*** Taking the High Road regarding a comment in the Elementary Countries Quiz ***

[needapausebutton]

Those of you who monitor comments in contributed BofC quizzes may have noticed the post made by SFTxCallum today, in our "Elementary Countries" quiz, which I'll transcribe below:

"I'm slightly miffed that my quiz of a very similar format, mad epublic just before christmas, involving christmas words, was not published. Therefore out of jealousy and envy I shall ragequit this halfway through. (Also considering the fact I pressed americium and somehow got 2 wrong answers o:)"

I would like to get our group's endorsement for my responding to this, in almost the opposite way that most people might (and in a manner that I would if it were my OWN quiz)....

I'm a believer in forgiveness, and second chances.

I'd actually like to completely "turn the situation around" and make a "positive" out of it.  I just played his quiz, and it IS a fun little holiday quiz, and it is clearly constructed differently from ours, in spite of him saying his is "of a very similar fomat".

• So I want to link  HIS QUIZ  to ours, and leave the following comment:

"@SFTxCAllum: Some of the members of BunchofCurators have just looked at your quiz, and enjoyed it. But we want you to be clear that we have nothing to do with which quizzes do or don't receive Editor's Picks, and neither of our quizzes has actually been published. But in a gesture of good will, we've created a link to your quiz in the game notes, so others can enjoy your quiz as well. Some of us have been in your shoes, and we know what it is like to make a fine quiz, and have some other quiz be featured instead."

And in case you all did not notice, he did NOT bomb the quiz with a 1, a 2, a 3 or even a mild 4.

I have taken this approach with disgruntled commenters in the past, and the results have been quite remarkable. In fact two of my current "Sporcle friends" fit into this category. It also demonstrates to other comment readers that we "have a heart" and would rather be nurturing of quiz-makers than get defensive (after all we are curators and representatives of Sporcle)

If the group concurs,  I plan to do this by about 1pm or so on Tuesday

- pause

[needapausebutton]

Sorry, I meant to say "....by 1pm or so on Wednesday (EST)

[Daniel Hodgson]

I, personally think that is the best way to handle it. Don't want to start out making any enemies.

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[mcomisky]

I noticed the comment too. If it were my quiz, I would probably just leave it unanswered. However, because this is a group of curators, I really like napb's suggestion (pretty much for the reasons given). So, I agree :)

[zalkon2004]

I'm fine with the link. Some may erroneously think "favorites" are being played, even by those who choose not to comment so little things like the link may help to assure people they aren't.

[needapausebutton]

SFTxCallum  has responded.

[zalkon2004]

Looks like it was a good call by you NAPB. Also I like his/her explanation. I think we've all been there. Sporcle can be frustrating at times for the quiz creator, especially when looking to get noticed for that first publish. Voted the comment up and really hope his/her quiz benefits!

On Friday, February 15, 2013 9:28:59 PM UTC-5, needapausebutton wrote:

SFTxCallum  has responded.

[AdmiralMaxtreme]

Excellent conflict resolution.

[amazingjosh]

Why is the quiz offline?

[needapausebutton]

Josh, and all:

It's a long complicated story, and I prefer not to get into every last detail "publicly".

One of our users' own personal computer had been compromised recently, and the assumption of the administration is that whoever hacked it took a joy ride around Sporcle creating malicious damage.

One of the effects of that, was that the Elements quiz had had most of its data deleted.  It had been my intention to try to restore the quiz, and move on.

I've been told that the person's computer is no longer at risk.

My recent change to the group password was partly as a result of this incident, but I'd have been doing it soon anyways regardless.

I was also advised by the administration to not make a fuss about this in the group, and although there was/is no "secret" about what had happened, they did not want group members to falsely feel alarmed, or to be concerned that future quizzes will be at risk.

Well, let me qualify that:  It is the responsibility of all of us to ensure that our computers have safeguards. In a collaborative venture of this size, the more people involved, the higher the percentage is that something could go awry.

On the other hand, the more people involved, the merrier (from my point of view), and the greater the spirit of collaboration, and the greater the infusion of potential creativity.  It is those aspects that both the administration, and myself, wish to focus on.

So I'm not going to allow this to turn into an ESPN Sportscenter-style review of the flaws or shortcomings of any person or the group where 50% of that "Sports" show has nothing to do with sports.

Also, getting back to the Elements quiz itself.  I also recently discussed that quiz's potential for publication with the administration.  Although we all know it was a brilliant quiz, in a nutshell, for whatever reason, it was not really on their radar as a publish candidate.  So, I'm personally less inclined to try to re-create it at this point.  My apologies to all of you who did work hard on that one.  Just like with our own personal quiz-making, the time and energy put into quizzes sometimes yields gold, and sometimes just the satisfaction of knowing a few people enjoyed it.

Let's move forward.  Let's get the "NOT Animal....." quiz finished.    The Sojourn quiz is awaiting the fix of the scrolling glitch, and still has a ways to go content and style-wise, before it is brought before this group for testing.

And let's take a moment of satisfaction that our Baldies quiz was published..... today!  Congrats!

Thanks,
pause

[Derek Pharr]

I wanted to clarify something.

To paraphrase the conversation NAPB had with "administration", it went something like this:

"This user was hacked (Sporcle's servers weren't hacked, someone must've gotten on his computer) and as such some data was messed with, this game was affected and some email was sent. Poor guy, but not a big deal."

That was the gist of it. This line - "advised by the administration to not make a fuss about this in the group" - makes it sound so Big Brother and paranoid. The "administration" is Matt or me, we aren't Haliburton here. This kind of thing happens and it sucks, but Sporcle itself wasn't compromised (we have tons of safeguards against hacking) and so it was a fairly isolated event with one user's computer in particular, hence the no fuss.

That's it. NAPB's email made me feel like the "administration" was trying to hide something here and hey wait a minute I'M THE ADMINISTRATION?!? Maybe no one else got that vibe, but I wanted to clarify what happened.

Derek

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--

..............

Derek Pharr, Vice President of Products

www.sporcle.com | de...@sporcle.com

w: 206-453-4475

t: @dpharr

[needapausebutton]

OK, I've chatted directly with Derek, and cleared things up.

I apologize to all of you, as well, for any mis-implications my post above may have caused.

Bottom lines:

1)  A user's computer was hacked, NOT the site, and that is no longer an issue.
 
2)  Our quiz had been compromised so I took it off line.

3)  Derek was not aware that the advice I'd gotten from Matt was a response to me after I had asked him "do you think I should bring this up with the group?" The essence of that is that we both felt (in my words here) "no need to worry the group" since there was no longer anything at risk.

4) So it was not even remotely an act of admin. monitoring or managing what our group does and says!

- napb

[Derek Pharr]

Hey thanks napb and sorry for the mass email to the group.

Emails about hacking tend to trigger a reactionary email from me. At the end of the day it is a bummer the quiz got all screwed up cause I know the large amount of work that went into it

On a quasi related note since napb is a moderator and has been in a bit closer contact with those of us at HQ we are hoping to enhance some of the curator features and page design here in a bit (thanks to his urging and input). So look for some more fun features that might help ya'll in the not so distant future.

Derek

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