quizzes written in the type of English Stu's provided above.

Even a more experienced writer though might have trouble converting their style to ours. I remember figuring out that the software gave a random scrambling of answers for each administration of the quiz! I hadn't thought about that, because when I did quizzes and tests for students, I had to do that in my head, or eeny miny mo! Things like that didn't occur to me and Jazz pointed them out. You can't do 'all of the above'. Or you cannot artfully place the answers in a pattern because it will be scrambled up. You need to write questions that are aimed at an audience that may not resemble any other audience you've had.

Or how about our dreaded quotation mark rule for titles? I know it's a pain but if you just think of it as italics, it works like a charm.

So we honestly would prefer to be able to do a higher level of editing where we'd say, 'Have you thought about this?' and it would make the question work better. Jazz did this with my art quizzes when I began here and they worked much better once he did.

We welcome new quizzes honestly.

Heather aka Bruyere, funtrivia.com editor

I agree with mark, this kind of stuff will only make new people to the site think twice about writing a quiz.

I have ten quizzes online and i dont think i could be bothered doing any more.

As some of the quizzes that get thought have spelling mistakes and other things wrong with them, yet they still get online.

well thats what i think anyway.

George

Thanks for your considered reply Heather.

I certainly wasn't disputing that this is the type of message that editors deal with. I mentioned elsewhere in this forum on a thread that has since been deleted that I can imagine that editors have a huge volume of quizzes to go through. I do appreciate that those that find their way onto the site are the tip of the iceberg, and there are many more that don't make it. Yes, it must make for despairing reading sometimes, and yes, there must be some unintentionally amusing entries, which would make me laugh too.

No, the point I was making is simply that to me, this does not seem to be the correct place for such comments, which I'm afraid to this reader do appear to be (to use your word) 'mocking'.

Mark

Minor spelling mistakes and grammar misuses are easy enough for an editor to miss if the author missed it as well. Small mistakes can be hard to spot if it passes through a spellchecker.

Stu's kindly helping us in music where admittedly, we get more of the scary stuff because of the nature of the game.
We still consider it if it has any merit and if the person is willing to work on it. This cannot be said for many publishers in any form.

This one needs the Post office analogy I like to use.
We're a bit like the post office in that many different people use the service (except that this is free).
We're a bit like the post office in that if you follow the basic directions or ask the person at the desk, your mail won't have any problem getting to its destination.

If you ask an employee, they will help you.

However, unlike the good old P.O., we will accept a 'letter' without a stamp, or an address, or the city of the destination, or the envelope being closed!
I mean that we still accept submissions and try to help the person get them into shape, although the person hasn't done the mere basics.

This is not the case of any of you reading this forum, not even close. But when you look at the queue size from the outside it looks different.

Theoretically a quiz that is like a letter without an address or a stamp, can make it, but it will be a rougher haul. It's like the person hasn't the basics to post a letter. Sometimes helping the person makes us look patronizing, and for that we apologize, but, at least we've tried to go through it. If it were the real post office and the letter had been put in a box, it would have been rejected, returned to sender without any questions asked. Funtrivia tries to explain why it didn't work.

This is why it takes longer for people to get their work online. We have to take the time to give everyone a chance.
If you've established a good working relationship though, it will zip through. I'm not saying yes man yes woman type thing, but, if we ask about this or that, then it gets done.

As to the errors in quizzes online, they happen when the humans like me, are looking at structural things that need improvement after a few tries, and I'll fix something by entering a word that makes it clearer and in the process, a misspelled word is something I overlook.
I try to make quizzes inclusive to international audiences and that takes some careful looking.

Don't forget one thing, Stu's example was of someone being rude and typing in an incomprehensible way. If they hadn't been rude we'd have still tried a few more times!

Thank you Stu

Thanks also Heather - I've certainly never disputed how much work is involved in being an editor, or the contribution that the team of editors make to the site, nor how tricky that work can be at times. Diplomatic skills are essential, I think it's clear!

Mark

So when's your next quiz Mark?
One thing you can do is send an inquiry to us to see if we think it would float.
Like, 'hey Heather, I'd like to do a quiz on the political implications of Monopoly." and I'd probably say yes, with all my heart.

Yes it's about time I submitted another. My one quiz, lovingly crafted though it was, is looking a little lonely!

I have one that I started working on several weeks ago, and plenty of ideas, but the demands of day to day life have prevented me from focussing on quiz making recently.

'Political implications of Monopoly', sounds interesting. Or maybe I'll try one on a Marxist critique of the board game Risk.

That'll be a Groucho Marxist critique, obviously. Hail Freedonia!

Mark