For the past couple of weeks, I've had more questions in the New Questions Game from one category than any other. Last week I counted 20 questions on Sport in six consecutive sets and I thought that was way too many. But in one set today, I had seven sports questions and in the next set three, which means that 50% of the questions I've seen so far today have been on Sport.

Would it be possible to have some sort of filter so that at least, say, seven categories must be represented in every set of questions? I realise that sometimes the pool of questions might be low in some areas but to get 10/20 questions from one category doesn't seem balanced to me.

flopsymopsy, you and I must have been in the same set. I counted seven, as well.

It's not really surprising to me there are more sports questions in this game. Nightmare has contributed over 130 more questions than the next person in the list and most (if not all?) of his questions are sports related.

Of course there's a simple cure for this - submit

We can use more single questions again anyway - the NQG is now on the slowest setting, so more questions won't hurt!

There's another solution: Don't include sports as one of the possible categories, like what is done with For Children or Video Games.

(I doubt that'll happen, though.)

Or at the very least, don't include obscure American sports questions - which accounts for most of the questions in the sports category ........
If it isn't a sport played by MOST of the nations of the world, don't include it.

For Children is available; Brain Teasers is not. And shush! I've been campaigning for Video Games for ages!

I thought the slowest setting was ad hoq/ when they are available.

Sport and TV are always going to be "contentious" because they do tend to be rather more specialised than general knowledge. It's not like you get an "Aha! Mr. Smith said that in his lesson that day in third year infants and I remembered it all this time" moment with those categories. I must admit, I have to try very hard to look for the effort/research/knowledge that went into one of those questions when I rate it, and stop myself going "oh ew sport, bleh" A well written question can still be a good question even if I have no idea of the answer, and no matter who wrote any given question in the QQ, they have put their time and effort into doing so and deserve credit for that, even if I personally could just about care less about the subject matter lol. I've written some pretty "bad" ones myself, and come to realise that yes, I *am* the only person sad enough to remember/care about XYZ
It's not like we can trade our points for chocolate people! ... (dreeee eee eee eee eeemmmmm dream dream dreammmmm)

Don't forget -- we're at an unusual point in the NQ game right now. Editors have just placed old questions back online that were earlier taken off due to errors.

As such, there are large clumps of questions in certain categories.

It will take a couple of weeks for those to work their way through and we'll be.... regular again.

Most of the sports questions are too obscure for the average trivia player. The new qustion game asks for questions that can be answered by 60-95 per cent accuracy. I think one would really need to be a dedicated sports fan to get 50 percent right. I know I can't.

I don't think the extra large batch of Sports questions can be answered solely by the fact that some questions have been put back into the pool. Firstly that applies to questions in all categories, secondly the problem started a couple of weeks ago, and thirdly it would mean there were a disproportionately large number of Sports questions that were allowed to go through with errors the first time round.

I suspect that the large number of questions submitted by one author, almost all of which are on Sport has something to do with it as pointed out by pyronir. If a large number of them have gone through in one batch then it would skew the balance of the game.

The huge imbalance is bound to affect how people view the Game. If it's "always full of sport" people will stop playing it. I'm not picking on Sport just because I'm useless at it, lol, I'd say the same if the game was full of Music questions (I'm lousy at those too) or Movies (ditto). Or even History, which I like. But I do think it's a problem and I'm not sure it will work itself out in a week or so - it's already been going on for that long.

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Of course there's a simple cure for this - submit

We can use more single questions again anyway - the NQG is now on the slowest setting, so more questions won't hurt!

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If that's the case, perhaps consideration could be given to removing the maximum of five submissions. Most of us have to wait for our questions to be approved. While I certainly wouldn't expect an editor to drop everything so they can pass my questions, and am perfectly happy for them to sit in the queue, I do find it frustrating when I have a nice clump of time to spare and am "on a roll" in the creative department of my six remaining brain cells to find myself at a sudden full stop.

The limit prevents questions being entered to check for matches, so I won't type it up elsewhere in case it's already in the system from someone else.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I have just written a sports question about a neighbor of mine who competed in the 1968 Olympics.

I don't post very often and when I do, I tend to "go on" way-y-y too much, so skip to the next message NOW if you don't like long missives (you've been warned lol) ...

a) the New Question Game is NOT a quiz or even really a "game", per se. It's a collection (for lack of a better word) of new questions that we are given the PRIVILEGE of rating and/or contributing to.

b) barring queue lengths, the questions that come up in the games seem (to me) to be pretty much RANDOM. In my dictionary, none of the definitions for that word is "evenly balanced and equally fair to all parties involved".

c) this idea is a fairly new "concept". Because of the NATURE of it, inherently, it isn't going to please everybody ALL of the time. Not that I think it needs to, since (to me anyway) that's hardly the point of the exercise.

d) some very enthusiastic and prolific writers submitted LOADS of questions in the "birthing weeks" of this game and I'm sure many of those q's were underplayed at the very beginning. If ALL of those q's suddenly get put back into the mix for several rounds, then (logically) you're going to see multiples from the same user (whether the topic is sports or not) in the near future. For instance in the last set I played there were four questions from the same player (none of which were about sports, in case you were wondering).

e) The recent "reintroductions" nonwithstanding, if any members submit a proportionately greater amount of questions than most folks on a REGULAR BASIS, then again, logically, you're going to end up with more questions in any given set, whether the selection is random or not. Example: if there are 100 questions in the current pool, and 40 of them are written by the same person, what do you think will happen? lol

f) At least one of my early q's had less than 40 plays. I am THANKFUL that those q's got another "kick at the cat", as it were (mind you, one of them isn't doing any better %age wise for correct answers than the first time around, but at least that proves once and for all that it's a terrible question lol)

g) just because some subject is not a PERSONAL favourite, doesn't mean that it doesn't appeal to many many other folks. I don't know how many people from Asia are actually on this site (nor do I care), but based merely on population size, if something is enjoyed by 20% of the Chinese population, it's going to be FAR more popular statistically/globally than something that is enjoyed by 100% of the people who live in, say, Wales (not picking on anybody here, btw, it's just "stats"). Using the Asian population again as an example, baseball is growing in popularity there every year. The same cannot be said in those countries for aussie rules football or the tv show "so you think you can dance". (and no, I'm not "defending" american baseball here, it's just an example! )

h) if you "hate" ANY particular subject, in this "game" you at least HAVE an opportunity to say so by rating it poor/uninteresting. In other games (such as expert or smartest which tell you the topic before you play) and of course, normal quizzes, you can choose not to play those you're not interested in. There's really no need to state your dislikes regarding NQG in a thread, the game lets you do that on its own. Not only that, but you actually get POINTS for "voicing" your opinion there.

i) if enough people feel the SAME way you do about a certain (disliked) question, it will end up in obscure games somewhere and you'll never have to see it again if you so choose lol

j) that being said, kudos to the person(s) writing lots of questions on a particular subject, because think how lucky those folks (of similar interest) are because THEY get to play a whole bunch of new q's when they select that topic. And pity the topics that hardly anyone is writing anything for, because those folks will have to continue to play the same (possibly old/tired) questions.

k) sports has already been bashed enough in previous threads. It's not my favourite subject either, but I'm infinitely more annoyed at people complaining about it than I am about actually SEEING sports questions in games. I feel the same way about all topics (including video games lol) If I don't get ANY question correct, no matter what the subject, I consider that a deficiency on MY part, not the fault of the question pool. There seems to be PLENTY of folks on here who manage "expert" wins on many varied and unrelated subjects, so apparently the question content/database is not a "problem" for them.

l) No matter what the topic, if you don't like the questions, the CHALLENGE of this "game that is not a game" is either to write a BETTER one on that subject or write LOADS of (good) questions on some OTHER topic. We can't claim that we're "victims of the system" in this particular case. In the NQG, we have all been "empowered" to either change things in some small way (if that is your goal) or to add even more good things to an already fabulous site.

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... As a child, I came to the realisation that the world was NOT "all about me". Surprisingly, this was an immense relief, as being responsible for the entire planet involved WAY too much effort ~

I'm not the biggest sports fan either, so I'm terrible at all the Sports questions in the New Question Game, but I agree with Jakeroo in that there's no need to condemn an entire category which undoubtedly appeals to some people. When I play the New Question Game, I try to consider whether a question would appeal to a sports fan (or history fan, etc) even if I have absolutely no interest in that subject, and then rate the question accordingly. If I wanted to play a quiz on only the topics that I liked or knew something about, I would just stick with the new "Daily Quiz"

Oddly enough (for me at any rate), my next QQ question waiting to make the rounds is a Sports question, and I sincerely hope that anyone who gets it will rate it fairly and objectively, even if they dislike sports, as I think that's the least that any author should expect.

I also have put in a couple of sports questions.
I do get tired of seeing baseball, NFL, etc questions but it's all part of the randomness of the FT games.
My questions will probably be called 'obscure' but at least they are different and I am giving it a go. They are just as legitimate as any of the other sports questions in the pool that I have seen.
If more people submit questions about sports that they think 'obscure' the sports pool will eventually be diluted down to questions that are not specifically about baseball and other US specific sports.
I'm also going to stick up for nightmare here and say that it's not just him submitting all these obscure american sports stats.

I'm not a sports fan either, but I agree entirely with Jakeroo's sentiments.

Even if I lived to be as old as Methuselah, and assuming I could still use a keyboard, if the answer to an American sports question isn't Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, OJ Simpson, Dale Wossname, New York Giants or the Harlem Globetrotters - I'm sunk without a trace.

It's great that those who submit lots of sports question can actually think up so many - I wish I could do the same for the categories that interest me!

In my opinion, sport - American or not - is as legitimate a topic as any other, but to an ignoramus like me many sport questions seem to have been simply drawn from a statistics book. Who won this? In which year did that happen? What was the final score in 1976? Etc. Hardly interesting or answerable questions for the majority of players.

This is actually surprising, because all baseball, basketball, football or cricket fans I've met in my life were always animated by a strong missionary spirit and didactic enthusiasm. :-)
So why don't true fans take this wonderful opportunity to make their favourite sports more understandable and "digestible" for a wide, international audience?
I would really like to see, for example, some funny anecdotes about baseball, or basic questions about its rules or about its fans, or whatever along these lines.
Such questions might seem to true experts to be "beneath their dignity", but isn't it the same with an elementary Shakespeare question for a literature buff, or a question about a Supernova for an astrophysicist? Why should sport be an exception?

If you honestly think that the question is too obscure, give it a poor rating. That's what the ratings are for. Most of the authors have been using their ratings to fine tune the way they write questions. Your rating is your way of expressing your feelings about what you want to see in this game.

But before you do, take the time to actually read the question. A well crafted question, even on an obscure subject in which you have no interest, might be answerable, due to to clues in the question or a good selection of answer options. The interesting info may be actually interesting, giving you a new appreciation for the subject.