After being frustrated by other political tests, I tried to make my own compass
test, but found myself baffled by the rigid limitations. It was impossible to
map out a large ideological terrain. I tried changing what each axis means, I
tried adding dimensions, but nothing seemed to work. Then, I got the idea for
this test. Why not map political positions as leaves of a tree instead of
dimensions in a space?

Before making this test, I started on paper and failed many times. Then one day,
I began to make a lua file containing an ideological tree that was beginning to
make sense. The current version of this tree is visible in the javascript source
code, which is at:

https://44100hz.neocities.org/mlquiz/index.js

Most political quizzes try to reduce your politics down to quantitative measures
such as "progressive/conservative", "central/decentral", etc. Fairly basic, they
always ask the same set questions, and they compress your beliefs into a series
of positions on various axes. People turn some number of these axis values into
an N-dimensional space, divided into ideologies. In the 2-dimensional political
compass, there are 4 ideologies implied by its quadrants, which are colored
respectively. My question is this: where on the compass is the division between
Marxists and non-Marxists? Where is the line between anarchists and
non-anarchists? There are no good answers to these questions, because the
political compass is too reductive. Despite its reductive nature, the political
compass still maps out the contradictory ideology of anarcho-capitalism.
Subtracting dimensions makes these quizzes even less insightful, and adding
dimensions exponentially increases the number of contradictory positions to be
occupied. What does it mean to be a "centrist marxist" or an "eco-capitalist"?

I began to ask myself what the function of political tests should be. Test
takers consume the test to get apparent insight into themselves, which has some
social value much like a personality test. There is also a dialogue between the
test writer and the test taker. While taking the test, the test taker gets to
solve problems, to feel like someone cares about their opinion, and maybe even
to try to get a grasp on political issues through the understanding of the test
writer. The test taker takes on the role of a student or subject, and the test
writer takes on the role of a teacher or an analyst. Because I see this
relationship, I have made a point of asking for feedback about the test, and
being responsive to the feedback that I get.

Clearly there is a cultural effect to the compass, but is it rational? Take for
example the mainstream political compass, which has a vertical axis of
libertarian/authoritarian. Our assumptions about that axis are different than
the corresponding quiz questions. People associate gay issues with the
left-right axis, correct? In the political compass, the question of legalizing
gay marriage actually determines the vertical axis. To ban gay marriage is
considered authoritarian by the test, but left or right by most people. Which
way should it go?

I have watched people struggle with the results from political tests. Some
create a false identity based on the test results, or engage sectarianism
against people they believe would have a different test position. Others wonder
why they got a result that doesn't seem to reflect their views, and may think
that it means they should convert to the ideology they recieve.

Sometimes confusion is because the test writer has a political bias. Even if the
test is intended to be neutral, an unintended bias toward liberal thinking is
present, causing these tests to stray from materialism and class analysis that I
consider key elements of politics. The test writer imparts this bias onto the
test taker, and the nature of the bias is not an obvious fact of the quiz. In
this quiz, I make my bias and intent very obvious fact. This gives the test
taker a clear idea of what they are signing up for.

My agenda is to educate people about Marxism-Leninism, it is crystal clear.
Instead of a linear structure, I use a decision tree structure, always
attempting to ask the most relevant question based on the previous answer. By
doing so, I map out the terrain of political belief as a series of exclusive
separations. It puts limits on what I am able to categorize, but compared to the
N-dimensional space of the political compass and slider, it has far less room
for contradictory ideas and the irrelevant questions behind them. I also combat
the rigidity of the tree structure by having a 'back' button, which allows the
user to explore different ideological possibilities instead of feeling that the
test has ended and the categorization is complete.

The tree is still quite rigid in its own way, but I believe that it is superior
to other varieties of test because it is able to cover a wider range of ideology
in fewer questions, and with fewer contradictory results. I am hoping that this
test can give a new paragidm and a fresh outlook on what political tests in
general. I hope that people who are interested enough to read this document
consider experimenting with tests of their own. It would be as easy as copying
my webpage and altering the decision tree.