When it comes to Sporcle, curators truly do know best. In this blog series, some of the great curators of Sporcle share their expert opinions on curating, top-notch quizzes, up-and-coming Sporclers, and a wee bit of trivia.
This week we feature geronimostilton, curator for the Country and Canada subcategories.
How did you first get involved with Sporcle?
I’ve always been really interested in geography and the world – particularly facts about countries and learning where things are on a map. So back in 2010 I challenged myself to label a map of the world, but a few pencils and a sore hand later I thought, there must be a better way to do this. I went online and searched for a quiz on the countries of the world, and voilà, there was Sporcle in front of me. I created an account, played a few quizzes for about a week and then promptly forgot all about it.
Three and a half years later, I happened to go through roughly the same thought process: I found myself playing the Countries of the World quiz and creating an account (i.e. discovering that I already had one). This time, it was for real — I discovered badges and the quiz creation tools and have been active ever since.
Why did you decide to be a curator for your subcategories?
Once I got my first quiz published in the fall of 2016, I thought that I was getting more of a handle on creating them and I was often trying to help out other quizmakers by giving them tips on their quizzes as well. One day when the Country curatorship opened up I decided to give it a shot, because I was still super interested in countries and wanted to have more opportunities to help others.
A couple of months later, I was really enjoying the first curatorship and interacting with the users creating quizzes for my subcategory, and I had an itch to take on another role. I’m Canadian and my country is celebrating its sesquicentennial this year, and I couldn’t help but notice that the Canada subcategory had been inactive for quite a while. With needapausebutton’s help, I contacted Sporcle to see if anything could be done about that, and thankfully a few weeks later I had taken on my second curatorship. This July, I held some cool events on Sporcle celebrating Canada 150.
What’s your favorite trivia fact having to do with your subcategories?
Country: It has always kind of blown my mind that given the vast difference in political climate between North Korea and Norway, they are separated by just one country – Russia.
Canada: The Canadian postal service, Canada Post, has actually created an official address, complete with postal code, for Santa Claus: North Pole, Canada H0H 0H0. Any mail sent to this address (mainly from children) is opened, read, and responded to by Canada Post employees. Quite inspiring, in my opinion.
What are some of your favorite published quizzes from your subcategories?
Country: goc3‘s recent Secret Country series has had me quite impressed with the obviously huge amounts of time and dedication that he puts into them. I’m also interested in vexillology so any quizzes about country flags always grab my attention, notably sproutcm‘s Flags of Food and Balaitous’s Flags Within Flags And finally, I’d say that you can never go wrong with the classic Countries of the World quiz.
Canada: I think my all-time favourite would have to be iglew’s Canadian Cities: Real or Fake?. Some of the decoys, such as ‘Frostbite Falls,’ ‘Hockey Puck,’ and ‘Grand-Plat-de-Poutine’ are just so funny! (yes, we Canadians enjoy laughing at our own stereotypes). Beyond that, I also enjoyed Translate the Canadian Words, which was one of the quizzes I picked during the Canada150 contest in July. Finally, kudos to mikenew for his Fix the Canada Map quiz.
What are some of your favorite contributed quizzes from your subcategories?
Country: The quiz Zoom Map to Find by gazzso further proves his quizmaking genius and I’m eagerly awaiting future installments in that series. Some others include Country by Nordic Cross-ified Flag and I Can Guess The Country You’re Thinking Of!
Canada: Landmarks with the Canadian Flag is a great one which I also picked for the Canada 150 contest. Build a Mosaic of Canada and 25 Mammals of Canada are two other fun ones.
What are your favorite quizzes from an entirely different category?
I’m a loyal fan of good humour, so I’d have to say Oh, the Irony, Visual Puns, and 30 Gadgets for Lazy People. Yeah, I guess you could say I like slideshows too. I’m also a huge fan of Fawlty Towers (which definitely falls under the humour category as well), so I have to give an honourable mention to smithy3311 and their laugh-enciting Follow that Line: Fawlty Towers.
Which Sporcle Group do you frequent most often?
I initially started out in Groups through Find the Star, which I’ve stayed active in ever since. To stay on top of pretty much everything going on, I’ll check the Recent Discussions page, and I’ve also subscribed to How To & Tips to try and help out other users as quickly as possible.
How can Sporclers in your subcategories best contact you?
Just send me a private message with a link to your quiz(zes) and I’ll do my best to respond. Watch out though, because I’ll usually provide feedback before promising picks!
Are there any Sporclers whose quizzes you think merit more attention than they get?
Wow, what a tough question! I apologize in advance to anyone who I may have left out – but some of the users that have stood out to me recently in my subcategories are mg10, nateeverett, pecheneg, NO_r_WAY and jwalsh101. PenguinsMeercats has also made a few good ones in the Canada subcategory. I also just have to give goc3 another shout out because his recent quizzes have been absolutely phenomenal, although he is now definitely getting the attention that he deserves.
Haiku or favorite Dad Joke (or both):
You really shouldn’t trust atoms, they make up everything.
