Re: GNOME user survey 2011 (v4)

[Felipe Contreras <felipe contreras gmail com>]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 9:34 PM, Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 12:12 PM, Felipe Contreras
> <felipe contreras gmail com> wrote:
>>
>> I am not being aggressive. All I am asking is for clarification; is
>> there *anything* I could do to make the survey more acceptable to you
>> guys, or are you opposed to the very idea of having a user survey
>> blessed by GNOME?
>
> Your answers sound aggressive to me but I think that's totally
> understandable given all the negative feedback.

Perhaps you are not used to straight-forward communication. I'm not
trying to aggravate anyone.

> I gave my feedback. I'd want the survey to be much more detailed. "What do
> you think about this menu option on Cheese" seems like it would give more
> feedback than "do you like GNOME?" But I do not have time to help come up
> with the questions, so I agree with many folks that say you'll have to take
> the feedback you've gotten and move forward.

Trying to do that would create a huge survey that most likely most
people will not even try to answer. If somebody really detests certain
menu option on Cheese, I'm sure they'll let you know in the comments
box.

Who knows, maybe it turns out the part that most people are not
satisfied with is the documentation, those kinds of results might
trigger some interesting debate. Or maybe you are right, and we
wouldn't not get anything useful, but at least we would have some
ideas for the next survey.

> Giving feedback does not mean providing alternatives or working on the
> project. It's easy to give feedback. It's much harder and more time
> consuming to incorporate that feedback. You asked for feedback, you got
> some. If you want those people's approval, then you'll probably have to
> incorporate that feedback.

I have incorporated all the feedback that can be incorporated. The
rest is too vague, or not actionable.

What do *you* think must absolutely be changed in the survey?

> If you aren't planning on incorporating it, then
> it's probably best to stop insisting that people need to provide
> alternatives if they give negative feedback.

Huh? That's a very broad statement. Let's be clear, I have not turned
away any feedback. Let's analyze for example the claims by Allan Day:

---
> When you do survey research, you have to be certain that one person
> understands the questions in the same way that another person does.

Generally yes. Is that achievable in all the questions in this survey? Probably
not (would love to hear some suggestions otherwise). Which why some other
questions are asked to determine the people that might be thinking in other
terms.

(I already explained that)

> You've also got the representativeness problem. Your sample will inevitably
> be unrepresentative, probably highly so.

Says who? What if we get 10 million answers? That would be such a big chunk of
the total population that this problem is not a big deal.

Or what if there's a notification app embedded in GNOME 3.2. That
would not only maximize the reponders, but also maximize the
randomness. Wouldn't it?

(I already explained that)

> your survey results will be misleading

That's very useful. Now, how about some ideas to make the results less
misleading?
---

What exactly do you want me to do with that feedback? (aside from what
I have already done) I am all ears.

> Obviously, you don't need everyone's approval to move forward. Rarely does
> any project get 100% approval.
>
> How you move forward, how much feedback you want and how you use that
> feedback is up to you.

I want the approval of the GNOME community, and I am willing to accept
all suggestions for improvement in order to get that.

So, what should I do?

-- 
Felipe Contreras