Re: Put up yer dukes! It's that laptop user issue again.....

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

I'm sorry; I wasn't very clear about how the laptop issue currently stands.
I should have been more clear.

There are currently 6 user types that we've agreed on. The possibility also
exists that we will have a *separate question* on the front page of the
survey, asking people if they also use a laptop. Thus, they will be able to
check a user-type and also check if they're a laptop user.

This means that people who checked 'laptop user' on the first page will have
an extra section of questions for them on the second page.

Several points:

a) It is imperative that we stick to only two 'sections' for the survey. The
   front section must be relatively short, and it must be clear that they
   aren't answering the actual survey yet. The main section can be pretty
   long if we want it to be, but people taking the survey need to have a
   good idea of how long it is, and how much there is left. Essentially,
   having more than one page is really bad for morale. So we're going to do
   everything we can to avoid it.

b) I still am not convinced that we should have the separate laptop question
   on the front section. My argument is simply that I don't see the laptop
   issue as being any more important than, say, "do you use a word
   processor?" Other people disagree on this. I will not be convinced by
   people saying "But trust me, it's important." I will be convinced by
   people coming up with the questions that should go in the laptop part
   of the main section. Good questions -> laptop section. No questions ->
   no laptop section. I think that's pretty fair, right?

c) Actually, I *was* planning on having people fill out the survey
   multiple times if they felt they fit into multiple categories.
   I wasn't very clear on the chaos you were describing, Kimboo --
   what's wrong with the scenarios you described? Do you think we can't
   trust people to be rational and answer questions from different
   perspectives depending on which user-type they're answering for? Or
   I guess that might skew our survey results? We'll be able to keep
   track of whether people answered multiple times, so if we want to 
   get fancy we can ask our data questions like "how many soho+sysadmin
   users care about foo?" But we won't want to do this, because there will
   be enough noise that that question will probably be meaningless.
   Anyway, do people think this is a bad solution? How else do we deal
   with people who *do* fit into multiple categories?

d) About the 'extra questions for each user-type' that we are supposedly
   working on. Here is the original plan:

   There will be a set of core questions that are applicable to all user
   types. For each user type, the *order* of presentation of these
   questions can be different, to emphasize different concerns and groupings
   of issues for that particular user type. In addition, for each user type
   we might add *new* questions that pertain only to the interests of that
   user type, to get more detailed answers on eg whether a large business
   sysadmin is happy with the current Microsoft server solutions.

   However, this means we actually have to come up with those new questions,
   and also come up with orderings for questions for each user-type. We
   might not want to put that much work into it (also, it might not be
   worth it to do so). Thoughts? If we do decide to skip the re-ordering
   of questions on a per-user-type basis, then the survey gets much
   simpler... (this isn't necessarily a good thing).

--Roger