It's likely this question may have been asked previously, but I would be grateful to know whether or not the difficulty levels of quizzes include the scores of Guest players.

I've noticed on most of my quizzes that a disproportionate number of guest players score 0/10 even on the simpler quizzes, which leads me to believe they don't actually bother playing them.

No, only member plays count toward quiz difficulty levels.

Many thanks, I assumed that would probably be the situation.

I was shocked today that a recently created quiz of mine has a ranking of a lowly 75000 even though it has 71 percent Good and Excellents and a quiz created a few years ago had 70 percent Good and Excellents and had a rating of between 59000 and 60000. What is this anomaly?

It's not an anomaly; you don't have a way of knowing the ratings below those two when they're selected. We also don't know the exact algorithm used to calculate the ratings.

I enjoyed more creating the more recent quiz as I knew very little about the subject but did research on it, but apparently the ratings tell a different story and this event tells me that ratings are very unpredictable.

That they are.
Because they're out of the author's control they can seem frustrating but the more you write the more you may find a turn inward-- less of an interest in the ratings and more of an interest in your own opinion of your work. At least that's how I've found it.

Once you get a decent portfolio of quizzes, you'll probably be able to predict a bit better. I can usually estimate at least which 10,000 bracket any given quiz of mine is likely to fall in just based on the limited good & excellent info. Since you can't see the avg/poor/vpoor ratings, it's never going to be an exact science, though. Oh, and even my worst at 106k has 59% positive rating - so there is a trend for people to rate fairly nicely overall which I suppose should be taken into account too. It's all relative.

I care about the ratings in as much as it's progress towards that 'orrible Pangalactic challenge, and because it's nice to get positive feedback and acclaim, but the scale is a little arbitrary. It's certainly more the journey of writing them I'll remember in the long run than the outcome of getting an ever-changing rating.

Overall, I'd just say that if you enjoyed researching and writing the quiz, that's a good enough reason to keep going. There are little tricks you can use to improve the ratings, should you so wish, though, so keep that in mind. It's clichéd advice, but check out the top-rated quizzes to see how they did it. It's a good starting point from a ratings perspective.

I just played the following quiz "Quiz - British and Irish Lions in Australia, 2013" and someone had spent time and effort to produce this quiz, but I was amazed that out of the 15 plays of this quiz, 9 of which was by FT members only 3 people including myself had bothered to rate this quiz.

I know quiz rating is a personal choice, I for one ALWAYS rate a quiz, one for the extra 20 points and also to let the author know the work was not in vain and what I thought of it.

It takes 5 seconds to rate a quiz.

Keep in mind that quiz numbers are inflated by a factor of three to take into account guest plays and guests can not rate. While not everyone will rate (and no one is obligated to), I like to think that there are a lot of people who do care to.

Kyle that's why I broke it down and took into account guest players

15 plays
6 guests
9 FT players

3 ratings

So from that small cross section only 33% rating a quiz

I'm not trying to make a fuss about it just a general observation

I believe non-gold members can't rate after their first 100 quizzes.

(Top quiz site-wide)
3061 plays (after dividing by 3)
1598 ratings
52.2% rated

(Bus ride quiz)
1269 plays (after dividing by 3)
872 ratings
68.71% rated

(One of my quizzes)
698 plays (after dividing by 3)
326 ratings
46.7% rated

With 9 players, the result isn't going to be very accurate. Maybe 1/2 is a bit closer to the average figure than 1/3. Or maybe both of those numbers are way off.

Taking into account non-gold plays and scores under 2 (and re-takes if they count), it's not *that* bad an average.

I played it, and rated it, so that's two of us.

That's true, Regular Members cannot rate quizzes after the first 100. It's a GM privilege.

And AdamM7 also pointed out the scores under 2 - I have taken quizzes that I really enjoyed but on which I did not score high enough to rate, and had to just send a compliment.

Well, any compliment is nice, of course.

Can you say that again? I'm not following. The number of plays is multiplied by a factor of 3, or the number of ratings? If it's the number of plays, and it's to account for guests, then why not count the guests in the number of plays and not inflate?

It is the number of times a quiz has been played by someone who can rate it that is multiplied by 3. This is because, as Kyle pointed out, guests cannot play, nor can non-gold members who have played more than a certain number of quizzes. It has always been this way. I imagine it is at least in part to keep people from logging in multiple times as a guest and rating a particular quiz either very highly or very poorly, for personal reasons. Someone who has just written their first quiz might find it very tempting to play and rate it hundreds of times. the fact that non-gold members have an upper limit seems like a way of enticing them into going gold - it is another perk that you get for your money. (I'd pay just to not see the ads - no other sweeteners are needed for me!)

Some of those might not have been Gold members though. non-gold members can only rate a certain number before their ratings don't count anymore.

Exactly this. Not only is it a courtesy some people just don't extend, but some can't extend in the first place.

Rating is not compulsory.

Sometimes, it depends upon why I took a quiz as to whether I will rate it or not EG if going for a badge and playing quizzes outside my comfort zone, I will often not rate because I believe my uninformed opinion is not relevant. However, if the author of such a quiz impresses me by their knowledge, understanding of the subject and their explanations as well as the overall presentation, I will rate. Also, there are certain authors that I like a lot. If I take one of their quizzes and am disappointed I will not rate it.

Also, as someone who has some really "down" days, I know that my ratings could be skewed then because of that and choose not to rate, it being to my mind the best option.

If I race through a quiz without even reading the II for whatever reason, I will often not rate it with the intention of coming back and doing a real rating job. I'd rather give a quiz an excellent that it deserves, than just give it a good or an average based only on the questions and answer selections. The II often affects my overall impression of a quiz favorably, as it is where I learn the most and where the author's wit and humor sometimes come into play.

I tend to give the lowest ratings in two cases. The first is the older quizzes with absolutely no II (or just "Hope you enjoyed my quiz" on the last one. The other reason for a low ranking is when there are fill in the blank questions that have difficult to spell words so that even though I know the answer, I don't get credit.

One of the criteria I may use to lower my rating is if the author makes a poor decision as to the format for the quiz. For example, if there are really long questions that are hard to read in quiz mode I may downgrade because I can't read the question when the print is so small. On the other hand, if it is just available in HTML and there is no good reason why quiz mode doesn't exist.

Anything that causes me to send a correction notice will get me to downgrade a quiz.

If I think something is inappropriate for the quiz then I'll also downgrade. For example, I recently played a quiz in the Sports for Kids subcategory where it asked what team someone played for in 2008. Whereas that might be appropriate in a quiz in the regular sports category, I didn't think it made sense in the For Children category since people who are likely to be taking that quiz won't remember back to 2008.

On a related note, it's important to realize that different people have different standards in rating quizzes. My thought is that I am rating the quizzes against the typical quiz on this site. That means that there should be as many quizzes below average as there are above average. I tend to make a bell curve around average which means that something has to really stand out to be Excellent or have a significant problem to be Very Poor.

Whereas I tend to rate quizzes highly where the author has made an effort to give the quiz a storylike quality with longer questions.

It just goes to show how truly subjective the quiz ratings are.