Another suggestion for a new option for the survey.

Don't know enough about the subject to determine how difficult the question is.

I don't think I really understand how I'm supposed to answer the survey. If I think a question is too difficult/obscure/trivial to have a place in a general game, is this what "no" is for? And if there's a typo or misinformation, that would be "this needs editing"? Thus far I've just marked everything "yes," though there were a few I'd have liked to have given "no"...

In addition to the "Yes/Needs Editing/No" survey already in place for each question, I would like to see an "other feedback" box where I can type my opinion of the question. For example, I marked a question I had yesterday as "Needs Editing", but it would have been nice if I was able to explain exactly what I thought needed to be edited instead of leaving it up to the editor/author to figure it out. Also, it could be used for other comments that I have wanted to write, such as "I think this was too obscure" or "I got this right, but it was a total guess", or even "this question was great, should definitely be used!"

Yeah, I'll rework that feedback form for the next game.

The goal is to allow lazy people to still mark which questions are problematic with a single click. It would be nice to allow non-lazy people to also offer more detail though

I'm also in favor of a fourth option for feedback on the question. The set I just took was, I think, harder than a Madness/Obscurity set. I fully expected a 2, but my guesses were pretty lucky.

I didn't click "No" on any of the questions, though, because I didn't think they were wrong or ambiguous, but I definitely would like an option for "this question is too obscure". I realize that difficulty can be tracked through the overall percentage of players getting the question right, but I still think a fourth feedback option would be nice.

<< I realize that difficulty can be tracked through the overall percentage of players getting the question right, but I still think a fourth feedback option would be nice. >>

Yeah, we really don't need comments on difficulty because the difficult questions stick out easily based on the correctness %. We do sort of need a box though for "this question just sucks", although I'm not sure how to say that (a) politely and (b) concisely

I got 4/10 on that last one. One was an intelligent guess, the others were wild guesses. Agreed, it was like the LOTO game!

I'm concerned about chucking out the difficult questions though. Most of the FT members are from the US and as may have been mentioned once or twice a lot of the questions, particularly in Sprots and TV, have a US slant. That is fair enough, but what happens when the non US members try to write questions to redress the balance? For instance, I'm sure most people from the US would know that John Ritter starred in Three's Company, but possibly they wouldn't know that Richard O'Sullivan starred in Man about the House, although that would pass the 'ask your neighbour - 80%' rule for most Brits.

There's a real possiblity that the question pools, especially in TV and sprots, will become even more US slanted, not less!

And then of course we will all need extensive therapy for the complex caused by not knowing any of the answers to "easy" questions once they're accepted into the hourlies.
I don't mean now, but in future, if I get one and get it wrong, I'll feel totally thick as it will have been "certified easy" ...sigh...
said it before and I'll say it again...all together now... "They're all easy if you know the answer"
oh and Meathead - if we ever meet r/l I am going to poke you with a pointy fingernail once for each letter of the words "American Idol"...
The ones I got right by guessing, I think, probably would qualify as easy, it was just that I didn't know them!
Then again, I've had another one rejected that I thought was SIMPLE and it's been bounced as too difficult
I think coming up with these Qs is harder than anything else on the site!

This is merely one source of questions that we can use in our games, and I will use them where and when it makes sense to use them.

If you want difficult UK questions to be available, I suggest you write *quizzes* on difficult UK topics. That is the place for such questions.

This "question quest" is a tiny, microscopically small portion of our entire question database. I want to target questions in it to fall within a certain "intermediate" difficulty range for the MAJORITY of our players. We have 950,000+ DIFFICULT questions already at our disposal.

<< I think coming up with these Qs is harder than anything else on the site! >>

Yes, it is incredibly difficult to write good trivia.

<<
Then again, I've had another one rejected that I thought was SIMPLE and it's been bounced as too difficult >>

I'd be curious to know what this question is?

I have changed the form to the following for each question. It will help us (a) find errors and (b) filter out stuff that people really have no interest in.

1. Accuracy / Errors

[x] Looks good to me
[x] Minor fixes needed: typos, spelling, etc...
[x] Major fixes needed: [small form appears when you click it, asking for details]

2. Is this a good, interesting question?

[x] Average
[o] Great question
[o] Poor question

It was "with which sport would you associate British man Phil "The Power" Taylor"
lets see how many people know lol (stop googling you lot!)
I suspect that the Brits will know, he's won more championships and titles in his sport than anyone else in history.
I thought it was simple because it's sport and *I* knew it lol, which is saying something

Never heard of him, but I would guess cricket! Second guess, rugby

you just picked "Brit" sports didn't you gg
I wonder if it was my wrong answer options rather than the actual Q come to think of it...perhaps if I'd put Bog snorkelling, Cheese rolling and Croquet for the wrong ones it would have made it easy to tell :S and no way to find out.
It's easier to write a full quiz than these Qs lol, but they are great fun to think up. Almost a game in themselves

Yeah never heard of him. It's a good example of a UK-specific question, which really doesn't fit in a "general question" pool. It does fit in our UK quiz categories though, and if it were placed there would likely be sucked into a future UK-only game.

lol yep, I certainly did pick Brit sports

Third guess, football! lol

Phil "The Power" Taylor I would guess is in snooker or darts. Strange that he isn't in the Who Am I? database. I'll look him up and add him to my candidate list.

Happy Trivia!

I've played this game twice and I would say maybe two of the twenty questions were something I might hear at my pub trivia. I'm shocked by how some of these got by without being labeled too difficult. One of them was in a language that didn't even remotely look like English.

With the new grading system, it would be nice to have a chance to rerate some of the questions in the first two go-rounds in terms of appropriateness. Is there a reason why the questions can only be used once instead of possibly being randomly reused over the course of, say, a week after submission? It would mean more people would give the question feedback so that the author could, hopefully in the future, edit the question to the appropriate specifications.

I had two questions on who won or came in second on a reality show and a sporting event. Unless there's some background information that makes it particularly relevant, these are a pure guessing game. I've watched "Survivor" for years and even I couldn't tell you who won Season 6. I imagine those who don't watch the show (which would be most people) wouldn't even have a clue.

Terry, the examples you've given on the questions page about Salman Rushdie and the baseball glove are terrific examples of the types of questions I have heard at pub quizzes. It's a great reminder of how a well-worded question, no matter how difficult, can be answered by many.

Is it possible that we could have access to our questions interesting info section for the questions we have had rejected? I had one question that just needed to be reworded but now I would need to research the info section again which is now double the work.

On an up note, I would say over half the questions I've come up with have been rejected as being duplicates. It just goes to show what a tremendous pool of questions we already have at our disposal. Go Funtrivia!

Will we be able to read/see the feedback on the questions we wrote, even just the % answering correctly?

Does anyone else see a "pattern" in the results for the current game? It looks to me (and I'm not a stats person, just from superficial observation) that Set 10 is getting the higher marks and set 2 isn't (to be blunt lol). I am totally nosy lol and would love to be able to peep and see what the Qs are in those two sets. Obviously it's not every player, but just a general look shows 9 in the current top 24 played set 10, and it doesn't seem to be a case of "the usual suspects" as such, it's more general that that. Will be interesting to see if the trend continues as more people play...

<<
But the example I used wouldn't be a particularly difficult question in the UK >>

Correct, and I'm sure we could submit questions that would be easy in Ethiopia too. However, this specific feature is not designed or intended for "questions easy in Ethiopia" or "questions easy in the UK".

I'd like THIS PARTICULAR question pool to be open to as wide an audience as possible.

In other words: "Questions of intermediate difficulty for your average English speaking earthling."