editors note: this piece is the second 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, and Phase 1 is available here

The Worlds Smallest Political Quiz
http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html

1. Depth of Coverage:
Being as how the self-proclamation of being the smallest political quiz, I wasn’t predicting much, and I didn’t get much in return. For only being 10 questions, they cover more area than I expected. No dilly-dallying around it 10 unique questions that really hit most of the high points of national politics, minus of course the utter lack of questions about national security. I anticipated an ultra low score for this one but was pleasantly surprised. 2

2. Practical Question Asking:
Short, sweet, and straight to the point. There is some problems with the questioning, but lack of practicality is not one of them. 5

3. Severity of Slanted Questioning:
Aside from every question’s affirmative answer being the Libertarian point of view and the explicitly defined justification in half the questions…oh wait, that’s basically the text book definition of slant, which doesn’t bode well if you desire to score big in this category. It probably deserves a 0, but because they aren’t sneaky and underhanded about their preference…1

4. Data stacking:
Every question is absolutely different that every other question, while this is a by-product of asking only 10 of them, it still scores big here. 5

5. Reasonable Answer Interpretation:
For the sake of science, I conjured up a series of intellectually consistent views and plugged them into the quiz. Remarkably the simplistic nature of the quiz nails the interpretation of the quiz questions picture perfect. The two-dimensional board is a vast improvement over anything else I’ve seen. They correctly simplify the political spectrum into two areas, economic and personal, and plot you based on how you believe the issues of those areas should be dealt with, of if they should be at all. The “Centrist” category bugs me though, while the rest of the labels are basically political ideologies defined by a set of standards, the “centrist” square basically means you believe a lot of things from different ideologies, and I believe it’s a mistake to define no-ideology as an ideology itself. It’s similar to having a defined religion of atheism; it’s a contradiction of terms. But as I have yet to see better, 5+

6. Accurate Representation of Existing Political Groups/Leaders:
Well done, as pointed out in previous question, not only does it hit the political parties on the head, it graphically explains what there differences are and why you lie were you lie. A little more modernity or examples of political leaders wouldn’t hurt though. 4

7. Bonus Points:
I appreciate brevity, so two points for that; and another point for the cool checkerboard thing. The explanations of political philosophies also earn them two more points. I like the general vibe the site gives out so I award two points for that, but I take them right back for the total disregard of foreign policy issues, which incidentally is essentially the only reason I’m not a member of the Libertarian Party. A quick check of mental math revels 5 bonus points.

Total Points: 27/40, not to shabby