10 replies to this topic

[iPoco]

Hi guys,
We've been working on a new way to improve the quality of topics, and reduce the spam without all the behind the scenes manual labor.

Welcome the Quiz Center !

All newly registered users and those who used to be in the Newbies group will now need to take an introductory quiz to allow posting in what has fast become our most viewed forum, the New Users Lounge.
To post over the entire forum, a second harder quiz must be passed.

Post any comments, questions, and concerns and we'll make sure to take a look! (If you are in the Just Joined group, send us a PM)

Poco

[aylamrin]

Very good idea indeed! I think it's the same in the other forum as well.

[therhymer]

I've been around for a bit, so i can post, but I'd still like to run through the quizzes, but they come up as unavailable. what is that about?

[iPoco]

The quizzes change your primary group. So if you were to take for example OSx86 Part 1 your group would be changed to Newbies. This isn't really a problem for the Members group as you can always get back, but it is if someone with a special group were to take one. We have an invite system though, so if you want I can invite you to take Part 1, but you'll have to take Part 2 to get back to being a Member.

Poco

[q64ceo]

I know I am late to the game with this response, but I do hope you will read it.

While there is a big problem with spam and mistakes by new users, I am of the belief that this is a bit drastic. By having these quizes, you may be pushing out members who could become valued members of our community.

If there was a quiz when I first joined years ago, I wouldn't be here.

[iPoco]

We read, we read!

At the end of the day, yes, that may be an unfortunate consequence. However from the statistics that we've gathered in the past ~3 months of having the quiz, the quiz looks like the lesser of the 2 evils.

So far we've had 10929 people pass OSx86 Quiz Part 1 vs. only 534 who haven't yet passed (but who tried). Out of those 534, ~85 had a score of 0 because of leaving the questions blank and most of the others only took 1 try. Something that frustrates most of the staff is people posting when they obviously haven't tried to solve it by themselves. We allow 3 tries per day for Part 1, so it doesn't show much determination to stop after 1 try of a 2 minute quiz. There have been cases where users have tried 4 times and then passed.

Anyhow, we're looking to make it localized in the near future which will probably help the international users. If you'd like to take the quiz and see for yourself, send me a msg and I'll invite you (we don't like duplicate accounts).

Poco

[3.14r2]

IMO Quiz is not that firewall that could protect from all issues new users could bring. There are many questions that are repeated other and other again. Sure, Quiz can help to reduce amount of such questions. Unfortunately it doesn't help that much.

Nothing can force a user to search extensively before creating new post/topic. IMO it is more important thing to consider, then Quiz.

Unfortunately I'm not that smart to propose anything to solve the issue. It's quite complicated task to maintain peace and order on such a crowded place as this. And I do respect all what been done so far, to make things better.

[Gringo Vermelho]

The quiz is very effective at keeping spammers at bay though and that's very important on a forum as vast as this.

3.14r2, on Jul 19 2011, 06:18 PM, said:

Nothing can force a user to search extensively before creating new post/topic. IMO it is more important thing to consider, then Quiz.

Exactly. Except there is nothing to consider, because as you say, there is nothing we can do about that. As much as we'd like to sometimes..

[Alessandro17]

q64ceo, on Jul 19 2011, 08:57 PM, said:

By having these quizzes, you may be pushing out members who could become valued members of our community.

I don't think so, and the reason is very simple: we have approximately 519924 (!) users who registered before the quizzes were introduced and who never posted (out of a total of 657211 registered users for the same time span). What stopped them? Besides I have no means of counting how many users have posted totally useless topics.
OTOH I was on the front-line when we were invaded by spammers, and I can tell you that something needed desperately to be done. The first solution was to compel every new user to post in a moderated New User Lounge, and that was a horrendous amount of work. Ruger42 can confirm it, he did most of the work.
If the quizzes have discouraged a few people from posting useless topics, so much the better. After all we have a knowledge base which has few equals on the internet, on any subject.

[freibooter]

I just registered and I have to say: I really like the idea of the Quiz - I actually had a lot of fun taking them and luckily passing both on my first try was very easy. This is probably the most innovative way of keeping out Spammers and members that would have very little to contribute to a community I have ever seen.

The one thing that bugs me, however, is that the Quiz won't tell me which answers I got wrong.
The fact that I got some answers wrong at all is bad enough for my self conscience, but not knowing which ones really was a bummer.

I know of one that I got wrong by accident, but the other two will probably haunt my nightmares for a while.

[Alessandro17]

freibooter, on Jul 28 2011, 11:04 AM, said:

I just registered and I have to say: I really like the idea of the Quiz - I actually had a lot of fun taking them and luckily passing both on my first try was very easy. This is probably the most innovative way of keeping out Spammers and members that would have very little to contribute to a community I have ever seen.

Thanks! It is nice to hear that somebody likes the idea

Quote

The one thing that bugs me, however, is that the Quiz won't tell me which answers I got wrong.
The fact that I got some answers wrong at all is bad enough for my self conscience, but not knowing which ones really was a bummer.

I know of one that I got wrong by accident, but the other two will probably haunt my nightmares for a while.

You definitely have a point there, but I don't know how easily the issue could be solved. I am also afraid it might defy the purpose of having a quiz, because once all right answers were known, many would memorise them  rather than trying to really learn.