Why do so few participate in the PM-based quiz?

[Richard Cribb]

As most of you who visits this forum will know, we have a cumulative PM-based quiz going on. Compared to the amount of people who look at it, rather few participate. Considering the wast amount of knowledge among many of the members, this is a bit confusing and as one of the most frequent quiz-masters last year I am curious to know why. What am I doing wrong?
Some aspects that might be considered is:
- The quizzes are too difficult or focuses on uninteresting topics.
All have have different strengths and weaknesses in our intellectual armour. As recent threads show, many people's main interest lies in military history. Perhaps then the quizzes are not in accord with the community's preferred fields of interest.
Or: The topics are OK, but the questions are too specialized.
- The format is wrong.
Instead of just settling for the usual and simple question/answer formula we have more and more varied with association questions based on pictures, excerpts of documents and literary works, paintings or even music. This was originally done based on the assumption that variety is good, and that it makes for more interesting play. But perhaps this is too flashy? Right or wrong?
- It is too Eurocentric.
A couple of eloquent critics has mentioned this. The quizzes have a tendency to emphasize too much events and persons from Europe or the North American continent. People who has grown up and lives in other parts of the world are alienated from them. Those who make them should try to get a larger degree of variety, geographically and culturally speaking.
- Other possible reasons which only non-participators know.
Not quite being a clairvoyant, I am not able to figure out every possible reason.

Feedback will be most welcome. The customer is always right, but only if the customer makes demands.

 

[Mongoloid Cow]

Well, for me it is all three (I'll be honest) Although there never has been a large number of people participating in them. I can't answer the questions because they are too difficult. A bit of variety is good, but some quick easy one line questions couldn't hurt. Also, I am not exceptionally knowledgable about European history, and I know bugger-all American.

 

[Rambuchan]

- The quizzes are too difficult...

I think there is something behind this first part. Quiz masters, in general, are often keen to share / demonstrate their in-depth knowledge on a subject but this often means that the questions are very hard for most folk. Quiz masters should recognise that it's a quiz to which people are supposed to submit answers and in which they should be encouraging folk to participate, not a demonstration of their specialism in a given subject. Just write an article and post a new thread if you want to do something like this. There should always be some easy questions to encourage new folk to get involved, that's not always the case.

...or focuses on uninteresting topics.

The focus on subject matter is always quite varied. Whilst some may not be interesting to some minds, there are always quite a few different subjects in the mix. Enough variety to cater to many minds. And, as an opponent of 'military history overload', I'm quite happy that there isn't too much of a slant here.

- The format is wrong.

I don't think so. There's always a variety of question formats and new ones keep emerging.

- It is too Eurocentric.

Well yes. This is a major flaw imo. The cultural and geographical focus (not subject matter) is always very exclusive and confined, especially considering the vast array of expertise from around the world that is on offer in CFC. If you bear in mind what I say to the first point, this need not be the case. If the quiz master doesn't mind NOT indulging themselves and showing their learnedness on a subject, then I don't see why more variety cannot be provided. Quiz masters don't have to demonstrate expertise all the time. So why not put a few easier ones in on areas of the world that you aren't the leading authority on? That would both add variety to the geographical and cultural focus of the questions and also produce some easier questions.

- Other possible reasons which only non-participators know.

Possibly. I'll have to come back to this later when time allows.


In conclusion: The two biggest reasons I can see are a) Too difficult for your average punter and b) too Eurocentric for the diverse population in CFC.

 

[PrinceOfLeigh]

I don't contribute because it often looks to me like a test to see who is prepared to google for longest rather than who is more knowledgeable.

The History Thread appears to be the 'Cut and Posters' paradise. It happens quite a bit on the History threads whereby someone will attempt to win a debate by hitting the other poster with a huge number of figures which I very much doubt they could simply 'know'.

 

[PrinceOfLeigh]

EDIT: That is not to say there aren't a number of posters on the History Thread who are very knowledgeable and although I may not post often. I do enjoy reading from these threads.

 

[Asclepius]

-The quizzes are too difficult or focuses on uninteresting topics.

I don't think the topics can be said to be uninteresting, they have been far too varied. Anyone who finds classical, medieval, modern and military history to be uninteresting shouldn't be bothered by the content of this quiz. Most question posers have also included art, music and poetry to some extent so I would say the coverage is pretty comprehensive.

The difficulty level is another matter. A good question should allow the person answering to "demonstrate knowledge". Far too often the opening question is way too specialized, leaving no room to show any attempt at an answer. IMO the question should develop, the opening part should be accessible to all who have a reasonable knowledge, with further sub-questions becoming increasingly more difficult to allow the specialist to demonstrate that he has a deeper understanding, for extra points of course!
Some questions have been so specialized (or even elitist?) that one either needs to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the minutiae everything, have the Hitch Hikers Guide in your pocket, or have Googled to find the answer. And I am a firm believer that a quiz that requires Googling is totally pointless.

-The format is wrong.
From what I have seen, the format is great and varied. Simple one line questions, photos, excerpts and even music pretty much covers it.

-It is too Eurocentric
I really don't have a problem with this. Most of the posters in the quizzes seem to be European (or at least "Western") and I believe the questions should reflect the expected knowledge of the audience. There have normally been one or two questions included from outside Europe and, from what I understand in the past, these are the questions which remained unanswered...

 

[thetrooper]

My historical knowledge is limited to philosophy and science. Throw in a few military questions and, whammo, I'm almost out already. The questions are definitely too eurocentric. I don't think I would be able to participate otherwise. One thing though: why don't we make a rule for the Researchable PM Quiz that, let's say, 50% of the questions should be 'non-European'?

 

[Rambuchan]

There have normally been one or two questions included from outside Europe and, from what I understand in the past, these are the questions which remained unanswered...

Not the case from my end. I relish having a go at these questions, such a refreshing change.

 

[El_Tigre]

Why not merge the Researchable and the regular PM-based quiz altogether? The quiz master could lay down which questions may be researched and which not. This would focus attention on one PM-based quiz.

 

[thetrooper]

Another point: how many people frequent this part of the forum anyway? I notice the same people every time I visit here (maybe 30-40 different members). I wouldn't call it poor attendance if you get 8-10 participants in a quiz. We could of course make links in our sigs to advertise everywhere we roam.

 

[Dragonlord]

As others have said: The questions are quite difficult and specialised.

This makes it very interesting for me to browse the quizzes - both because I can learn from the answers as because of the often very nice presentation with pictures etc. - but since I usually am glad if I can answer even one or two of the questions, I don't bother sending in any answers - though I have participated on occasion and even asked the questions once (some time ago now).

To boost participation, it might really be better to focus on more generally known subjects for the greater part of the quiz and keep the 'hard' questions to one or two per quiz.

BTW, I'm always surprised that others wonder at the high proportion of war history buffs here - we're all Civ Fanatics, right? And what is Civilization? You got it... at core a historical wargame..

 

[thetrooper]

Why not merge the Researchable and the regular PM-based quiz altogether? The quiz master could lay down which questions may be researched and which not. This would focus attention on one PM-based quiz.

The Researchable one is actually a spin off from the more regular PM based quiz. There was a debate about this earlier. I may search and link it if motivation hits me hard.

 

[Rambuchan]

Another point: how many people frequent this part of the forum anyway? I notice the same people every time I visit here (maybe 30-40 different members). I wouldn't call it poor attendance if you get 8-10 participants in a quiz. We could of course make links in our sigs to advertise everywhere we roam.

This is a fair observation. I always find it a shame everytime I visit the C&C forum and read some good (albeit much briefer) posts on all manner of history and then find that these same posters never come to History. It would be good if there was more correlation between these two fora, whether by signatures or some other means.

 

[classical_hero]

I generally find that most of the questions are too hard and plus, I am really new to this forum, despite being a member of CFC for awhile, so I am not weel versed in History as some of you might be.

 

[Aion]

I'm not the person addressed, since I do participate regularily, and it would certainly be more interesting to hear from people who don't take part what their reasons are, but here is my opinion anyway.

- The quizzes are too difficult

Most quizzes have been quite diverse with different types of question formats and topics. So I don't believe they're uninteresting. If they're difficult? Well, they are. But on the other hand, we have some cracks here. Take my last non-researchable quiz: the winner luceafarul answered 8 out of 10 questions correctly, and Ciceronian and El_Tigre, who shared the second place, weren't that far from him. So if the quiz had been easier, probably all three of them would have had the full points. That would have been pointless. But I agree, that the difficulty level of the questions could be more diverse, with some questions accessible to 'normal' posters and the difficult questions being really difficult to give some challenge to the cracks.

... or focuses on uninteresting topics.

What has been said about googling and the researchable/non-researchable formats: I'm a fan of the researchable format, but this requires the questions to be made up in a way that prevents that you only have to type the keywords into Google to find the answer. An example might be question #3 from my old researchable quiz. The first step is to identify the depicted people. If you have no idea who the person was, Google won't help you. But it can help you, if you have a clue but don't know it exactly. For instance, if you don't know the guy in the nazi uniform, you can get through all important nazi officials and then find out that the picture matches Rudolph Hess. Once you've managed to identify the people, you will have to find the connection between them, which will require you to inform yourself about them, for example by reading the Wikipedia articles about them. Even if you haven't identified all persons, you will probably notice the point: all of them were born in Africa. So the good part about research being allowed is that you have learned something new while informing yourself about these people (you needn't even be an expert of the topic), while in the non-researchable format you either know the question or you don't know it, but after having answered it you will know exactly as much as you knew already before.

- The format is wrong

Don't think so. Variety is the word: No problem with a part being simple question/answer type, but some picture/association questions make the quiz much more interesting. Again, there's the question of accessability, so it wouldn't harm if some questions were easier and some really hard.

- It's too eurocentric

It is eurocentric. But what can we do? A tiger doesn't change his stripes. Of course the quiz-master will focus on topics that he knows about. For example my quizzes have contained many classical questions, because I'm classically educated. But on the other hand: Do you believe, say, a Chinese poster would be more willing to participate if I had a question about pre-columbian america? Or would a middle eastern poster (do we have middle eastern posters, BTW?) be more likely to answer a question about Qin dynasty china than about anicent Rome? After all European history (at least the important parts about it) is probably the best known area of history all over the world, and well, probably it's even the most important part of world history (of course not the only important one).
But again, the point is diversity. As luceafarul pointed out in the other thread, no one would want to participate in a quiz dealing only with the Latin American labour movement. In my quizzes (and that's the way it is in most quizzes) I have always tried to include some questions from other areas that I'm also interested in, e.g. my last quiz had one question about ancient India (Ashoka) and Islam (Kairouan). But on the other hand, 4 out of 10 question were about the classical antiquity, which, as I said, is due to my personal background.

 

[Till]

- The quizzes are too difficult or focuses on uninteresting topics.

The one area of improvement i see are that most history questions are hit or miss. Either you know the specific fact or you are out of luck. That is why i like the picture riddles. They allow the quizmaster to pick a well known historical event and adjust the difficulty by picking more or less obvious pictures. Make the question hard and the answer easy, if that makes any sense.

- The format is wrong.

The format is perfect! I love the mix.

- It is too Eurocentric.

Moving out of Europe certainly is an option for the researchable quiz. If we introduced it in the normal one the "hit or miss" factor would rise dramatically for most of us.

 

[mitsho]

For me, it's that I
1) don't have the time atm.
2) I would need to guess most things and
3) I'm not really in the mood for researching - if it is even allowed - most of the time.

But I do lurk the threads whenever I have time and participate in the "One question - One Answer" type of quizzes (non-military ones).

mitsho

 

[Taliesin]

1) I don't think the quizzes are too difficult. Obscure, yes, and there are many questions I look at and know there's no hope of answering them, but then that's my fault for being ignorant in that area. I think this is a good thing. For one, it means that each poster can bring his unique knowledge set to bear-- there will be a few questions only he can answer-- which brings a certain excitement to solving the quizzes. If the quizzes were easier, the top posters would get near-perfect scores every time, and there wouldn't be any feeling of pride in being the only one to solve a question. This makes it more of a contest.
2) The format is fantastic-- creative and engaging. (If the pictures can sometimes be infuriating...)
3) I suppose it's Eurocentric. I don't have a problem with that.

 

[nonconformist]

I find the questions quite difficult,a nd quite specialised.
I also don't wish to make a fool of myself

 

[sydhe]

Jan 12, 2006, 08:45 AM #16
Till
Adventurer

The one area of improvement i see are that most history questions are hit or miss. Either you know the specific fact or you are out of luck. That is why i like the picture riddles.

I like researchable questions that are puzzles, like the ones where you had to figure out a city by the coats of arms.