a documentation poll

[Phil Bull]

Hi Vikram,

On Mon, 2009-09-07 at 14:39 -0400, Vikram wrote:  
> Alright I guess that was  a waste of time then....

Don't let this discourage you, it's never a waste of time to propose a
new idea! Figuring out how people use the documentation is very
important, because otherwise we have no idea whether we're doing
anything right. In fact, this is the current situation!

Looking at the survey you proposed, I think the criticisms provided were
valid. People hate providing personal information (like IRC nicks) in
surveys, and it's bad practice to ask for more personal information than
you need.

Designing surveys and getting meaningful information from them is a
difficult job, and people often get it wrong. There are some
well-established principles that you can apply to help you to design a
survey; take a look at these websites for some good advice [1] [2] [3].

Thanks,

Phil

[1] - http://usability.gov/
[2] - http://www.surveysystem.com/sdesign.htm
[3] -
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Soc_survey.shtml

-- 
Phil Bull
https://launchpad.net/people/philbull