Re: GNOME user survey 2011 (v6)

[Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 10:35:24AM -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-10-18 at 17:27 +0200, Olav Vitters wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 04:54:12PM +0200, Mark wrote:
> > > FYI: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAwMjY
> > 
> > Useless.
> 
> Web surveys are guaranteed to self-select, and I have to imagine a
> survey hosted on phoronix self-selects a ton more than one on cnn.com or
> msn.com.  Useful surveys are ones that go out and find users, instead of
> depending on users to find the survey.

That and various other things have been mentioned beforehand, and was
ignored.

Read for instance the "survey" page itself:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAwMjI

"Felipe Contreras and others have been working on a GNOME survey for a
 while now, but the GNOME developers or the GNOME Foundation weren't
 interested in endorsing such a survey. But the survey has the blessing
 of Alan Cox and "
totally ignores that most concerns were ignored and the pretty
annoying/bad behaviour displayed on the mailing list.

Furthermore, if you do a survey, at least try to solicit unbiased
feedback. Saying developers "weren't interested" misrepresents what
happened. Furthermore, this influences the responses you will get. I
don't see why this is added if you care to avoid bias.
Then while the survey is running articles are made taking various highly
critical (but useless feedback) and this is used to suggest what "GNOME
users" think. This while beforehand it was said that an internet survey
is not representative. It is still being presented by Phoronix as such.
I don't think any of the 600.000 Spanish users saw any notice for a
survey. Was specifically warned about beforehand.

Such actions just confirms that the effort was not an honest intention
to gather feedback. Just to confirm own thoughts.

As such, I find it useless.

Just waiting for the next misrepresenting article/blog/etc. :P
-- 
Regards,
Olav