Re: GNOME user survey 2011 (v4)

["Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)" <zeeshanak gnome org>]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Felipe Contreras
<felipe contreras gmail com> wrote:
>>  I didn't say this so far because it might sound like I am trying to
>> make a joke but since you still insist on your assertions about the
>> survey, I feel I must say this: How do you know people in general like
>> to participate in surveys? It is my observation that most people do
>> not like to do that, unless they have something to complain about. Now
>> this observation of mine could very well be wrong but how do we know
>> that? Do we do a survey to find out if people like to participate in
>> surveys?
>
> Are you serious? That totally and completely speculative and
> unrealistic.

 What is speculative? I made it very clear that it is *my* observation
and *if* it is correct, the results of this survey may very well be
wrong. Do you have any evidence that suggests that my observations
above are incorrect?

> Have you ever participated in making a survey?

  No I have not but that does not necessarily mean what I said is
incorrect and could just be ignored by pointing to examples of other
surveys. If other people are ignoring an important issue, doesn't mean
we should do the same.

> I have, as
> I have explained, for the Git survey. In my experience, only the
> people that want to help in some way do spend the amount of time
> required to fill the survey.

  As I have explained to you many times before, git's user-base is
mostly (if not all) geeks and those geeks know where the mailing-list
is and be able to access the survey easily. Still, I am a geek and a
very happy user of git but I didn't even know about the existence of
this survey until you told me. Even then, I didn't care to
participate. I am pretty sure I would have cared to participate if I
had something to complain about its current or planned features.
GNOME's user-base consists of people who do not even know what GNOME
is so many of them will not be able to participate, especially if they
are happy users.

  In short, example of git surveys are quite irrelevant here.

> But again, as I said, if there's no survey on Earth you could trust,
> just ignore the results. Results by themselves cannot hurt you.

  In this case those results will really hurt since then you will have
some numbers to back-up your claim of "GNOME 3 is completely
unusable". *If* your motivation for this survey has remained the same,
you'll spread a lot of negative propaganda (which you already did even
when you didn't have any numbers) and many people will just say "Oh,
people don't like this gnome 3 thingie, must be shit" and will stay
away from it. Even if you don't do that, there is many others who will
use this "data" in that way.

-- 
Regards,

Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
FSF member#5124