Matching quiz results question

[katesutton]

Sorry if this question has been asked before, but everything Google suggested to me didn't cover this specifically...

I posted a new quiz last week ( www.sporcle.com/games/katesutton/hide_the_palm_trees/ ). I went through several iterations of quiz types before I finally settled on clickable matching in order to get the variety of questions I wanted without causing a ridiculous amount of scrolling (the original plan of classic quiz with multiple choice was way too long). However, the results page is now useless in determining correct answers, since some of the matching involves identical options in the 2nd column, and those are the answers displayed in the stats. Is there, or could there be a future fix that allows the quiz maker to choose which column on a matching quiz gets displayed on the results page?

My particular quiz doesn't seem to have gone over very well, but I imagine there are other quizzes or quiz ideas that could benefit from this tweak. And I'm just still curious how much of my quiz was actually answered correctly.

[JoeBeta]

I saw your quiz when it was launched, but I didn't play it because I had hardly a clue as to what almost every correct answer could be. If you swapped the left column (Hint) for the right column (Answer), then instead of the cities being displayed as the guessed answers, the TV shows would be displayed. When I've done a major edit like this in the past, I've temporarily changed the Quiz Question to something like - This quiz is in the process of a major re-editing, please return in an hour! I would copy Hint #1 and paste it into that extra column. Then copy Answer #1 and paste it into the Hint column. Then Copy the data in the extra column and paste it into the Answer column. And then just go down the line for 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. Thus all of the answers will now be unique.

[JoeBeta]

Two more thoughts. Perhaps get rid of the numbers 01., 02., 03, ... and alphabetize both columns. I also think that you should cut it down to a more manageable 30 matches.

[katesutton]

Thanks for the suggestions, but I added the numbers as a work-around because the columns are alphabetized. If I take away the numbers, alphabetically, I get a lot of rows that are just one show. This way, I can alphabetize the cities and still force the order of the shows into rows that fit more than one item. I also did make significant cuts to the number of matches and I'm not sure what else I can cut to keep it the quiz what I want it to be. This gets off track from the previous question, but would you have preferred it to be a multiple choice quiz with probably more scrolling? Logistically, I don't see reversing the columns because then the quiz would mostly need to be played from right to left, which seems tedious for English-speakers.

[JoeBeta]

Switching the columns solves the problem of the non-uniqueness of the results. I can only speak for one English-speaker. I wouldn't find it tedious to go from right to left. I understand why you added the numbers now. As far as changing the quiz format, it would definitely be nice if a quizmaster could adjust the width of the columns in a matching quiz, in the same way that you can adjust the column widths in a Classic quiz. In this way it would be much easier to wind up with columns of near-equal length. I'm just throwing out ideas. You could use your data to make two quizzes instead of one. Scrolling in a matching quiz is always a thing to be avoided. However I think that matchable is the perfect format for your quiz. It's just too big a quiz for the format. Going way back to your original question - "Is there, or could there be a future fix that allows the quiz maker to choose which column on a matching quiz gets displayed on the results page?" I don't work at Sporcle so I don't know the answer, but I can't recall anyone ever writing that this was something that they felt needed to be fixed.

[iglew]

I don't see why this quiz is set up as two-column matching at all.  Wouldn't it work better if the data currently in the left column were regular clues and the data currently in the right column were the only buttons?

[katesutton]

I tried it that way, and the false answers kept being problems at the end of the quiz. The clickable matching was the only way I could get the answers I wanted in the quiz to work. However, I think I came up with another solution, for my particular quiz, anyway. It's just going to take me a while to make it, so I guess I'll be going with JoeBeta's suggestion of changing the title to tell people not to play for now.

I did also like JoeBeta's suggestion of adjustable columns, though. That would be nice for the future.