Retired Quizzes

Comments

El_Dandy

5 years ago
Hey Sporclers!

If there are two things that can be said about the content team here at Sporcle HQ, it's that we pride ourselves on our ability to be diligent with quiz updates and that we make every reasonable attempt to make sure quizzes are fun as standalone experiences, as challenges, and as showdowns.

However, sometimes, for one reason or another, we run across previously published quizzes that are impossible for us to keep updated. For example, the source to the quiz may have been deleted, or something about the quiz may have broken. In the past, our solution to this has been to completely unpublish those quizzes, but we have only used this sparingly. Unpublishing was literal -- the user in question would lose their publish, and this seemed harsh to us, particularly for quizzes that weren't otherwise broken but permanently out of date.

As of today, we've remedied this issue by adding a new status for quizzes - Retired. When a quiz is marked as 'Retired', it will no longer be updated by staff, be in the pool for random showdowns and challenges, or show up in the Staff Pick pool at the top of the front page. However, it will still be considered a Published quiz for the user who contributed it, with the added benefit that control of editing the quiz will be returned to the user.

We're going to start officially 'Retiring' quizzes next week (although a batch of previously unpublished quizzes were reclassified as retired earlier today). However, I must stress for our contributors who are concerned that their quizzes will be affected: 99.9% of published quizzes will not be touched. Ever.

If you have any questions or concerns, my messages are open.

Thanks,
Jason/El_Dandy

Yankees2003

5 years ago
@El_Dandy will it say on the quiz if it’s retired?

El_Dandy

5 years ago
@Yankees2003: Yes. Where it normally says 'Quiz Updated', it will let you know that the quiz's status is Retired. In addition, users will be notified if/when it occurs to one of their quizzes, and the quiz will have a little icon next to it in their list of published quizzes.

Hejman

5 years ago
I have the somewhat odd perspective of being someone who has both (A) a bunch of published quizzes, and (B) an assigned duty as a moderator to help update quizzes (though only periodically- the majority of that is done by admins). When HQ mentioned this to me in a recent conversation, I was initially a bit concerned about which quizzes would be put into this status. But after asking a few questions, and seeing the explanation @El_Dandy provided up above, I’m certain that this will be the exception and not the rule, and will be used sparingly- only for those quizzes that really can’t be updated anymore. Kudos to HQ for finding this creative solution to what will be a persistent problem.

jimbaz

5 years ago
Echoing @Hejman on congratulating Sporcle for once again taking care of the users/quiz makers.

Will there be a way to search for them or will there be a list someplace?

Will a notice go to the original contributor letting him/her know they are now responsible for updates? This does affect me but inquiring minds want to know.

KansasJayhawk

5 years ago
I think this is a fair solution for a very real problem, especially as we get to the point where we have quizzes well over ten years old.

Yankees2003

5 years ago
@Chenchilla I don’t understand what you mean by that. I’m pretty sure unpublished quizzes can’t get retired.

tk925

5 years ago
For some reason, when these quizzes were retired, they showed for me as unplayed (when I'd played every published quiz).

Impsman

5 years ago
The retired quizzes have appeared on my unplayed list of published quizzes also. Many are unplayable as they involve stills or audio clips which are unavailable. Will they remain in that list or is the plan to remove them from there?

Chenchilla

5 years ago
@Yankees2003 Unpublished as in a quiz that was initially published, but was later removed from the featured list and privatized. My question essentially boils down to if retired quizzes should count towards badge completion.

YElise

5 years ago
@El_Dandy to echo what @Impsman and @tk925 brought up: I had previously completed 100% of all published quizzes and rely on the front-page applets for new-to-me daily publishes. It’s now cluttered up with these 61 retired quizzes; many of which are unplayable. I do hope you guys can find a way to clear that up!

El_Dandy

5 years ago
@Impsman: We're in the process of figuring that out -- we'll update on that soon.

@Chenchilla: If you're referring to creators getting badge progress, they already got it when the quiz was published. Moving a quiz to retired (either as unpublished or otherwise) has no effect.