Ladyfest Table Quiz: Air Guitar for Your Brain. (1 Viewer)

[billygannon]

Actually, I'm sporting more of a screeching-at-the-kids-from-the-doorway-of-the-trailer look.

Squalor-chic, I like to call it.

Ah! Golden memories.

I'm going for a really punk look today. I've loosened my tie.

 

[oh shit]

ha ha ha ha ha ha, i hope you meant that in the way i would have. i commend you for that post!

.|..| you know what i'm talkin about

 

[Ex-User (250)]

.|..| you know what i'm talkin about

hee hee hee

 

[minka]

i didn't think the questions were alienating to men either, but they were hard enough, and kind of art/literature/history focused (was that because it's hard to do a lady-oriented geography round, or just reflecting the interests of the quiz setters?). i ended up being the person who answered most of the questions on my team of smart folks, i think because i was the one with the english/history degree.

not a big complaint, mind. and we did enjoy ourselves.

 

[damien]

again, i dont think that the questions were alienating to men, i thought they were extremely hard, and i know i'm not the only one. practically everyone i knew there seemed to feel the same, no one on my team had any fun and a lot of people around us left early (before the last sheets had been handed up).
in fairness, table quizes (sp?) are supposed to be general-knowledge based, last night was totally slanted in favour of academic/intellectual type questions.

as well, i brought someone along who had no idea about ladyfest or anything like that and he went away with a fairly sour taste in his mouth.

 

[Ex-User (250)]

can i venture a guess that kirstie and jane made up the questions? they are knowledge collectors. the worst kind of collectors.

 

[jane]

Yes, we should be severely reprimanded for asking questions about such erudite figures as Jessica Simpson, Madonna, Tonya Harding, Billie Jean King, etc...

In fairness, the questions were hard, I'll admit that. You might not have known some of them unless you had a particular interest in certain subjects, but the same goes for sport, which is considered 'general knowledge', but is just as specialist.

 

[krystal]

again, i dont think that the questions were alienating to men, i thought they were extremely hard, and i know i'm not the only one. practically everyone i knew there seemed to feel the same, no one on my team had any fun and a lot of people around us left early (before the last sheets had been handed up).
in fairness, table quizes (sp?) are supposed to be general-knowledge based, last night was totally slanted in favour of academic/intellectual type questions.

as well, i brought someone along who had no idea about ladyfest or anything like that and he went away with a fairly sour taste in his mouth.

Yep, I agree with you. I think we need to think about what people who are coming to these fundraising events (and the event themselves) actually want. The having of FUN is a big yes, and I felt it was missing last night. You could see that in how disgruntled some people were, in the feedback I was getting from the floor, the fact my own sister left early in despair etc etc etc.
I appreciate the feedback from everyone - both good and bad, and I'm most definitely taking it on board.

 

[jane]

I also don't think there would be so much fault-finding if it weren't to do with women. If you went to a music quiz and didn't know all of the answers because it didn't cover music you knew, you wouldn't have a hostile attitude and a 'sour' taste.

All quizzes are slanted in some way, and I don't see a problem in having a quiz night that rewards knowledge of women in society. I'm quite proud that we were able to give people the opportunity to use knowledge that isn't normally valued.

 

[Ex-User (250)]

Yep, I agree with you. I think we need to think about what people who are coming to these fundraising events (and the event themselves) actually want. The having of FUN is a big yes, and I felt it was missing last night. You could see that in how disgruntled some people were, in the feedback I was getting from the floor, the fact my own sister left early in despair etc etc etc.
I appreciate the feedback from everyone - both good and bad, and I'm most definitely taking it on board.

ok so, while the going's good, you're a big gossip.

 

[jillface]

But think about the reputation of Ladyfest.
You're always talking about how much you want to emphasise the FUN in FUNDARAISING and LADYFEST but I really didn't have very much fun last night. And it's not because the questions weren't based around punk music or anything, it's because they were ridiculously hard.

Willie said it well "I never went to college".
I felt stupid, he felt stupid and so did the rest of my team mates (until the music round).

Was there any collaboration on making the questions?
What about questions like "what planet were zig and zag from?" or "what's the capital of kazahkstan?"

Not starting argument. Just giving my two cents.

 

[krystal]

I also don't think there would be so much fault-finding if it weren't to do with women. If you went to a music quiz and didn't know all of the answers because it didn't cover music you knew, you wouldn't have a hostile attitude and a 'sour' taste.

All quizzes are slanted in some way, and I don't see a problem in having a quiz night that rewards knowledge of women in society. I'm quite proud that we were able to give people the opportunity to use knowledge that isn't normally valued.

Well, I, (and I think the majority of people who have replied to this thread) don't think it was alienating to men. So that's not an issue. What the problem is, and let us extrapolate the problem at hand from the issue of gender, is that the questions were actually too hard. This is the nub of the problem. I think it's fine for people to say what they think of the quiz because feedback is great - and just because it may be negative doesn't mean it's hostile. I'm not looking at it based on gender, at all at all at all. I'm looking at it based on 'ok, everyone is complaining, we might have been a tad ambitious with the questions'. And I think that makes sense - we'd love people to keep coming to fundraisers and supporting ladyfest.

 

[Ex-User (250)]

two knowledge hoarders do not good question masters make... heh heh.

 

[MDR]

Setting quiz questions is very hard: you need a mix of easy, hard and hard-but-guessable questions. I suppose if you're going to draw on recondite information, it's probably best to use it only if would have come to people's attention in some more accessible way (i.e. be legitimately part of general knowledge) e.g. asking about an obscure author only when their death had been recently reported in the paper or they had won some notable award.

 

[damien]

I also don't think there would be so much fault-finding if it weren't to do with women. If you went to a music quiz and didn't know all of the answers because it didn't cover music you knew, you wouldn't have a hostile attitude and a 'sour' taste.

was it advertised as a "women" quiz? with questions all about women? i certainly didnt think so, and neither did the vast majority of others i knew. i think its total bullshit to say that people are finding fault with it because it was about women, it was simply way to difficult, and loads of people (of both genders) felt left out. The two females on my team were pretty pissed off. neither of them enjoyed themselves and i think the quiz left them feeling a little stupid (as it did with me).
why couldn't a number of people involved with ladyfest have come up with ideas for questions collectively instead of one or two doing the whole thing?

like did you ever honestly think people who hadn't been to college, people under 20, etc would have had any clue as to the answers?

you mention madonna, jessica simpson, etc but somehow fail to remember the art round; dont think i had heard of *one* person (cynthia plaster-caster excluded) that was the subject of a question in that round.

talk about trying to appeal to a broad base of people of both genders?

you'd want to take a hard look at the impression that the quiz last night gave out to the majority of people who were newcomers to the concept of ladyfest.

in fairness.

 

[jane]

Maybe people should just stop being so insecure, and see the quiz as something from which they could come away with new knowledge. But, just to make sure this isn't lost, there were a LOT of 'general' knowledge questions, but people can only seem to focus on the fact that there were a few more academically-slanted ones that some people didn't get.

And one more thing, given that the answers would have related to women in some way, if you narrowed down your options, the questions were much easier than the equivalent ones involving men. And some of them were pretty safe to guess it.

Here're a few examples, that could be considered 'general knowledge' in any quiz:

In what year was Madonna born?
In what country was singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell born?
Name the most useless Spice Girl. (for which, by the way, we accepted nearly anything)
Helen Gurley Brown founded which popular US women’s magazine?
What prize did Alice Walker’s book The Color Purple win in 1983?Author and Journalist Martha Gellhorn was briefly married to another well-known writer. Who was he?
Which Mexican self-portraitist, who, along with her husband, was briefly detained for the murder of Leon Trotsky, would have celebrated her birthday yesterday, were she still living?
In 1973, former Wimbledon’s Men’s Tennis Champion Bobbie Riggs challenged a famous female tennis player to a match, claiming that no woman could beat him. This one did. What was her name?
In what decade did the famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart disappear?
Who was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize?
The 1994 Winter Olympics were marred when figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed in the knees with a bat. Which rival skater was responsible for the attack?
"Is this chicken or is this fish? I know it's tuna. But it says chicken. By the sea." Name the famous wit who asked this question.

 

[egg_]

i thought they were extremely hard

There's no such thing as a hard quiz question, surely - if you know the answer it's easy, if you don't it's impossible. I set the questions for a table quiz once, and it's damn difficult to judge - the fun for participants in a quiz is getting answers right, but it's so hard to guess what people will/won't know (I, for instance, have no idea who Tonya Harding or Jessica Simpson are/were), especially for an older crowd that mightn't have many interests in common

 

[damien]

picking the ten or so easiest questions of the whole quiz isn't exactly a fair sample, is it?

 

[Ex-User (250)]

yikes. i'm outa here.

 

[jane]

Yes, some of the questions were hard. And we wouldn't make them that hard again. In fairness, I've been to about three table quizzes in my life. One of them was about TV theme songs, for which I knew almost NOTHING. And you know what? I still had fun. I didn't blame anyone else for my lack of knowledge of theme songs. I didn't feel ignorant of popular culture, etc, etc.

I can accept the complaints, and I certainly recognise that maybe some of the questions were hard, but I'd personally have the same problem at lots of other quizzes.

What I can't accept is that people seem to be blaming us because they didn't have a good time.