Re: Initial survey discussions

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

In message <35823BDD.180E06FA@bigfoot.com>, swaldman@bigfoot.com writes:
>First of all, arma: Can you get majordomo to add a reply-to line
>pointing to the list? I almost sent this to you personally my mistake.

Yes, have done. For most of the seul lists I prefer not to set the
reply-to, because it reduces needless spam. But we're all grown-up here. :)

>THe sign of good cinematography or video editing is that you don't
>notice it. The same is true, IMO, of OSs This may cause seul in general
>a problem: How do you explain to somebody that linux is a different OS
>if they don't know what an OS is? I know a number of people who think of
>Win95 as 'the computer'. But that's probably off-topic for this list.

Well, this isn't the user we're targetting yet. The way to get Linux to
these people is to get the people who know what an OS using it, and then
eventually spread further. We can't take over the world in one easy step.
It takes three of four, at least, and they're not easy. :)

>>  The problem with any
>> "voluntary response" type survey is that you'll find your results are
>> skewed toward the interests/opinions of people most inclined to
>> respond.
>>
>This is very true, but I'm not sure it's actually much of a problem for
>us. ANY people not currently using linux who start using it is good, so
>as long as the responses are from non-linux users they're useful - it
>doesn't really matter if they're not from a representative sample
>(althought that would be nice).

yes, exactly. While it would be nice to get answers from a wide cross-section
of people, i will settle for people not currently using linux but whom i
might be able to convince to. They're our first targets, after all.

>> Otherwise you end up writing your own parsing code for
>> the CGI or response-mailer data you get.  This is my current headache
>> (I'm trying to learn Perl by doing this project).
>>
>Somebody write the CGI, and I'll do the web page to front it...(me, take
>the easy job? nah...)

I'll write the cgi if somebody writes the survey...(me, take the easy job?
nah...) :)

--Roger