Re: GNOME user survey 2011 (v4)

[Felipe Contreras <felipe contreras gmail com>]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 8:15 PM, Jonathon Jongsma
<jonathon quotidian org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-08-19 at 19:42 +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 4:56 PM, Richard Hughes <hughsient gmail com> wrote:
>> > On 19 August 2011 14:13, Felipe Contreras <felipe contreras gmail com> wrote:
>> >> Is there anyone in the universe able to create a user survey worthy of
>> >> GNOME? Can you convince him of doing so?
>> >
>> > Do your survey with the questions you want, and come to your own
>> > conclusions. Blog about them if you want. You could even convince a
>> > distribution to include a popup with a link, although I think that's
>> > insane.
>> >
>> > Just don't tell people that it's from the GNOME project, in any way
>> > authorized or blessed by the ruling cabal[1] or developers. I'm pretty
>> > sure the majority of the people actually working on GNOME 3.2 don't
>> > want a survey at all.
>> >
>> > Sorry to be blunt.
>>
>> No, thanks for the direct feedback. So basically you are saying
>> there's no way any survey of any quality would be blessed by the GNOME
>> community. That certainly clarifies things.
>
> It seems obvious from most responses here that there are not very many
> people within the GNOME community that think that this sort of a survey
> would be beneficial, and worry that it may even be counter-productive.
> In response to this realization, you have apparently shifted into
> outrage mode. You pretend that it is impossible to simultaneously care
> about what users while also opposing a user survey that has no hope of
> being a representative sample of users.

You might say you do, and you might even believe so, but if your
actions demonstrate otherwise, perhaps you do not.

If the GNOME community really cared about what users have to say, and
this survey indeed does not have any hope of having a representative
sample of users (I disagree), then wouldn't they take the reins and do
it properly?

> It is possible for well-meaning people to come to different conclusions
> on the best methods for achieving a certain goal.

Yes, whenever I have a disagreement on a method to develop some
software, I just go ahead and do it that way, and then say; see? this
is how it should be done.

Saying "you are wrong" is easy, anybody can do that.

> It seems that most
> people here don't agree with your methods.  Please accept the fact that
> this does not mean that they hate users, despite your attempts to
> conflate the two things.

I would, if they went ahead with the "right methods" and got some user
feedback, if not in the form of a survey, in any method.

> You are free to proceed with your survey on your own.  Others are free
> to not wish to join you.  It's that simple.  Can you please stop the
> faux outrage?

Sure, I just wanted to make things clear. In fact, if they cared about
user feedback, there would be some numbers available somewhere, and I
wouldn't have to do this.

-- 
Felipe Contreras