Submitting Categories
Category Format
Sample Category
Will You Use My Category?

Submitting Categories

We welcome you to send in a new category. However please note that once your category is mailed to us, it becomes the property of Mzinga. If you plan to use your material commercially then you may want to think twice before submitting a category. Also by submitting a category, you are assuring that the material being submitted is not already copyrighted (i.e., is not copied straight out of a book, game, or other such media).

Before you go ahead and submit a category, consider the guidelines below. Right now about 40-50% of the categories submitted are thrown away for one or more of the reasons listed.

Many people just submit a category NAME without the actual LIST! We are only interested in full categories with at least 20 items in them! Sending us a message containing only the text "Famous People" is not a category.
Keep your category free of profanity or material inappropriate to Talk City (see our Standards). Your category should be appropriate for a family audience. If you wouldn't feel comfortable showing it to a child, then it's inappropriate for our audience.
Make sure your category does not already exist. You should not submit a category unless you have played long enough to feel confident that your category is not already in the game.
Do not make your category ridiculously easy or ridiculously obscure (not even ridiculistly obscure :-). We are also removing categories that become rapidly outdated (e.g., about other players), categories about obscure bands, or categories that require personal information. Your category should be somewhat general; if it is not suitable for a TV game show, it is probably not suitable for Ridiculist. And remember that our audience is international -- please submit categories that a player in Bombay could guess as easily as one in Boston.
Write your questions so that they do not become outdated. For example, "Name Sacramento Kings Players" will become outdated next year. If you are giving a question such as this, be sure to qualify it with the date, "Name Sacramento Kings Players in 1997"
Remember to spell check your category and check for accuracy.
Make sure your category is in the right format. The format is described below. Categories that are not in the proper format will be returned to you or simply thrown out.

Category Format

The format for categories is given below in the same format that you would use to submit a category. Mail your categories to ridiccategories@talkcity.com in plain text format. Do not encode your text as attachments. For the subject, give the name of the category and the word "Ridiculist".

	Descriptions	Example
•	The first line is a comment that describes the category.	Rock Bands from the 1960s. Category by Foxman:
•	All the answers follow, one per line...	Blood Sweat and Tears
•	Alternate answers are separated by the \| character - both "The Beatles" and "Beatles" are valid answers.	The Beatles\|Beatles
•	Answers must be less than 79 characters long.	The Rolling Stones\|Rolling Stones\|Stones\|The Stones
•	Answers must not contain an apostrophe (') or a quote (")	Hermans Hermits
•	Spell out and give numerical answers	The Four Tops\|The 4 Tops\|Four Tops\|4 Tops
•	For names give the first+last names as well as the last name (separated by the \| symbol)	Jethro Tull\|Tull
•	The first of the alternate answers is the one the bot displays at the end of the game, so use it for the most complete version.	Credence Clearwater Revival\|Credence Clearwater
•	You can add more information for the bot to display at the end of a round by putting it in parentheses for the first answer in the answer list. The bot always displays the first answer when it presents the final list. Make sure that you include an alternate answer that does not contain the information in parentheses.	The Monkees (Not spelled Monkeys)\|Monkees
•	An answer given by a player is considered correct if the player's answer contains anywhere inside it one of the answers selected by the bot. So, in this example, any of these responses would be correct because the second option, "Who" is contained within all of them: The Who, Who, I Don't Know Who They Are, The Whom	The Who\|Who
•	Avoid questions with ambiguous or multiple answers. In this case, answering "smith" would be correct for two of the items. The category should say that full names are required, and the \|smith should be removed.	dean smith\|smith joe smith\|smith
•	Spell check and verify the validity of the answers
•	There should be 20 questions minimum per category, or the category won't be fun to replay.
•	The category shouldn't have more than 40-50 items or it will be frustrating to play (too hard to guess which 10 answers the bot chose).

We'll do our best to add new categories as fast as we can!

Sample Category

Here's the full sample Ridiculist category so you can see the formatting:

Will You Use My Category?

It usually takes about 6 to 8 weeks for a submission to be edited and added to the database. However, if your submission is a duplicate, is too obscure or too broad, or has less than 20 listed items, it will not be considered. We currently have more than 1,000 categories, with an average of 75 submitted each week. Because of the high volume of submissions, we cannot write to acknowledge acceptance of a submission.

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Contents

Submitting Categories

Category Format

Sample Category

Will You Use My Category?