On Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:15:11 +0100, Nelson Marques wrote:
Problem #1 - How large is the openSUSE user base... This defeats the whole purpose of having a decent survey; but your are right, technically, it's impossible since we can't measure our Universe.
No, that's not what I said. I can pretty much guarantee you that when a more technical subset of users attend a conference, their needs are not going to reflect the needs of the non-technical userbase. We can get a rough measure of our universe, though - we know (or should know) how may times openSUSE has been downloaded from the official sites (via whatever means). While downloads are not a 1:1 relationship to installs, it's still a pretty good measure of how many users there are.
Not that getting opinions there is a bad idea, but it's not the only source for data.
It's all about resources. We use what we have, and if openSUSE invested in the conference/summit, I don't see why not squeezing some juice out of it.
Did you not see where I said "of course we should ask at the conferences"? I'm pretty sure I said that, Nelson. I just said that that shouldn't be the /only/ place that discussion takes place.
Spare a few millions to Nielsen or any other like them, and I'm sure they will provide outstanding work... the big issue is... do we have a few millions to spend with AC Nielsen ? :) (or any other like them? I tend to say they are the best ones since when it comes to consumer profiling they are the best).
Yes, because the *only* two options are to do a half-assed job or to spend millions of dollars to hire a professional polling company. That's a straw man argument and you know it.
See problem #1 above. But yeah you are right, we just have a problem of resources;
Hmmm, did I miss where we asked if we had anyone in the active communities who had experience in crafting customer/user surveys? If we haven't asked, then how do we know we have a "resource problem"?
You know the old saying - garbage in, garbage out. It's important to ask the right questions to get value out of a survey.
I would put it this way... If you have resources and want a professional work, it means the world... If do it poorly, it means nothing :)
And there is middle ground between "do nothing because it's 'impossible'" and "spend millions of dollars to hire an AC Nielsen". I would suggest that instead of arguing against it, we actually have a discussion about what we want to learn about our userbase. That's useful whether we do an informal discussion at the conferences or if we do a survey. In either case, knowing the right questions to ask to get the information we're looking for is /critical/ to getting useful information. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org