I guess things really do need time to simmer before they catch on...

I have received more emails in the last month or two about my poly-gon quiz than I did in the entirety of last year. In a way, that's awesome! More people are curious about poly and/or curious about its different facets. Frankly, I think my poly friends need to spend more time thinking about this stuff on a personal level.

But what strangers don't know when they take the test is that I have barely looked at the thing since I wrote it. Not because I didn't put a lot of hard work into it or because I don't still think about it (I probably have another 50 questions jotted down somewhere or other just in case I ever get around to revising it), but because it broke my heart.

I wrote that quiz off and on over a period of two years. I came up with an elaborate 2.5 dimension geometric pattern that depended on the old OKC model of quizzes, where skipped questions meant something and you didn't have to format every question. Then OKC came up with Hello Quizzy the final week, when I knew for sure it was going to become a reality. I had to start over from scratch.

I was racing against the clock to get it entered into a contest on romance, to be sure Polyamorous people got some recognition as romantic, too. But when I entered it at the last second possible, heart pounding and brain sweating, I was told that my (only just published) quiz was "a classic" because I had kept the name from a previous draft that was more than a month old.

OK, fine, whatever. But then, the real heartbreak... it was off. Most of the scores were relative to other places on that overwrought geometric pattern I'd devised, which didn't work at all with the new scoring system and may not have worked with the old one either. I made a few preliminary tweaks and checked its popularity every day, but it went days without any takers, even weeks. When someone did take it, they would be upset about their result (including one of my own partners), and all of my passion and energy seemed to inspire people in the opposite ways that I had intended. I just kind of backed off from it.

The quiz isn't perfect, but neither is it completely bad. I doubt most takers will get more than one space off from their "true" score, but recalibrating the scores would be even more tedious (and relativistic) than rewriting it from scratch. Some day, I will do just that. I may have to throw out the graphic altogether, which would mean the new test would also need a catchy new name and spiffy new graphics (I built those from scratch also... one box at a time... the "hours spent" shown on OKC is only half the reality, if that).

If and when I do rewrite the quiz, I will pay closer attention to subjective scoring (because some questions are more important than others). I will include some newer, subtler results that expand our notions of polyamory even further, and probably cut down on the space given to monogamists and cheaters, since they don't take the quiz much anyway. And I will try to incorporate distinctions between the freedoms people want in a relationship and the actions they take, since many people are polyamorous in either spirit or action, but not both.

In the meantime, I will let the flawed quiz stand, but please understand that I am not making changes at this time. I read messages, and I appreciate the encouragement, but that is all I can give at this time.

That said, if it sounds interesting, I recommend taking it. But take it with a lover (or two). Talk over your answers with each other and identify where you are alike and where different. Talk about how you define polyamory (or other forms of non-monogamy) and feel free to disagree with my assessment. It doesn't matter what I think anyway, it matters what the people in your life think.

With love,

Free