User blog:JimmyWalesQuiz/Jimmy Wales wants to talk to you about Quiz Night Beyond

Did you ever play one of those badly-organized but extremely fun Zoom quizzes that sprang up in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic? Groups of friends or family members would sometimes get together to play trivia games and test their knowledge of pop culture or whatever their favorite subject might be. It was a great way to pass the time in the early days of shelter in place, when many of us were home for so much of the time.

I was playing those with my family when it occurred to me: I bet I could make it better.

At this point I should probably stop and re-introduce myself to the community here. Hi, I’m Jimmy Wales. I co-founded Fandom back in 2004 and I’m the founder of Wikipedia. I’m still involved in the business on the board of directors, but believe it or not this is my first edit here on Community Central in over ten years. And I couldn’t be more excited to be back!

Today I wanted to talk to you about my new virtual quiz product. It’s separate from Fandom’s newly-expanded Trivia Quiz feature and doesn’t live here on the site, but what they share is what, I believe, is an appeal to wiki editors and fans of the site alike. The Fandom community represents the collective knowledge of pop culture, and putting that to the test is fun!

Knowing that, I launched Quiz Night Beyond.

What is Quiz Night Beyond?
Like I was saying, as I was playing Zoom trivia early in the pandemic, I wanted to make it better: more fun, more interactive, and so easy to set up that anyone could do it with no tech knowledge required. That’s when Quiz Night Beyond was born. It’s an interactive experience, and here are some of the ways you could use it:


 * A highly personalized quiz for a loved one’s birthday, with questions about anecdotes and in-jokes that only those closest to them would know
 * Tackling a really difficult Harry Potter quiz with other members of your Hogwarts house
 * General knowledge trivia with family and friends, to see which of you is the smartest

It even has the ability for us to add some special immersive flourishes to it for the right occasion. Imagine you’re playing a game of Stranger Things trivia. Now imagine the screen begins to twist itself and bring you into the world of the Upside Down. That’s a big step up from seeing your friend’s living room in the background.

Quiz Night Beyond is run by the same small team as WT Social, my social network based on the same ethos of community and collaboration that Wikipedia and Fandom were founded on&mdash;including making the internet a more fun and less toxic place. We’ve been growing Quiz Night Beyond over the last year in that same spirit, and we’ve been adding more features and functionality while bringing test groups together for test playthroughs so people could see what it’s all about&mdash;which has included Fandom staff and users alike.

Now, we’re ready to put it in front of even more people. That’s where you come in.

I want to hear from you–and host you!
I want to show the Fandom community what Quiz Night Beyond is all about. To kick it off, I’m going to be joining the Fandom Discord server this Wednesday, March 16th to hold an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the community at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 6pm GMT. I’ll talk to you there about Quiz Night Beyond and answer all of your questions about it, plus anything you might want to ask me about Fandom, Wikipedia, or any of my other ventures.

From there, we’ll start getting groups of Fandom community members together for special quiz sessions hosted personally by me. You interested? You can let me know in the comments, reach out to your Wiki Representative to let them know, or message Fandom staff at Special:Contact.

I look forward to talking to you on Wednesday and hosting you soon!