From: rns@npg-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM (Rick Schubert)
Newsgroups: rec.music.misc,rec.games.trivia
Subject: Re: * * Another lyrics quiz to POST to! * *
Date: 15 Aug 92 02:40:09 GMT
Organization: NCR Corp., Network Products - San Diego

[Sorry if you've seen this twice.  `inews' sent me mail saying that my
follow-up posting failed, but then I noticed it did get posted locally.
I'll try posting again; then I'll try to cancel the first one.]

In <1992Aug12.150938.6113@awdprime.austin.ibm.com> lisa writes:

>(Rick Schubert) writes:

>> Since you appear to starting a series, I'd like to point out to you that
>> Standard Practice [TM] in rec.games.trivia for lyrics quizzes is to have
>> people MAIL you their answers, not POST them.

>I don't see the real harm, since people seem to enjoy the
>quiz.  Don't I have the right to ask for posts rather than
>e-mail replies?  Besides, at one point I didn't have e-mail
>access outside my company, yet I could post, and I hated  
>seeing all these trivia and lyrics quizzes that I couldn't
>reply to by e-mail; I could only post to the net, and I figure
>other people might be in the same boat.  

Well, I'm not about to carry out a one-person crusade against on-line
quizzes.  I just thought I'd try to encourage the stop of these things
before they got out of hand.  I noticed that someone else followed your
lead and posted one also.  I think there's a potential for this sort of
thing to really expand, and I think it would really clutter up the newsgroup.

Sure you have the right to ask for posts; on Usenet, everyone has the right
to post just about anything he/she wants to.  Frequently, the posts are
inappropriate, and sometimes people (known affectionately as net.police)
point this out, with varying degrees of success (usually little, which is
why I hesitated to get involved in this).

Maybe people do enjoy them; there are enough people contributing answers
(the same answers over and over and over).  On the other hand, I could
claim support from the thousands of people who don't post answers (you know,
the Silent Majority).

I'm not quite sure what to say about people who don't have e-mail access
outside their companies.  I guess first I'd wonder why the companies don't
provide the e-mail access.  Maybe they don't want their computers used for
non-business reasons.  But there could be other reasons that I don't know
of.  Perhaps we should create rec.games.trivia.posting.place.for.those.who.-
do.not.have.email.capabilities.

And before you or anyone else points it out, yes, I can just skip over
the posts that are replies to such quizzes.  Fortunately I use a newsreader
that makes it easy to select which articles I want to read and to skip over
the others.  I make great use of this feature in newsgroups like
rec.music.misc, but, until now, I've always selected all the articles in
rec.games.trivia.  There have been few enough articles in that group so
that I could just skim over the articles I wasn't as interested in without
wasting too much time.  Maybe I'll start being more selective now.

Another thing, although it's a minor point: there have been a few lyrics
and/or titles to either your quizzes or the other on-line quiz about
which I wanted to make some slight corrections, but I didn't want to
contribute to the clutter.  In a normal quiz situation where there is
one posting with the questions/lyrics and another with the answers, I
would be tempted to post, but not in this situation.

>And I also don't think it's that much fun for anyone if I 
>post a quiz and then post the answers later without letting 
>people take a shot at answering the quiz...what's the point?

I'm not sure what the point of 75 people posting the same answer to
the same song.  It's not exactly your fault, though, that people
blindly post their answers with checking to see if someone else has
already given that answer; that's just a common problem on Usenet.

I think there is some fun in taking a quiz and scoring it myself
if the quizmaster were to post the answers later.  I do think that
it's a lot more fun to have the entries (which were received via
email) scored by the quizmaster and the results posted.  I personally
don't think it's any fun to post my answers when so many other people
have, which is why I haven't posted any answers.

>Like I said, I don't think it's really that harmful, plus
>many people seem to like it, and what's done is done, right?

Sure, what's done is done.  I wasn't suggesting that you be taken out
and shot; I was just trying to discourage such quizzes from being
perpetuated.  As far as how harmful it might be, harm is relative.
There are certainly a lot more harmful things in the world, on and
off the Net.  Maybe people do like such quizzes.  I suspect that there
are a few other people who don't.  I'm not about to take a poll to
see what the sentiment of the readers of these newsgroups is, although
maybe that would be a good idea.

>I actually have one or two more quizzes left, but if it's that
>big of an issue and the majority agrees with your viewpoint,
>then I won't post them.  Or maybe I'll post before school starts 
>up again this fall and not after.  I hope that sounds fair; 
>really, I didn't mean to cause any commotion... I just wanted 
>to share these quizzes with everybody.

Thank you for taking me seriously and considering my point of view.
I think you are trying to be reasonable.  I can't tell you what to
do with your remaining quiz(zes), although you might want to run them
in the more traditional manner.

>smile on,

Oh, I do.  This is a rec newsgroup, so it's all for fun.  I may get serious
at times, but sometimes I'm serious about my fun.

-- Rick Schubert (rick.schubert@SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM)

P.S. These are likely to be my last words on the subject ("the crowd roars!");
I've let my point be known.

[Well, last words if I ever get this posted.]