After putting in a correction on a question in the daily game I checked back through the questions I had submitted to the New Question Game because I knew I had asked a similar question. I found it had been reworded without letting me know beforehand. If an editor disagrees with a form of words, surely it's just politeness to let the person know instead of just changing it? It can change the whole context of the question.

I've heard similar complaints from other authors in regards to questions where the entirety of the text has been changed (for whatever reason). I typically find this to be against the spirit of the Single-Questions. I'd write my own if that were the case. Currently, the only thing to do is ask the specific editor (or an editor in that category) why it was done.

People react to this differently. Some think it a kindness for the editor to make a slight change, rather than reject the question. Others see it as an affront while others still don't even notice.

I will often fix a grammatical error if that's the only problem with a question, or even add a question if one is missing.

The question was accepted and used in the game in its original form. It seems to have been edited later. There were no errors.

Editors don't have access to questions once they have been accepted, unless there has been a correction notice submitted on it. In these instances, I will often make minor changes to a question rather than send it back to the author and add unnecessary delay.

I wanted to say something here (and actually had it written) about how time is irrelevant when achieving perfection, but that isn't really the answer that should be here and above. Authors of single questions and quizzes should remember that once submitted to the process, they forfeit all ownership to the question. It is kind editors who apprise the author of changes being made or request forms of improvement to those constructions. Once you give a question to FT, it becomes theirs to do with as they see fit, their property. No author needs to be made aware of any changes being made. Only an objection to having the author's name associated with a changed property can be discussed. If you do not like the changes made, ask that your name be removed as the source of that item. Then resubmit the question in the form you want it. Or just go with the flow.
(Disclaimer: I am not associated with Fun Trivia beyond being a proud Gold Member. I have no legal training, just years of writing documents for the man. I am only expressing my opinion of what I have read as the fine print associated with hitting that submit button. It is appreciated that editors extend themselves as they do to keep members happy. I'm just glad to know that I'll be sure of the answer when my question comes up.)

Wow Mehaul, two spoonfuls of coffee in your cup this morning?

I don't think anyone is talking legalities here, more of courtesies. Editors - much respect - are first and foremost fellow players and, experience apart, their judgement is as prone to be flawed as anyone else's (and certainly as subjective as anyone else's). So if a previously accepted question is going to be rewritten, beyond a simple typo, it would seem to be reasonable and courteous to refer it back to the author for comment. I guess most Edtors would expect the same consideration from fellow Editors in regard to their own questions.

It is true - as I've experienced (twice I think) - that simply moving a comma, capitalising something that wasn't capitalised, or slightly altering the sequence of words in a question can significantly or even totally alter its sense. It may still seem to make 'sense' to a lot of people, while being plain to the question writer that it doesn't.

I repeat, not everyone feels the way you do. Many question writers (in fact more writers, based on my experience) would prefer that we make the changes for them and see having the question sent back as a nuisance, not a common courtesy.

I wouldn't for a moment dispute your experience in this. However the context of this thread seems to be about a rewording of someone's question - rather than a correction per se (even though that rewording may have been prompted initially by a correction note).

This also isn't about absolutes (as far as I'm concerned anyway). Of course Editors should just go ahead and make straightforward 'typo' amendments without 'annoying' the question writer with it. I do think however that if the change involves something more substantial - a factual change or a partial rewrite, for example - it should be referred back.

Far preferable - in my opinion - to 'annoy' someone who isn't interested in the future of their questions by doing that, than 'annoy' someone who does care by not doing it.

Early on in the New Questions game I had a question sent back because the editor didn't think it specific enough so I re-wrote the question and resubmitted it. So far so good, I had no problem with that, I was new to writing questions and appreciated the chance to improve the question.

However, the point of the question related to a process which is different between men and women, and my question was clearly related to the women's activity, which is more well-known internationally. Imagine my horror when the question got into the NQ game and for the first time I saw that the editor, without any reference to me and after I had made the initial amendment, had changed the answer to something which applies only to men. So now there is a question clearly relating to women where the answers available don't include the correct answer because the editor thought he knew best. If he had asked me why I had included option X rather than option Y I could have said - but I was left with a question which is wrong and has my name on it. It put me off writing more questions for quite a long time.

What was changed was the word President. It has now become Presiding Officer. The original question was 'Who was the first President of America?' Changing the wording changes the question. I went on to say that John Hanson was President under the Continental Congress and that Washington was the first President under The Constitution which came some years later. Also that there were several others before Washington and ratification of The Constitution. Hanson, as far as my research showed, was not referred to as Presiding Officer. If any one can show me different I will apologise for raising this issue.

What Wiki says is:

The presiding officer of the Continental Congress was usually styled "President of the Congress" or "President of Congress". After the Articles of Confederation were adopted on March 1, 1781, the Continental Congress, previously officially known as simply "The Congress", became officially known as "The United States in Congress Assembled."[3] Thereafter, the president was occasionally referred to as the "President of the United States in Congress Assembled", although "President of (the) Congress" continued to be used in most official documents.

The vast majority of single question submissions (the same can be said for the vast majority of quizzes) are written by members who don't really have a clue what they are doing, and who appreciate the changes made in order to make their questions feasible. Those of you who have some experience quizwriting, who know how to research, and who word your questions carefully, are a very small percentage of the whole.

The single question system was not set up for back and forth - the intensive editing process that we use with quizzes is cumbersome and unwieldy when it comes to single questions. It was designed as a quick accept/reject system.

My own personal policy is to send back questions from names I recognize as those of experienced good authors, explaining the problem, and to use my judgement to make changes needed for the others. Other editors in busy categories may or may not choose to do that.

If you have a problem with the way your question has been changed, it is now possible for the question author to submit a correction note for the question. I suggest that you do that.

Peyton Randolph was first President of the Continental Association (which also called itself a Congress of the Colonial Districts) in 1774. John Hanson was not a signee to this Alliegence nor a representative of any of the colonies. John Hanson was elected from Maryland as a representative to the Continental Congress of 1779. After the Articles of Confederation were drawn up in November of 1781, he was named President of the Congress, Not the United States and as such he was just the Presiding Officer of the Continental Congress serving a role that today encompasses the duties of the Vice-President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was preceded in that office by Thomas McKean (so how could he be first?) One of his first jobs was to conduct an election which would choose the First President of the United States. He did not succeed in that duty and was replaced a year later by Elias Boudinot. Who also failed to establish an Executive branch to the Continental Congress. It took Congress another 5 years to settle on the manner of electing and the term of office for whoever was to be the First President (And it was mostly Washington who finally ended the debate by accepting the position he had previously refused to take) The following table lists the people who served as presiding officers of the Continental Congress. You can see Hansons name in the middle of the list.
List of presidents of the Continental Congress
# Name State/colony Term start Term end Months in term
1 Peyton Randolph Virginia September 5, 1774[a] October 22, 1774 2
2 Henry Middleton South Carolina October 22, 1774 October 26, 1774[b] <1
3 Peyton Randolph Virginia May 10, 1775[c] May 24, 1775 <1
4 John Hancock Massachusetts May 24, 1775 October 29, 1777 29
5 Henry Laurens South Carolina November 1, 1777[d] December 9, 1778 13
6 John Jay New York December 10, 1778 September 28, 1779 10
7 Samuel Huntington Connecticut September 28, 1779 July 10, 1781[e] 21
8 Thomas McKean Delaware July 10, 1781 November 5, 1781 4
9 John Hanson Maryland November 5, 1781[f] November 4, 1782 12
10 Elias Boudinot New Jersey November 4, 1782 November 3, 1783 12
11 Thomas Mifflin Pennsylvania November 3, 1783[g] June 3, 1784 7
12 Richard Henry Lee Virginia November 30, 1784 November 4, 1785 11
13 John Hancock[h] Massachusetts November 23, 1785 June 5, 1786 6
14 Nathaniel Gorham Massachusetts June 6, 1786 November 3, 1786 5
15 Arthur St. Clair Pennsylvania February 2, 1787 November 4, 1787 10
16 Cyrus Griffin Virginia January 22, 1788 November 15, 1788[i] 10

George Washington began serving as President of the United States of America in 1789.

Taken from a site about Hanson.



We could go on like this forever. My original post still stands though. Changing a word or words can alter the context. Minor changes, no one minds (typos, some punctuation) but surely major changes should be put to the question asker to allow them to justify their choice of words.

This isn't really the place to debate the validity of the question, though I think it's clear that the question and supporting info will need to be carefully worded. Send a note with the question, and work it out with an editor in the category.

Not to worry if you're thinking there is a double standard (not saying that's what you were suggesting), my own questions still get minor alterations from other editors since becoming an editor myself. They're usually pretty minor (recently an editor changed 'colour' to 'color' in one of my questions.. amused me more than annoyed me really ) but sure, it can sometimes change the question in a way you didn't intend. An editor in a certain category doesn't know EVERYTHING about that category, but the editing process is meant to improve upon the style of questions if not necessarily the factual content of those questions. If an editor thinks your question (which is otherwise interesting and correct) is awkwardly phrased, it's far more efficient to tidy it up on the editor end rather than send back saying "Fix awkward phrasing". If the author isn't the best writer, it could be resubmitted even more awkwardly phrased, or awkward in a different way. How many times do you want the editor to send the Q back for the same reason, rather than just fix it ourselves? Occasionally the way it gets changed may inadvertently change the meaning or intent of the question and this is just a small hazard of an otherwise fine system. This is also why we now have access to see ALL of our accepted questions in full, with the II and all. I check mine periodically, especially when a handful of questions have just been accepted. You don't have to wait to maybe see it in the New Question game. If you think that a change was made incorrectly, then submit a correction on it, explaining yourself. No big deal.

GG, many thanks. I eventually found how to send the correction. You're the only one to offer such advice.

Oh you're welcome! To be more specific, for anyone who didn't know this and may not know where to go, there's a link on the page where you post questions that says "My Contributions: All Accepted Submissions". You can see EVERY question of yours that has been accepted, whether they've been played yet or not, along with the answer options and interesting info, and at the bottom of each question, there is a link for "I see an error.. submit correction". You can't edit them yourself, but you can send a correction note detailing what you think needs to be fixed, and it will be viewed shortly by the category's editors. As always with CNs, a polite "My question was edited to say _____ but I believe that becomes confusing for players because ______" will get you much farther than something like "hey you stupid editor, change my question back immediately!" You can do this for typos or spelling errors that may have been missed the first time too, or if you realize you made an error and it needs to be amended.

I seemed to have lost my crystal ball, so I can't crawl into the mind of a question writer to see what the intent of their question was. I can only reword the question for a worldwide audience if necessary, check the validity of it, fix all their spellings-punctuation-grammar, make sure it is not time dependent, verify that the question has not been used prior, then make sure that their interesting information is just that, interesting, while none of it will be confusing to a worldwide audience.

It is not uncommon for an editor to spend four or five minutes verifying and adjusting one Single Question before it is placed online. When an editor has dozens of Single Questions to deal with, this could take a considerable amount of time. That in itself is not that much of a problem for some. On the other side of the coin is looking at some of the horrendous Single Questions that are submitted, and as stated prior, some QQ authors do not have a clue what they're doing. If these were found in a regular quiz submission, the quiz would be rejected. To fix their Single Question and place it online helps these new authors have a better understanding of how questions work, and will help them move to the next step of creating full quizzes.

It is far more advantageous to all parties to fix the Single Question to the best of the editor's ability, rather than to play ping-pong with rejections, intent explanations, or to deter the author from submitting future Single Questions. It is also not time-productive for those who actually know how the site works, and there are a slew of other editor responsibilities within the site. If after an editor places a Single Question online, and there is a factual error in it, then simply submit a correction notice. The author of the question may do that also.

Appreciative authors who have their Single Questions adjusted by editors, far more than out-weigh those who complain without basis. As an author, one has to follow the Quiz Guidelines. As an editor, one has to follow those and Terry's guidelines and editor procedures. I don't have a problem with either one.

Erm, there's THREE things here, Nightmare ... Quiz Guidelines, Terry's guidelines and editor procedures .... 'either one' refers to one or the other of two. Edit to "I don't have a problem with any of them."


....Only joking, honest! ... couldn't resist it!

I think the philosophy is pretty simple:

1. An editor has the right to change a question however he/she deems necessary to allow for that question to be successful in our games. They do this as a time saving technique. It's not very efficient to send a single question (a couple lines of text) back and forth a number of times, and so editors can edit these questions and move on.

2. Note however, that significant modifications imply lots of work for editors and potential offense taken by authors.

Clearly rewriting is something that we like to avoid for everyone's sake, but it will occasionally happen if the editor believes that the question as it appears needs the changes to be successful on the site (or to be different than a similar question).

In the very rare case that you disagree either factually or emotionally with an edit, simply submit a correction on that particular entry. An editor will more than likely gladly make changes.

That's fair enough. It just miffed me a little that the wording had been changed to something I didn't intend it to say.

So, it seems there has never been anyone titled "President of America" which does not say the same thing as "First American President" or "First President of the United States of America". or "President of Brazil" or...
You'll find that the only proponents of calling Hanson the First American President were his son and a make waves American historian from the 30's who bring up the same argument about the Articles of Confederation which were never agreed to by the states, just by the members of Congress Assembled as a framework to conduct their transactions and never applied to how the States were governed (which was its failing). We live in the United States of America governed by our Constitution and its adjunct Bill of Rights. There was another set of states later in our history who went by the Confederated title and articles. Your question may better be put as who preceded Jefferson Davis as First President of the Confederation of American States under the Articles of Confederation?
Another reason the Articles of Confederation failed was that it allowed slavery. 70 years later those articles were reborn to give credance to slave ownership in some states and to justify their cessession from the United States. So, your question, though seeming innocent enough, touches on a very sacred issue to Americans: Freedom and an attempt to deny it to other humans. Please, do not request that you get your question put back into its original form.

The goal is to create a database of questions that we can use in games. The original design didn't even have the author's name appearing alongside the final question they submitted.

The optimal design for "single questions" is anonymous contributions, edited to however editors want, and then online without individual attribution.

Clearly, I'm not comfortable with the "without individual attribution" part when used in our public games, so we have added attribution in games.