Some Quizzes Edit Themselves

Answer: Capitalizing

A lot of quizzes involving media titles (in Music, Literature, etc.) make frequent references to films, texts, and otherwise and in these cases we ask that you correctly capitalized all of them. By this, we mean that capitalization should reflect the capitalization of the title proper. "Runnin' Down a Dream", for instance, would be in title case while "Runnin' down a dream" or "Runnin' Down A Dream" would not; the former is sentence case while in the latter, the 'a' should not typically be a capital.

There will always be unique capitalization rules out there-- some artists/authors/what-have-you will make stylistic choices. A general rule of thumb is to capitalize your titles the way they're capitalized on a CD or a book cover (or otherwise).

Answer: Time-stamping

With this question, the issue is apparent from the get-go. While it's true that "Avatar" became the top-grossing movie of all-time after its theatrical release in 2009, this question will go very stale very quickly because of the 'As of...' at the beginning. This is what we call time-stamping.

As soon as you place 'as of such-and-such date' into a question or info section you stamp it with a time that becomes arbitrary the longer the quiz is online. One, three, five, seven, or however many years from now, the date may have no relevance to the player and the question will go stale. People playing in 2021 won't necessarily have any regard for what happened at that point in time between the release of the film and the present date and there are plenty of ways to rewrite the question to avoid the issue.

Answer: Fact-checking

Although the editors at FunTrivia have worked on a lot of different topics, it's always best to play it safe by researching your facts before sending the quiz to the queue. Frequently sending in incorrect answers to questions, for instance, will not warm you up to the editors or the players, both of whom can send corrections. The goal is to have not only an entertaining quiz, but an informative learning tool; having incorrect info would not be effective in this regard and would result in lower player ratings if it ever saw the light of day.

Canada's capital city is Ottawa-- not Toronto.

Answer: Proofreading

The word you're looking for is 'balut'...also, you misspelled 'weird' in the info.

Spellchecking your quiz is an important part of quiz creation and in some cases, it's difficult. 'Weird', for instance, is commonly misspelled for obvious reasons; it goes against the 'I before E except after C' rule many are taught. Your best option is to use an online spell-checking application to proofread before submitting-- in some cases your browser will already have one built in. If not, many are free to download whether they be on toolbars or they be plug-ins.

Answer: Fact-checking

A little effort goes a long way and the goal is to make quizzes informative. If you are unsure of certain facts, the internet (or even books...they're still out there) can work wonders for research. You don't need to be an expert to submit a quiz on a certain subject, but we do expect submissions to demonstrate not just an interest in the topic, but a sense of completion. If you do not know a fact, look it up.

Pitt and Jolie had one child, Shiloh, in 2006. They also had twins, Knox and Vivienne, who were born in France.

Another issue with a question like this is what we call 'time-sensitivity'. If a question has the possibility of changing as time goes by (for instance, Jolie could have more kids) then you should avoid writing your question in a certain way. This should be done while avoiding time-stamping, of course.

Answer: Capitalizing

In this case you should be looking into the answer fields; the question and info have no issues whatsoever. For your answer fields you should not be capitalizing each and every word. Instead, the first word should be the only possibility for capitalization since none of the rest of the words is a proper noun.

Treat your answers like sentences unless you have reason to do otherwise (for instance, the answers are names or one word each). In addition, you don't need to add punctuation to the end of your answer(s) unless they're in full sentences; the system will take care of that for you.

Answer: Fact-checking

Base your quizzes on fact!

The point behind this question is to illustrate the importance of backing up your questions, answers, and info whenever possible. In some categories, Celebrities for instance, it's quite easy to get carried away in gossip and hearsay. The goal is to create quizzes which are informative and factually-sound, so writing speculation is not allowed.

In this case, while Stephen King later admitted the parallels between himself and Jack Torrance (and later, in other works, wrote about his struggles with alcohol abuse and drug addiction), writing the question with unsureness and no textual support (be it from an interview or another writing) casts doubt and we can neither confirm nor deny its validity.

In this case, King has confirmed that he was, in fact, basing it on his own life, but in interviews and the prologue to later editions of the book. Simply noting where he said it would help to validate the info.

Answer: Time-stamping

Although your question and info don't explicitly note 'as of a certain date', the issue emerges from the end of the Interesting Information section where you write "There have been four games released in North America since this quiz went online."

While this may be true-- at the time the quiz went online this was correct-- it time-stamps what's been written, and unfairly at that, because the player won't know what you mean until after they've completed the question. Without saying 'as of...' explicitly, the question is only true 'as of the date the quiz went online' and many players may ignore the date entirely before jumping into the quiz; you can never really know.

As an aside, the question is one we would typically advise against as it wouldn't necessarily be fair to international players-- it only applies to North Americans when really, the market for gaming is universal.

Answer: Proofreading

When writing a fill-in-the-blank question, one of the most important elements is the answer itself. The best FITB questions are not complicated or lengthy; being concise and indisputable is key. We try to aim for FITB answers which don't have variations (eg. 'My Favourite Things' & 'My Favorite Things') and which are not difficult to spell, otherwise it becomes less about trivia and more about a spelling bee. In the exemplar, for instance, 'Desperate' is misspelled. If the quiz were to go online with the spelling error, players would miss out on the points and correct answer even if they knew the answer (which is completely unfair).

Some spell-checking programs don't revise the answer boxes, especially if you're using one built into your browser, so pay extra attention.

Answer: Capitalizing

In this case you opted to include both 'McDonald' and 'Mcdonald' as correct options for the answer; really you only needed one. With fill-in-the-blank answers, it doesn't matter what you capitalize because when the player types in their response, it's not case-sensitive. By this, we mean you could write 'McDonald' or 'Mcdonald' or 'MCDONALD' or 'McDoNaLd' and you would always get it right. The only time you need to worry is when you misspell the answer, use too many (or too few) spaces, or add in punctuation.

As a side-note, one thing to look out for is using punctuation in FITB answers-- we don't allow it since different punctuation could cause problems for international keyboards.