Subeta -

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I used Goole to search too like others and the only percentage I saw for giveing valanines gifts to pets was 3% of people. I searched and checked quite a few sites and after seeing all those 3% decides that had to be the answer as it seemed to be most common.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

DebiLee.. You saying that a card is not a gift can be considered a belief, and not fact. Some people might consider cards gifts, and no where did it say Gifts only, not cards. You also say taking them to a grooming parlour isn't a gift, also an opinion. If someone rarely does it, and only does it once or twice a year (say valentine's and the pet's birthday) to that person, it may be considered a gift. Plus, you said GIVE them gifts, not buy them gifts. So by that wording as well, giving your dogs a steak, could be considered giving them a gift. Whether you bought it specifically for them, or not.

I don't mean to be disrespectful or seem so... I'm simply trying to show that your reasoning isn't entirely unflawed (which my own may not be as well)

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

crybabies geeze i used yahoo search, first sentence was practically word for word as the trivia ??? so was about every other phrase
yahoo is all i ever use

stop whinning and go back to the playpen

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Wow, is there a prune juice shortage in Subeta or something? jesus.

Annnnd what have we learned from all this arguing boys and girls? =D That... we can get actual headaches from pink pixelated puppy dogs!

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

wow... alot of arguing over this trivia!
honestly... who cares if the true answer is really 3%.
when the question is googled - regardless of lack of well researched statistics - the answer most frequently shown is 3%.
it's a trivia... there will be errors sometimes... we can't all win every item. and yes - sometimes the answer is subjective and we're not going to agree with the given answer.
you win some... you lose some...
subeta doesn't HAVE to do a trivia and give us cool rare prizes from it!

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I never did find it posted as a percentage. I found that it was approx "9 million" so then I took the population of the US and did the math and came up with the 3%. I never in my wildest dream assumed it would be correct. If they made it so easy that everyone gets the correct answer every time they might as well just give up on the trivia altogether and just give out a free gift each day.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Your answer 3 for the trivia was correct! Youve been given an I Love You Puppy and 214sP

X3 Yay! I gotta puppy!

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Wow, someone thinks they are WAY more important then they actually are.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

The acceptable swear list had nothing to do with you. That was an entirely different discussion that came up in IRC. Again, I am sorry you misread me so severely.

I would actually love to work for Subeta again one day to fix some things like this, however, in the meantime, the most I can contribute to the site is to offer sound feedback in the avenues available to me, including comments on this news post. We don't have to be members of staff to have an impact, after all. Admittedly, it's far easier trying to fix these procedures from within staff than without, where people think it's personal belly-aching and the whining of a sore loser. But, this is the only choice I have right now.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I'm not willing to argue with you offsite because I don't need to say inappropriate things to get a point across.

Apparently, since you were asking what swear words were allowed on the site AND took it offsite in the first place, you were taking the disagreement WAY too seriously. Fetching for insults. I had no idea we were ruffling your feathers so much.

I just don't understand why you searched a trivia question, saw the answer 7 times on the first page, then said 'No that's not good enough.' You just read too. far. into it. I didn't even click the links on google to see if they had accurate research. I said 'Oh, wow, the first three pages all have the same answer. Guess it's 3'

Subeta Procedure. Maybe you should try reapplying and shaping things up.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

And for the record, I never said you were dumb at all. I sincerely apologize if you misunderstood me.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

It's called "targeting", humorless. I'm not going to be dumb enough to be baited into saying anything on site that can get me reported. You're more than welcome to discuss this with me off-site though.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Well, it's nice to know users can have simple debates without some of the users going offsite to insult the other users.

Oh wait. They can't.

If you think Sp4de and I are so dumb, why are you trying so hard to prove your point to us.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Sp4de, I find it kinda strange that you're so willing to argue with someone, and at the same time refuse to read her posts.

Everyone here is free to have their own opinion, but you can't effectively nitpick someone's posts if you don't know what the hell they're talking about.

My opinion on this subject differs from Luxe's, but I'm not about to argue with people that think these kind of questions shouldn't be used. The way I see things here, there can only be a few possible outcomes to all the complaining that almost always happens with these trivia answers:

1-Debi is just going to ignore all this and continue posting whatever questions she feels are appropriate

2-She'll try pleasing those complaining by posting a different type of question, and people will start complaining about some new and completely different flaw or unfairness

3-She'll finally have a nervous breakdown and the trivia questions will stop

No matter what the format of these questions, there's almost always a problem. I remember one non-site-related trivia not long ago that had to do with the difference between buck season and deer season. I knew for a FACT that the winning answer was just plain incorrect, and said as much. Then I let it go and figured not all of the questions were going to be perfectly accurate since there's so much conflicting info out there.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

fooey! i had 6% for the answer and was off! dangit, that puppy is cute! too bad i won't be getting it..

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Quote:

; border: 1px solid ; font-family: georgia; font-size: 10;">
And she also posted on the Comments for that Trivia that the correct answer is the one that shows up the most.

And I'm not going to buy the 'Well she should have posted it on the Trivia page' excuse because you obviously read News Comments or we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I read the news comments AFTER I answered the trivia. DebiLee's clarifications do not help when they are made AFTER people submit the wrong answer due to vagueness.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Quote:

; border: 1px solid ; font-family: georgia; font-size: 10;">Luxe, no one really wants to read through a mile long response. It's a simple concept to copy/paste the exact question and get the answer. You can't dispute the lack of a source when 7 out of 10 of the first results on google had 3% as the answer.

So don't. I doubt Luxe cares if YOU read or reply to her comments, I doubt she is making them specifically FOR YOU.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Humorless, for the love of---This is NOT about ME. I don't know how many ways to phrase that. This is about Subeta's procedure in general. I might read News comments, but how is that fair to the people who choose not to socialize on this site? You should be able to play this game in isolation if you choose to, not have to go post-stalking some member of staff in hopes for some other clue or clarification.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I certainly can cite a lack of source, Sp4de. Just because it was on 10 or more page doesn't mean it is true. How do I know where those sites got their information??

For that matter, I've seen that whole page of "Valentine's Day Facts" verbatim forwarded in my email inbox. Does that make it true? Until I see something that says "According to __________, about 3% of pet owners will give their pet a Valentine's Day gift." where __________ is a polling or survey agency and not just the name of another website, I'm going to continue to say that this shouldn't have been used as a trivia because it can't be verified.

It doesn't matter whether or not I got it right. The trivia was ambiguous.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Wow. If you're going to tell someone what she's saying is wrong, and you don't even read what she's saying... no gain no credibility.

Luxe is NOT saying that 3% isn't the answer to the trivia. She's saying that she doesn't trust 100% that 3% is the real number of pet owners. Anyone can put anything on the internet, and even if 50 people put 3% on some website, 49 of them could all have found this 3% number somewhere faulty, so they could all be wrong.

Honestly, I do think that APPMA or someone with access to the report found the average and released it to some newspaper somewhere, and the rest became history. But who knows.
And that's why she's saying is, trivia answers shouldn't be something questionable.
She's also right about it being an American stat. Granted this site is American, as is Debi, but it is another point that adds a little vagueness to it all.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

The first site I found when I googled the last question said 0, then the next said it was subjectable... 0_o But you'll have that... Can't win them all... So I bought the love puppy...

I know I got this one... I looked harder to make sure... And, funny thing is I found the last trivia answer lookin' for this one!! lol

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I read your long posts that went on about how you chose to read too far into something. I'm saying to you that she gave us a question that gave us the exact answer. It doesn't get much easier than that.

And she also posted on the Comments for that Trivia that the correct answer is the one that shows up the most.

And I'm not going to buy the 'Well she should have posted it on the Trivia page' excuse because you obviously read News Comments or we wouldn't be having this conversation.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Luxe, no one really wants to read through a mile long response. It's a simple concept to copy/paste the exact question and get the answer. You can't dispute the lack of a source when 7 out of 10 of the first results on google had 3% as the answer.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

If you would read my post, Sp4de and humorless, you would see that I am not disputing the result of 3%. Given what DebiLee asked and the clues she gave after the fact, it was the logical answer. However, what I am disputing is the SOURCE, or lack thereof for this statistic. I absolutely refuse to restate everything if you refuse to read my argument completely even once, which it is obvious you have done.

I had no problem finding the answer. I chose to ignore it because I was under the assumption that Subeta had standards for its Trivia questions and answers.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Sorry, the "quiz" I referred to way actually a poll. However, it still doesn't change the fact that 17% was not an option.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Since Sp4de pretty much said what I was going to...I'll just say people have only themselves to blame if they chose to rephrase the question before attempting to answer it.

Over 2000 users didn't seem to have a problem so you having the wrong answer doesn't make your argument very clear to me.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

There is no argument or need to question anyone but your own ability to use google.

If you google "Approximately what percentage of pet owners give Valentine GIFTS to their pets?" you get (without clicking into the results) 7/10 results with 3 in them. If you click any of them it clearly states "About 3% of pet owners will give Valentine's Day gifts to their pets."

If you still want to dispute it, you can click "VALENTINES DAY CONTEST 2008 Contest to win a Scuba.com Gift ..." result and take the quiz. It would tell you if you get it right or wrong.

Quote:

; border: 1px solid ; font-family: georgia; font-size: 10;">About what percent of pet owners will give their pets gifts on Valentines Day?
3
15
30
45

3 is the only one that comes up on other searches. 15 is close to 17 but not close enough.

Read the question carefully.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Humorless, if you read my post, the argument is quite clear.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

...You copy and paste the question. All aside from like 3 results say 3%.

And around 2400 answered correctly.

Where is the argument.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Oh, I know it was about spending time and not buying gifts, Aurianna. I just couldn't find another mention of 60% anywhere, so I was confused.

I also saw that APPMA statistic you listed and disregarded it as wrong for the same reason you said earlier. It was just in the context of giving gifts in general, not specifically for Valentine's Day. That and "over 60%" was too ambiguous for my taste.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

OOOH. Luxe, no, I didn't see that one. I was referring to this one I found in another APPMA manual:
"According to the APPMA survey, over 60% of dog, cat, bird and small animal owners have purchased a gift for their pet"
The purina one though, says include in celebrations and not give a gift. Semantics. woot. I can understand why that would be frustrating.

I'll say that I have yet to see the 3% officially posted anywhere. I only assumed it came from the APPMA. I do know that the:
Dogs 6%, Cat 3%, Birds 4%, Small 3% came from the 2007/2008 APPMA National Pet Owners Survey. I don't know if the survey Lists the overall numbers (the survey isn't public access, just the table of contents), but I do know it includes this:
"Number of pets owned by species"
And that there is an individual section about pet gifts for each animal (including fish, reptiles and horses along with the ones listed above).
If they have the number of each animal as well as the percentage for each animal, an overall percentage can be calculated to some degree (doesn't fully account for people who own more than one type of pet). I just assumed that someone did this math somewhere and that's the number that got released to the public somewhere unknown. But honestly, it was just an assumption, so Luxe... I'm at a loss as to if it's 100% verifiable or not.

And... I think we've discovered the answer to why trivias were switched to Subeta related a few years ago. I remember back in the day when most of the questions were google questions, this kind of debate would pop up allll the time.
I love getting all fired up for almost no reason, but I can see how it can be a strain on some people.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Hmm, since debilee had said it was the only percentage she saw, I kept changing the wording of my search until I saw several sites that listed the same percentage. I did see 17 a lot as well, but that was in searches where "over 50 percent" from of course places that sell pet presents... the other percentages always showed with a mix. Now, when I copied and pasted the question, I just found people asking for the answer on Yahoo :X

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Lypsyl, in the past Subeta HAS made those judgments and allowed for multiple answers. The problem is that right now that functionality in Subeta's Trivia code is BROKEN, so we are reduced to only one possible answer. Previously, if Debi wanted the love spoons Trivia to have multiple answers, she could have just entered love spoons--lovespoons--lovespoon--love spoon--wooden spoon--spoon--etc. Do you see?

For at least a year or more this function has been broken and I nearly positive that this is when the majority of Subeta's complaints about Trivia started. Ideally, it will be fixed in the recode, however, I don't think Subeta should have passed it off as such a low priority in the first place.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Sorry for misreading. Haha, that'd really suck for the pet if an owner considered that a present though.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Quote:

; border: 1px solid ; font-family: georgia; font-size: 10;">According to a national Purina PetLover survey* of 1,000 U.S. pet owners, more than 60 percent plan to include their pet in their Valentine's Day celebrations.

*The survey interviewed 1000 adults, ages 18 and over, living in the United States during a one-week period in early December 2006. Phone interviews were conducted via Ipsos U.S Express, a leader in market and opinion research. Most results have a margin of error of +/- 5% at the 95% confidence level for comparable data between the populations of pet owners.

Is that what you're referring to, Aurianna?

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Luxe, I agree that there have been problems with the trivia in the past, but overall, it has improved tremendously. The issue with the answers is a programming one. You said "I would also suggest allowing for variations in spelling of words and allowing multiple answers if they mean the same thing". The problem with that suggestion is that a computer is incapable of making those value judgements. Making a human evaluate the answers is a pain (for the human) and there will also be misktakes made by the human. Not to mention that sometimes even a human would have trouble making a value judement. Then you would get cries of 'favouritism" in addition to "not fair".

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

You misread, ChillyKitten. That was precisely my point. If a pet owner is spending money on their pet for Valentine's Day according to a survey, I would like to be able to assume that they are spending it on a gift and not some routine expense like vaccinations or sterilization surgery.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

"The context was not in the sense that people are spending money getting their pets spayed, neutered or vaccinated for Valentine's Day."

Sorry for butting in, but that HARDLY seems like a valentines day GIFT, haha xD The poor little animals.
And also, take into consideration that there really is no way to collect this information without the general public actually saying they've bought a gift for their pets. it's a word of mouth thing, especially considering the valentines day trivia commitee isnt going to search through millions of stores and their pet inventory before and after VDay.

My money is that all of the given information on the web is done by POLLING, which is really the only way we're able to tell how many people give pets presents without going around the world and asking them all. It may not be too reliable because not everyone polls, but it's better than not having any answer at all. Maybe other sites had a higher number because they are primarily sites about pets, or perhaps people voted more than once. maybe someone bought their earthworm in the backyard some extra soil, or their pet rock a friend.

On the front page alone, about seven sites all had the same answers. all different sites, with reliable information. All I did was search, and i looked for the majority percentage that any given site stated, and went from there. and hey! I got it right. xD

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

That 60% was for general gifts, not just Valentine's gifts (assuming I'm looking at the same National Pet Owner Survey from the APPMA). But the question clearly asked for Valentine's gifts.

I would think Valentine's gifts to pets would be a much smaller number than gifts in general, as not everyone pays attention to Valentine's day and those that do might not see a point in giving a present to an animal when you tend to give it to a sweetheart. I've never given my cats a Valentine's or Easter present, but I HAVE given them Christmas ones. shrug

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Okay, while I am in no way agreeing that this Trivia was appropriate for Subeta, I would like to offer a few apologies. First of all, I would like to apologize to DebiLee and anyone else I might have insulted with my faulty math in calculating the 16% from one of the links I presented before. I guarantee I would have scored a 12 on my SAT had it not been for the language portion.

Secondly, I am willing to admit that 17.2% of people who celebrate Valentine's Day is not the same as any percentage of "pet owners", and I can fully understand why my answer was incorrect now, given the wording of the question.

That being said, I do not agree that the 3% statistic is correct either, and I would like to explain why. In doing so, DebiLee, I kindly ask that you not take any of my criticisms of this or past Trivias personally. I am making this argument to hopefully improve Subeta and perhaps open some eyes to the idea of setting a standard for future Trivias. I resent being labeled a "sore loser" simply because I find fault in Subeta's procedure for this game. I had planned on addressing this regardless of whether or not answered correctly.

I have yet to see a source for the claim that 3% of pet owners buy their pets a gift on Valentine's Day. While I have seen a multitude of webpages claiming the statistic, none of them reference any specific survey, such as the ones conducted by the APPMA, Purina PetLover or National Retail Federation that I mentioned earlier. Just because the same page of trivia "facts" is posted all over the internet verbatim does not mean the "facts" are true, and it is for this reason that I am greatly disappointed that Subeta would use such an unverifiable source as basis for its own Trivia once, let alone multiple times. The argument that 2,400 people got it correct so it must be fair is just as flimsy as my 16% math, frankly. It doesn't make the question any less obscure or unverifiable if 2,400 people happened to enter "Valentine's Day Trivia" into a search engine to find the result the same way Subeta staff seems to have found the question.

I am further disheartened that succeeding at the last trivia was so dependant upon semantics. "Spending money on a pet for Valentine's Day" should be taken in the same context as having bought that pet a gift. The context was not in the sense that people are spending money getting their pets spayed, neutered or vaccinated for Valentine's Day. Are we to argue that taking one's significant other out to dinner or to the spa or salon doesn't count as a Valentine's Day gift, too? Or is the money spent on these things not the gift in and of itself? Frankly, while I do not expect trivias to be easy, neither do I expect to have to wonder at Subeta staff's definition of a particular word and have my answer dependant fully on their personal opinion.

(This is getting far longer than I intended it to be, however, I am not done yet. I apologize.)

I saw Aurianna mention that the statistic was not arbitrary and indeed came from APPMA. I am withholding judgment of that until I see a link to the APPMA page with that math, because I have already seen the APPMA give me the 17.2% statistic I mentioned earlier. However, percentage aside, I'd like to look at the APPMA. American Pet Product Manufacturers Association. AMERICAN. Therefore, if the survey was based on the APPMA, the trivia should have been worded more clearly to reflect such. "What percentage of American pet owners give their pets a gift for Valentine's Day?" would have been more suitably worded. Without this distinction, I fail to see why a statistic for France, the UK, or any other nation that celebrates Valentine's Day would be incorrect. How are we supposed to know which nation Subeta staff was looking for?

Personally, I would love to see Subeta set a standard for both the wording of Subeta's Trivia questions and deciding from which sources they should come. And given the worldwide demographic Subeta has, I would also suggest allowing for variations in spelling of words and allowing multiple answers if they mean the same thing. I'm not raising these arguments to get the prize that I missed out on. I could genuinely care less about the item. I'm making these arguments because Subeta has a serious problem within its Trivia arrangement that needs to be addressed. I hope that point has come across clearly.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Your answer 3 for the trivia was correct! Youve been given an I Love You Puppy and 214sP

Told you guys it was easy. ;3

and I see many more people won, congrats! Just proves it wasn't as hard as it seemed. all you had to do was search.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

... I know where you probably got your information, since I ran across it in my search, but I dismissed it because I found the National Pet Owner survey said 60%.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I wroe 13 instead of 3 oh well. I have no idea for this one.

I have a quest if you think its kids would you say Children or kids. What about aunts or uncles is there a group of them both?

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I'm curious as to what the "Exact" phrase was that those that got it wrong googled. If you googled the whole question, on the first page of results without even clicking the links, you would see 3% on 6 out of the 10 results.

Good work with the last 2 trivias People are learning they have to read every bit of the question.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

cold feet dont even exsist in subeta!!!!

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Please at least make yoru clarifications in the actual trivia question, not int he comments of the news where people may or may not look.

I got this wrong because I did not see the clarification until after I had answered.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Woohoo, I'm on a roll with these easy trivias!

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

...I think the thing we need to fall back on is that there were 2,400 winners. If there were that many, how could it be too ambiguous?

I think it was a perfectly legit trivia. I ran across some crazy statistics at first, but realized that they did not quite match what we were supposed to look for. When I cut and pasted the query into google, I also found practically a whole page of the correct answer.

As for people blogging anything, even a wrong answer... be careful who your sources are, and stay away from blogs.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

DebiLee, great job on the trivia. (Yes, even the ones I have NO clue about) lol And I love the non-subeta related ones.... especially the ones you actually have to look for.

And shame on anyone who actually sits here and whines "not fair". Not everyone will get EVERY trivia!

Good luck on the upcoming

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Event!
Your answer 3 for the trivia was correct! Youve been given an I Love You Puppy and 214sP

Yay!
Got the next one right! Good thing I watched the Today show yesterday. >.<

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