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Authoring flow

From 'create quiz' to a quiz other people can take.

Decision: ⚪ idea

Context

Any account opens the quiz editor and builds a quiz end to end - questions, answers, weights, orientations, result modules. Same editor we use for our own quizzes, no separate creator tier.

stateDiagram-v2
    direction LR

    [*] --> Draft
    Draft --> Review: submit
    Review --> Draft: request changes
    Review --> Public: approve
    Public --> Draft: edit
    Review --> Removed: reject
    Public --> Removed: take down

    classDef private fill:#eef2ff,stroke:#6366f1,color:#1e1b4b
    classDef live fill:#ecfdf5,stroke:#10b981,color:#064e3b
    classDef gone fill:#fef2f2,stroke:#ef4444,color:#7f1d1d

    class Draft,Review private
    class Public live
    class Removed gone
State Author Others
Draft takes and edits freely no access
Review takes it, edits locked no access
Public takes and shares full access, listed in discovery
Removed no access no access

Review is moderation. Every transition out of review carries a written reason.

  • Changes requested - The quiz goes back to draft; the author fixes it and resubmits when they want to.
  • Rejected for breaking the rules - The quiz is removed, not returned - see the criteria in moderation.
  • New version - Editing a public quiz opens a new draft, not a review. The author keeps working on it as long as they like and submits it themselves; the approved version keeps serving until the new one is approved.
  • Removal after publishing - Approval is revocable - a public quiz that turns out to break the rules is removed the same way.

Opportunity

  • Our own output is the ceiling on the catalog. Creators remove it - they bring ideas we would never staff.
  • The author never waits on us to iterate, only to reach other people.
  • The 2023 editor proved demand with no promotion at all: dozens of community quizzes, including large ones like "+500 questions" and non-political ones like music preferences.
  • The creator's alternative is building a platform, a scoring algorithm and reach from zero. We hand over all three - hundreds of thousands of users a year, an editor, and configurable result modules.

Risk

  • The full editor surface is a lot for a first-time creator - LLM authoring exists to soften that.
  • Review latency between submit and publish kills the momentum a creator had while building.
  • Edit-after-approval is the obvious bypass vector and has to be closed by the state machine, not by trust.
  • Most drafts will be abandoned; that is fine, but it shapes what we measure.