Hozzászólások - Johannes Buckbeak

Vatican City is entirely within the city of Rome.

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 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?

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?

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".

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".

Yes, I have discovered this forum now and it is very useful, and I intend to be more active, for example in reporting bad questions and bad spelling in the appropriate places.

However that doesn't change my basic point, that the evaluation system could be much improved fairly simply. As a great example, I have now discovered that there is a blanket ban on the "none of the above" type of answer. The main reason it took me so long was that the evaluator was constantly telling me there was a spelling error, which there wasn't. I am sure he was only doing what he had been instructed, but the problem is with the system. Even if you don't want to give them some "free form" text, there ought to be a greater variety of more meaningful responses. If there is a blanket ban of the type I have mentioned, then you simply need a standard response which says "None of the above" is not permitted as an answer. That would have saved me a lot of time and stress. probably adding half a dozen such standard responses would hugely improve evaluation feedback, and consequently the enjoyment of the customers for this game.

You can do that - I put a lot of things under ethnography, like the question about the colour of a Chinese wedding dress. But flags come up so often, they should have their own category - there are far more questions about flags than about Food & Drink, say, or Dance.

I spotted this one as well but decided not to report it, because in the USA sports teams always seem take the singular, even when their names are plural. So they say "The Washington Redskins is playing at home this Thanksgiving". It seems odd to my ear, too, because in the UK it is pretty much the opposite - "Blackpool are playing at home to Wigan next week". So I would say that this is an allowable local variation, rather than plain wrong.

Anaphlyactic shock is can be a result of what?

Either "is" or "can be" but not both. I'd say the latter.

Uranophobia is fear of heaven. What other name this fobia has?

Second sentence should read "What other name does this phobia have?".

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.

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.

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"?

Which weapon is inflicting cut injuries?

Should read "Which weapon inflicts cut injuries?".

I'm not entirely happy with the answers - "Sword" is correct, but "Shovel" is another option, and if used as a weapon a shovel might easily inflict cut injuries. But I guess that's for a different thread.

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?

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?

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?

Idézet: Viridel - 2010.04.30. 22:02:33

Well I would not like to see the quiz system removed - this was what brought me into the game in the first place, and it is the unique feature of Doomlord among all the fantasy games out there. But I do agree, the question evaluation system is badly broken. Questions are rejected with effectively no explanation - "Bad - incorrect question" is entirely useless, and "Bad or ambiguous question" is no better - especially when the question is not ambiguous. It would make a huge difference if there was even one line of feedback from the evaluator to give some clue as to why the question has been rejected. I am also unhappy at the inconsistency (double standards as you put it) when you see many of the questions which do make it into the database. I'm sure we could all name several.

One final point which puzzles me. If there are 25,000 questions in the database, how come I keep getting the same 50? They clearly go in waves - you see a new question, get it several times a day for a week or two, and then it vanishes. What happens to all the old questions? Do they ever get used again? If not, what does it mean to say that there are 25,000 questions?

Yes - I normally treat those as if they were film and theatre, then sub-categorise them (Titles, Heroes etc) as usual. But we could do with a TV category of its own, with similar sub-categories, or change the name of "Film and Theatre" to explicitly include TV. Personally I think the biggest missing category is "Flags" - there is a huge number of questions on that, but nowhere sensible to put them.