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Frequently Asked Questions About Quizilla (FAQAQ)
revised August 2002
Abstract Questions
In basic terms, it's a way to make and take those annoying quizzes that seem to be all the rage with the (blogging) kids these days. It's designed to make easier for those with no programming/Java-script skills to make quizzes and to have a centralized place for you to keep and present all the quizzes you've made.
Quite well, actually.
To take a quiz, you just follow the link the someone gives you whereupon you are presented with a nice long list of widgets to click and an imposing "Submit" button. After you press this button a large pack of highly trained Wilda Beast (as well trained as Wilda Beast can get) calculate the results and give you an answer back.
If you'd rather be on the dealing end of quiz-shaped terror, Quizilla gives you an attractive wizard, Quizard™, that will assist you in making your quizzes. You can then save them and present them to your friends, loved and un-loved ones.
You can even download your quiz in one of those pre-packaged "Quizdef" files for movement to other places that understand that sort of file.
As opposed to, what, nothing?
Oh, I see what you mean, as opposed to doing it another way, right. One good reason: we have a mascot. That other quiz place doesn't have a mascot. Your java-script tomfoolery doesn't have a mascot. We do, and we're quite proud of him. His name is "Penny". Don't laugh. Don't laugh at Penny. He'll step in you if you laugh at him.
Also, our page layouts don't look like they've been hit in the face with a Gwar concert.
In more serious reasons, we think we have just a better way of doing it. You make your quiz, pop down a link and that's it, you're quizzing. We don't put caps on usage like some places and Quizilla doesn't require users to have Java-script turned on (Hey, some people are paranoid).
Absolute Questions
Does it cost anything? Are you going to charge anything?
No.
Do you have any backend access?
Yep, we have RDF feeds of the Popular Quizzes and Recent Quizzes lists. Once per half-hour, kids, or I start banning IPs.
A quiz offends me and I want you to remove it.
Before anything gets removed, you have to do something: one, first contact the author of the quiz about it (if possible). If that doesn't work, check to see if it violates any of the terms of service in the Usage Policy. If it does, mail someone here (webmaster will do) and tell us which quiz it is and why it should be removed and if you've tried talking to the author. If you ask for a quiz to be removed just because "you don't like it", you'll be ignored -- you have to give a valid reason as to why it should be removed.
A quiz on your site is violating copyright law and i want it removed
Quizilla respects copyright, but we also respect fair use and personal expression. If you have a serious copyright violation issue that you would like resolved, please contact us and we will work things out.
Technical Questions
Why won't the quiz editor let me put a slash in a quiz title?
Due to a bug in the Apache web server and the way that Quizilla presents quizzes, using forward slashes in quiz titles will break the presentation mechanism so in the title all forward slashes are replaced with backslashes.
You want a more detailed explanation? Okay. The quiz presentation mechanism (/username/quizzes/quizname/) is actually just another CGI script, even though it looks like part of a file system. It uses the Apache ScriptAlias directive and the PATH_INFO environment variable to make it look like it's all based on paths and filenames. However there is a chance that someone could, using an escaped forward slash (%2F), cause some havoc on the server and so the Apache group decided that it would be best left unpatched. In response to this reasonable observation we have some code that replaces all forward slashes in quiz title with backslashes with come across just fine.
Yes, I know that Microsoft IIS doesn't have this problem, but I'd rather have one exploit a year and have backslashes instead of slashes as opposed to have 20 exploits a week and forward slashes in path_info.
When I do X in Y, I get a 500 server error
Yeah, we get a lot of those -- it's probably a bug. Try it again later and if it still gives you an error you can yell at the tech people at bugs@quizilla.com.
Get a new browser. Yes, I'm serious. Quizilla has been officially tested with Netscape 4.72 on Linux, Konquerer 2.2.2 on Linux, Netscape 7 on Linux and Windows, Opera 5 on Windows and IE 5.0, 5.2 and 5.5 on Windows and Mac OS. If you're using an official tested browser and it's still crashing, you know who to call.
An image file size limit?!? That's bogus!
Hey, 40k should be enough for anyone. You can fill an entire screen with a 40k jpeg and your images shouldn't be fullscreen anyway. If you still need more space, get a subscription when they become available.
You may think I'm a jerk for saying this, but I have reasons: the bigger the image == the more bandwidth it takes to send it 10,000 times a day == more money to our co-location provider. It's economics, baby.
Why is Quizilla so monolithically slow?
On an average day Quizilla well over 1,000,000 cgi-backed pageloads a day. One million pages is not an inconsequetial amount of traffic and equals out to 11 hits every second of every day. It take a lot of machine speed to supply this which, quite frankly, we don't always have at our disposal. We are constantly upgrading out hardware and optimizing our code, but the growth of popularity is constantly outstripping our hardware upgrades. The only thing I can suggest is to use the site during off-peak hours, before 9AM or after 11PM.
What hardware does Quizilla run on?
Right now, June 2003, this is Quizilla:
- Primary Database server: Dual Pentium III 750mHz, 2GB RAM, 40GB RAID
- Secondary Database server: Dual Pentium III 500mHz, 512MB RAM, 20GB RAID
- Web server: Celeron 1.2gHz, 1GB RAM, 20GB
- Web server: Pentium III 1.13gHz, 1GB RAM, 20GB
- Web server: Duron 950mHz, 1GB RAM, 20GB
- Web server: Duron 1.0gHz, 1GB RAM, 20GB
- Traffic Aggregator: Celeron 1.3gHz, 1GB RAM, 2.5GB
- Image server: Pentium III 1.0gHz, 1GB RAM, 40GB
You suck.
That's not a question.
