What's the most a quiz of yours has been edited before publishing?

[Kazaxat]

I'm aware that Sporcle admins or editors are able to make changes to your quizzes, and that typically such modifications are made as a precursor to publication. I'm curious though, how far have the changes gone in your experience?

I ask because I noticed today that a quiz I made on Animated Rodents which had stalled out at around 100 plays suddenly had garnered 8 plays today, and that the name had been changed. When I went to check the quiz itself, I was quite surprised to see that things had been changed quite dramatically. My original quiz had 15 different rodents, all as cutouts (some of which I had to cut myself from non-simple background), as you can see from the image I used for the map. The current version has 16 rodents, of which 4 are different. More noticeably, the entire map I had used has been replaced, and every one of the images has been replaced. Here's a link to the quiz as it currently is.

While I suppose I should be happy that it seems likely I am soon to get another publish, I can't help but feel it's not really even my quiz anymore. As I stated in the comment I left after releasing the quiz, the impetus for making the quiz was my watching the series that the mouse Oeufcoque is found in, which is why I left him in the quiz despite his being an obscure answer (that had only been guessed by 2 out of the 100 or so plays I had). I'm sure he was the first cut once the quiz was considered for publication, but that loss combined with the replaced map makes me feel as though I contributed very little to this current state of the quiz, and don't know how I will feel about it's potential publish.

I've seen comments in the past that others have also had their quizzes likewise changed. Has anyone else had a similarly bittersweet feeling about potentially garnering another publish? What's the most a quiz of yours has been edited?

[Sheldon]

I've had this happen to me too with one of my quizzes. The idea was for it to be about guessing a website from its favicon (the little icon in the address bar) and it was A-Z using icons that had a letter in it so when you saw the picture it would be the alphabet. The published version is quite different and has only 6 of the same icons from the original, and two or three others with the same website but different logos.

It does seem a little odd to change so much of a quiz because it makes it seem like the original quiz wasn't worth publishing, but looking back, at least half of the changes made were probably necessary to be more widely appealing so I'm OK with it.

As for your rodent quiz, it seems strange that every image would be changed but I'm assuming that since it was a map quiz, changing that to a picturebox meant they would need different images anyway, especially if they couldn't find cutout versions of the new answers (it would look better if it was either/or instead of a mix).

You could also look at it this way: Since the (soon to be) published quiz was changed so much, you could probably get away with re-releasing the original one as well as get the first one published and most people wouldn't remember (or if they did, they wouldn't be able to find the original)

[JoeBeta]

@Kazaxat - I believe everybody that creates anything hates to be edited. There have certainly been occasions when Sporcle HQ has edited some of my quizzes in unsatisfying ways. Removing least guessed answers is common. Most (possibly all) editors, in my experience, do not make substantive changes to a quiz, such as removing lines of data, replacing lines of data with different data or replacing images. Speaking for myself, as a new editor, I always try to contact a quizmaster about making any changes to a quiz. There has been one occasion when a quizmaster never got back to me. Because I wanted to EP that quiz, I decided to edit it quite a bit myself. If I see a quiz that has an obvious typo or misspelling here or there, I usually fix those right away without comment or contact. "Can you name the name the TV show ..." I'll delete the extra "name the". I'll change Amy Poeler to Amy Poehler.

In your original quiz I would have gotten 8 correct answers. In the new version I got 8 correct. I would have gotten Feivel (if I spelled it correctly). In the new version I was able to replace that correct answer with Rocky. Hmmm, is that Danger Mouse in the original? I would have gotten that correct. Ergo the original version was better! Wait ... Danger Mouse is also in the new version!!! I just didn't see the little DM logo so easily and missed it. Rats! Thus either version is just as good as the other.

I guess I just woke up and felt like writing :) Collaboration is a great component in the creation process. When a quiz is finally published, it has always been a collaborative effort along the way. In an extreme example - You create a quiz. You launch it. The quiz gets positive comments and high ratings. The quiz is EPed. The quiz is praised in the comment section. The quiz is published completely intact.

However, most quizzes can usually be improved before they are published. It's hard to judge your own baby with a critical eye. Feedback is invaluable and should be treasured. There are concerns that HQ might have that are unknown to you and me and that cause them to alter a quiz. I like the Map you created for your original quiz. It's beautiful work, but perhaps it's far far easier for HQ to alter a picture box quiz at a future date if Walt Disney calls them on the phone and says, "Please take Mickey out of that quiz." Who knows? Not me.

In summary - in my opinion the new version of your quiz is no better or worse than the original in quality or content.

One day soon this entire Google Group will be frozen in time. "I'll see you on the other side, brother."

[johnnytaken]

My first publish was a missing word quiz, which was edited some. I didn't mind too much because I had been waiting for a publish for two years (making dozens and dozens of quizzes). My second publish I got a little upset because it was a slideshow GIF quiz. Cartoon Characters By Dancing Scene. A quiz I loved making and was my first GIF quiz. Originally I think there were about 30 or so GIFs and when it was published it was reduced to 26, keeping the ones people got right most and removing some of my favorite GIFs (Like Aquaman and Droopy and Calvin and Hobbes.)

 I had never had a quiz edited like this before and had sent an email to the admins to inquire what was going since my quiz kept getting changed (this was before it was published). The next day they sent me an email telling me my quiz was being published and had to be made smaller or something. And it was that very day. So I was happy and at same time it was Bittersweet. I made a sequel to the quiz including the GIFs that had been removed called More Cartoon Characters By Dancing Scene but I was careful to make it 26 GIFs to begin with so as not to have too many removed should it be considered for a publish.

My other GIF quizzes that were published just recently, weren't edited nearly as much. Superheroes By Embarrassing GIF had I think maybe 2-5 GIFs removed but all the best ones stayed so I wasn't as upset since I was again glad to get a publish. (That quiz also had to get a sequel though for the missing ones) And Cartoon Characters By Drinking GIF was not edited at all which made me extremely ecstatic when it was published. So I guess it varies which quizzes get edited or not or there isn't a particular pattern except by which ones are removed are a lot of times just the ones people dont get correct. So it's always a bittersweet publish for me, but I believe like JoeBeta said it is for everyone. But it's Sporcle's privilege and since they think the quiz is good enough to be published, I'm happy to let them edit it as long as Sporcle doesn't change the entire quiz (which to my knowledge they never have). 

[katesutton]

Maybe it was because it was still in the early days of user-created quizzes, but I had a quiz that was extensively edited to the point where the quiz is essentially the opposite of what I created. I don't personally count it as my first publish. It was really bittersweet for me because my quiz no longer exists, and (bonus!) I got credit for something I didn't do.

[Hejman]

The longer I've been around Sporcle the fewer edits have been made, not because of HQ but likely because I've started to get a sense of what HQ wants in a published quiz.  That's not to say that some of my quizzes still haven't been significantly edited, though.  The edits don't usually bother me and when I think something has been made worse or even broken through an edit (which is rare), HQ has always been very responsive to my concerns- at least explaining their decision making.  What I have to remind myself every so often is that while I make quizzes on Sporcle for fun, HQ has to make this a successful business in order for me to continue to have fun with it and to have the money to continue to improve the site.  And to do that, they have to have quizzes that are fun to play and entertaining and not too hard and hit the right niche.  They study all sorts of metrics to figure out where those sweet spots are and make edits to quizzes based upon their knowledge of those stats and their experience with prior published quizzes.  So even where I'm not thrilled with edits, I try to see why they were made (or email and ask why) and keep on eye on the bigger prize of Sporcle continuing to be here for me to enjoy.

A reminder also, Sporcle's terms of use say: "by posting or submitting Content to the Site, you automatically grant and represent and warrant that you have the right to grant to Sporcle an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, royalty-free, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, modify, adapt, publish, display, translate, and distribute said Content." 

(And that's the lawyer in me speaking at the end.)

[iglew]

I can only remember one time when a quiz of mine was edited substantially for the worse.  I had extra information in the third column set to appear after the answer was correctly guessed, but Sporcle changed it so that information appeared from the start as clues, making the quiz absurdly easy.

Other than that one, all the edits I recall seeing in my quizzes have been minor ones.  Many of them I thought were improvements, which I would have done myself if I had thought of it. The rest were choices I wouldn't have made (and didn't) but were understandable in terms of making the quiz more accessible to the larger audience.

I would guess that more than half of my publishes don't get edited at all.