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Adjust "Which came first" to make options farther apart in time
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Description

Feature summary (what you would like to be able to do and where):
We are receiving feedback from users that choosing between the options in any round often feels like a 50/50 tossup, given that they are generally obscure and quite close in time. E.g. right now, it's often one option from 1947 and one from 1950, whereas if we made it more like one option from 1947 and one from 1970, that'd make educated guessing more feasible.

This task involves adjusting the code to make it so that the dates of the options in each round are generally farther apart. Recent events can be somewhat closer together, as it's much easier to tell e.g. 1940 vs. 1950 than 1740 vs. 1750.

Benefits (why should this be implemented?):
Having the game feel like it's feasible and not just random guessing would make it more satisfying for players and hopefully boost retention.

Related Objects

Event Timeline

Seddon triaged this task as Low priority.Jul 7 2026, 4:27 PM
Seddon moved this task from Team Triage to Watching/Tracking on the App Experience board.

We have this fix https://github.com/wikimedia/wikipedia-ios/pull/5993 set to be released in our next release 8.2.1 T430315.
It adjusts the algorithm to try and match Android's gameplay.

@HNordeenWMF this was released in 8.2.1, should we move to Sign Off in the current sprint board?

@Mazevedo, the notes of that patch state "Don't allow multiple events in the same year", which is certainly an improvement, but seems like it would still allow e.g. events one year apart, whereas this ticket is asking for more separation than that.

@Sdkb gotcha!
@HNordeenWMF noting the comment above, users might still be expecting a more comprehensive improvement (in case you want to keep the ticket around).