The problem is the nobody answer. Same thing as none of the above. If it was made up, the question of "who" would be irrelevant.

I disagree - "nobody" is a perfectly valid answer to the question "who?" "Who took the biscuits?" "Nobody, they are still in the box". In any case, the rejection says that it is a spelling error, which it isn't. I tried again, like this:

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 I got the same response - "Spelling mistakes in question or answers." Can you see a spelling mistake?

No spelling mistakes, but ChaoticGemini has a point there (although some might consider it nitpicking), so maybe you could try something like this: where does the name of the terrier breed called Jack Russell come from? (or "what's the origin of...") And modify the answers correspondingly. That way you get rid of that "nobody" answer while the question itself won't be any less interesting.

I don't consider it nitpicking, I consider it plain wrong. The "Nobody" answer is an important part of the question, as well as being a perfectly valid possible answer. I am sure I could ask a different question and get it passed, especially if it is about an obscure Hungarian sportsman. But that's not the point - this is the question I want to ask, and until someone gives me a valid explanation of what's wrong with it, I will continue to try. If the evaluators can simply reject random questions which they don't like or don't understand, then what's the point? How do you get to become an evaluator anyway?

Well I'm not an evaluator and I don't know how to become one. Not that I would like that anyway. But if I learned anything from my experience with the Doomlord quiz system, it's that if what you want to ask is in contradiction with what is allowed to ask, your question will be rejected. It's that simple. In Hungarian worlds, it is customary for the evaluators to reject answers containing "nobody", "none of these", etc. The evaluator didn't make up this rule, he or she just applied it. And with the "spelling mistakes" label, you were given a second chance for submitting the question in a different form. Now it's up to you, but once rejected in its current form, it will never be accepted unless you make the required changes.

Well this is interesting, and the most useful response so far, but still unsatisfactory. If I had asked something like "Who was the Beatles' drummer" and gave answers John, Paul, George or "None of the above" that would certainly be a bad question, but that is not the format of the question I asked. My fourth answer describes a perfectly possible situation where the dog's name was invetned to sound like somebody's name. I expected to draw a reasonable number of incorrect responses into that answer. If the evaluators have some hidden blanket ban on such answers, then I think they are showing poor judgement.

However, what is entirely unacceptable is to lie about the reasons for the rejection. There was not a "Spelling error in the question or answers" and to say there was is simply false. If the system "forces" the evaluator to give this false respoinse, then the system is broken and needs to be fixed. I have posted in another thread that the evaluation feedback process is the poorest part of this game, and that is a shame. The quiz process is the one distinctive feature of Doomlord and what interests me in the game. I enjoy thinking up new questions and plausible answers, and I am afraid this sort of this is a serious drawback to that enjoyment. You may say that if they don't like the question they will reject it, but my response is that if I play a game I want to know what the rules are, I want to see the rules applied consistently and if I break a rule I want to know what it was, rather than being told a lie.

In the end they don't need to make any changes, it's their game and they can run it the way they like. My only response is that of any customer, to stop playing. I must say I am pretty close to that now, if I am not enjoying the quiz element then I see little point in continuing with the game.

Well, who would have thought it, after all that the same question has now been evaluated as "Good question!". Which is nice, because I think it is a good question. But I also still think that they need to make some significant changes to the evaluation feedback system. The main problem is the very limited choice of "reasons" which they have to pick from - so that they have to say "Spelling error" when it clearly isn't. If they are going to have blanket rules such as "None of the above" being invalid, then they should have a standard message to explain that's why the question has been rejected - then the author knows what is wrong and can change it. Even better would be a short message where the evaluator can say why the question has been rejected. A bit of communication would save an awful lot of aggravation.

Idézet: Johannes Buckbeak - 2011.11.27. 14:04:53

Yes, it does, and I can only agree with you on all of these points.

I'm really surprised that your question has been evaluated as good after initially being rejected because of that answer. This kind of things don't happen very often, believe me. At least not in Hungarian worlds. Probably this time a different evaluator was assigned to your question. (perhaps someone who's not from a Hungarian world) Or maybe they just realized that it's a good question after all.

I am an evaluator and I told you the reason why it was rejected based on the rules we are all supposed to follow. You were given a choice of ways to change it as acceptable. (remove nobody or change the question wording) The only reason you were continually given the misspelling error is because I thought it was a good question and wanted you to make it acceptable. The only evaluations we have that do not take away your chance to write a question are "Misspelling" and "already in the database" Any other choice would have require you to hunt more to ask another 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".

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.

Why?

Idézet: Johannes Buckbeak - 2011.12.03. 12:14:47

It is an odd-one out question and should be filtered as such. See http://forum.doomlord.net/index.php/topic,14.0.

NOTE
All odd one out questions are not filtered. The reason fro this is still a mystery.

No it isn't an "odd one out" question. It asks which one died of natural causes, and gives four possible answers, only one of whom died of natural causes. That's how all good questions work - they give four possible answers, only one of which can be right. It would be an bad question if it simply listed the four Presidents and asked which one was the odd one out - because there are lots of ways in which one might be different from the others, so there is no definite answer, and the question is ambiguous. But in this case I specified what the difference was - only one of those presidents died naturally, and so there is only one possible correct answer - the question is not ambiguous at all. How could "Abraham Lincoln" be the right answer - he did NOT die of natural causes. Same for Kennedy and Garfield. By your logic every question would be an odd one out.

Idézet: Johannes Buckbeak - 2011.12.04. 01:34:27

I agree that the question you did could be stated as a "normal" question, but the way you wrote it you say:
"4 people died while in office; Three were killed an one was not. Which one was not killed?"
Is that not an odd one out question? If it isn´t, then I must have the wrong definition of odd one out question in my head, and I would be grateful if you could correct me.
If the question would have been:
"Which of these presidents of the USA died of natural causes while in office?"
the question would not have been an odd one out (especially if the three other choices would have not died while in office).

Please note that I have no idea if that is the real reason your question was rejected. But I also looked up Zachary Taylor, and a cursory look says that he was not the only president of the USA that died of natural causes while in office, which makes the question a bit too narrow. If you would have asked "Who was the last president of the USA to hold slaves while in office?" I think the question would have been a very good one.

DISCLAIMER
I gave up on the quiz system and the way quiz questions are approved/rejected a long time ago. I do try to help people when you have trouble understanding what Beholder and its mods are doing, but since I am in no way affiliated with them what I say is guess-work, and should be seen as nothing else.

Thank you, sbart. I suspect that you are right in thinking that this is why the question was rejected, but I still disagree that it is an "odd one out". You offer a different way of phrasing the question, which you think would avoid the problem, but it is exactly the same question. All my version does is offer a bit more information (the fact that all four died in office). Both you and I are asking the reader to identify the fact that Zachary Taylor died of natural causes, the only one of the four to do so. This is the only possible corerect answer to the question.

The rules are quite clear. An odd one out question looks like this:

"Which of the following four US Presidents is the odd one out? Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, John F Kennedy, James Garfield".

This is unfair, because there are many ways in which any one of the four could be the odd one out. JFK was the only Catholic, for example. So there is no way of knowing which is the correct answer, you have to guess what the person who wrote the question was thinking. So it is ambiguous and unfair.

What you are saying is that by adding a bit of free information (the fact that the other three were assassinated) I made it look as if this was an odd one out, and some evaluator just rejected it. But it's not. This is what irritates me about the evaluation system, perfectly good questions rejected for reasons which we are forced to guess at.

I sympathise with your final comment ("I gave up on the quiz system and the way quiz questions are approved/rejected a long time ago.") but the problem is that I enjoy thinking up questions and presenting them in an interesting way - as compared with "Israel: What colour is the flag?" which I have to answer five times a day. Constant rejections like this irritate me, and they ought to remember that I am a customer. Constantly irritating your customers doesn't seem a very sensible business model to me.

However, I thank you for pointing me at the probable reason why this question was rejected, even if I disagree with their logic. I will make my questions more boring in future, and less likely to be rejected.

Yes. For example :

How is the the player character of the Ultima PC game series known ?

The Hero
The Avatar
The Knight
The Lord

The question is valued as "Bad, incorrect question"!
According to evaluators only a special group of people might know the answer.

That's quite possible. However, I fail to see how it's more specialised than a question about an obscure duel in 19th century England. At any rate, it's just as easy to google the answers.

what is the earliest known example of papier mache?
pot lids
Helmets
all of the above <---
a falcon's coffin


First, "all of the above" is never accepted as an answer. Second, you can't ask for the earliest example and then say it's 3 things.

Idézet: ChaoticGemini - 2011.12.21. 01:15:52

Sorry, Chaotic, but that is simply not true. Maybe it ought to be, but we could all name dozens of questions where the answer "All of the above" is included, and it's usually the right answer too. It's usually found where someone has realised the same word means several entirely different things, and decides to make a question out of it. Now I don't mind if this is allowed as a "type" of question, or if it is forbidden - personally I think they are usually quite poor questions. But what I want is consistency. What we actually get is completely random, we're told such-and-such a question type is forbidden, and then you go off and do a bit of the quiz and find loads of the same type of question.

When you find "all of the above" questions, they are older ones. To my knowledge, all the evaluators have been enforcing this for some time in response to old complaints.

When did Joe Montana play for San Francisco 49ers?
1979-1992
1978-1992
1979-1993
1978-1993

Those dates are WAY too close together. Even the AFLAC game questions are not that specific.