Sporcle Subcategory Sojourn

[AdmiralMaxtreme]

This is only kind of an idea at this point.  I haven't even begun to flesh it out, partially because I don't know if it's really even feasible, and partially because that's exactly what this forum is for.

The idea is to make a quiz that includes one question from every single subcategory.  This would really test the true breadth of a Sporcler's knowledge.  Ideally, I would like to get each curator to contribute their subcategory's question (even those that aren't a part of this BunchofCurators group), but there are probably some curators who don't list their email address, and there are still a few subcategories without a curator.  In reality, I think it would be best to get as close to that as possible, and then fill in the rest with questions crowdsourced from this group.  Because of that, this will obviously take a decent amount of time to put together, but I think the final result could be worth the trouble.

There are obviously problems with this idea:

1)  The entire Just For Fun category is basically unusable, because all of the subcategories relate to types of quizzes, and we obviously can't make a Clickable Missing Word Logic Puzzle Safe Cracker Blitz (although that would be awesome).  This would unfortunately mean that curators of those subcategories would be left out, which is something that I really don't want to happen.  The only solution I can think of would be to come up with some kind of clever alternative, like a question about safes or something like that for the Safe Cracker subcategory.  To me, this is the biggest issue with this idea.

2)  There are 183 subcategories, so this quiz would be really long.  This is obviously not always a bad thing, but playing it might get pretty tedious by the end.

3)  The only way that this could really be done is just by asking 183 questions, which is not the kind of format that Sporcle was made for.  There are some published quizzes that do that (rather than asking the user to name members of a list, or something like that), and they're not exactly my favorite quizzes to play.  They're not bad, of course, but one of the things that sets Sporcle apart from other quiz sites is that the games don't just ask you a bunch of trivia questions.  My concern is not whether or not it could or should be made, but rather whether it would be really fun.  If it's not a great quiz, then it probably won't be worth the huge amount of effort it will take to make.  At least, that's my opinion.

I don't want to start actually setting up this quiz yet.  I'd really just like to discuss whether this seems like a quiz that would be worth our time to make.  I'd also like to hear your feedback on the problems I've listed, as well as any other problems that you can think of.

[citkeane]

Sounds like an ambitious idea, AdMax, and that's why I like it. Personally, I think this group was MADE for ideas like this, which rely on the hive mind aspect of the group. Maybe an idea would be to structure the quiz so there were 15 rounds. Each round was a different category (e.g. Geography) and the list of subcategories in that category became the list of TOPICS from which the player had to choose their next question to be on. 

So for Round 1 it would say 'Welcome to the Geography Round (or something like that), Please chose the topic for your first question:

• Country
• City
• State
• Population 
• etc.

They'd select their preferred topic/subcategory and the question would show up. Maybe if they answer wrong they'd have to select again. Answer correctly they'd move on to Entertainment and so on.

Again just brainstorming here. I'm sure this idea could only work as a Classic quiz and I'm not even entirely sure how that would go. Just my take on how I MIGHT work.

[zalkon2004]

It's a really interesting idea AdMax. I do think that it might be feasible. The first thing that struck me, and this is only a first impression, is part of the problem of "tediousness" and the related issue of length could be solved through consolidation where possible and practical.

A example of consolidation would be taking the three related categories of NBA, Basketball, and March Madness (College Basketball tournament) and consolidating down to two questions - NBA and College Basketball. Basketball and March Madness even have the same curator - hotsauce_gm. Same goes with NHL and Hockey down to one question; also both with the same curator - kmad.

It might be a little less literal interpretation of your idea but make for a more manageable quiz with less redundancy. 

I think it's an idea worth exploring further.

[citkeane]

With a little tinkering I think the format I suggested could be a way of executing this. Using 'Group Answers with the Same Hint' you could have 15 groups of answers each dedicated to a category. The main answer cells would list each category's subcategories and provide users with the instructions to select their preferred subcategory which will be the topic of their question. After entering the name of the subcategory, the question would appear in the bonuses under the grouped answers for that category. When they managed to provide a correct answer they'd move on to the next category. 

Perhaps, I'm not explaining it very well but I think that could make for a pretty good quiz. Maybe it's not what you (AdMaX) had in mind?

[AdmiralMaxtreme]

That's not exactly what I had in mind, but it's a very attractive alternative.  My only issue with that would be that there are 183 subcategories, which would require 366 rows in the data field, which is obviously over the limit.  There are probably ways to remedy this, and I'd like to discuss them, in addition to seeing more discussion on the original conception of this quiz.

[needapausebutton]

A-M, thanks for starting this thread, and presenting the seeds for what might become a terrific quiz once the scheme and format are figured out.

I understand citkeane’s proposal, and it is certainly one way of creating a subcategory-related quiz.

 I have another option to present,  which would still keep all subcategories in the quiz.

Obviously, the sheer quantity of answers required, plus the “thinking time” necessary (especially as players encounter questions in categories that are less familiar to them) are the biggest issues to me for a typical question & answer formatted quiz.

Here is another approach which I think would avoid possible “tediousness”, account for similar subcategories, and also include JFF, and perhaps be “fun”:

A  forced-order quiz in which the subcategories themselves are the answers.

Clues could be any of the following: “Samples” of a format,  “Answers you might find in a quiz about such a subcategory”, “Hints you might find”, or  even “Instructions that might appear in such a quiz”

 Examples:

 For some History subcategories:

• “Nixon resigned in 1974” – US Presidents (with “presidents” as an acceptable alternate answer)
• “King Philip reigned from 1554 to 1598” – Monarchs
• “Thatcher’s cabinets included numerous Secretaries” – Prime Ministers

 In certain cases the clues would have to be quite “focused”,  in order to differentiate them from other “quite-similar” subcategories:

•  “Horatio Lord Nelson was promoted to vice-admiral” – Military
• “In the U.S. from 1861-1865, it may have been called “Civil” but it was far from it” – War
• “The Persians were victorious in Thermopylae” – Battle

 Similar Sports Categories:

•  “Laettner’s basket gives Duke the victory” – March Madness
• “LeBron James finally gets his title” - NBA

 JFF could easily be accommodated:

•  “XDMIE DROW” – Mixed Word
• “____ is the third month of the year” – Missing Word
• “Now enter the code Z4N to proceed to the next section” – Safe Cracker
• “PINE – TINE – TONE – BONE” – Word Ladder”
• “Avoid the decoys or the quiz will end” – Minefield
• “Keyboard familiarity will help, as the words become increasingly longer” – Typing
• “You’ll only have 30 seconds to complete this!” – Blitz

 Also, regarding “similar subcategories”:

 Clues whose answers are similar to others could have a pop-up bonus wrong answer saying “be more specific”

 - napb

 

[needapausebutton]

And, one other idea related to the above, which would up the FUN factor, and make it even more "playable" (particularly for subcategories like Gaming, or any which have pretty obscure actual subcategory names)....

The use of a Word Cloud would be awesome, like in This Quiz

That word cloud uses at least 150 words, including several huge ones, so I think we could easily get 183 into it, using different colors, and even some variations in font size.

- napb

[Daniel Hodgson]

I like this idea, especially what Napb suggested with the subcategory being the answer.

On that note, what if we made it kinda like a jeopardy game where the categories are the jeopardy categories and you are given "the answer" and you give the question or "what is ______ subcategory".

For example. The first category is "Movies". The First Answer could be: "A Movie Series turned TV show generally about the Skywalker fam and the player would then give the question of "What is Star Wars".

Now about it being too long, we could separate it into multiple (as many as needed) quizzes by some sort of themes. I'm not the biggest fan of separating them, but it could be used if needed.

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[citkeane]

My main reservation with the subcategories being the answers is that it would run the risk of being too self-referential and Sporcle-centric, which would be an issue, especially with regards the quiz's 'publishability', as those types of quiz tend to live out their lives in the user created section. I'm not sure what percent of users are even aware of the subcategories, so making THEM the answers would probably limit the quiz.

I know there are also some obvious issues with a general knowledge question-based quiz, namely the fact that quite a few subcategories don't lend themselves to that format, at least not in an obvious way, but I don't think omitting SOME subcategories would be a major issue, especially if those subcategories are types of Sporcle quizzes. Just for Fun would still have Alphabet, Color, Typing, Sporcle, Puzzle and I think, with a little imagination, it might also be possible to include Missing Word, Mixed Word, This or That, Word Play and Follow That Line.

[Daniel Hodgson]

What if we take the most guessed question from each of the most played quizzes in each subcategory and use those as the questions and answers. Then the subcategory pops up the extra column when they get it right.

[needapausebutton]

Regarding "publishability"...

I think admin would be even less likely to consider publishing a 183 or 150 or 120-question quiz requiring such eclectic subject-matter knowledge.

And, regarding the self-referential aspect, imagine that there were no subcategories in Sporcle.

Next imagine a quiz involving a word cloud.

Then, a quiz whose premise is "Name the Subject".

I know I'd enjoy playing it, and would enjoy it even if it were not specifically Sporcle subcategories.  And I think the word cloud would be the precise aspect of it that would make it publishable in spite of its "Sporcle-centricity."

Plus, it would serve a great purpose for Sporcle, in bringing a lot of subcategories to the awareness of many players who might go "Hey, I didn't know Sporcle has a _____ subcategory!"

One way or another it's going to have to be a fairly long quiz, and, again, I think the key factor is "fun".

Something about word clouds, to me personally, I find them to be inherently fun... perhaps it's a subconscious thing, but the colors and the fonts "reduce the tediousness" and removes the mind from being faced with endless wordiness (i.e., the eye gets some relief from all the reading as it goes back and forth from reading to the cloud).

- pause

[needapausebutton]

• Teddy, just want you to know that our posts "popped up on this page" at the same time, so I wasn't ignoring you above! :)
  

I think we first have to decide on a general format, and then get down to the specifics later.

• I do have one other thought I'll throw in regarding considering what sort of quiz to make:

I would not do this in the case of a typical BofC quiz, but...

If our eventual "idea" IS one which would simultaneously serve to further promote Sporcle, (such as "educating more players out there as to what Sporcle subcategories exist", then I think I will actually directly broach the idea with Matt & Derek.

If they LIKE the idea and would endorse it, then we'll "have our answer" as to its publishability.

Also, then we'd know if we really DO want to put the amount of time and energy that would go into crafting a quiz of this complexity, and potentially involving all curators (or at least inviting them) to provide their own clues. (I have ideas about how to go about that aspect as well, but I'll save that for later, if we do go forward).

[citkeane]

So you wan't to have all the answer listed in the word cloud and people have to match the correct question/hint? I suppose that's one way of doing it. 

Regarding the length issue, the format I suggested would significantly reduce the number of questions a player would HAVE to answer in order to complete the quiz, which would make it more user friendly in my mind. 

Depending on the difficulty of the questions and how many questions one would have to answer to proceed to the next category, the quiz could be completed in 15/30 questions, with the users selecting the most favourable subcategories for them, thereby reducing the 'tediousness' a whole lot more and not forcing anyone to TRUDGE through a whole array of subcategories that they have little or no interest in.

If AdmiralMaxtreme, or anyone else, has an opinion these formats or even a completely different way of executing the idea, I'd love to hear it.

[needapausebutton]

I'm sure A-M will chip in again, as this is his idea (and I love the discussion we are having).

So ultimately the design of the quiz should, and will, require his sanction.

Just to repeat something he mentioned earlier, the original idea was to involve as many curators as possible, and also to use as many subcategory-related clues as possible.

I DO like citkeane's idea, in and of itself, but that would be an entirely different type of quiz.

So here's what's currently on the table:

• Go big scale (perhaps with the administrations' endorsement)
• Or go small scale (with players being able to "pick" the clues they want to answer)
• Any other better ideas which might not have been presented yet

As A-M mentioned, this is a preliminary rumination about viability and alternatives still at this stage.

[zalkon2004]

I think the word cloud and the original vision (possibly citkeane's idea) are both viable because essentially they are two different quizzes which require different knowledge sets.

Matching given facts to given answers (categories)

The word cloud version lays out the answers with a clue and requires the player to use the data given in the clue to match to the right Sporcle category. You don't necessarily have to know much about US Presidents or anything else, just enough to make a match - unless we get creative/cryptic with the clues.

Having a preexisting knowledge (or being able to "think it out") to given questions

The original appeals to those players who have broad/varying interest and would excel or at least enjoy testing their knowledge.

I personally like the original vision but I understand the word cloud in being slightly smaller scale with a already successful format (not to mention being easier for a "casual" player.)

The point of my post is I  think that whatever quiz idea gets chosen in the end doesn't necessarily eliminate the other from future development.

[skuban]

It's been said that this would best be done as a classic game, but what about having it as a clickable? The clues that pop up are a question from a popular quiz in the subcategory, and then you have to search through the subcategories to find which subcategory the question comes from. To make it less tedious in searching, we could break it up like those clickable "Millionaire" quizzes, divided into each category. The clickable field may look like this:

-------------------------------  Geography -------------------------------

 Countries    Capital   Population   Flag    States

--------------------------------- JFF ------------------------------------

blitz      alphabet      colour

etc etc. 

Of course the limitation with this is that the field gets really big really quickly (especially with 15 categories). But if we do it this way, then those users who are NOT familiar with the user created section (or subcategories) would be able to see the sheer volume of subcategories, some of which will probably pique their interest.

It's like using the word cloud idea, but making all the subcategories equally visible, instead of having some sideways words, some huge and some tiny words etc etc. 

[AdmiralMaxtreme]

I'm still here; I've just been waiting to see what other people think.

On the word cloud idea:  I agree that word clouds are cool, but I don't think that they really apply here.  The bigger fonts are for words that appear multiple times in a given set, and since our set is the list of subcategories, each one will only appear once.  This would essentially mean that we'd just have a plain list of subcategories at the top.  To me, the clickable field with the list of subcategories would probably be a more desirable option than that (assuming it's not too large, of course).

As zalkon said, this is actually a pretty different idea than the one I originally came up with, so both of them could simultaneously exist as quizzes.

On the original idea:  The more I think about it, the more it seems like reading and answering 183 questions is going to get tedious no matter what.  I think we definitely need to trim it down.  I like citkeane's idea where you would answer one subcategory's question from each category, but I feel like 15 questions is too short.  I think if we got it up to 30 or 45 it would be perfect.  The way I'm envisioning it is we'd use the Group Answers with the Same Hint option to create 15 groups, one for each category (just as citkeane suggested).  The difference is that the questions would be listed in the Extra column.  Players would choose two or three (whatever we decide on) questions, then enter some kind of code to clear out the rest of the category.  This makes for a much shorter quiz, but still allows for a fairly broad test of knowledge.  What do you guys think?

[citkeane]

AdMax, feel free to dismiss this idea if it's not what you had in mind, but I made a mini tester for you (and anyone else who's interested) to have a look at, which takes the basic concept I pitched earlier but also incorporates your reservations about length and hopefully provides a solution.

Here's the link: http://www.sporcle.com/games/test/1690f0

It's just a VERY basic test (only one category, the instructions would need to be beefed up etc.) and the questions are very easy but it demonstrates a format that could potentially work, while also bringing a little novelty to the table. I decided to make it so answering the second question brought up a codeword, which you then had to enter to progress to the next category. That feature is entirely optional and could be removed so that answering the second question immediately opened up the next category. 

The possibility of putting all the questions in the extra info. column is definitely another possibility, if that's how you would prefer to do it, but I thought this might make for a less daunting first impression for first time players. As I said, feel free to say so if this format is not what you had in mind. I certainly won't take any offence.

[skuban]

I think that looks like a good format, but of course it's up to AM what he thinks. My suggestion is that we begin the quiz in the bottom right corner, and then work our way up instead. That way, completing the quiz won't lead to scrolling. Does that make sense?

[needapausebutton]

Just want to chip in and say that, in spite of my earlier idea presentation, I'm fully behind this in how it is developing, and thanks as always to those of you with the great ideas and the efforts to forward it.

[zalkon2004]

Just played your test citkeane, WOW, I love it. I know it's still a work in progress but two thumbs up.

[AdmiralMaxtreme]

Great job on the test game, citkeane.  I have a couple of comments:

1)  Right now you have to know the answer to move on to the next question, which is something I'd like to avoid.  I'd rather players be able to try and answer all of them rather than getting stuck if they don't know one.  We could use wrong answers to accomplish this, but I don't know that we'd be able to fit them all in with 300 rows of data, and not all of the questions will easily lend themselves to wrong answers.  One possible solution is to have the selection message appear on the start for all 15 categories.  This would allow the player to at least have a shot at every category.

2)  The player also has to choose from a subset of subcategories, rather than just being able to pick the two or three they want.  Personally, I'd rather let them pick whatever subcategories they want, but this presents a technical issue:  How do we "close out" the rest of the questions when any two or three are answered?  I can think of two ways of doing this:
    a)  We create a complicated code system, providing the player with part of a code (probably only two letters) after each answer, then have them enter the code parts to close out the rest of the answers.  This would be pretty difficult, because we'd have to account for every single code combination.  In Sports, there are 19 subcategories, which would result in 342 different combinations.  This doesn't seem like a good option.
    b)  We use the system created by sproutcm in this quiz, which automatically closes out categories when any two questions are answered.  The way it works is each answer line is missing one of the answers, so if you were trying to name any two Beatles, it would look like this:

John/Paul/George
John/Paul/Ringo
John/Ringo/George
Ringo/Paul/George

This would require us to use the extra column for questions.  It would also look kind of odd, because while the quiz would allow you to answer any two questions you want, it wouldn't seem that way visually.  For example, if there were four subcategories called JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE and RINGO, and you answered the GEORGE question, the quiz could look like this:

      EXTRA COLUMN      |   ANSWERS
JOHN:  _____ Elway      |  DONE!
PAUL:  _____ Sorvino    |
GEORGE:  _____ Clooney  |  DONE!
RINGO:  _____ Starr     |  DONE!

You typed "George" and got the GEORGE subcategory answer correct.  With the way the quiz would work, you could type the answer for the JOHN, PAUL and RINGO subcategories and the last remaining answer would fill in, but visually it looks like you have to answer the PAUL subcategory.  We could try and make this clear in the notes, but it still might not be an ideal situation.

[needapausebutton]

Just a reminder, as you throw ideas around, feel free to create a temporary "sample" quiz construction using a "dummy" BofC quiz, and link it from here, so people can see any issues (or proposed solutions) hands on.

If there are contrasting ideas in play, then simply set up another one,and point to it as an alternative.

And then if an idea seems on pace, and someone else wants to say "how about we do this slight change", they can, for example, just change ONE LINE of the data page and say "I changed line 10 on the data page, how would that work?"

[citkeane]

Yeah, pause voiced similar concerns about players getting stuck on one category. Personally, I initially didn't see it as an issue, as players could keep selecting different subcategories from the subgroups until they found a question they knew. However, on reflection that doesn't sound ideal and if you both agree that it's an issue, I'm sure you're right. Having all the categories display on the start is an alternative but if you aren't happy to divide the subcategories into groups then finding another way of making the format I pitched work might not be possible. If you make a decision on whether you want to go ahead with the questions in the extra info format let us know. I don't have a resolution to the issues you flagged but would certainly love to hear from skuban, zalkon, teddy and anyone else monitoring this thread on any ideas that we might have overlooked.

[zalkon2004]

The format is I think still proving to be difficult in large part due to the possible length. The longer the quiz, the more questions, the more questions the more things we have to account for and opportunities for players to get stuck. I hate to sound like a broken record or like I'm pushing some idea but I really think consolidation of some of the similar sub-categories could reduce the amount of data lines in the quiz and may therefore make certain options more feasible.

I was just looking at Entertainment for instance. 12 subcategories.

Celebrity and Famous deal with very similar things. The words are practically synonymous. Celebrity has a curator, Famous does not, so no one is getting "left out" in case we still wanted to attempt to ask every curator to contribute a question.

Musical, Broadway and Show once again deal with very similar. Three could become two or even one question. Once again Musical and Broadway have the same curator - prouvaire. Show has no curator, no one gets left out.

Quote stays in. No curator though.

Animation could stay in. No curator though.

Marvel and DC have separate curators so they could potentially remain so as not to exclude anyone.

Superhero removed. Topic covered by previous two categories plus there is no curator.

Logo and Company could be combined. Though there many quizzes that deal with non-company logos but for the case of this argument let's say it's about the many company logos quizzes. Similar theme and same curator - sw1m97.

Assuming Musical/Broadway/Show became one question that would cut Entertainment from 12 subcategories down to 7. If we whittle the quiz down as far as we can practically take it, does that change our options for what type of format we can pursue?

[MovieGuru]

If we keep going in this direction, some categories may need to be combined even if they have different curators. They'll either have to work together or let one just pick the question. I'm fine letting other categories absorb mine, Oscar -> Best Picture ... and probably won't work for Doctor Who.

[spacemaniacsporcle]

I love this!
But I completely agree with zalkon about some subcategories being the same thing, and one of my subcategories, picture, I don't think we can really use on the quiz. We can also combine actor and actress.

[zalkon2004]

As far as the possibility of consolidation of overlapping subcategories - seems like Sporcle is doing some of the work for us with the recent overhaul of History. I see what you did there napb! -- j/k ;)

[trevor.birenbaum]

Maybe in the case that there are multiple curators for similar categories (like Elements and Chemistry) th two curators could correspond with each other to create one question that falls into both of their categories.

[AdmiralMaxtreme]

Hey,

Sorry I've been silent on this topic for a while.  I've been pretty busy lately.

Anyway, it seems to me that the best way to go with this quiz would be to follow citkeane's template, except with the first question immediately appearing for each category instead of just one.  As for all of the suggestions about merging similar subcategories, I'm not exactly a fan of that.  To me, it kind of defeats the purpose of making a quiz that spans all subcategories if you start merging them together.  Yes, categories like NBA and Basketball are very similar, but it wouldn't be hard to make questions that highlight the differences between the two subcategories (meaning the basketball question would not be related to the NBA at all).  That's my thought, anyway.  Also, the whole point of merging the subcategories was to reduce the number of questions in the quiz, but if we're following citkeane's template, then the number of questions is no longer an issue.

Before we get started on this, though, there's one thing that I'd like to get figured out.  The admins have realigned the subcategories for two categories recently, and I'm wondering if they have plans to do this for the rest of the categories.  If they do, then we should definitely hold off on creating questions for this quiz, as many of them could become obsolete.

[needapausebutton]

AdMax:

The History subcategory overhaul was something that I personally generated and proposed to Admin, and I'm fairly sure that Hejman had some things on his mind for quite some time, and he was motivated to kick those into action recently himself.

Just the same, I'm shooting off an e-mail as we speak, to inquire about that, just in case there has been further stimulation for other changes.

I'll let you know soon what I hear.

That said, subcategories will always be changing, so wouldn't we be able to construct a quiz, and then "swap out" clues for subcategories that are removed with those that are added?

Also, one other thing to throw into the mix: Vacant subcategories.... Will we be expecting the Editors to fill those in? Or come up with clues ourselves?

Speaking as an editor, I'd be happy to make clues for vacant subcats in History, when the time comes (if there are still some).... AND, I'd also be able to ask other Editors if they'd like to participate that way. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that most of them would greatly enjoy doing that, and that they would be honored to be asked. So if there is a consensus feeling in "support" of that, then I can broach that with them in the Editor's forum.

- napb

[AdmiralMaxtreme]

You're right that the subcategories will always be changing, but if Sporcle was in the middle of completely overhauling every category, then it would make sense to just wait until they finished that.

As for the vacant categories, I had always imagined that we would just collectively come up with them, but involving the editors seems like a good idea to me.

[needapausebutton]

OK, that surely makes sense.  The e-mail was sent and we may not hear until early next week on that, but I DID specifically ask it there were known plans of any sort.

[zalkon2004]

AdMax - Don't want you to think I was "stepping on your toes". It's your call. I think it's always important to explore possible alternatives so that was the only motivation behind my posts about category consolidation. I too like citkeane's template so if that's the way you want to pursue the quiz, I've already started thinking of possible questions for my categories!

[citkeane]

I'm not sure how much time I'll have over the coming weeks to devote to this but I'm glad to see some activity again. I moved my earlier mini-tester to the drafts section of the bunchofcurators account so people can have a look under the hood/bonnet before progressing with a version of that format (with the title 'Subcategory Sojourn (FORMAT TESTER)'. I didn't attempt to make any changes, in accordance with the ideas that have been talked about since, as I think a new draft will have to be created when the time comes to start writing the actual quiz.

[needapausebutton]

Just thought I'd let the group know that AdmiralMaxtreme has been working diligently on this "behind the scenes" so-to-speak, working on formatting, and doing some other tedious prep-work in collaboration with myself and citkeane, via e-mail.

It won't be long until the request for clues goes out to the curators.

Thanks AdMax!

- napb

[AdmiralMaxtreme]

Yeah, sorry for not saying anything here sooner.  After I updated citkeane's template, I decided not to post anything here since I was going to be away from my computer for a four-day weekend.  Then when I got back, I forgot about it.  But anyway, the skeleton of the quiz is now completed.  Give it a try (I believe it still has citkeane's test questions and answers for the Geography section) and let me know what you think.

[zalkon2004]

Just played the template again, I really like the setup, very "clean" looking to me. I like how each "level' within the category presents different subcats. Some, if not all those Geography test questions seem usable depending what you desire the overall difficulty of the quiz to be Admiral. 

On the difficulty front, do you plan on each "level" within a category to be increasingly difficult until the category is "closed out" or do you want the difficulty to be even throughout?

I'll post the link to the template here to make it quicker to access

http://www.sporcle.com/games/test/16b28c

[skuban]

Ooh, I do really like that. Well done Admiral. This definitely has wonderful potential.

[AdmiralMaxtreme]

The difficulty of each question will probably be about the same (though that's certainly not set in stone).  I put the subcategories in three groups, and tried to make sure that the groups were somehow related (for example, the Entertainment groups are:  1) Celebrity, Famous, Logo, Company  2) Musical, Broadway, Show, Quote  3) Superhero, DC Comics, Marvel, Animation).  I then put the groups in their order of difficulty (or at least obscurity).  Obviously, not all subcategory lists lend themselves to be shuffled into three cohesive groups, so it's definitely not perfect, but I think it works.

[ubbiebubbie1234]

One flaw I see is that you can type "correct" and then get every single "CORRECT!" well, correct. A possible workaround I see would be maybe put some kind of space (　) on both sides so you can't do that.

[AdmiralMaxtreme]

Yeah, I was aware of that flaw.  I had tried doing exactly what you suggested to fix it, but I must have been using a different blank character, because it didn't work.  The one that you provided does work, so thanks!

[ubbiebubbie1234]

Any time!

[skuban]

If I pick a category, say "Logo", and I don't know the answer... at this point, I believe it's possible for me to change my mind and type "Popular" and still get a question. Now, I don't know if these is a way to work around this... but I have a feeling that there isn't. I do think it's something we should think about, though, because if you pick a category I think you should stick to it. What are other thoughts on that?

[needapausebutton]

Hey everybody, I just wanted to give you an update on this.

By NO means has this project been abandoned or forgotten!  AdmiralMaxtreme has been on top of it for months now (doing a yeoman job), and I've been assisting him with a ton of loose ends.  We have just about all of the questions now, but the quiz is not yet ready, even for testing.

He'll be posting here, to let you know when he wants that done (and believe me, we will!).   But, for now, even though some data has been entered into the quiz draft, please don't bother attempting to play it because there are still changes to come in the format.

Also, and a key to the timing of the eventual final release of the quiz (after we do the testing with you), there is currently a glitch related to the formatting nuances necessary for the quiz, and I've been assured by admin that they intend to fix it..... which is that the Answer Box is not "staying at the top" when scrolling becomes necessary.  And in this quiz, the ability of players to scroll, as more and more questions are revealed, makes it crucial that the answer box does stay in place.

Meanwhile, if anyone has not yet contributed to citkeane's "Not an Animal Vegetable or Mineral" thread, or the "Clickable Classic Jokes 5" thread which mrsiriustab has kept alive, please feel free to do so.  I don't mind if those two quizzes are forwarded, or even completed/contributed prior to the Sojourn Quiz.

Many thanks,

- Pause