Personal Profile: Chaddington Boomhauer and Shale Nightfire, Part 2/2

Here's the continuation of my chat with Chadd and Shale. Enjoy!


Lette Ponnier: Is there any trivia writing process either or both of you follow in deciding on questions for events?
Shale Nightfire: Both of us have played trivia a lot pre-SL, so we have a bit of a trivia collection mentality, I think? Usually, we aim for variety. Anything can trigger a trivia question: a conversation with a friend or colleague, a current event that triggers some deep-hidden knowledge. I retain it til I can enter into a wiki we use for collaboration (typed into my laptop if I have that with me or jotted on a napkin at a café). We always strive for primary sources when we do our fact checking.
Chaddington Boomhauer: There's a balance to get between hard and easy. Sometimes I will try to get very far away from a current news story or the "on this day" news to get hard decent variety. I search the web and use ones I make up, like "who will get this first" kind of thing.
SN: We have a lot of fun writing the questions – I've even pulled up articles in newspapers from other centuries at the library. I think sometimes a bit too much of our humour comes through. Usually one of us will say something to the other if something seems a bit too off/difficult/etc., but we give each other a lot of leeway. The ordering we do at the end, putting together what we've both come up with and seeing if there are any natural segues.

CB: There's only one version of them even if one of us wrote most of them that week.
SN: One feature of wikis that is very overlooked is the ability to view history and discussion of previous versions. So if you are looking up an issue that you suspect is "contentious" on Wikipedia, it's good to read the previous discussion and history. True, a few "griefers" might post there, but a lot of experts also provide their opinions with backup links to authoritative, primary sources.
CB: It amazes me times when we think it's varied and someone gets more than half of them at an event. If anyone has complaints we would love to hear them :)

LP: That's everything I had planned. Is there anything that the two of you wanted to talk about?
CB: There aren't enough early trivias. I wish there were some between 2-7AM. Sure that means people actually in SLT will be drunk or asleep. Lotus has been having one but it's a little too early.
SN: We really do try to do questions from every perspective. We have tried very hard to include European and Australian questions, for example. We tried hosting that time period too, but the scheduling was ad hoc, so no chance to build-up regulars. We still play Gogomodo Trivia; some people don't see the point of it, but I find it really helps my memory. Always learning (or re-learning) new things. It can be quite fun when you get a competitive group together, too.


CB: The adult regions opened. Heh, well, one! There's a new test adult area. It's not the "real" place. You can test how many of your friends won't be able to get in.
LP: Do you think that trivia games that move to adult regions will take a hit?
CB: I get the impression the large number of unverified users would be an issue. I did one quick poll once and it was more than half the people I asked. The grief-free part is somewhat appealing, but I think many of them don't have a credit card they can use.
SN: Or are leery to? But isn't that changing? What's the current percentage of online shoppers? The comfort level has definitely risen.
CB: It seems higher in there, though. In the circles where this is a secret life for them, they don't want to get ID'd.
SN: Identity is a fascinating topic and ties in with the use of alts.
CB: Some days I pretend everyone is an alt.
SN: When I was new, Chadd told me there were really only 10 people on SL; everyone else is an alt.
CB: It mostly freaks me out when I meet a new person who is not new and knows everyone around me well, i.e. acting chummy. It's confusing. Friends who "leave" due to bad relationship drama, then you make a great new friend a few days later who likes all the same places. Gets you paranoid.
SN: Yes, but you don't want to make assumptions either. Each new person needs to be treated as an individual, not an alt or "reincarnation." I did find SL was better for this though. On IRC, there were quite a few different networks, channels and bots, but often a big chunk of the questions all came from one initial source. You could become an expert in one place, then show up in a new place and you already knew all the questions. People suspecting you of being an oldbie in disguise could be quite nasty. Here on SL, however you personally feel about using one, alts are a fact of SL life. We've only done one "trivia redux," where we did an actual replay. And no one swept it.
CB: It was on a different day though. I recycled some questions for Sharon's BYOT.
SN: We do love to reuse questions though that weren't answered on previous weeks. We thought everyone would catch on to that quickly, but there have been questions that went 5 or 6 weeks I think. It surprises me when there is headline news on NASCAR, for example, and no one comes prepared with an answer. We also like to make sure new people are welcome and that everyone has a chance at winning something. That's one reason our random prizes came about. Plus, we just like to have fun! We've given out some crazy ones.
CB: The first few times we just made them up.

SN: We did a "guess the theme" trivia, where the answer had to be specific to fit the theme. We asked 20+ questions and they all related to a theme. Knowing us though, there was a bit of quirkiness involved. At the end, you could guess the theme for 1000 or 2000 Lindens. No one got that one. We might try it again with an easier theme.
CB: I don't think anyone got the first one, it was impossible
LP: What was the theme?
SN: Well, I don't think we should tell... In case we want to use it again.
LP: Haha, ok.

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