editors note: this piece is the first installment of an ongoing project to critique the intricacies of political quizzes on the internet. The rules and grading scale are available in the introduction of the project.

The Political Quiz Show
http://madrabbit.net/webrabbit/quizshow.html

1. Depth of Coverage:
Well, the questions basically cover every possible political issue, as of like 1999. But, there really isn’t any substantial questioning. It’s all either 2 option multiple choice, or a list of things to check or uncheck. They also don’t even touch the reasons for political beliefs. All in all, the test covers a wide area, but since the criteria is depth…2

2. Practical Question Asking:
All practical all the time, there isn’t a single theoretical question to be found, which isn’t necessarily good. All the questions are modern political issues that every politician has had to answer at some time or another. So they get props for that, but, the questions aren’t specific enough as to warrant real solutions or suggest any course of action. 3+

3. Severity of Slanted Questioning:
Everybody has an opinion, and in this case so does every question. I award –2 points for the epidemically biased questions, and +4 points for having the slant ludicrously split both ways. 2

4. Data stacking:
Not too shabby, a good mix from everywhere, a little heavy in the “Government and Personal Morality” sphere, but I’ve seen much worse. 4

5. Reasonable Answer Interpretation:
Here is where it all catches up. The political quiz shows seems to believe that everyone’s personal beliefs fit on a nice straight line, and that Jesse Jackson is the most Liberal person ever, and that Ronald Reagan is the most conservative person ever. Representing anyone as a nice moderation of the two extremes is far fetched, let alone fitting all of humanity in there. They also insist on the weighting of each question the same, regardless of what it is or how it’s asked. And all answers are scored as conservative or liberal, there are no neutral answers. -0

6. Accurate Representation of Existing Political Groups/Leaders:
Well, if you’re going to make political leaders the yardstick of your system, this isn’t a bad ordering. But I would have like to see someone outside of the recent political landscape. 4

7. Bonus Points:
The whole “who do you trust more?” section is pretty absurd; any student of history regardless of politics would know answer the questions the same. The number of questions may be stacked toward governing morality, but the scoring system sure isn’t my consistent answering of keeping the government out of my life, and my pocketbook, netted me a score of 32/40, with 40 being conservative and 0 being liberal. So according to The Political Quiz Show, I am 82.5% Conservative which isn’t quite right. Bonus points? ehh…2, merely because operate on a 40 point scale like I do.

Total Points: 17/40, the bar has been set, extraordinarily low, but at least it's set.