Re: GNOME user survey 2011 (v4)

[Felipe Contreras <felipe contreras gmail com>]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
<zeeshanak gnome org> wrote:
> 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?

Do you even know what speculation means?
 to make an inference based on inconclusive evidence; to surmise or
conjecture [1]

You don't have any evidence how often does this happens in real
surveys, if at all. It's all based on conjecture.

>> 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.

You are again going off-tracks. Let's go back to the point.

You said:
> What if the results are all wrong and we don't have any way of knowing that?
> Would those results still be better than nothing in your opinion?

You can ignore the results. Problem solved, is it not?

>> 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.

So what if that's true? (I don't think so) At least I have a
data-point of experience with surveys, you can discard it all you
want, but what makes your speculation based on imaginary notions
somehow more valid that my experience in real-world scenarios? At best
you can say that they are both equally useless (I don't think so).

The world is no filled with Zeeshans. Most people fill surveys
truthfully. If you think otherwise, you can ignore the results.

>> 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.

Aha, so that's what you are afraid. This survey will happen with or
without GNOME's blessing. It would be in GNOME's best interest to
improve the survey to get more useful results, and so far, I think
many people have done so.

However, at this point it's clear that you are not interested in
improving the survey, all you are doing is making imaginary claims
that lead to a dead-end; "all surveys are pointless, because the
answers might be lies". There's no way to go forward from there.

If you have some *suggestions* how to improve the survey to avoid
whatever issues you see, then say so, otherwise I'll not explain any
more why this is flawed thinking that leads nowhere.

Cheers.

[1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/speculate

-- 
Felipe Contreras