Recently I submitted an individual question in the music category. It was accepted within minutes, which was great, but the question appeared to have been edited. A parenthetical sentence I had added to the end of the question had been removed. This sentence was a hint - to make the question (I thought) more interesting and easier. Also, I discussed the hint in the interesting info section.

I feel that it was inappropriate for my question to have been edited without my knowledge or approval. It should have been rejected with an explanation of why and how it should be changed. However, I do understand that the omission of my critical sentence may have been the result of a technical fault, and not the editor's doing at all.

Unfortunately, once individual questions have been accepted, there is no way for authors to change them, nor can authors ever again view their answer choices or interesting info. Nor do they know which editor approved the question, in case the author needs to contact the editor for some reason such as the issue I just described. Finally, authors cannot view or defend edits to their questions/answers/interesting info after the questions have been played and changed by their peer reviewers.

My questions are my babies, and I want them to succeed. The utter lack of control offered by the Question Quest system is frustrating to say the least. There may be good reasons for the lack of control - data processing and storage constraints; sensitivity and knowledge of the players, editors and authors; availability and workload of the editors; the ephemeral nature of the individual questions; etc. I also understand that the Question Quest is relatively new. Maybe no one has yet made suggestions to improve it. But, having seen a few people post forum issues with Question Quest, and after many thousands of questions have been submitted, accepted, and played, I feel that the time is ripe for change.

What I would like to see in future versions of the Question Quest (sooner, if possible, rather than later) is this: at the minimum, the ability to communicate with the editor who accepted your question, as well as the ability to retract a question once it has been accepted and is in the queue. Nicer still would be the ability to view ALL the data associated with all of one's questions - answers as well as interesting info. This would be a valuable reference for authors working on other quizzes and questions who would like to remember what they have already discussed, and how they discussed it. Finally, being able to view a history of the edits to one's questions, answers, and info AFTER the questions have been played, as well as the ability to defend one's work, would be terrific features to have around.

I encourage the administrators to consider my suggestions and reply honestly. I also urge the editors and other players to support change, come up with their own suggestions, and support or blast my opinions as they feel appropriate.

I apologize for the wordiness, but I think this is important. This is my first post - I've just never felt this strongly about anything else before.

I agree, those changes would make the QQ work better. I don't know how possible it would be to make them - that's something only Terry knows. Sometimes something that seems simple to us is difficult for him, just because of the way the program is written.

Partly because of the way QQ is set up, and partly because of the - as you say - ephemeral nature of the individual questions, there is just naturally less back and forth between editor and author with these questions than with quizzes. If I see an issue come up in every question of a ten question quiz, I'll send the quiz back to the author, explain the problem in detail and get the author to rewrite the quiz. The same problem, in a single question - well, it's just more efficient for me, often, to fix it up myself. I try to let the author know in a note what I did and why I did it, but sometimes forget.

And, in my experience, for most authors, this is the way they want it - the majority of authors would rather see their question online, with small necessary changes made for them, than have it returned and make the changes themselves. I do agree that this is hard on those of you who would rather do it yourselves, especially because you are, almost by definition, people who care more about getting it right. What I can offer you is the assurance that if you write to an editor in the category of your question, giving specifics and asking for some idea of what the problem was and how to avoid it in future, we'll do what we can to explain and offer solutions.

If you do happen to see your question in the game, flagging it for correction is one way, though a cumbersome one, to initiate dialogue.

I'm broadly in agreement with Celicadriver, in that I think the present system is unsatisfactory and that there should be some modest and simple changes made - not to unduly complicate the work for editors but to ensure questions don't contain avoidable author-led or editor-led mistakes. As a minimum it would be great if: a question could be withdrawn before it's passed by an editor, to enable an amendment to be made; if there was some way of knowing which editor had worked on a question (which at present only happens if they write to you); and if the editor was able to insert an amendment to the question, on request from the author, AFTER he/she has released it into the system but without a correction notice needing to be submitted.

By way of explanation of the problem, I recently wrote a sport question, which was correct in the form I submitted it. However, the editor made a very slight textual amendment - obviously thinking this clarified the sense. In fact it changed the sense, and anyone familiar with the sport (hurling) would have recognised the error. The only way of getting that error fixed was through a correction notice if someone came across the question in the New Questions Quiz. I didn't get the question, nor did other Irish players I wrote to about trying to 'spot' the question, and thus no correction note could be submitted. Consequently the error (which suggests that hurling is played with a leather ball and a cork, instead of a ball made of cork and leather!) is still in the question.

Probably, nine times out of ten, editing changes made by experienced editors improve the question. However inevitably sometimes they mess it up, and there's no great system at present to sort that out.

Yes, having had to deal with problematic editorial changes on QQ, this would be a wonderful upgrade. One of my questions, which I assume the editor felt wasn't worded well, was changed completely to ask a different question that was no longer accurate in the least. It was a good many months before I even noticed, but I was able to fix it via the correction system. Perhaps if it was easier for the author to deal with their own questions, the editors would not feel a need to take such liberty with our entries.

Quote:

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the ability to view ALL the data associated with all of one's questions - answers as well as interesting info.

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For me, this was solved with a word document. It also lets me compare the original version of my questions with what I see in the games now.

Edited to add: This idea just occured to me, I don't know how easy it would be for Terry to implement. Could authors have an option to flag their own questions as needing corrections from the "My Contributions" page, instead of having to chance upon them in one of the games? This would be even more helpful if we could see the entire question (info and answers) and note any problematic post-editing changes.

I think I'm the guilty one here, Celica. :s

It's possibly because of stylistic reasons (though I can't recall exactly- I ended up editing a lot the day it was submitted and checked). Parentheses after a question are something I usually place back into the question to make it seem like less of an afterthought; it's all a flow thing. I must have forgotten to stick it back in there as I was going along and I do apologize for the carelessness. The info was not amended and probably says something about French cities (now out-of-context).

We'll have to hope it gets flagged out in the field.

I do like DarthRevan's idea for a player 'flag'. Hopefully Terry can implement something like this.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to organize feedback and critical conversation about the single-qs with the current set-up.

Being able to edit before an editor looked at the question (because sometimes after a good night's sleep, I can think of a better way to ask that question) and being able to contact the editor who edited the question without my input would be awesome.

I recently submitted a question, which an editor changed the wording of and now, even to me, the question doesn't make sense. Even if the way I had written it when I submitted wasn't really the way to go about it, I feel I should have at least got that question back and been asked to re-word it. I have noticed that it has had just over 100 plays whereas three other questions that went online at the same time have had over 200 plays - leading me to assume that question was pulled from the rotation due to errors (which may or may not have been due to the editor's rewording of the question).

Ok, rant over. Just wanted to say "I agree"

A couple of days ago I had a question accepted within an hour of submitting, but then realised that although the question made sense, I had omitted the vital 'clue' word, thus making it extremely hard to answer. It hasn't come up yet, but I just know it's too difficult as it stands. I agree, an edit mode or flag (as above) would be useful. Regarding the altering of questions without notification, that has happened to me once and I could not see how the change was an improvement.

I feel much better knowing that I'm not the only one whose individual questions have been negatively and more or less permanently altered, whether accidentally or with well-meaning intent.

And I appreciate kyleisalive coming forward and explaining what happened. I feel better knowing that it was an honest mistake. I will try to catch it and submit a correction in the New Question game.

I suspect that one of the assumptions behind Question Quest was that single questions would be easier and quicker than whole quizzes to come up with and implement. As a result, the system was designed to allow for almost instant (but unfortunately permanent) gratification. As agony pointed out, many authors are probably happy with that. But once they get burned by having their question's core meaning changed, and as a result having the question thrown out after negative reviews or so many incorrect responses, they might change their tune.

Having seen so many examples of authors wishing they could retract or change something after the fact, and reading Lones78's comment about rewording questions after a good night's sleep, it has become apparent that even single questions often need revision and time for refinement and precision craftsmanship. This is the beauty of the quiz authoring system - you can take your time to get things right before sending it off into the world. Maybe an improved "hybrid" Question Quest could incorporate elements of the quiz authoring system ....

In the meantime, I do plan to use darthrevan89's idea of storing my individual questions and all their related data in a local file - thank you for that.

I have always saved my full questions (not just for QQ, but for real quizzes as well) in some sort of word processing program and have found it quite helpful.

Almost all of the low "performance correct" results on my questions are my own fault due to either making the q too hard or the answers being too hard to choose between - but I, along with several other folks it seems, DO have some personal issues with the way this beast works in the practical sense:

a) since we can't use html, the only way to "highlight" an important word clue/hint without actually typing "hint: blah blah blah" in brackets in a question, is to put the word/phrase in quotation marks. In a few of my questions, the marks were removed by editors (and yes I understand the whole quotation mark thing is not proper grammatical syntax and considered generally extraneous) but I really feel those changes MAY have affected the final results to some small degree. Not a big deal if your q is sitting at 20%, but it might be if it's at 54%.

b) I actually had a question that was rejected because it was "too easy". My question was NOT of the "what's the name of that annoying purple dinosaur" variety, and although it probably would have seemed easy to someone living in Germany or England, I doubt that it would have been more than 70% obvious to people living elsewhere in the world. On the main QQ page it used to say something along the lines of "most of the q's are TOO HARD and if whatever % of the world's population can't answer it, then it's not appropriate for this venue". I thought the whole point of this exercise was to let the "populace" determine, by playing it, whether a q was at an acceptable difficulty level or not. AND that if it turned out to be too hard for most folks, then it might (or might not) be used for things like Obscure. It shouldn't be up to an editor to decide on the difficulty appropriateness level. All of our editors are extremely intelligent/well-read etc and I can't imagine how many zillions of q's seem WAY too easy to THEM, but I thought actual game play was to be the determinant in this particular challenge. I fully agree with editors having issues with actual quizzes and the difficulty of questions therein, but this game is a different "kettle of fish".

c) as per many of the messages above, it is unfortunate that you can't edit particular parts of a q at any point in the progression after submitting. At present, the only REAL way to fix your question is to either delete it entirely (only available if it either hasn't been accepted yet or has been rejected) and resubmit something else entirely or wait for correction notices or to flag it yourself, although I've only encountered 2 of my questions in actual game play. I can only assume that just editors see these since I've never received one directly. If this is indeed the case, then why aren't the correction notices sent directly to the author, rather than to editors who are overburdened already and should not be expected to have to fix things on their own?

At present, I don't feel highly motivated to get to 50 for either badge. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the idea of being given the opportunity able to submit q's. But it would be really nice if, upon viewing a q, that the editor who had issues with it, could either
a) somehow send the question back in its ENTIRETY for resubmission before it gets played or
b)"this q is considered acceptable, but is there anything you would like to change before it enters the game pool"?.

QQ is a FABULOUS thing, but like all new concepts, it is possible that it might need a little reworking here or there to make it even better than it already is : )

Good suggestion, but I don't know. Perhaps an editor could give an opinion? : )

Yes, I'd say an asterisk, or perhaps caps, if it's not overused. Please don't use quotation marks to stress a word, it really bothers some of us ("us" meaning picky grammarians, not editors, though there is some overlap).

About sending the questions back - as I said earlier, the problem here is that the vast majority of question authors would *not* appreciate that. My estimate would be that there are fewer than fifty authors who would like that, out of the thousand or so people who have written single questions. You can't go by those posting here, because they are by definition people who care about the game, care about their questions, care about the site as a whole. Most authors, unfortunately, don't, much.

Getting into a back-and-forth actual editing situation with single questions would change it from something fast and easy for both editors and authors. It's a regrettable side effect of the "fast and easy" that it causes problems for those who really care the most. I hope that Terry has been watching this thread, and will be able to make the questions more accessible to authors - that would take care of a lot of the problems.

The corrections come to the editors, and, in the spirit of "fast and easy", most of the time we do the corrections ourselves. The vast majority of them are spelling and punctuation errors. If there's a problem that needs more than just a quick fix, I send the question back to the author with my own comments - that only happens now and then. I'm sent back maybe a dozen questions so far.

Fair enough. Thanks Agony : )

A few things to deal with here, so I'll sort through them one at a time.


"I feel that it was inappropriate for my question to have been edited without my knowledge or approval. It should have been rejected with an explanation of why and how it should be changed. However, I do understand that the omission of my critical sentence may have been the result of a technical fault, and not the editor's doing at all."

Editors have the right to completely change a question if they choose to. We want to keep things as simple as possible. The idea is that editors take a question, fix it to their liking, and then "lock it down". We want to avoid questions popping in and out of existence, being dragged out of games by the original authors, changed, re-posted, changed again, etc etc.

This is the same reason that we "archive" old quizzes and allow them to be edited only by our editors. The fewer moving parts we have, the less likely we are to introduce errors, vandalism, accidental data corruption, etc. If we KNOW that a subset of our data is "locked", then we can focus on that which is not, and better monitor / take care of it. That "locked" data can still be changed, but in a more controlled manner, and by a very small number of people.

<< as well as the ability to retract a question once it has been accepted and is in the queue. >>

This is a reasonable request. If a question has been submitted but not yet processed by the editors, you should have the ability to change it.

<< By way of explanation of the problem, I recently wrote a sport question, which was correct in the form I submitted it. However, the editor made a very slight textual amendment - obviously thinking this clarified the sense. In fact it changed the sense, and anyone familiar with the sport (hurling) would have recognised the error. The only way of getting that error fixed was through a correction notice if someone came across the question in the New Questions Quiz. I didn't get the question, nor did other Irish players I wrote to about trying to 'spot' the question, and thus no correction note could be submitted. Consequently the error (which suggests that hurling is played with a leather ball and a cork, instead of a ball made of cork and leather!) is still in the question. >>

Dsimpy -- curious on this example. How are you aware that the question is wrong? Surely if you saw the question in that form you would have had the ability to submit a correction?

<< the ability to view ALL the data associated with all of one's questions - answers as well as interesting info. >>

Ok, how about we do this then, as I think it would accomplish what some of you are requesting without fundamentally changing the current system:

You would be given a list of all of your accepted questions submitted (answers and info too).

Beside each one you would have access to a "report correction" link, which would link into our current correction system. You could then point out problems, editing issues, etc. The editors would receive these in the normal "correction queues", and be able to change your question to your liking.

Does this work for everyone?

I think that would help quite a bit, Terry. As it now stands, the only way to access a question needing changing is to hope you come across it in the game.

Done!

http://www.funtrivia.com/questionpost_me3.cfm

Terry, that link you posted just takes me to a screen that says:


An Unexpected Error has Occurred
We are unable to continue because an error has occurred.
The administrators have been notified of the problem.

Please hit back on your browser to continue.

Try now please.

It's working fine now. Thanks Terry! Managed to change my question before it is played.

That's excellent - thank you so much!

Thank YOU for your contributions!