Getting popcon back in shape

[James Livingston]

On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 10:16 -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> The problem of determining which packages are important to users is, I
> think, more complex for us than is allowed for by popcon's approach.  In
> general, genuine application use is more interesting than package
> installation and file access, and this is more difficult to measure.
> Surveys, while they have their own problem, would seem to give us more
> useful results.
> 
> For example, a Fridge poll about Epiphany vs. Firefox would give some idea
> of what the user community prefers today.

There was a debate/flamewar about this on the forums a while back,
rehashing the same arguments over and over again. Someone added a poll,
to try to get some actual numbers - and the the debate about whether the
numbers were meaningful started. FWIW I think the numbers were something
like 70-25-5 for Firefox, Epiphany and Opera respectively (but I might
be wrong).


The big argument brought up by people (mostly pro-Epiphany, but some
pro-Firefox too) was that anyone who cared enough to vote, was probably
going to install their favourite, no matter what the default was. The
people who don't care are more affected by the default, but they won't
vote.

An online poll will tell you which is most popular amongst the people
who care. If that's what you want to know, it's great, but that might
not be actually what you want to know.


Cheers,

James "Doc" Livingston (sitting on the Epiphany-after-XULrunner side)
-- 
"Jumpin' Jehosophat, you have to explain the error message to them, and
then you have to explain your explanation to them, and then you have to
hit them with a fucking brick, and they still might not shut the fuck
up." -- Alan J. Rosenthal in the monastry
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