Submitting Quiz Questions

Started by Andy
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Andy

Hi everyone,

We have a page where you can submit questions for the weekly quizzes.

http://www.memverse.com/submit_question

For questions to be accepted, they must meet the following criteria:

  1. Include a supporting reference.
  2. Do not include the reference in the actual question. This makes it too easy to look up the answer during the quiz. Rather than pinpointing a story or event using a chapter reference, describe the event.
  3. Select a category for the question. There might not be a category that fits exactly - just pick the closest.
  4. Make sure you indicate the correct answer by filling in the bullet to the right of the answer.
  5. Do not submit questions that are identical or similar to an existing question.
  6. Both the question and the answer should be supported by the 5 common translations in use on Memverse (NIV, ESV, KJV, NKJV, NAS).
  7. When quoting or using language from the Bible, please use either NIV or ESV. If the language in KJV or NKJV is radically different, it is okay to include it parenthetically in the question/answers.
  8. Perfect spelling and punctuation.

The criteria above represent the bare minimum requirements for questions to be accepted. We would, however, like to maintain a high quality in the quizzes. We will heavily favor questions that also meet the guidelines below:

  1. Have educational content. Ask yourself whether people will have learned something from the question.
  2. Avoid trivia. Is it critical to our faith how old someone was when they died? If it is, incorporate that fact into the question or answers so that people learn why. Focus less on names and numbers and more on how God's purpose and character are illuminated in the story.
  3. Link Old and New Testament ideas. (I know it is hard to give a single supporting reference … just try).
  4. Avoid questions that require exact knowledge of obscure verses. Questions that require a single verse or reference to be recalled from memory will usually be rejected with the 'Trivia' reason.
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Emmy

Yay!! Thanks Andy =)

But then those of us who submit questions will get a head start on the others, right?

Well, I guess that will just be an incentive for us to submit them ;)

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2 Corinthians 5:17

Wow, this is great! I've recently found some great quiz questions, so I'll be submitting soon =)

Also, is there a way I can have all the questions after the quizzes, like in a PDF file or something? I know you did that during BB. :)

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Mommy's Helper

Yay! Thanks!

By the way, I submitted a question, but I didn't give the answer. So I submitted the question again giving the right answer.

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Emmy

By the way, I submitted a question, but I didn't give the answer. So I submitted the question again giving the right answer.

I did that too, but I haven't yet resubmitted it giving the answer. I guess I should, though…..?

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Matthew Minica

Already submitted three or four questions, and am hoping to do some more soon! Thanks so much for this opportunity! I really hope we can get another time slot started soon.

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Mommy's Helper

Already submitted three or four questions, and am hoping to do some more soon! Thanks so much for this opportunity! I really hope we can get another time slot started soon.

Already submitted ten or twenty questions, and am hoping to do some more soon! Thanks so much for this opportunity! I really hope we can get another time slot started soon.

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Emmy

Oops, I just accidentally clicked enter on a question before I was finished writing the verse reference. I guess it will be okay though. Sorry 'bout that.

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InSoloChristo

Sorry that with a few of the many questions I submitted I didn't include a reference. That's because I never saw the instructions, because I never saw this thread, because my sister gave me the link to the Submit Questions page, and I didn't know there was a thread. So, sorry about that. :)

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Andy

Thanks everyone for your questions to date. I've updated the initial post to explain better the types of questions we're looking for.

To start up the second quiz (probably on Saturdays) we're going to need 50 new questions a week. I think that if the regular quiz participants each aim to contribute 4-5 questions a week then we'll have enough.

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Ian R.2

I just put in a question, and I put in the supporting reference, but when I clicked submit, it didn't show the reference. Is that okay?

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Andy

You might have made a mistake when entering the reference. We will soon have a page where people can check on the status of their submissions.

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Emmy

Thanks so much for adding the whole new "quiz" section, and the page where we can see our submitted questions! I just deleted the ones that were just trivia, and was happy to see you accepted my newer questions ;)

It was very helpful that you explained more about what type of questions you will accept. Thank you so much for all your hard work!!

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Mommy's Helper

Thanks so much for adding the whole new "quiz" section, and the page where we can see our submitted questions! I just deleted the ones that were just trivia, and was happy to see you accepted my newer questions ;) It was very helpful that you explained more about what type of questions you will accept. Thank you so much for all your hard work!!
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Dance4Him

I submitted a question about the sermon on the mount. However i typed in 'Matthew 5-7' as the reference. IS there another way to do this?

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Andy

Bethany, for now we can only handle a single verse supporting reference. I realize that's potentially a bit limiting but we wanted an easy way to pinpoint the answer in the text.

For questions of the type: "What is not an instruction in the Sermon on the Mount" I would put Matt 5:1 as the reference since it isn't possible to reference a nonexistent instruction.

For now, though, we'd probably prefer questions that can be verified with a single verse reference. Since the Sermon on the Mount is a well known passage, I'd be ok with it. But for now we won't be able to approve questions that require me to read through the whole of Leviticus, for instance.

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Mommy's Helper

But for now we won't be able to approve questions that require me to read through the whole of Leviticus, for instance.

Wow, I would hope not! :)

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Jael

Could I do a question like, "Jesus was called many things during his three years of ministry. Which one of the following was he NOT called?" There's no reference to prove it, but it'd be true anyway… :-P

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Andy

Jael - at the moment those sort of questions aren't possible. At some point in the future we will add a way to add multiple supporting references but I wanted to keep the submission process as simple as possible for now.

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Emmy

I think that they only put the winner who answered the last question first on the homepage; however, I do remember a time when they put two people as the winners when they had a tie, so I'm not sure… I don't know, maybe those two people just answered at the exact same time. xD

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Matthew Minica

I remember when there was a three-way tie before and all of them were posted on the dashboard. That would have to be mighty close together to make the system think it was all at the same time. x)

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Amara J

Does anyone want to guess how hard (by the "Easiness" percentage) my hardest quiz question is?

0%? ;)

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Amara J

Nope. Even lower. (Impossible, I know. But true.)

Really???? How does that work? Minus? Like -3% or something??

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Amara J

I wish. But no, it's just -1%. (And I also have a 0%, by the way.)

Wow!! How can you have minus percents?? :)

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InSoloChristo

Yeah, that's the really weird part: I got it correct, each of the two times it was asked. And I have a hard time believing that I was the only one…

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InSoloChristo

Now that I'm (dis)approving quiz questions (thanks to Ian and Alex), I'd like to revive this topic to remind everyone that they need to follow the rules that Andy posted on the first page, especially these two:

  1. Include a supporting reference.
  2. Do not include the reference in the actual question. This makes it too easy to look up the answer during the quiz. Rather than pinpointing a story or event using a chapter reference, describe the event.

A question that violates either of these will be rejected with "No Reference". So don't be confused like I was a while back when a question that has a reference is said to have "No Reference". :P

Also, a lot of questions were submitted for the Bible Bee quizzes last year. I'll be rejecting many of these with such labels as "No Reference", "Ambiguous", and "Trivia". This does not mean they are bad questions. Many of the ones I'm rejecting were actually used in the Bible Bee quizzes. However, they are usually not well-suited to the regular quizzes, and it is unlikely that they will ever be used again.
If some of your questions for the Bible Bee quizzes last year are rejected, please either revise them according to Andy's rules or delete them. Or let them sit in your "Need Attention" queue indefinitely. :P I could delete them myself, but perhaps some of you would like to save the questions you made.

Thanks.

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M27

Thank you for approving some of my questions! Wow, some of my questions were a little (or more than a little) weird! Who fell asleep during a sermon?! I guess I just wanted to give everyone a good laugh during the quiz :).

For the most part, I can see why some of my questions have been disapproved, but I do have a few questions. First of all, one of my questions was rejected for "Implausible Answers". Maybe you meant to put "No Reference" on it, though, since it had no supporting reference. Or maybe it was rejected for being one of the "which of these is NOT" type questions. I could put a supporting reference on it, but the problem is that there are three supporting references, which is why I didn't put a supporting reference on it in the first place. Which brings me to my next question. If there are three supporting references (like for an "All of the above" or "Which of these are/is not…"), what do I do? In the past, I've just hoped that whoever approved my questions would know what I meant and not worry about it :), but apparently I still need to put a supporting reference on the question. Would there be a way for MV to make it so that we had to have a supporting reference, but could also optionally have two more supporting references? I don't know if that's anything you or they could do, and that's fine, I was just wondering.

Oh, and I can give you on here the supporting references for the question that was rejected if you want me to.

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M27

Oh, and one more thing. What do you exactly mean when a question is rejected as "Trivia"? I haven't had any rejected (that I remember) as being trivia, but I think some of my brother's have, and it seemed like quite a lot could be rejected with that label.

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M27

Oh, and another question :). How do you judge how hard a question is? All of mine are at 50% right now, but I'm thinking some are harder and some are easier than that. Maybe they are all at 50% because they've never been asked?

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InSoloChristo

You're welcome. :)

In the past, I've been told by one of the administrators (I can't remember which) that if there are multiple supporting references to a question, just include one, the one that is most helpful. We'll probably know whether the question is correct or not. (Of if we don't, we might check eventually.)

I don't really like the 'Implausible Answers' option, because we can't specify which answers we mean. I remember using this label to reject several questions, and thinking, "They won't even know why I'm rejecting this." Which may be true in your case. If you want to, you can post the question here, and I can tell you which answer I thought was implausible. Or you can post the link to the question (the page where you edit it). I'll be able to see it, but unauthorized users won't.

The 'Trivia' label is used when a question is judged to have no real learning value. In the early days, I submitted a question, "How old was Reu when he fathered Serug", and it was rejected as trivia. Think trivial. Not that all questions have to have some deep, theological value, but there should at least be something you can take away from having read the question.
I'm also using this label to reject some of the old Bible Bee quiz questions. Most of them just need deleted, but some of them might be useful with a little bit of editing. It's up to the user who entered it.

I'm not the one who decides how hard a question is. :P Questions default to 50%, which value can change every time the question is included in a quiz. It's determined by how many users get the question correct - though I'm not sure about all the specifics, because somehow it's possible to have a negative percent (I have a few).

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Andy

ISC - I really appreciate you helping out with approving the quiz questions!

Please try hard to keep the standard of the questions really high. They don't need to be difficult but we'd really like them to reflect a true understanding of the Bible. As I tried to create questions myself I realized that it is quite a tricky skill to create good questions but I think it is worthwhile to spend the time building up a database of great questions.

All that to say, you will probably have to reject a very high percentage of the questions submitted but we'd rather have 1 great question than 5 mediocre ones.

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