You're in the Spotlight

What do you do with your spotlight awards?  What should I do with my spotlight award?

I remember the first time I was given the opportunity to hand out a "spotlight award", I didn't really know what it was.  I saw a fun little quiz on cities in Canada that wasn't really unique or exciting, but one that I particularly enjoyed.  I don't remember if I even noticed it on the front page, but realized afterwards how the whole system worked.

I got another spotlight very quickly, so I decided to spotlight my Lil' Self-Referential Logic Test.  The Hardest Quiz on Jetpunk is one of my favourite quizzes, but there are barely any other logic-based quizzes like it, so I made a smaller, easier one.  The quiz got a bunch of takes and nominations; it was pretty cool seeing a quiz I made get more than 10 takes!  I eventually spotlighted a random quiz in a series I made: Words that End in "-usty"; it turns out spotlighting at the beginning of summer gets you mad takes.  Over 1200 takes so far for a quiz that was not overly creative or innovative.

Spotlights seemed to come regularly when they first started, and I spotlighted other people's quizzes a couple times. However, I mostly just picked quizzes of mine that I thought were cool.  I think I spotlighted myself 6 times and other users 3 times, or thereabouts.  It was also very cool when other people spotlighted my quizzes, even if entirely unexpected and I had to make emergency changes to get it up to snuff! At least I eventually got Mergeography to a place I could tolerate it. But I digress.

This blog comes to you at a time when I have a spotlight sitting in my inventory.  I don't think I've had a spotlight award to hand out for over two months, so I feel like it's an uncommon commodity these days.  I have a couple quizzes that have high nomination rates but low take counts: Lil' Self-Referential Logic Test #2 and How Many Abraham Lincolns? are ones that I'm considering putting the spotlight on.  Or I could just go for mass takes and try to push myself to 20k takes faster by spotlighting my recent SAT Words Click Quizzes series. However...

FOUR of my quizzes have received spotlights from cool, generous, and probably good-looking people over the last few months. Maybe I should pay it forward... maybe someone who reads the blogs has a great quiz that's underappreciated!

Feel free to chat in the comments about what you do with your spotlights.  Is it tacky to spotlight your own quizzes?  Should I avoid spotlighting my own quizzes? Do Abraham-Lincoln-related math quizzes need more attention?  Or are you a quiz maker who has made a wonderful quiz and polished it perfectly, only to get 12 takes?  Or do you know an underappreciated quiz maker who has a wonderful and polished quiz that just doesn't have the love it deserves?

Legal disclaimer: Please only include links to one of your quizzes. If it has glaring issues and needs polish, I likely won't pick it unless you clean it up before you link it. I am unlikely to pick one of your quizzes if you have hundreds of thousands of takes or quite a few featured quizzes.  Contest ends, I dunno, maybe February 4 or something. Prize has no cash value; I have no control over schedule of spotlight date.  Keep in mind this is just a fun way to discuss what we do with spotlights, so please no dumping on anyone's quizzes and don't feel bad if your super-intricate map quiz loses out to some stupid novelty quiz... I'm a man of many weaknesses, and novelty is one of them.