---PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK OF ASKING TERRY (IN A SEPARATE THREAD)TO UPDATE THE FAQ WITH MORE DETAILED INFORMATION REGARDING SINGLE QUESTIONS---

Hey guys!

So I've been wondering about Question Quest a lot, since I've recently been submitting lots of questions.

Here are my questions:

1. What games do questions contribute to? (i.e. Do my questions get placed in Piece of Cake, Who's the Smartest, etc.)

2. There are some questions I see constantly recurring in the hourly games. Do some questions (i.e. higher rated ones) appear more times in the games than others?

3. Does a higher ranked quiz have a better chance of making it into games?

4. How many questions get actually put into games other than the New Question Game, and how does their ranking affect this?

5. How many times to questions repeat themselves in different sets of the New Question Game?

6. What is the process of selecting questions for the hourly/daily games from the New Question games for Quality Questions, and what is that process for not-quality-questions?

7. How does the ranking of a question affect the likelihood of it being put into games?

8. At what point are we alerted that our questions are in games other than the New Question game? [ANSWERED: We never get alerted of this]

9. Once a question has been determined as a Quality Question or not as a Quality Question, based on the voters' ratings, what different roles will the two have? Will one just never be selected as a Hourly/Daily game question?

10. Is it a guarantee that every Quality Question will be placed in a game other than the New Question game at some point?

Thanks,
Port Gleep

P.S. I've noticed that this is one area of FT that is never explained. Perhaps Terry could update the Question Post FAQ with some or all of these questions? Because its really frustrating not knowing this kind of stuff about your questions.

All I know is this: I'd like to know a number of those answers too.

I'd like to know the process that Question Quest questions go. There is very little transperancy to where the questions go. I want to know! There is little to no vetting by FT members before the questions are public!

8 - So far as I know, you're not informed, the same as with questions from your normal quizzes, or when one of your quizzes is quiz of the hour or on the bus ride.


***Edited to remove reply regarding question 1, as the OP has edited the original question!***

Can't help you with the rest I'm afraid. However, I would love to see more QQ's cropping up in the global, obscure, piece of cake and smartest games.

To answer question 6 as best I can, there is a rating threshold below which questions will not be entered into the game pool. I would assume that this is a rating of 0.2 but I don't know this for certain. Not-quality questions (I assume by this you mean questions that do not pass this threshold) will understandably not enter the games. After all, why include a question in the hourlies/dailies that a large number of players have indicated is not particularly good?

The % correct on each question that passes the threshold will determine into which of the game pools they go.

Does that mean that questions under 0.2 will only be used for the New Question game?

I wish Terry would update the FAQ with some or all of these questions, because I agree with cubswin that FT members know very little about QQ.

For Question #1, I think you misunderstood me.

My question was this: once a question has been determined as a Quality Question or not as a Quality Question, based on the voters' ratings, what different roles will the two have? Will one just never be selected as a Hourly/Daily game question?

Is it a guarantee that every Quality Question will be placed in a game other than the New Question game at some point?

What games do questions contribute to? (i.e. Do my questions get placed in Piece of Cake, Who's the Smartest, etc.)

I will edit my post and update it with this.

I have to be honest - as quite a significant (128) QQ question contributor - I'm not as curious as some others obviously are about the final destination/ultimate usage of my questions.

I wrote them (write them) because it gave me enjoyment doing it (and I got a few badges) and I get a kick from seeing them appear now and again in games ... always worrying whether I'll answer them correctly or not!

I do agree it'd be useful/interesting to know a little more about how they're subsequently used ... but (most ideas being pretty cheap and easy to come by) I was happy to relinquish ownership of them, more or less, once I'd submitted them.

The concern I would have is about Snowman's belief that questions 'disappear' if they receive a sub-0.2 rating in the New Question Game. You may be right Snowman, but here's why I think that'd be unfortunate if it was the case ...

Terry improved the QQ system a while back so we can view ALL our submitted questions and suggest improvements to them if they got a low 'correctness' or 'satisfaction' rating, in order to make them more accessible.

I've done that with quite a number of my least successful questions marked 'average'. If they were played again I'd like to think the satisfaction rating would improve significantly, but if they're already 'down and out' because of the initial poor rating and never see the light of day again, I've sort of wasted my time ...?

So I AM curious about that.

It puzzles me too.

The percentage of correct answers determines of course if a question, when it appears on another game, goes to the Piece of Ceke, Mixed or Smartest games. If any of the question quest questions pops up in the GLobal Challenge, the percantage of correct answers would determine in which division it comes.

I suppose the rating will have an incidence on the chance of being used in another game. When Terry created the possibility to improve on our questions, I suppose the amended questions will lose their original rating (because of the changes made) and wait on brand new ratings.

Some of my own questions that ended up with a final rating below 0.2, I have seen in other games, so while that's the cutoff for the QQ badge, it doesn't seem to be the cutoff for usability in other games (by below 0.2 I mean like 0.18, not super low).

I'll try to answer a bunch (with the caveat that this is from my knowledge and not official - no guarantees for correctness!):



I've seen them in the Daily Game and Knockout. No idea where else. Their introduction in more topical games such as Smartest will likely take longer since we will need a larger base for that game.




No. Among questions eligible for a certain game, all of them have the same chance. However, questions with certain difficulty levels are eligible for more games than others.



Apart from needing to be above 0.0 in rating, not as far as I know.



A question needs approximately 250 plays to "graduate". The number of sets needed to achieve that may differ from day to day.



Questions are selected by being in a certain difficulty range, in the right topic and above a minimum quality (rating 0.00 or better). The rest is automatic and random.



It's either there (>0) or not (<0).



See #7



No. Since selections are entirely random, a question might just never hit. However, over the really long run, every quality question has a near certainty to appear.

They are also definitely found in the average hourly game. Every single question has been question quest submissions. :-)

The Quick Quiz is, I believe, completely made up of Question Quest entries. I've seen even some of my lowest-rated questions appear there (0.10 or so).

OK, so maybe 0.2 is a bit high for the threshold but the principle is the same. It's probably a good thing that I'm not in charge here - there'd never be any questions in any of the games!

Every Question submission accepted by an editor gets a number assigned to it. Depending on whether a question is single or in a quiz determines where it goes next but the number exists and starts picking up tags at this point Example: Question Quest submission by mehaul after honing with editors is assigned Question number 1234567. It was entered through the Pastry category so now it becomes 1234567;P. Being a single question it goes through the Question Quest for Quality Questions and regardless of rating outcome now gets tagged with those outcomes: 1234567;P;15%;0.49good (if that last tag gets below zero it does not progress but let's call it as being in Limbo for now, there are opportunities to fix 1234567 subsequent to this process.
Database record# 1234567;P;15%;0.49goodQ={text}Ans=A.wrongB,C,D&info now can be selected by the computer depending on what game is being fleshed out with questions. If you were looking for a difficult Pastry category The computer would look through its records for records with P in the 1st tag position, a low percentage correct value (tag position2) and question 1234567 is your baby and into the quiz it goes (or it may not even be looked at, it's random as far as selection out of the Pastry subcategory goes). Next time it may get chosen in the International Cuisine category which is a parent category for Pastries. It may show up in a mixed hourly, daily, GC TvT, Team Heroes or Quick Quiz (Having come from a single question it won't appear as an Hourly Quiz)

I think most of this is close to accurate in describing the process.

Guys, what do you think about asking Terry to do a more detailed FAQ list explaining the process and some of the details?

Mehaul, I can not for the life of me decipher your reply :p, no just kidding, thanks so much for giving such a detailed reply. But... English, please?

What part needs translationing? I good at dat.

Mehaul, thanks for trying to explain. You are however pretty much speculating about the technical details and in some places you are quite wrong even though you did identify most of the key stages in the life of a question. The order of several events is clearly different and I'm saying that purely from knowing the authoring and editing process.

One thing for now: Single and quiz questions are vastly different in treatment both during authoring/editing and during play. You will always see either questions from quizzes or singles in a specific place. If a game has both, it's because it selects some from quizzes and some from singles, but then the singles will always appear in the same slots and each set will have the exact same number of singles. This could of course change in the future but for various reasons I don't see that happening soon.

Because the site is constantly changing and updated, it is a clear possibility that the questions can be used for future games based on a number of criteria. Just because it's gone through its run on the 'New Question' game doesn't necessarily mean we've seen the last of it. After all, we now have a database of tens of thousands of single questions to use.




Not completely. If the question is from a quiz, a link to said quiz will be given after the question is answered- otherwise there will be no link.





Not quite.
Every quiz gets a number at the time of its creation. The same can be said for single questions.

I'm not sure that there are any tags either- at least not from the editor end.




Again, this isn't really the case. The most specific category you will see for a single-question is the main category. For example, a single question about 'Silence of the Lambs' will only be categorized under 'Movies' and nothing else. Questions about Video Games are actually categorized under Entertainment in the single questions database.



Please remember that some questions about the aspects of the site are only answerable by Terry and the admins. Technical matters such as these are fine to theorize about, but we don't want to be giving the wrong answers.

I meant to give no wrong answers and indicated in my closing that "it was close to what happens". I saw the confusion that has reigned on this thread. I surmize that many times multiple questions arise when all could be explained by a describing of the process involved, as knowledge of the process erases many questions. So I described a theoretical question posed by me and how a data base record would be built for that question. Getting it assigned a record number, initial review results, category or subcategory, etc. For brevity, I left out certain items I knew would also be in there like author name, date created, date assigned a number, editor names involved, subsequent playing results, correction notes, and more I'm certain (But not sure as I am not one of the site engineers) are also part of that record building.

I tried to explain there is a data base of questions a quiz draws from. Pick your game here in FT and the Q's come from that Database. I apologize if any secrets were revealed or if I've grossly impressed anyone with extremely wrong indications. I will now go shut up. Thank you for setting the'record' straight Wesley and Kyle.

You never said it was a theory. You simply said "I think this is accurate."

While I am confident that many different criteria could be pulled from the questions currently online it is not the case and much of what you said is incorrect.
While it is appreciated that you are trying to help answer the questions asked above, the only concern I'm bringing up here is that players may have considered your wrong answers as the right ones.
This way, we don't get people asking 'why didn't my single question about 'Harry Potter' end up in the 'Harry Potter' category of the Expert game?' The answer would be because the single questions are not tagged beyond the designation of 'Movies' or 'Literature'. They wouldn't even go to 'For Children'- it doesn't even go that specific.

Again, it's not to say that this is or isn't a possibility, but it is currently not a setup we (as editors) have access to. Terry and the admins are the only ones who would be able to describe the database in full.

I suspect Terry doesn't go into too much detail in the FAQ so that his options remain open. As Kyle said, the site is always changing, and just because things are done a certain way now is no guarantee they will be done that way in the future.

But he could always say, this is how it is at the moment, but it may change in the future. And I'm not asking for the technical details of it.

I'm just asking because I want to know what happens to my questions. Just as I would want to know how many times people have played my quiz, and what its rated, and what the % of incorrect/correct on each question is, I would want to know the future of my questions.

The questions I asked don't deal with the technical side of things. Its just asking for information on my questions as an author.

I feel Terry really should update the FAQ with this - it wouldn't be a given that things will always stay the same, and it would take very little effort on his part - it would just be letting authors know what their work will go toward.

Here's one that I hope is a good reply. Under the Single Question cover page there is a link to a page that shows all your questions and the results from how many times it's been played. The links I was familiar with at first, 'those in queue' and 'those currently rated' have another link above them. Most of what you ask can be found on that page.
How to get there:
From the Home Page directory bar at the page top point to ME and a drop down menu appears. go down to My Single Questions - Edit
on that page, to the right hand side are several links the one in the middle 'My Contributions: All Accepted Submissions' has a later in life standing for all your submitted questions.

No one can ever tell you where or when one of your questions will be used (Except for the Terryman, a mythilogical monster that exists to bring us all low quiz scores and brand us with his badges).

As of yet, I'm not sure what the plans for each respective 'amount correct' or rating range designates for the future distribution of single questions. Originally, Terry intended to filter them into the dailies/hourlies but it has yet to happen. I'm sure that when it does, we'll have some sort of breakdown. Obviously, those receiving 30% or less correct (give or take) would go to Obscurity. The Quick Quizzes take from another range of percentages as could Knockout, 'My Daily Quiz', and 'Who's Smartest'. It's all prospective, but perhaps it'll result in new games entirely. Rest assured that the New Questions game is likely not the end-all for your single questions and when that time comes, Terry will likely accommodate authors when making the changes.

Knockout does already use single questions - the last three (I think, might be four) questions in every set are from the Question Quest pool. The root category/subcategory at the top of those questions says Movies: General Questions (or Geography: General Questions; or Hobbies. etc.)

And that Mixed category that was showing up every three hours in Who's the Smartest used QQ questions too. But I haven't played Smartest in awhile, and I lost track of the discussion. I know some people didn't want the Mixed category, some did... I can't remember what was eventually decided.

Edited to add:

Don't forget the FTBot Mix quizzes! Those use single questions too, and at least a few show up in New Quiz list everyday, so the single questions are being played.