Zealot Trivia
Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does this game work in Netscape 4.x? Because, you know, it just crashes Netscape for me.

A: Netscape 4x is 1995 technology. Sure, thre have been "updates", but these mostly just fix security problems. The browser itself hasn't changed in years. Would you want to still be using Windows 95? That was actually 1994 technology, but you get the idea. Netscape is old, and uses proprietary extensions. One of the things it does in a nonstandard way is layers, (using the layer tag instead of div like everybody else, for example) which Z relies upon to work properly. Another problem with NS4x is that it doesn't support style sheets very well, which Z uses extensively to make itself look as it should. There is a nice, modern browser known as Mozilla (there's a version released by Netscape that they call Netscape 6, but you don't want that) which supports CSS and proper layers, and Zealot works in that. Mozilla is availible on any platform you're likely to ever use, and thanks to K-Meleon on the Windows side and Galeon on the Unix side, one cannot even complain about performance or RAM usage problems. I no longer bother to support NS4x, as anyone who is using it has serious problems. IE4 should work with the game, but not perfectly, IE5+ is perfect, and Mozilla and its derivatives (NS6/Galeon/etc.) work perfectly but for one transperancy problem. Everything else will probably NOT work with Zealot. Deal with it.

Q: Doesn't someone screen the questions before they are entered into the game?

A: No. This may change in the future, but like the message says, "Your question has been added." If you go and play, it has as much chance of showing up as any other question. Yes, not screening questions before they can appear leads to a lot of stupid questions.

Q: Well I found a question that is incorrect. What can I do about it?

A: Ah, you have stumbled accross one of the best and worst aspects of the new Zealot Trivia. Unlike the old Z, where players did not (generally) add new questions (and where all questions were screened to some extent), this version of Zealot has a large proportion of bad questions. By bad questions, I mean ones which are factually incorrect, contain mispellings (whether typos, or words which have been written incorrectly out of ignorance), or are not appropriate questions (more on those in the next answer). However, also unlike the old Zealot, in which we simply lived with the mistakes (fewer though they were, there were still many annoying inaccuracies), in this version of Zealot we can correct mistakes. This is done (at present) by sending in by email a report of the problem. On the trivia screen there is a button that says "feedback" which, when clicked, will open an email window using your default mail client, with the correct address to report errors to in the To: field. What you must do is copy the text of the question (highlight it and then hit CTRL+C in Windows, Command+C in a Macintosh, and various inconsistent things in Linux) and paste it (CTRL+V or Command+V) into the email. This serves to uniquely identify the question you've found a problem with. What you must then do is write a short note saying what the problem is that you have found, and then perhaps suggest a solution (remove the question entirely, change this text to that text, or whatever seems appropriate). The person you send the email to will review the question in the database, asses your complaint to determine if it is valid, and make a correction (which will probably be whatever you suggested) if it is determined that a correction is needed. You might get a followup email noting changes made, or asking for additional information. Don't be shy now, this is how we make the game better.

Q: All right, so what constitutes an incorrect question?

A: That is an incorrect question! Ahahahahaha... whee, heh... Alright, so no one else finds this funny. An incorrect question is, very generally, one which serverely violates the guidelines set up in How To Q. Question errors can be divided up into three categories: simple mistakes, factual errors, and inappropriate questions. Simple mistakes are things like transposed characters (someome typing "thta" instead of "that"), missing spaces, typos, strange linebreaks, answers being so long that they wrap to the next line, wierd symbols in random places, and so on. Factual errors are when questions or answers contain mistakes, like refering to Spock as a Romulan, or getting the name of a character wrong (or spelled wrong), or anything else which violates fact. To correct these, or even notice them, you will probably need to be a minor expert on the topic, or have some kind of knowledge of it, unlike simple errors, where anyone can notice the problem. Inappropriate questions are much trickier. They include questions which do not fall inside the scope of Zealot; that is, Qs which are not Sci-Fi/Fantasy in nature. This is sometimes fairly subjective and hard to determine, but sometimes it's obvious. For example, Gilligans Island questions are obviously inappropriate, they have nothing to do with science fiction or fantasy, but by contrast James Bond questions are sometimes okay, and sometimes not. There's a lot of science fiction in James Bond stories, and they certainly fall into the general realm as many other things which are included in Zealot. Derermining whether a Bond Q is appropriate is very hard, because not ALL are approproate, though some certainly are. Therefore Bond Qs must be determined on a case by case basis, whereas Gilligans Island Qs can be simply banned. But inappropriateness doesn't stop there: questions which are about Zealot internal culture and people are generally allowed, but sometimes Qs like "What team is the greatest?" appear, and these must be removed because the answers are subjective. Qs like that really fall under the "factual" type of bad Q. Worse, there are Qs which exist for the sole purpose of being nasty to someone else, and these are inappropriate (even if one agrees with them). If you see any Question which matches any of the above criteria, please do report it. But don't stop there! See a question without a good comment? Send in a comment of your own! Most of the time I will be happy to replace a lackluster comment with a better, more interesting one. Though I have given a general outline of what I consider bad questions, keep in mind that you can report a question FOR ANY REASON AT ALL. Even if you just don't like it, you can still send in a report. Of course, you should probably say WHY you don't like it, and make a suggestion of what to change/remove to fix the problem, or you will very likely be ignored. Reports without suggestions tend to be given less attention. You do your part, and the admin feels that it's worthwhile to do his.

Q: The game just says I cheated! I don't cheat! Why are you being so mean to me? I'm going to quit if your game doesn't stop making false accusations.

A: Calm down! What the game has done is report an error. The game encountered a set of circumstances which it has been taught usually means someone is trying to cheat. If you were not trying to cheat, then you can simply wait 30 seconds and reload the page. You should be fine at this point, although sometimes the error persists. For a slightly more technical run down of the problem, keep reading. In an attempt to prevent people from playing two or more games at a time with the same name, and thus racking up points at an enormous and potentially devestating and annoying rate, I have implimented a few checks. As you are probably aware, in order to get a new question your browser refreshes the page you are on. This refresh sends the results of your most recent question (what you clicked, what you gained, your name, your password, and a couple of status indicators) back to the game (it is, incidentally, only at this point that your score is permanently recorded). The game, in turn, sends you a new page with a new question in it, and you get to answer again. What joy! As the game is updating your score, during those few seconds (usually fewer than eight, even more often fewer than three) when the page is reloading, the game notes the current time, right down to the second, and stores that information with your IP address in a file. The next time you update your score, at the end of the next question, the game notes the time again--but this time it also compares the new time with the old time, and counts the number of seconds difference between them. Since the javascript timer in the page you answer questions from only refreshes the page after approxamently 45 seconds, the game knows that any attempt to update a given score twice within the same 30 second period is certain to be an attempt at cheating. When the comparison of the first time and the second time reveal a difference of less than 30 seconds, that "you have cheated" error page pops up to prevent the cheater from continuing. This is all well and good, but for the sad fact that the routine which compares the two times is slightly broken. It has to do with 0 values and rollovers, and is much too complicated for me to fix myself. It makes more sense to grab a third party date module and use that instead (which I will do, when I have time, if I can make it work). When the comparison is made, occasionally (though sometimes quite often) the result is less than 30, when the reality is that more than 30 seconds have passed. In such a situation an error is thrown erroneously.

Q: I'm getting a timeout or server not responding error while trying to play the game (but no where else). What gives?

A: This is a problem with the new synchronization code which allows the joyful playing of one question by everyone at once. There is not much I can do about it, but there is something YOU can do about it. All you have to do is adjust your browser wait timeout to something greater than 45 seconds (I recommend 60, which is pretty standard) and you will not see this problem again. There is no real down side to making this change. How do you do it? Well in Mozilla or Netscape 6+ type about:config into the address bar and hit enter. When the page has loaded, scroll down to the linefor network.http.request.timeout and right click it. Select Modify from the context menu, and whea window opens enter 60 (or whatever) into the input field, and hit OK. Earlier versions of Netscape and Mozilla may require adding a line like user_pref("network.http.request.timeout", "60"); to your prefs.js as these versions lacked about:config. Anyone who knows how to change this value for IE or AOL embeded browsers please send me the instructions.