“Quiz Blurb Series” – An advance “Heads Up” to the BofC Curators

[needapausebutton]

Hey everybody,

I wanted to alert you to a quiz that is in-progress by the Editors, over in your sister-group, the “UnitedEditors”.

It will test players on their ability to match Editors’ “category page blurbs”  to the names of quizzes.

For example:

• I guess "Dan Seals and the other guy" isn't a great clue --  Musical Duos
• Sorry; false alarm. Turns out it's just a quiz -- Word Ladder: It's a Trap!
• This quiz is GR-R-REAT! -- Tony Winners by Opening Line
• E.T. phone... a bigger boat? -- Follow That Line: Spielberg Edition
• Then Jesus said, "What you are about to do, do quickly." -- Christianity Typing Challenge
• We're still lobbying to get Sporclium on the periodic table. One day, it's gonna happen. -- Element to Symbol Match
• We think one of them even coined the phrase "finders, keepers..." -- Ancient & medieval explorers, clickable
• Should all the lyrics be forgot... --  'Auld Lang Syne' Clickable Lyrics

The reason I am mentioning this here, with you, is that there will be a SEQUEL, which we will produce HERE in the BofC group, which will focus on CURATORS’ subcategory page quiz blurbs   :)

However, I am going to wait just a bit before starting to put this quiz together, with your participation, because

- We want to finish up the Editors’ version first. 

-   AdmiralMaxtreme is momentarily going to be putting the BofC quiz which he is managing, the  Sporcle Subcategory Sojourn  Quiz, into full-swing and send out e-mails to all curators.  I want to support THAT quiz, for now, as the BofC priority....

Meanwhile,

... We also hope to see more of you chime in with contributions to citkeane’s under-construction NOT an Animal, Vegetable or Mineral  quiz in this forum: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/bunchofcurators/Z0LTljWmWS0 --- Surely you creative folks can add to some already great ideas which have been contributed there.

... And skuban & mrsiriustab's  Clickable Classic Jokes V: Math Humor  quiz has not been abandoned either, it had been delayed due to outside factors for the moment.

OK, a couple more things regarding the Quiz Blurb Series:

I want everyone to be aware that there is also a THIRD sequel already planned, with a quiz-maker who had been consulting with me to develop a quiz related to PUBLISHED quiz blurbs.

Therefore I have three requests of you, for now.

1)  On your own, if you wish, you can start looking for your own, or others’ subcategory-page quiz blurbs to potentially include in the BofC version. But please do NOT post them yet here. Just keep them on standby until I officially open the quiz thread.

2)  Secondly, and this should go without saying I suppose, but I ask you all to respect this game plan, and not take it upon yourself to make any similar quiz to this until AFTER all three of these "Blurb" quizzes are released. There will be plenty of opportunities to make even more sequels, even after those three quizzes are constructed, completed, and released.

The editors have put a lot of work into THEIR version of this, and I really do not want to see anybody attempting to “trump” this and, you know, “borrow” the idea to do something similar.

Thanks in advance for respecting that, and for your patience in waiting until I formally announce here that the BofC Curator-version is “officially underway”.

3)  In whatever way works for you, which will enable you to enjoy your participation here, I ask you to support the three existing BofC projects mentioned above (Sojourn/Animal-Veg-Min/Jokes). Just follow the leads of each quiz owner, and you'll know when they need your assistance, or are ready to proceed with any further stages of development, or proofing, prior to releases.

Many thanks!

- napb

[needapausebutton]

A Reassessment Of This Game Idea

The Editors' version of this is almost complete.

Just on a lark, I spent a little time tonight scanning through Curator subcategory pages.  What I had not realized, is that there are many, many subcategories where blurbs are not written for CPd quizzes.

When I became a curator, for "Classical", in January 2012, one of the things I most looked forward to was adding a quip; obviously my affinity for word play was a factor, and my love for both good and bad puns carried over into that subcategory as well.  I merely assumed that most curators would be doing the same. But I rarely visit subcategory pages, since I pretty much see every quiz that gets released as it passes by, and certainly notice those that come and go in the Recent Subcategory Curator Picks box.

Upon reflection, I also realize that I DO spend time trying to craft those, and that time does add up.... and many of us who make picks simply don't have the luxury to do the odd Wikipedia search and Thesaurusizing often involved.  And so, understandably the focus is just on finding quizzes to pick, and making the picks, and so be it.

Therefore, I want to gauge the interest level here, in actually making a Curator-Version of this "Quiz Blurb" idea.  Are there enough of you interested, who feel that we have enough material to use to create a viable and entertaining quiz?

Thanks,
napb

[zalkon2004]

When I first became a curator in 2011 I used to make up blurbs for almost every game I chose and liked doing it. I still do occasionally, but I don't spend as much time on it as I used to. 

As far as the quiz goes, for those of us who do, or did, make blurbs we still have access to our old blurbs in the 'Nominate' box. Other sub-cats picks eventually get pushed off the page or the blurb gets changed when made an Editor Pick (which reminds me of something I was gonna bring up elsewhere) so those blurbs are lost to us unless there is an archive that Sporcle has of past blurbs and they'd be willing to aide us.

Many of us are curators of multiple categories if this is something we wanted to pursue and if we could get enough of the BoC membership to commit to making blurbs over a period of time (+/- month?) we might have enough material over enough sub-cats to make a viable quiz.

We could always make up blurbs too but that may be stretching the idea.

[vikZ]

Well I'm ready to offer blurbs for tennis and logic for the quiz, I'm just waiting for the thumbs up to post them.
I do think we have enough for a quiz anyway. There is a large amount of subcategories and we don't even need to come close to cover them all. I think it'd be ideal to have 20-30, maybe up to 40 but anything more will probably make the quiz a bit too long.

Also I'll see what I can do to contribute for the other BoC quizzes. I still need to prep questions for the Sporcle Sojourn quiz. But yeah I've been part-time Sporcling for the past few months and I don't think I'll be Sporcling a bit more actively for at least a lil while longer.

[needapausebutton]

Good to hear from you, zalkon2004, and vikZ, and I've also heard from mrsiriustab, Spacemaniac, and popestcyril by e-mail, so I know there are at least a few of us interested so far.

I'm going to offer a  few advance "cautions" to you blurb writers, in order for you to recognize if your existing (or newly created) blurbs might be suitable. Unlike what people might think, it is not a 'gimme" to throw this sort of quiz together.  I was the one who stitched together the Editors' version (sort of it's "owner" you might say). I looked at hundreds of blurbs, and aside from what actually went into that quiz, there was very little left over that still may have worked.

Why? Well, the key to making (or not making) this quiz, is going to be whether or not there is enough "viable" material.

By "viable" I mean this:

• There must be a clear connection between a blurb and quiz title, (although not necessarily one which is immediately noticed), so "generic blurbs" won't work because there is no way for a player to know it "belongs with" a particular quiz. And the connection must be recognizable just by the quiz's title and not require further knowledge of its content.
  

• Also, the blurb can't "give away" the answer either. A huge amount of well-written blurbs have that "problem", using the same words, or other obvious things, which make the connection too overtly evident. 

• Next, when choosing actual blurbs to put into a quiz, one blurb can't "conceivably fit another quiz well", such that a player could argue that a blurb could easily have been written for one of the other choices.

• And we want to ensure variety and interest; humour and creativity; and incorporate multiple category themes if possible
  

These were all major problems I encountered, when I sifted through the contributions that the Editors offered for the UnitedEditors quiz.

I had to "toss out" a huge number of them, and dismiss most of some great blurb-writers' material, because of those things. And, of course you can't possibly know if those last two factors might be relevant until your own material is held up alongside others'.

Here's what I propose at present, for any of the above curators (and anyone else who still wants to help get this going):

1. Send me some direct e-mails before you write your next few rounds of blurbs for quizzes. Sort of like what many of us do for each other with quiz "test links". I'll give you a private assessment of how I think they'd work in a quiz. I'd rather not do that publicly, because there is nothing worse than thinking you have ten great ideas, and then having someone publicly point out their flaws. It's not that I'd "expect" that to happen, but since I've already been through this process, I have a clear idea about blurb-potential.
2. Send me some examples also of older blurbs you've written, and I'll give you my assessment on those as well.
3. If anybody wants to scan through OTHER curators' pages, looking for good material, I'd welcome samples of those as well
   

My thought is to do some of that stuff as a preliminary step, while we gauge the results of the Editors' version, and learn from any mistakes that I, or the group as a whole, may have made. AND to get a better idea if, as I said, we really do collectively have enough to go with, and/or whether we would -- after more blurbs are produced in the coming weeks.

So we are not in any hurry.

But if anyone like vikZ expects to be less active for a while, send me by e-mail everything you've got now, and I'll be sure to consider that material once this goes "official".

Many thanks to you, and those we are yet to hear from!

- napb

 

[needapausebutton]

Oh, by the way, I wanna be clear that I'm in exactly the same predicament with my own blurb writing. I've written 98 blurbs for History so far.

Of those, only 8 were really "viable" for the editors' quiz, and only 4 of those were used! :)

- pause