^ so, why not change parson to reverend?

Because he wasn't a "reverend", he was a parson. E.G Wikipedia :"John "Jack" Russell (21 December 1795–28 April 1883), known as "The Sporting Parson", was an enthusiastic hunter and dog breeder.". Should I put in an incorrect answer because the adjudicators are marking the correct answer wrong?

he was a reverend. here's a copy of his obituary: http://www.jack-russell-terrier.co.uk/breed/parson_john_russell_obituary.html.

Yes, he was a Reverend, he was also a man, a person, a graduate and a lot of other things. But those are not what he is known as. He was KNOWN as a parson, and you will note that the very title of the article you link to calls him "Parson John Russell". So why should a correct answer be rejected?

However, in the interests of moving this forward, I tried the following change:

After whom was the Jack Russell breed of terrier named?

An English clergyman
The head of the Kennel Club
An Australian politician
Nobody - the name was invented

And guess what - "Spelling mistakes in question or answers." Can you see a spelling mistake?

perhaps the evaluator didn't like the nobody/none-of-the-above option.

Why not? It is a perfectly good option, and an important part of the way I constructed the question. And in any case, how does that comes out as "Spelling mistake"?

Idézet: Johannes Buckbeak - 2011.11.27. 09:59:49

If it's rejected as being a "bad" question, you will lose the chance to get the extra SE for the question (or half the SE for renouncing) and it goes into your record. After a certain number of bad question, you lose the right to submit any more questions. The evaluator didn't want that, so instead he/she rejected it as having spelling mistakes, which gives you a second chance for submitting a question.

So why was this rejected?

Before 1984 the country now called Burkina Faso had a different name. What was that name?

Upper Volta
Gold Coast
Ouagadougou
Rhodesia

The reason given was just "Bad, incorrect question".

It should have also said already in the database.

Thanks, Chaotic - of course that's a perfectly good reason for rejection, though I have never encountered that question as far as I can recall. Do you know that's the reason, or are you guessing?

On the topic of the "database", I have asked about this in a different thread, but was told it was off topic there. They say there are 25,000 questions in the database, but in my experience the actual questions served up at any one time are very limited - maybe chosen from 100 or so active questions. If I decide to catch up and answer a batch of 50, I can be pretty sure I will encounter several duplicates. A new question appears, it is asked several times a day for a week or so, and then we never see it again. Can anyone explain how questions get "retired"? And if there are only a few hundred active ones, in what sense is the figure of 25,000 meaningful? If someone asked a question about Burkina Faso two years ago, and it has been retired long ago, does that mean we can never have a question on the topic again?

I know that's the reason. It sounded familiar and so I did a quick search and found the same question.

I guess you need to look at the database like an ipod. People complain that the random shuffle never plays certain songs and always repeats others. None of them are really random; it's just a mathematical equation that attempts to make it random. The questions are only "retired" when less than 25% of the people get it correct or we manually remove the question. In my hunts, I have experienced repeats from having duplicate questions in the database and from the "randomness" of the program. When we were first given database access, I tried cutting down on the duplicate questions and occasionally still remove them when they are reported. As for the random repeat, there is not much to do other than for a mathematician to come up with a better formula. Every once in a while a question pops up that I say to myself, "OMG, I haven't seen that one in over a year." Then I have to think hard to remember the answer.

I understand the concept of the random selection, as a mathematician, but I am afraid there is no doubt that the population of questions we are presented with is far smaller than 25,000. The question about the Israeli flag is coming up once or twice a day at the moment, ditto the one about the LA Dodgers, and the quote from Benjamin Franklin, and the one about vertices and edges in a graph. No doubt these will drop out of use soon. A few weeks ago you couldn't log on without being asked about the captain of the ship in "World's Most Dangerous Catches", now it has vanished. I know when I submit a question I tend to see it for a few weeks, then it disappears. Do you happen to know, if you subtract all the questions which have been retired, how many active questions are there from which the system chooses?

While I've found someone who knows what they are talking about, can I ask does a retired question still act as a duplicate? So if someone asks a question about - say - Upper Volta, and it is retired for one of the reasons you mention, does that still mean that no-one can ever ask a question about Upper Volta again?

i have to agree with Johannes, here. i've gotten that j.r.r.tolkein quote question 6 times in the past 2 days. i can appreciate statistical anomalies, but there is clearly a limited rotation of questions running at any given time. the quiz olympics don't seem to have the same problem.

I can say the total submitted is over 26,000, but with what I have access to the only way to know an exact count of questions not eliminated is to count them all individually.

Before we were given the ability to look up questions in the database, it may have been possible to have a duplicate of an eliminated question rejected. There were also a lot more duplicates let in. The old way relied on our memory and notes of questions we came across. Now, we can see a question like the Upper Volta one and say that "sounds familiar." Do a quick search to see if anything comes up. When it does we can read the question and answers to see if it is the same. Also, we can see the percentage of correct replies. If it was a rejected question, it will be marked. I can't say how other evaluators decide on resubmitted dropped questions. Personally, if it still meets the criteria for the game, I will accept a new one.

I hope that helps clarify things for you.
I haven't gotten the ship captain question, so I'll be watching for it now when I go hunting.

Thank you, that is very clear, and also quite reassuring. That means we can submit a new question on a topic that has been used before, but a very different question (let's say about the geography of Burkina Faso rather than its name). And if the evaluator works the way you do, they will compare the old and new questions and decide if it is "different enough".

manunkind makes a good point which had not occurred to me - it does seem to be the case that in the Quiz Olympics you see more of the old questions than in the normal quiz. It's clear that there is some sort of bias towards new questions in the random process, and I can understand this - it would be a shame if a new question was created and then never got asked for weeks. But (in my humble opinion) it is a bit too strong. I'd like to see more of a balance between new questions and old.

I think, that frequent appearance of some (new?) questions can be related to categorization stuff. After a newly accepted questions is categorized, it goes to the common pool of questions, and virtually appears less often.

Just my hypothesis, nothing more.

All these US Presidents died in office. Three were assassinated - which one died of natural causes?

Zachary Taylor
Abraham Lincoln
John F Kennedy
James Garfield


The question is valued as "Bad, incorrect question"!
According to evaluators your question is ambiguous.

What is ambiguous about this?

When you guys see the "your question is ambiguous" evaluation, the quiz evaluators see "badly shaped question"

In this case, I would assume it is because it is an odd one out question that we are not supposed to allow. Simple rewording would solve the problem.

Which of these is not a nut?

Acorn
Hazelnut
Chestnut
Almond

The question is valued as "Bad, incorrect question"!
According to evaluators your question is ambiguous.

An almond "nut" is actually a seed. The fruit it comes from is a drupe.