This is an unusual post on
this blog, which otherwise features only questions and answers. But I think
this is the perfect platform to put down my experience of a yearlong social experiment,
which is slowly winding down as we begin the process of drawing curtains over
2015. The idea of asking a daily question on twitter has its inspiration from a
fellow tweeter @DegreeKaapi, who began doing this in 2014, but discontinued it
for some unknown reasons before he had crossed the three figure mark. In fact
when he had posted his intent of a daily quiz, I had given him a week’s notice,
warning that I will start it myself, if he does not do so in a week’s time. So
when his quiz vanished from my timeline, I resolved to start my own on
01.01.2015. And I did without any fanfare. I chose #DailyQuiz as the hashtag
for my daily quiz and the first question appropriately was on Gregorian calendar.
My questions have generally
been topical, relating often to a significant event or commemoration of that
day. The questions haven’t been easy, but neither have they been
extraordinarily difficult. They haven’t been trick questions as quiz masters
are frequently wont to ask. I didn’t have a question bank to draw from each
day. This blog features some 1400 questions, but I never once dipped into it
for #DailyQuiz. Sometimes, the questions would drop into my head straight from
heaven, but on most days (or nights) it was lot of hard work searching and
researching for the questions and the answers. Getting the answers 100% correct
was important to maintain my credibility. Keeping the #DailyQuiz flag flying each
morning was a stressful task, but not because of the paucity of questions to
ask.
When I started #DailyQuiz, I
had no expectations other than sharing my passion for quizzing. I can think of
a dozen benefits of quizzing, but probably this is not the right time or place
to talk about them. But there is one benefit that I cannot resist mentioning.
It is the lateral forays along new paths and making serendipitous discoveries.
Both while setting questions and validating the answers, I often experienced
this profound joy of serendipity. And I thought #DailyQuiz will arouse the
curiosity among my twitter followers and let them experience the same delight.
But I was sadly mistaken. Only one person @LEELAKAPOOR1 understood the true
purpose of #DailyQuiz.
I never cared how people found
answers to the questions. But it was important that they engage with me and
with others. The objective was learning and sharing. Though I never stated it,
Googling to find the answers was never discouraged. Only four followers - @LEELAKAPOOR1,
@DegreeKaapi, @cgBalu and @aar004 engaged with me constantly by answering the
questions. Three others, @maith_i, @happie_hameesha and @plumpernickel also
engaged irregularly. Those who engaged with me on #DailyQuiz could be counted
on the digits of my two hands; that is less than 1% of my 1200 plus followers. Even
those who engaged regularly never retweeted and try to popularize the quiz. So
#DailyQuiz is a failed social experiment.
I made no attempts to market
#DailyQuiz and relied on others to promote it though RT, but that never
happened. More importantly it had no prizes to offer! Twitter with its 140
character limit is a great platform for quizzing, but I quickly learned that a
plain vanilla quiz like mine cannot compete with other kinds of entertainment
that twitter offers. Yesterday I conducted a twitter poll to find reasons for
the poor participation. The answers were
- · Too difficult – 35%
- · Fear of giving wrong answers – 15%
- · Waste of time – 35%
- · Already answered by others – 15%
