Re: Empathy survey results

[Milo Casagrande <milo casagrande name>]

Hi Phil,

2009/8/8 Phil Bull <philbull gmail com>:
>
> I noticed from the Empathy survey results that we're hardly getting any
> non-technical users as respondents. Of the people who replied, over half
> were comfortable with programming! I don't think that these people are
> our main target audience for the documentation.
>
> How can we get less proficient users to take our surveys?

Maybe we used the "wrong" media to talk about the survey: we basically
used the Planet, and probably Planets are read by more technical savvy
people.

It could be a good idea to use the forums and the support mailing
lists next time (obviously we will use the Planet again too).

> I'm a bit worried about adding material because we think that it's a
> good idea, rather than because there is a demand for that information
> from users. While a topic on netiquette surely would be a good idea,
> will people read it? We run the risk of falling into the same trap that
> we did with the old documentation: Answering questions which no-one has
> asked.

Will people read the documentation anyway? :)

But I see your point.

> Maybe there are questions which users *do* want the answer to, which
> fall under the umbrella of netiquette. Maybe "Why isn't anyone replying
> to my questions on IRC?" or "Why am I being told-off for using
> all-capitals?".

This means that we should already know the questions that users would
like to see an answer for. It could be a good idea, as a starting
point, to write a "general" netiquette that covers some questions like
that, and then try to collect users' suggestions about what they would
like to read in the netiquette, and modify it accordingly.

There is another problem though: this netiquette will be tied to
Empathy docs. What if people don't use Empathy for IRC? They will
probably not even read the documentation looking for IRC related
things. Maybe this netiquette will fall better into the
desktop-guide...

-- 
Milo Casagrande <milo casagrande name>