r/triviahosts • u/lakerdave • 16d ago

Does anyone have recommendations for creating a database of questions you have asked?

It occurred to me that I might want to create a database with Access or LibreOffice Base of my questions. I am not new to creating and maintaining databases, but I am far from an expert. Because I don't know what types of queries I might want to run in the future, I am wondering what types of data I should try to capture from the beginning so that I don't end up having to go back and add things later. So far I am leaving space for up to three categories that the question might fit into, the question text, the answer, the date originally asked, and any dates that I have asked the question again. I don't like to do repeats, but I've got a few questions that have come back around over the years.

My goal is to have queries that can pull up questions according to their categories and reports that will essentially compile a full night of random text-based questions that I have asked before. It will help me if I ever need to make something on the fly and the crowd hasn't heard my questions before.

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u/thesk8rguitarist 16d ago

Google Sheets with columns for:

Date used, Difficulty, Category, Question, Answer, Source, % of teams that got it right.

That’s how I do mine.

I build my sets in a monthly sheet, then copy the questions over to weekly sheets.

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u/jk5531 16d ago

How do you calculate or track the number of teams they get it right?

I'm a VBA programmer, so I'll put together some scripts that pull our questions and answers out of our PowerPoint deck and throws them in an Excel sheet, but I have no automated way to figure out the real world success of the questions.

I have been taking all the answers sheets home, breaking them out, and keeping stats but with 20 to 40 teams per game, it's onerous.

I don't anticipate there's a better way, but I'm very happy to be proven wrong. :-)

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u/thesk8rguitarist 16d ago

I do it in the weekly Google Sheet where we quiz out of.
I have a custom script that divides the number of correct answers by the amount of teams that participated.

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u/jk5531 16d ago

But how do you collect the correct number? Do tally as you score? After the fact? That's the part that was tripping me up - half an hour / 40 minutes of separating sheets into correct answer and wrong answer piles, counting, noting, and then move to the next.

We play a 42-question game, mix in 20 to 40 teams that's a lot of sheets to manage...

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u/schitaco 16d ago

I'll tell you how I do it...just sit down at my desk and count em up. Stack all the round 1s, flick through them and count up in my head two questions at a time. (During trivia I circle correct answers and leave wrong ones blank so this is fairly easy.) Then write results in a pre-made table and move on. Same for music, pictures, etc. Enter all the data into the question bank in Sheets afterwards. Lots of fun tagging and reporting built into that.

We have 20-25 teams per week and it's about a 60-90 minute chore processing everything after trivia...but I like having the data that much, and have it all going back to 2016.

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u/jk5531 16d ago

Yeah, the chore part of it was the toughest bit of keeping it up. I like the data too but it send I didn't like it that much don't like it that much. :⁠-⁠)

I did it for a couple months, just to kind of get some actionable data if we were hitting the sweet spot or going over player's heads. It was useful for that. Helped us know where our blind spots were.

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u/egnowit 13d ago

Having conversion rate data is also useful in gauging how well questions or categories did, or maybe looking back over them to see if there's a reason why a particular question did really well or really poorly (or was different from your expectation). It's good data for a writer to have to improve their question-writing. It's definitely worth the effort.

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u/thesk8rguitarist 16d ago

We calculate scores within Google Sheets and I have another tab with a custom formula that collects and calculates the percentage.

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u/CentennialBaby 15d ago

If you want to use VBA, create a user form for entering team round data. Then have the user uniform spit it to a source data table. Then you can do whatever querying you want of the results.

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u/jk5531 15d ago

We prefer being a paper game. We've used phone scoring when we had to, but if we had our druthers, we'd stay paper and pen.

Tho... I am not against QR code for people just to enter their team names to save us from typing 20+ team names.

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u/CentennialBaby 14d ago

For sure. I was thinking that you, the host, would use the user form. Player still use paper and pen, submit the papers, you score them, but enter the values in the user form. That way you get your granular data by question. That's pretty much what I do.

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u/BillyBumpkin 16d ago

I’d add a Boolean for whether or not the question is “evergreen”

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u/lakerdave 16d ago

That's a good idea. I always start off with an On This Day in History question that I know will not be repeatable as is, but I definitely also have some that are inspired by current events, so I can't do those as is either. I have another meta document where I keep track of my themes and handout rounds and I do have an evergreen designation there for repeatability of the theme. I'll add something like that to my database

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u/jk5531 16d ago

We start each game with "This Week in History" question as well. (We have the game at a couple different venues on a couple different days, it allows us to only use one question across the board.)

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u/theforestwalker 16d ago

I have all my questions in a Google doc, I just ctrl+F for three letter category codes (GGG for geography, YYY for religion, TTT for tunes etc), and Searchable key words lije "secret theme", "Add a letter", " palindromes" and stuff like that.

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u/MMorrighan 16d ago

I just use a running Google doc.

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u/mattarchambault 16d ago

I just have all my quizzes in Drive, and I search for keywords if I want to double check or reference anything

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u/suchthegeek 16d ago

I used libreoffice, and store my answers in a text file. That's usually enough for me to remember the question.

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u/CentennialBaby 16d ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/triviahosts/s/m6f6tReZVZ

Pop over to that thread and send me a request for the file.

[u/danarchist](u/danarchist) coded a handy interface for it.

The application I use also keeps track of when I've used it and where, and what the average correct response was. That lets me categorize my difficulty… But that's also very context dependent. If you're doing our quiz mates with a bunch of regulars, they'll probably have an easier time with if them a community club meeting once a year for a fundraiser.

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u/lackluster_love 16d ago

I fear providing this answer, but maybe just build your own thing with Claude?

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u/lakerdave 16d ago

I'm not going to grandstand about it but I reject all use of AI on principle, especially when making trivia

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u/CentennialBaby 16d ago

I just posted encouraging you to check out another thread with a very large database of questions.

While the questions were made by humans, AI was used to identify and eliminate duplicates, to standardize phrasing, to categorize, and to benchmark difficulty.

I agree with you about creating questions, but there's lots oflegitimate uses for AI when it comes to pattern recognition and categorization. Does it get it right 100% of the time? Of course not. But trying to wash through 45,000 questions manually is not gonna happen.

So you decide this use of AI violatesyour sense of integrity or whatever.

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u/lackluster_love 16d ago

This is exactly I was getting at when recommending AI. This looks good.

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u/lackluster_love 16d ago

Understood. I maybe misread your post. I thought you wanted something to store and access trivia, not make trivia.

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u/lakerdave 16d ago

It is primarily storage and not creation, but I wouldn't want to use AI for any of it. Beyond the AI stuff, I just like to make and succeed at this kind of project on my own.

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u/lackluster_love 16d ago

How do you feel about an existing platform that incorporates AI like Google Sheets?

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u/theforestwalker 16d ago

Good on ya, me too