Quizilla

Quizilla was an online community featuring user-generated content, including a lot of writing from teen authors. It was primarily intended to host user-made quizzes (e.g. "What Hogwarts house do you belong in?"), but also played host to a large cohort of fans writing quiz fic and reader inserts. A similar site is Quotev.
Much of the fanfiction on Quizilla was written in genres and styles banned on Fanfiction.net. This included reader insert fics, but also any work written in Second Person POV, Real Person Fiction and Choose Your Own Adventure stories that were uniquely suited to the quiz format. Users recall a site where Quizilla's own formatting prevented the use of paragraphs to break large text blocks.What happened to Quizilla? What happens to them all!, yesthisishonk comments in their reblog of olderthanthenetfic (2019) On this quiz site, CYOA style questions at the end of a chapter rarely had any impact on the story. The next chapter was the same regardless of the reader's answer.Comment by u/tripod_cat, on :/r/fanfiction thread, Do you remember Quzilla?, 2019. The site was also host to a large collection of smut content, with users making use of the lemon scale, as there was no tagging system in place. 
Quizilla is remembered fondly by those who used the site. For many it was their first experience of fandom and fanfiction. The site was known as a space where young teens could create fan content with very few restrictions. Later updates to the site made the posting and formatting of fanfiction and fan poems easier. 
The site was started at the end of July 2002 and "first released into the wild" on August 4, 2002. Quizilla was bought out in 2006, leading to a purge of fan created content from the site. In September 2014, Quizilla announced it would be shutting down on October 1, 2014.
==What Was Quizilla?==
From its website in 2004: 
When fans began to post their fanfic at Quizilla in the form of chapters, the site added a section for fiction. From its website in 2005: 
==Why Was This Format Popular for Fanworks?==
Much of the fan attraction to Quizilla can be understood with the context that fans often gather online in spaces that are by no means ideal for their needs (Livejournal, Tumblr) but have several primary features which make them appealing.This tendency is perfectly illustrated in the poem/song 'A Sorting Hat Song For Tumblr' (link to archived version), which talks about how fans migrated between different platforms, such as Geocities, LiveJournal and Tumblr. 
It may be that Quizilla's fandom-inspired quizzes (e.g. "Which Yu-Gi-Oh! character are you?") served as the initial attraction for fans to gather, and as they did, a community formed and they began publishing fanworks. On top of this, Quizilla's quiz format was well-suited to the second-person, reader insert quizzes that fans favoured on the platform, although it's difficult to say whether this genre of fic was popular because of the format, or whether the format suited the genre of fic that fans wanted to publish. 
Second-person, reader insert quizzes may also have flourished on Quizilla because they were banned in other fan spaces, such as Fanfiction.Net Reader-Inserts have been banned on FanFiction.Net since 2005. See 2005 Ban on Choose Your Own Adventure Fic/Self-Insertion Fic/2nd Person Point of View Fic. and MediaMiner. "Interactive Fiction of any variety. These include CYOAs, fiction calling for Original Character biographies from the readers/reviewers, fiction calling for reviewers to vote or otherwise determine the plot of the next chapter, and fiction where the author uses readers as characters in the place of a valid character in both the passive and interactive form. Stories of this type uploaded after the January 1, 2005 will result in the author's account being terminated from the site." -- Terms of Service 
 
In 2014, a fan at Reddit asked: 
xunker, Quizilla's creator, replied: 
==Regarding the Citrus Content==
A fan in 2014 asked a Reddit forum: 
Quizilla's creator, xunker/Nielsen, replied:
==Regarding the Name "Quizilla"==
==The Beginning: An Announcement==
The site was "released into the wild" the very end of July. , 2004? 
Its creator announced his site on August 4, 2002: 
A September 2, 2002 post: 
From the FAQ page in 2005: 
==Penny the Pencil Monster!==
===Comments by Nielsen:===
From the site's FAQ, around 2003 and again, in 2005: "That logo, the No. 2 with green arms and legs, is "Penny" the Quizilla pencil monster. When the site first launched I needed a logo to identify the site quickly, but I have no artistic skill when it comes to drawing. Instead, I loaded up a graphics program and clicked out a peculiar little image dot by dot in super zoom mode. It's not very good, but I've grown attached to it." 
From Nielsen's online journal, January 2, 2008: "Big things are happening at the old Quizilla site, most of which are really due and I'm excited for, though with this new message posted there are more than a few complaints. My favourites? Look for all the people complaining about the loss of the Pencil Monster.. the logo I did in 20 minutes with the Gimp oh so long ago." 
===Comments by fans:===
* "Whoever created Penny the pencil monster was a genius." Facebook page for Penny the Pencil Monster, February 10, 2010 
* "I pretty much blame the way I grew up on this little monster..." Tumblr post 
==Its Forum==
In August 2006, Quizilla created a message board. It included sections for anime, books, poetry, and movies. 
A series of controversial threads called for a rapid increase in monitoring and rule enforcement. [need dates, more info]
"Forum Jail" was a section on the forum: "This is where threads go when they are misbehaving badly... get it back on track and it stays alive. You may not start a new thread here. 
As of late May 2012, the forums had been removed from the site indefinitely.
==Zillapedia==
Zillapedia was a section of Quizilla that used wiki software. 
With Zillapedia, users were able to create glossary entries, some serious, some numerous. 
Zillapedia closely resembled the Urban Dictionary in many ways, and it had similar functions to Wikipedia.
==Follow the Money==
===Costs and Advertising===
Regarding costs and advertising: 
Also see this 2007 post and comments: , partly bouncy, June 25, 2007
=== If You Wanted to Buy the Site: 2004===
From the site's owner in about 2004: 
===Bought Out and Changed: 2006===
On October 16, 2006, Viacom's MTV Networks (the owners of MTV and Nickelodeon) announced it had bought Quizilla for an undisclosed sum of money. Viacom's MTV Networks Acquires Gorilla Nation's Quizilla.com for MTVN Kids and Family Group , October 16, 2006 While articles refers to an "undisclosed sum of money," one cite mentions "$10 to $20 million." This cite is, however, unsubstantiated. 
After selling to Viacom, the site went from a free writing site to a PG rated site. Due to the sudden changes, a lot of the users' work was deleted, which caused a large number of people to abandon the site. 
In 2014, the site owner, Nielsen, wrote about the content changes: 
A fan in 2018 commented: 
== 2011 Thoughts on Revival==
In 2011, Nielsen mused on reviving Quizilla with a different name: 
== Fanworks==
* R.I.P QUIZILLA, a YouTube vid created by fansupkatie, posted September 30, 2014
* Quibblo has an archive of various Quizilla fanworks that were archived by xXnekogirl63Xx as the site closed.
==Fan Comments==
===General Fan Comments===
===Fan Comments About the Site Closure===
==Timeline==
* the very end of July, 2002: The site was created by Matthew Nielsen and "released into the wild" as a quiz site. , 2004? 
* May 2005: Nielsen sold the website to Gorilla Nation Media (a subset of Viacom's MTV Networks). 
* Late July 2005: There were lots of changes in layout. "THE TIME HAD COME THE WALRUS SAID TO TALK OF MANY THINGS. The time is upon us, faithful quizilla users: over the next hour the site will begin to change infrom of your eyes as if by magic. Do NOT be allarmed and don't worry if you see stuff not working for a while. This is normal the expected. This is going to be a new era for Quizilla that si going to give you all the featyres you've been waiting for. Hang on and enjoy the ride!" -- 
* October 2005: Many new features under request were added such as poems, Zillapedia, and an astrology section. 
* December 2005: A "tag" feature was added, a feature which allowed users to label content.
* January 2006: "Themes," sets of fonts, backgrounds, etc., could be applied to content.
* February 2006: Users could now add polls. 
* April 2006: After numerous request by users, a message board was added to the site.
* June 26, 2006: Nielsen posted that he was buying a house with Quizilla profits. "This will literally be the house Quizilla built." -- 
* August 2006: New story and poem editors were made available. New sections were added for lyrics and "scored quizzes."
* October 2006: The site was bought by Viacom's MTV Networks. , October 2, 2007, includes the comment: "I don't want to speak too soon, but Viacom may not be the cesspool the Corporate Conduct Statement made it out to be." Nielsen comments at , November 2, 2006 
* December 2007: The site announced that the site layout and content would be changed.
* January 2, 2008: Nielsen announced big changes to the site. "Big things are happening at the old Quizilla site, most of which are really due and I'm excited for, though with this new message posted there are more than a few complaints. My favourites? Look for all the people complaining about the loss of the Pencil Monster.. the logo I did in 20 minutes with the Gimp oh so long ago." -- 
* Early May 2008: The site completely changed the site layout and content, as promised in December of the previous year. To many fans' dismay, the site's original logo - Penny the Pencil Monster - was removed.
* July 22, 2008: Matthew Nielsen wrote of his anger over turmoil at Gorilla Nation. 
* August 2009: According to Alexa.com, Quizilla is the 1,680th most popular Web site and users spent an average of 10.8 minutes at the site each day. Alexa 
* October 2, 2009: Matthew Nielsen tweeted: "I just finished Viacom/MTV Networks. The end boss is really hard." 
* August 31, 2010: The site suffered a sudden and unexplained shut-down that resulted in many user's accounts being wiped clean and countless stories lost. All links began taking users to a 404 error page on MTV.com. 
*September 9, 2011: Quizilla left the 'Most Popular Stories' section void. 
* November 19, 2011: There were no stories, poems, quizzes posted to the "Most Popular," "Top Rated," "Ultimate," or "Newest" lists.
* November 21, 2011: The URL quizilla.teennick.com directed to a new quiz site linked with Teen Nick.
* November 30, 2011: Quizilla put quizzes, stories, poems back on the "Most Popular," "Top Rated," "Ultimate," and "Newest" lists.
* February 11, 2014: Few works were being posted. This was believed to be due either to a system hack, but much more likely was that many users had moved to less restrictive sites, or to sites they felt were better supported. 
* September 2014: Quizilla announced it was shutting down on October 1st due to the drop in active users.
* October 1, 2014: Quizilla shut down.
== Stats==
2003: A year after its launch, Quizilla had over 330,000 users with above 9 million pageloads a day and more than 50 million images used on the site. " In less than a year, Quizilla reached such success that it had over 330,000 users with above 9 Million pageloads a day and more than 50 Million images used on the site." -- from Why Quizilla closed? 
September 2005: It has 40 servers. "Quizilla run on a fairly large army of servers. Originally, it started out using one small underpowered computer in the founders basement, but has now grown into using a vast array of technology and hardware. Currently Quizilla runs on over 40 servers (as of September 1, 2005)." -- 
2005: "On an average weekday Quizilla serves nearly 3.0 million pages, most of these involving CGI code and database access. This figure does not include images, which can often surpass 10 million daily... If you go to the homepage of Quizilla.com, you will see some basic stats in the center blue bar at the top of the page. On most days over 1,000,000 quizzes are taken, 5,000 new quizzes are created and up to 2,000 people join the site as new members." 
2007: Some forum stats from an unknown month in 2007: threads: 47,098, posts: 4,888,270, members: 184,705,active Members: 1,381, most users ever online was 673 on November 11, 2006 
== Links to Quizilla's LiveJournal Page==
* , August 2005 and , November 2004, , November 2004 
== Graphics Resemblance to Slashdot.com==
== Links to Quizilla Pages==
* Quiz Mechanics 
* , roughly mid-August 2005
* 
* Image Content Guidelines
* , a Wayback look at a story page, September of an unknown year when there were "308430 Stories Created To Date"
* , a Wayback look at a Forum page from about 2007 
* , Wayback link to one in July 2005
* , 2004?
 
* , 2004?
==Photos of the Servers!==
Image:quizillaserver1.jpg|photo of the servers
Image:quizillaserver2.jpg|photo of the servers
Image:quizillaserver3.jpg|photo of the servers
 
==Sample Screenshots==
Image:quizillahome.jpg|a home page, date unknown
Image:quizillastories1.jpg|first third of a stories page, date unknown
Image:quizillastories2.jpg|second third of a stories page, date unknown
Image:quizillastories3.jpg|third third of a stories page, date unknown
Image:quizillaforum1.jpg|first third of a forum page, date unknown
Image:quizillaforum2.jpg|second third of a forum page, date unknown
Image:quizillaforum3.jpg|third third of a forum page, date unknown
==Further Reading/Meta==
* (2014)
* Why Quizilla closed? (2014)
* (2010)
* (2014)
* , partly bouncy, June 25, 2007
* , 2008-2010, many by ten to twelve-year olds
==References==
Category:2000s
Category:2010s
Category:2017 Featured Articles