Interview of a JetPunker #20 - baptistegorce

To be honest, I have several ideas in mind, but this one is excellent, so I'll consider it (we have time, before the publishment of a new interview 😅), and come back to you when I would have chosen. Thank you for suggesting it!

No worries, I thought you'd deserve to be interviewed yourself at one point! And I know there's not many users for whom it would make sense to be the interviewer.

Hi Stewart! I thought about it (I know, I needed too much time... 😅), but I've decided to opt for your suggestion for the 20th interview. Are you still agree to do that with me? I would really enjoy it.

I'd love to! I'll be sure to do you proud 😄

Hello Poirot, it's taken a while to make sure this interview goes perfectly, and also scheduling problems between us! Are we finally ready to begin?

Oh, great, thank you very much! Yes, I am ready to begin.

We'll start off with something simple... for those who live under a rock and don't know the creator of this delightful series, who are you?

Haha! As you maybe know, I’m the cruel baptistegorce, Poirot on Discord, evil interviewer and sinister quizmaker. No, more seriously, I’m a French JetPunker. I am mostly active on the French section of the site, which I really like. I guess I’m mostly known for my interview series on the English section, and maybe one or two of my quizzes, like the Scrabble ones.

I know the site since 2015, but I’m truly active since 2017. I would consider me as a classic quizmaker, because I spend most of my time on the site creating quizzes, but I also really like blogging. I’m also the administrator of the French JetPunk Discord server (with my dear Anna helping me to moderate it), in charge of the French spotlights and the creator of the Focus series (two daily French series, about Tolkien's and Rowling’s universes, which I guess have their place on the French section, a bit like the On This Day series by toowise, but with a specific theme, and twice, so during two whole years). 

I also have two brothers, that you surely don’t know on the site (their usernames are Chiffou and GORCE). And… I think that’s all for this first question.

That is excellent, I had no idea you had two brothers on the site! It seems you are a very active JetPunker.

Of course, this being interview #20, you are rather well known for this series. How did you come up with the idea for it?

Well, I could answer it in one word: Malkiboy. Nevertheless, I’ll try to develop it a bit.

When I joined the JetPunk Discord server, in early March 2020, I have had published only one blog, in French, which is actually just a poor announcement for one of my French quiz series. I didn’t really know where I could find the RUB (I wasn’t very active on the English section on the site) and I actually didn’t really care about it. But the first member of the server who welcomed me was a certain Malkiboy. Honestly, I didn’t know him at all at this moment. But this guy was really friendly and kind with me, so I decided to check is profile on the site. And I discovered his famous and incredible series: Life of a JetPunker. I read half of them the same day. I really liked these fictions about JetPunk but also many other things and important values, on the Net or in life itself. I truly understood what a blogger is thanks to Malkiboy, and I decided to become one too, trying to follow this awesome example.

I then created my first series: "Les raisons d’un succès". Despite the fact that these blogs are written in French, I consider they met a satisficing success. I was very happy. But I wanted to create a concept in English. It’s a bit stupid, but when I read for the first time LOAJ on the server, I didn’t know what that means and I didn’t really want to ask, so I tried to guess myself. But I misread, and understood IOAJ. One of my subjections was “Interview of a JetPunker”. That’s as simple as this. And my first interviewee was evidence: Malkiboy, of course.

We created the questions together, he helped a lot to improve the structure of the blog, which has evolved but which is still very similar nowadays, more than one year and half later. Malkiboy has been one of the most important users in my JetPunk adventure. He inspired me many ideas (interviews, French server, ...), and was what I would call an "online friend", my very first one, because I wasn’t very active at all on Discord at this moment. Losing him was very sad. I wouldn’t be the same JetPunker today without his help and good influence. Sadly, some stupid dramas made him leaving both the server and JetPunk...

While it is a great loss that Malkiboy left JetPunk, it's probably not worth bringing that drama into here, to avoid derailment.

It appears these interviews have formed a very important part of your JetPunk journey. So, I must ask, of the previous 19 interviews so far, which would you say has been your most enjoyable to do?

Well, I have to precise that I really liked doing most of the interviews. I learn many interesting facts about many of my poor interviewees thanks to these blogs, and I became online friend with some of them thanks to this concept. But I don’t really know why, excepting yours which I can’t compare to the other ones because of its ton of inedited and interesting facts..., I would choose the Penguinish one. 

I can’t really explain why that one, because I can’t pick out a particular element to show that I really enjoyed writing this one specifically, but it’s the case, in my mind. To illustrate it, if you have been one of the interviewees, I maybe gave to you this interview as an example. I guess it’s maybe because it still was the beginning of the series, something kinda new for me, but the structure of a classic interview was already here. All the conditions were here to have fun creating it, without being bored (that’s not at all currently the case, I’m still loving interviewing awesome JetPunkers, but it’s more habitual, less original for me, after 19 blogs in the series).

It makes complete sense that after 19 blogs the excitement of writing them has diminished somewhat. But it is great you still enjoy them a lot, and I hope to see many more as we continue into the future!

Similar to the last question then, which interview was the hardest to conduct? What made it so difficult?

Haha! Good one, and I have to explain some maybe-interesting facts about three interviews. But to introduce all of them, you have to know that most of the interviews have been made on Discord, but not all of them...

First, I would say the Hines one. I don’t want to be misunderstood: I just loved writing this one with Caleb and Joshua, because they gave very interesting answers and it was very original to have more than one interviewee. I really liked this one. But the fact is that the HinesBrothers decided to stop using Discord just a few months before this interview, so we did it on a "weird" website (sorry, I forgot the name). I didn’t know it, I was completely lost and refreshing the page was removing all the previous messages... Of course I did it, so I lost things, I had to copy every single message which was sent to not lose it! Eventually we finally finished the interview, and I’m actually proud to say that this one had been completely written in real time, like a true interview.

Then, the Fionathegreat’s one. And I won’t be long about this one, just read the blog and you will immediately understand. Sorry, but there was almost nothing to say. The interview has been done under a Fiona’s quiz, so the communication was really difficult, and Fiona wasn’t really... co-operative, I would say. I don’t want to be mean, just honest: that’s with no hesitation the interview I’m the least proud of. 

Finally I would like to write a bit about the MG’s one. You may know that he’s Brazilian, so his native language is Portuguese. And we did this interview directly on JetPunk, on a collaborated blog. I posted all the questions on the blog, and MG had to answer but... to understand correctly, he used a translator and then saved. All the blog was translated in Portuguese… I have to admit that I was pretty angry, but then MG fixed his mistake and I calmed down.

Wow, I never considered the troubles of communicating outside Discord (or even JetPunk). When we had conducted my interview, it felt like it went so smoothly. I can imagine technological and language barriers certainly created a number of issues.

So, now we know a bit about you, let's delve deep into the details. How did you start your journey on JetPunk?

Well, that’s a funny little story (at least for me). When I was in CM2 (≃6th year), my teacher propose to all of the students of my class to have support courses, between 1 and 2pm, once a week. But the thing was that... only students who didn’t need at all this kind of lessons decided to came with her. I was part of this group of students. To help us to learn things and not waste this hour, she decided to show us an American website which she discovered a few months before : JetPunk. 

Anyway, each week, on the same computer, we were all shouting country names that our teacher was typing (it was terribly noisy). Every Thursday, our objective was to improve our total score. I can remember that one of our first tries was about 50 answers found (yes, I know, that’s pretty bad...), and I was shouting "Fiji !" again and again but my teacher didn’t want to type it because she thought it wasn’t a country... That’s how I discovered my current favourite website.

That is absolutely fascinating, that's a very nice way to be introduced into JetPunk, and I can imagine a lot of joy (and frustration) comes from playing JetPunk with your entire class.

Now, despite what some here might think, there's more to the world than JetPunk! So, what do you like to do outside of JetPunk and blogging?

You sure do have a lot of hobbies, must be tough to balance them all. Looking at one in particular that caught my eye, you mentioned you ski during winters!

This is a privilege of living near (French) mountains, so I must ask: What do you enjoy about skiing so much?

That is intriguing, it does seem as though part of the enjoyment for you is because your slopes are French slopes. As you must be a proud frenchman, what do you love most about your country?

As you know (or have noticed reading my poor and ugly English), I’m French, and proud to be. But what do I love the most in my country? That’s a difficult question, because I have too many things in mind... I think I won’t be very original, and I’ll talk about the French culture in general.

I’m admirative to see the importance that France had, and still has, in the world of culture. Since the Middle Age, we are probably one of the most influential countries in the world, or at least western world. France is known for its beautiful monuments (Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe,...), castles (Versailles, Chenonceau,...) or other piece of architecture (Mont Saint-Michel), for its famous painters and sculptors (Rodin, Renoir, Delacroix,...), its compositors (Bizet, Saint-Saëns,...), I could go on: we are very well represented in all kind of arts.

Not only in traditional forms, but we are able to evolve: we are one of the most important countries in the world of comics (Asterix, Iznogoud,...) and we marked the video game one (with masterpieces like Rayman, Another World,...).

I could mention gastronomy too, because of course we have the best one cuisines in the world, you can’t deny it... I think that’s just impressive to look at this amazing influence. It makes me proud to be French, and to receive the heritage of all these artists, in their own fields, on their own way. I’m convinced that culture is the best way to change the world, and I think I can affirm that France understood it too, centuries ago.

France truly has been an important part of World History, however it would be naïve to say they are perfect; everybody has their flaws.

So, if you could change one thing about France, what would it be?

Hmm… That’s a difficult one. But I have an idea. I would say the feeling of many French people about the History of our country. Many of us aren’t able to assume some part of our History.

Nowadays, our politics still have debate about Pétain.

Nowadays, we are still talking about polemics on TV info channels about Colbert.

Nowadays, Algeria war is still not well taught at school.

That’s a problem. I think we have to change it. We have to assume: yes, France did make mistakes in its History. Big mistakes. Like all countries on Earth. But it’s completely impossible to stop our History here, because of our past. Like Sartre said, we aren't determined by our past. We have to apologize and not repeat the same mistakes, but we have to go ahead. Many French people would disagree, but that’s for me one of the main problem of my country, and I think and know that we are able to change it.

Admitting your mistakes and learning from them is a very important part of life in general. Which brings us swimmingly to the next question.

Here on JetPunk we've made our fair share of mistakes, and in particular the Blog section on JetPunk has seen its fair share as well.

So, if you could change one thing about JetPunk Blogs (as they are now), what would it be?

I’ve to admit that before the awesome Blog Update (and also the "It's Time For A Change"), I would have many things to answer. Now, I consider that the JetPunk blog section is a lot better, very enjoyable. 

One of my main wishes would be a higher activity on the French RUB section, but I guess we can’t do anything to encourage French users to write blogs, and I’m already happy to see that we have a few great bloggers, of course a lot less than the English section, but more than all others. 

There would be also some little things I would like to change in blogging itself, in the bloggers mind, maybe in term of blogs published, but I won’t complain: the situation is a lot better since the necessary and useful "It's Time For A Change". We can currently all find a blog we could like reading, so I think the Blog Section reached its goal, and I hope it will continue like that.

I'm greatful the Blog Update, and ITFAC blog were well received (and necessary), and especially hearing from a reknowned blogger that there is few problems remaining!

Now, as a moderator on the French Discord server, you are in charge of the User Spotlights for the French section of JetPunk. These appear on the French JetPunk front page every Monday. How do you feel these have gone so far?

To clarify it for those who don’t know it, I created a French JetPunk Discord server in May 2020. The server began to be very active at the end of the year 2020, and grew up a lot. It currently has around 90 members. I’m pretty proud of this achievement, permitted by many awesome members of the French JetPunk community, especially BolyaiAnna that you probably know, the other moderator of the server, also in charge of the account punkfrancais.

To help her, very busy by featuring quizzes for our beautiful section almost everyday, we decided that I would be in charge of the French spotlights, the "mises en lumière". They have been introduced in early May 2021. It’s only three quizzes weekly, and not ten daily like on the English section, but I think it’s completely adapted to what our section needs.

I really like this concept: each member of the French Discord server is able to suggest a quiz, and every Saturday, we vote for our three favourite quizzes, which are spotlighted on the French front page the following Monday. And I am very happy to see it’s a huge success both on the site itself and on the server. Tens of members vote each week, and the spotlighted quizzes have very good stats when they are on our front page.

It’s an awesome feature of the French section (I can’t thank you enough for this chance, Stewart)! I’m happy to say that, despite the fact that I believed knowing very well the French section because of the fact that I check recent users quizzes daily for years, I discovered some hidden gems, and I think many users are in the same situation. So yes, that’s very positive, in my opinion, and I would hope to never remove this feature!

The French Discord has collectively achieved great things with this Spotlight feature. I can't thank you enough for how easy you've made it on my part to do this. While the French section is not big enough to justify daily spotlights like English, this weekly, community-voted, system seems to work effortlessly.

Speaking of collaboration on that Discord, you were a very active part of making French Interesting Facts a reality, do you think this was a success?

To begin, I would like to thank all the members who participated in this project, and in particular Elboy who did as much as me for it, if not more (I thank you a lot, my dear Elboy, if you read these words!). And we finally did it! The French section has its "Anecdotes" (interesting facts).

I think that was a success, for two main reasons.

First, it was the first project that we had to organize with a huge part of the French community. It has been an excellent way to prove that we are able to make great things together. We were so proud, at the end! Translating was a thing, but then there was changing and checking. Changing was probably the most important parts: many facts were too American-centric, or untranslatable, because of some specificities of the English language for example. We put in common our knowledge to find new facts, close to the changed one, but linked to the francophone world. It was a beautiful moment of exchange. I loved it, and it reinforced our team spirit. Doing it alone or almost would have been completely impossible, but French users aren’t isolated, they are able to cooperate, and that’s an awesome thing. It encouraged us to lead new projects like this one, and some things could appear in the next few months, who knows...

Then, it was a success because we got very good feedbacks and stats about this new section on the site by users which are not on the server, so it made us happy to see that the huge work we did together was useful and liked.

Great to hear about all these successes with JetPunk. But what is your biggest regret on JetPunk so far?

That’s a very easy question for me: having been a translator. From mid-2019 to early 2020, I translated many quizzes from English to French. I regret it a lot, because I’ve the feeling that I stole the work of awesome creators. Joining the JetPunk Discord server and talking with you, my dear Stewart, helped me a lot to change this behaviour. But as you know, it’s still a difficult point of my JetPunk adventure. I have already asked to move these quizzes from my account to those of their original creators. Now, I accept this part of my JetPunk life, although I really regret it. And of course, I’ve completely stopped it. Now, and for years, I come with my own quizzes, my own ideas, and if other users like them, that’s great, but if not, I’m still happy of the work accomplished.

It seems you are a success story of your own advice! You advocate for forgiveness and learning from your mistakes, and this is exactly what happened during your own time on JetPunk.

Now, I suspect I might know the answer to one of these, but if you had to choose 2, and only 2 😈, users for their blogs, who would they be and why?

But who is the evil interviewer who decided to put a limit on the number of favourite bloggers and quizmakers...?! Therefore, I refuse to answer! Take that, interviewer!

Ok ok, but more seriously, that’s a very difficult question. I exclude Malkiboy, who was truly my favourite blogger, but who cannot be ranked here because of deleted account(s). Nevertheless, his LOAJ series will stay in my heart for years.

First, that’s maybe a weird choice, but I would like to talk about Insaniot. His QCC’s aren’t like other "competitions" on the RUB. Here we have a very good organization, with very original themes to create quizzes, and a completely unbiased and developed opinion about many great quizzes. That’s both a way to encourage quizmakers to create original quizzes and to make them discovering great quizzes which deserve our attention. I just hope Inasniot will keep publishing blogs, despite his pretty long absence on the RUB.

Then, I would choose Jiaozira. Their blogs are long enough, but not too much, perfectly formatted and very well illustrated. The subject can be a precise geographical thing, but they will explain all correctly to make all readers able to understand what it is about. In some of their blogs, we can feel all their experience and passion. I particularly keep in mind their blogs about the easiest languages to learn and more again Canada explained with maps. This last is maybe my favorite blog on the whole website.

Without developing, I just would like to mention you, Stewart, with your excellent blogs with many stats (I love stats), Poudlard for her blogs about etymology of French blogs (in French) and toowise for their interesting geographical concepts.

An excellent choice! Very good reasons there, and I agree that both Insaniot and Jiaozira are top-notch bloggers on JetPunk.

If I was to be so cruel as to ask the same again, but for their quizzes? Remember, only 2!

That’s probably more difficult than the previous question, considering that there are a lot more quizmakers than bloggers, and that I’m a lot more active on the quiz section than on the blog one.

My first choice won’t be original at all, but I have to mention dug. I decided to learn using Inkscape when I saw all the possibilities given by quizzes with SVG’s taking dug’s quizzes. For me, he is the creator. JetPunk could still be an awesome website with his three tens of quizzes (although having access to thousands of quizzes created by thousands of creators is very important and make our favourite website funnier, of course). Almost all his quizzes are critical success (as shows his +50% of quizzes featured). In my opinion, he should be an example for every other quizmaker. I currently really hope that his Middle Earth Map Quiz will be featured as soon as possible. 

Then, I would choose Elboy. He is also part of these creators who always come up with an awesome idea, and plus, he is French, so I can enjoy a lot more of his quizzes, and also talk with him. It’s very enjoyable, thanks to the French Discord server, to talk, have fun and learn of awesome quizmakers as him, it’s a chance and an honour. Each Elboy’s quiz with a SVG file is, like for dug and some other creators I’ll mention below, a pleasure for my eyes, at the service of a unique idea. I think in particular to his rebus series, which is one of my favourite French series (but which sadly can’t be clearly understood by a taker who doesn’t speak French correctly).

Like for blogs, I would like to mention overtired and JWatson, who are also at the origin of excellent concepts, with beautiful quiz design and animations. I don’t forget you again, Stewart, for all the concepts you have developed on JetPunk and which are nowadays classical and loved by everyone. Finally, I would like to mention ariane5, who is for me the best creator of French text quizzes.

Of all these you mentioned, they all have featured original quizzes. Most of which are English, but also original French features from ariane.

So, I propose to you, which user on JetPunk who has NO original featured quizzes deserves more recognition?

My choice is super-easy for this question, although I’m sure that many quizmakers deserve a lot more recognition: I want to talk about Crem. While they have two featured quizzes, they are Italian translations so do not count here.

I discovered them with their Pokémon regions maps, which are just excellent and are part of my favourite series on the site. Then Crem created, between many other excellent quizzes, thanks to his impressive programming skills, his awesome spinning globe. And honestly, seeing this quiz feature would have made me probably happier than if I got myself and English featured quizzes. I was very disappointed when I saw that, despite its top 1 on the nominations leaderboard, the quiz didn’t get featured because of the size of the SVG file, CSS,...

Try Crem’s quizzes if you haven’t done it yet (and nominate them too), you won’t be disappointed at all.

An excellent choice! I agree that Crem is hugely underrated. I should clarify that, while Quizmaster could not feature his spinning globe due to the size of the page and the fact it doesn't work for all devices / browsers, he did offer to feature another quiz of Crem's instead. However no such quiz was chosen and so Crem was left with no features.

Finally, there is only one way for me to end this interview, if you had the chance to tell your past self something now, what would it be?

Try to be clever and logical. When you want to do something, please think about it enough to be sure that’s a great thing, and to not regret it (although you will surely do, for a random reason, a day or another one). Don’t forget to consider enough your friends. They are important for you, probably more than what you are currently thinking. And finally, don’t be as scared by future that what you currently are. Time can’t stop now, without any reasons, just for you. Accept it, and go ahead. All should be easier for you (although I know that I ask you a very difficult thing). But don’t be too stressed, that’s useless. All will happen very well. Just enjoy the time that God gave you on Earth.

And on that wonderful note, I can confirm that this interview is over. Thank you for the thorough detail and information!

Thanks to you for the idea of this blog! It was very enjoyable for me to answer the questions for once!