Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Philip Kaludercic]

Timothy <tec@tecosaur.net> writes:

> Hi All,
>
> If any of you are wondering what happened to this, it has not been forgotten
> about! My very competitive todo list just pushed this on the backburner for a
> while.
>
> I’m returning to this now though, and hopefully will start testing the
> deployment and promoting the survey shortly (probably over the next few 
> weeks).

First of all, I'd just like to thank you once more for taking it on
yourself to organise this!  I am looking forward to seeing the results!

> If anybody has last-minute “I really think you should change/add/remove this
> question” feedback, now would be the time to mention it. I think the current
> state of affairs is fairly decent though, and I don’t think it would be worth
> bikeshedding the questions 😛 — we can always refine/improve next year.
>
> The current set of questions:
> <https://github.com/tecosaur/emacs-survey/blob/master/config/survey.jl>

We have already been discussing this in private, but I'd like to re-post
it here for others to comment on:

    Timothy writes:

    > Philip Kaludercic writes:
    >
    >> I remember that “residence” was at least one more option that was
    >> discussed, and I still think that it is preferable to nationality.
    >
    > Why? It seems like a worse option to me.
    >
    >> doesn’t even have need to be that precise, it could be something like
    >> the UN geoscheme[0], i.e. the following:
    >>
    >> - Eastern Africa
    >> - Middle Africa
    >> - Northern Africa
    >> - Southern Africa
    >> - Western Africa
    >> - Caribbean
    >> - Central America
    >> - Northern America
    >> - South America
    >> - Central Asia
    >> - Eastern Asia
    >> - South-eastern Asia
    >> - Southern Asia
    >> - Western Asia
    >> - Eastern Europe
    >> - Northern Europe
    >> - Southern Europe
    >> - Western Europe
    >> - Australia and New Zealand
    >> - Melanesia
    >> - Micronesia
    >> - Polynesia
    >
    >> Optionally some regions like “North America” and “Eastern Europe” could
    >> be subdivided[1].  This gives us an approximation of where Emacs users 
are
    >> found, instead of what countries they might or might not have been born
    >> in.
    >
    > Nationality isn’t which country you’re born in, but the country you 
belong to
    > most.

    For someone like me this is a meaningless question, and I don't think I
    am alone here.  Again, what I am wondering is what the question's intent
    is.  Maybe I am missing something but finding out what the association
    is between Emacs usage/behaviour and residence seems more interesting
    than national identity.

It might also be that the entire question and anything related to it is
pointless to begin with...

> With regards to survey promotion, I’m thinking it would be good to mention 
> this
> as widely as possible to try to reach a diverse range of respondents. If other
> people might have ideas on how to effectively share this survey around, that
> would be great.

It will probably be best to mention in the usual places (the mailing
lists, IRC, Emacs news, r*ddit, HN, image boards, etc.) with an explicit call
to share it among friends and colleagues that also use Emacs but perhaps
don't follow "recent events".

Anything beyond that will probably be a waste of time.

> All the best,
> Timothy