Emacs Survey 2022 - design

Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

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Hello,

I’ve recently been chatting with Adrien Brochard (who ran the 2020 Emacs
survey), and I’m pushing for a 2022 Emacs survey.

Even with detailed telemetry (urgh) it can be hard to understand the range of
experiences and opinions users have. As such, particularly once we have past
surveys to reference and some consistent questions, I see quite a bit of value
in helping:
1. Emacs developers,
2. Emacs package developers/maintainers,
3. The Emacs community itself
better understand the Emacs community.

Of course, this being a fiercely FOSS community, the situation with survey
platforms leaves quite a bit to be desired. To resolve this issue, I spent some
time last year writing a 100% FOSS, [survey framework] which is completely
functional without any JS. I have attached some screenshots of it to this email.

It would be good to maximise the utility of the survey to the three groups
mentioned earlier. In this vein I hope some of you, emacs-devel, would be
willing to provide some feedback on the survey :)

Attached you may find the current draft survey questions, both as
`survey-questions.org' file and the configuration file used by my survey
framework, `survey.jl'. If you’d like, you can even try running the survey
locally.

Lastly, if any of you would like to chat about this over IRC you can find me as
“tecosaur” on libera.chat, and @tecosaur:matrix.org over on Matrix.

All the best,
Timothy


[survey framework] <https://github.com/tecosaur/emacs-survey>

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Survey(
    "Emacs User Survey — 2022",
    "Help the community have a better understanding of itself and its
        own diversity in Emacs usage. Discover and show how people are using
        this versatile tool for everything, from software engineering to
        academia and journalism.
<br/><br/>
This takes most people ?–? minutes to complete.
<br/><br/>
<b>Disclaimer:</b> This is currently just a draft based on the 2020 survey,
the questions you see now will not neccesarily be in the final survey.",
    SurveyPart("Emacs Usage",
        MultiSelect(:emacs_tasks,
            "Which of the following activities do you use Emacs for?",
            ["Work", "Hobby projects", :other]),
        NumberInput(:emacs_years,
            "How many years have you been using Emacs for?",
            validators = v -> if v < 0
                "Seriously? Are we supposed to believe you're just planning ahead?"
            elseif v > 45
                "Oh really? 🤨"
            end),
        RadioSelect(:emacs_version,
            "Which version/fork of Emacs do you use?",
            ["29 (master)" => "29",
            "28", "27", "26", :other]),
        MultiSelect(:operating_system,
            "Which operating system to you use Emacs on?",
            ["GNU/Linux", "Windows", "MacOS", "BSD", :other]),
        MultiSelect(:emacs_mode,
            "How do you run Emacs?",
            ["Graphical Application (GUI)" => "GUI",
             "Terminal (TUI)" => "TUI",
             "Daemon/Client" => "daemon"]),
        RadioSelect(:keybindings,
            "Which keybindings do you use?",
            ["Default (Emacs)" => "Emacs", "Vim", "CUA", :other]),
        RadioSelect(:starter_kit,
            "Do you use a starter kit/configuration framework?",
            ["No, I have lightly configured vanilla Emacs" => "minimal vanilla",
             "No, I have an extensive, fully-custom configuration" => "maximal vanilla",
             "Doom Emacs", "Spacemacs", "Prelude",
             :other]),
        RadioSelect(:elisp,
            "What is your level of elisp proficiency?",
            ["No knowledge" => "none",
             "I can copy-paste and tweak some code" => "copy-paste",
             "I can write simple functions" => "simple functions",
             "Fairly proficient, I can/have written my own package." => "write package",
             "I maintain multiple packages" => "many packages"]),
        MultiSelect(:languages,
            "Which languages do you program (in Emacs) in?",
            ["Assembly", "C++", "C", "C#", "Clojure",
             "Erlang", "Go", "HTML/CSS", "Haskell", "Javascript",
             "Julia", "Java", "Lisp", "Python", "PHP", "Perl",
             "R", "Rust", "Ruby", "Shell scripting" => "Shell",
             "SQL", "Typescript", :other])),
    SurveyPart("First time questions",
        "All of these questions are <i>optional</i>. Answer these if you're doing the survey for the first time.",
        RadioSelect(:prior_editor,
            "Which editor did you use before you started using Emacs?",
            ["None", "Vim", "VS Code", "IntelliJ", "Atom",
             "Eclipse", "Nodepad++", :other],
            mandatory=false),
        TextArea(:emacs_strengths,
            "What do you think are Emacs' greatest strengths?",
            validators=[wordlimit(400), charlimit(6*400)],
            mandatory=false),
        TextArea(:emacs_dificulties,
            "Can you recall any difficulties you faced when initially learning Emacs?<br/>Please be as specific and concrete as your memories permit.",
            validators=[wordlimit(400), charlimit(6*400)],
            mandatory=false),
        RadioSelect(:emacs_introduction,
            "How were you introduced to Emacs?",
            ["Friend", "University", "Some part of the internet" => "Internet", :other],
            mandatory=false),
        MultiSelect(:emacs_motivations,
            "What features motivated you to initially try Emacs?",
            ["Extensibility", "Package/ecosystem",
             "Community", "Part of the GNU project / FSF"],
            mandatory=false)),
    SurveyPart("Packages",
        MultiSelect(:package_manager,
            "How do you manage third-party packages?",
            ["My framework/starter kit's default" => "framework default",
             "package.el (built-in)" => "package.el",
             "straight.el" => "straight.el",
             "use-package" => "use-package.el",
             "manual (git clone/download)" => "manual",
             "not sure", :other]),
        MultiSelect(:package_repositories,
            "Which package repositories do you use?",
            ["My framework/starter kit's default" => "framework default",
             "GNU ELPA" => "ELPA", "Melpa", "Melpa Stable",
             "Built from source (e.g. using straight)" => "Source",
             "not sure", :other]),
        TextArea(:favorite_packages,
            "Could you list some of your favourite packages? (comma-seperated)";
            validators = [t -> if length(split(t, ',')) < 2
                    "Come on, surely you like at least two packages?"
                elseif length(split(t, ',')) > 10
                    "That's a lot of packages. Surely you can cut that down to a top 10?"
                end, wordlimit(30), charlimit(200)]),
        MultiSelect(:theme, # people can use a light and dark theme
            "Which theme do you use?",
            ["The default theme" => "default",
             "my own custom theme",
             "doom-one", "dracula", "gruvbox",
             "modus-operandi", "modus-vivendi", "nord",
             "solarized", "solarized-dark", "zenburn",
             :other]),
        MultiSelect(:org_usage,
            "Which use cases of Org Mode apply to your usage (if any)?",
            ["Note taking", "General document writing",
             "Task management", "Agenda", "Time tracking",
             "Personal knowledge database (org-roam)" => "org-roam",
             "Literate programing / notebooks (babel)" => "babel"],
            mandatory=false),
        RadioSelect(:magit_usage,
            "How often do you use Magit?",
            ["Frequently", "Rarely", "Never"]),
        RadioSelect(:tramp_usage,
            "How often do you use TRAMP?",
            ["Frequently", "Rarely", "Never"]),
        MultiSelect(:term_package,
            "Do you use a terminal emulator in Emacs?",
            ["No", "eshell", "shell", "term", "ansi-term", "vterm", :other]),
        RadioSelect(:email_package,
            "Do you use an Email client in Emacs?",
            ["No", "Gnus", "Mu4e", "notmuch", "Wanderlust", :other]),
        RadioSelect(:spell_package,
            "Do you use a spell checker in Emacs?",
            ["No", "My framework/starter kit's default" => "framework default",
             "flyspell", "spell-fu", :other]),
        RadioSelect(:undo_package,
            "Do you use an undo package in Emacs?",
            ["No", "My framework/starter kit's default" => "framework default",
             "undo-tree", "undo-fu", :other]),
        RadioSelect(:project_package,
            "Do you use an project management package in Emacs?",
            ["No", "My framework/starter kit's default" => "framework default",
             "project.el", "projectile", :other]),
        MultiSelect(:selection_package,
            "Do you use any selection packages?",
            ["No", "My framework/starter kit's default" => "framework default",
             "Helm", "Ivy", "Ido", "Icomplete",
             "Vertico", "Selectrum", "Marginalia", "Consult",
             :other])),
    SurveyPart("Contribution",
        RadioSelect(:emacs_contribution,
            "Have you ever contributed to Emacs or an ELPA package?",
            ["No", "Occasionaly", "Frequently"]),
        TextArea(:emacs_contribution_feedback,
            "Have you got any feedback on the Emacs/ELPA contribution process?",
            validators=[wordlimit(400), charlimit(6*400)],
            mandatory=false),
        RadioSelect(:melpa_contribution,
            "Have you ever contributed to a Melpa package?",
            ["No", "Occasionaly", "Frequently"]),
        RadioSelect(:isa_package_maintainer,
            "Do you maintain any Emacs packages?",
            ["Yes", "No"]),
        RadioSelect(:has_donated,
            "Have you ever contributed financially to Emacs development (via the FSF)",
            ["No",
             "Yes",
             "I would if I could donate to Emacs directly" => "Would directly",
             "I would like to, but cannot" => "Cannot"])),
    SurveyPart("Demographics (all questions are optional)",
        NumberInput(:respondent_age,
            "How old are you?",
            validators = n -> if n < 8
                "My, you're advanced for you're age. <i>Suspisiously</i> advanced…"
            elseif n > 100
                "Congratulations on becoming a centernarian! How about you get one of your grandchildren to do this survey instead?"
            end,
            mandatory=false),
        RadioSelect(:respondent_gender,
            "What is your gender?",
            ["Male", "Female", "Other"],
            mandatory=false),
        RadioSelect(:respondant_education,
            "What is the highest level of education you have completed?",
            ["High school" => "School",
             "Asosociate's Degree" => "Asosociates",
             "Bachelor's Degree" => "Bachelors",
             "Master's Degree" => "Masters",
             "PhD or equivalent" => "PhD"],
            mandatory=false),
        Dropdown(:respondant_nationality,
            "What is your nationality?",
            # taken from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationalities/list-of-nationalities
            ["Afghan", "Albanian", "Algerian", "American", "Andorran", "Angolan", "Anguillan", "Antigua and Barbuda",
             "Argentine", "Armenian", "Australian", "Austrian", "Azerbaijani", "Bahamian", "Bahraini", "Bangladeshi",
             "Barbadian", "Belarusian", "Belgian", "Belizean", "Beninese", "Bermudian", "Bhutanese", "Bolivian",
             "Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Botswanan", "Brazilian", "British", "British Virgin Islander", "Bruneian",
             "Bulgarian", "Burkinan", "Burmese", "Burundian", "Cambodian", "Cameroonian", "Canadian", "Cape", "Verdean",
             "Cayman Islander", "Central", "African", "Chadian", "Chilean", "Chinese", "Colombian", "Comoran",
             "Congolese (Congo)", "Congolese (DRC)", "Cook Islander", "Costa", "Rican", "Croatian", "Cuban", "Cymraes",
             "Cymro", "Cypriot", "Czech", "Danish", "Djiboutian", "Dominican", "Dominican Republic citizen", "Dutch",
             "East Timorese", "Ecuadorean", "Egyptian", "Emirati", "English", "Equatorial", "Guinean", "Eritrean", "Estonian",
             "Ethiopian", "Faroese", "Fijian", "Filipino", "Finnish", "French", "Gabonese", "Gambian", "Georgian",
             "German", "Ghanaian", "Gibraltarian", "Greek", "Greenlandic", "Grenadian", "Guamanian", "Guatemalan",
             "Guinea-Bissau citizen", "Guinean", "Guyanese", "Haitian", "Honduran", "Hong", "Konger", "Hungarian", "Icelandic",
             "Indian", "Indonesian", "Iranian", "Iraqi", "Irish", "Israeli", "Italian", "Ivorian", "Jamaican", "Japanese",
             "Jordanian", "Kazakh", "Kenyan", "Kittitian", "Kiribati citizen", "Kosovan", "Kuwaiti", "Kyrgyz", "Lao",
             "Latvian", "Lebanese", "Liberian", "Libyan", "Liechtenstein citizen", "Lithuanian", "Luxembourger",
             "Macanese", "Macedonian", "Malagasy", "Malawian", "Malaysian", "Maldivian", "Malian", "Maltese",
             "Marshallese", "Martiniquais", "Mauritanian", "Mauritian", "Mexican", "Micronesian", "Moldovan", "Monegasque",
             "Mongolian", "Montenegrin", "Montserratian", "Moroccan", "Mosotho", "Mozambican", "Namibian", "Nauruan",
             "Nepalese", "New Zealander", "Nicaraguan", "Nigerian", "Nigerien", "Niuean", "North Korean", "Northern",
             "Irish", "Norwegian", "Omani", "Pakistani", "Palauan", "Palestinian", "Panamanian", "Papua", "New", "Guinean",
             "Paraguayan", "Peruvian", "Pitcairn Islander", "Polish", "Portuguese", "Prydeinig", "Puerto", "Rican",
             "Qatari", "Romanian", "Russian", "Rwandan", "Salvadorean", "Sammarinese", "Samoan", "Sao", "Tomean",
             "Saudi Arabian", "Scottish", "Senegalese", "Serbian", "Seychelles citizen", "Sierra", "Leonean",
             "Singaporean", "Slovak", "Slovenian", "Solomon Islander", "Somali", "South African", "South Korean",
             "South Sudanese", "Spanish", "Sri", "Lankan", "St Helenian", "St Lucian", "Stateless", "Sudanese",
             "Surinamese", "Swazi", "Swedish", "Swiss", "Syrian", "Taiwanese", "Tajik", "Tanzanian", "Thai", "Togolese",
             "Tongan", "Trinidadian", "Tristanian", "Tunisian", "Turkish", "Turkmen", "Turks and Caicos Islander",
             "Tuvaluan", "Ugandan", "Ukrainian", "Uruguayan", "Uzbek", "Vatican citizen", "Vanuatu citizen",
             "Venezuelan", "Vietnamese", "Vincentian", "Wallisian", "Welsh", "Yemeni", "Zambian", "Zimbabwean"],
            mandatory=false),
        RadioSelect(:respondent_ocupation,
            "Which industry do you work in?",
            ["Academia (Student)" => "Student",
             "Academia/Research" => "Research",
             "Education", "FinTech",
             "Healthcare", "Legal", "Manufacturing",
             "Software Development", "Telecom",
             :other],
            mandatory=false)),
    SurveyPart("Survey bookeeping",
        RadioSelect(:survey_prior,
            "Did you respond to the 2020 Emacs survey?",
            ["Yes", "No"]),
        RadioSelect(:survey_referrer,
            "How did you find out about this survey?",
            ["r/emacs", "Hacker News", "Direct message",
             "Discord", "Twitter", "Blog post", "Mailing list",
             "lobste.rs", "Telegram", "Emacs China", "IRC",
             :other]),
        RadioSelect(:survey_ux,
            "How well do you think this survey platform works?",
            ["Great", "Ok", "Not great"]),
        TextArea(:survey_feedback,
            "Do you have any general feedback on the survey?",
            validators=[wordlimit(200), charlimit(6*200)],
            mandatory=false)))

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Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Visuwesh]

[செவ்வாய் மே 17, 2022] Timothy wrote:

Hello Timothy,

> Hello, 
>
> I’ve recently been chatting with Adrien Brochard (who ran the 2020 Emacs survey), and I’m pushing for a 2022 Emacs
> survey. 
>
> Even with detailed telemetry (urgh) it can be hard to understand the range of experiences and opinions users have. As such,
> particularly once we have past surveys to reference and some consistent questions, I see quite a bit of value in helping: 
>
> 1 Emacs developers,
> 2 Emacs package developers/maintainers,
> 3 The Emacs community itself
>
> better understand the Emacs community. 
>
> Of course, this being a fiercely FOSS community, the situation with survey platforms leaves quite a bit to be desired. To resolve
> this issue, I spent some time last year writing a 100% FOSS, survey framework which is completely functional without any JS.
> I have attached some screenshots of it to this email. 
>
> It would be good to maximise the utility of the survey to the three groups mentioned earlier. In this vein I hope some of you,
> emacs-devel, would be willing to provide some feedback on the survey :) 
>
> Attached you may find the current draft survey questions, both as survey-questions.org file and the configuration file used by
> my survey framework, survey.jl. If you’d like, you can even try running the survey locally. 
>
> Lastly, if any of you would like to chat about this over IRC you can find me as “tecosaur” on libera.chat, and
> @tecosaur:matrix.org over on Matrix. 
>
> All the best,
> Timothy 

I just have a few comments on the questions,

Maybe we should have a "none" option in "** Which languages do you
program (in Emacs) in? :MultiSelect:Mandatory:"?  I don't really use
Emacs to program except in Elisp and an occasional shell script or two.
I suspect there might be people who exclusively use it for
non-programming purposes.

A nit: in "** Do you use a terminal emulator in Emacs?
:MultiSelect:Mandatory:", you have shell and eshell as options but they
aren't terminal emulators are they?

"** Do you use a spell checker in Emacs? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:":
I think you should add ispell (M-$) to the list as well.

"** Do you use any selection packages? :MultiSelect:Mandatory:":
Marginalia is not a selection package, I think the same goes for
consult?  Perhaps, users of those packages can comment on this.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Stefan Monnier]

> Of course, this being a fiercely FOSS community, the situation with survey
> platforms leaves quite a bit to be desired. To resolve this issue, I spent some
> time last year writing a 100% FOSS, [survey framework] which is completely
> functional without any JS. I have attached some screenshots of it to this email.

Nice!

>             validators = v -> if v < 0
>                 "Seriously? Are we supposed to believe you're just planning ahead?"

Could also just be a wrap around.

>         MultiSelect(:emacs_mode,
>             "How do you run Emacs?",
>             ["Graphical Application (GUI)" => "GUI",
>              "Terminal (TUI)" => "TUI",
>              "Daemon/Client" => "daemon"]),

You can use the daemon with GUI frames or with text frames (or both), so
the 3 choices aren't mutually exclusive.

>         MultiSelect(:languages,
>             "Which languages do you program (in Emacs) in?",
>             ["Assembly", "C++", "C", "C#", "Clojure",
>              "Erlang", "Go", "HTML/CSS", "Haskell", "Javascript",
>              "Julia", "Java", "Lisp", "Python", "PHP", "Perl",
>              "R", "Rust", "Ruby", "Shell scripting" => "Shell",
>              "SQL", "Typescript", :other])),

ELisp is strangely missing here.

>     SurveyPart("First time questions",
>         "All of these questions are <i>optional</i>. Answer these if you're doing the survey for the first time.",

I think "taking" is the better verb here instead of "doing", tho
hopefully some native anglophone can confirm.

>     SurveyPart("Packages",
>         MultiSelect(:package_manager,
>             "How do you manage third-party packages?",
>             ["My framework/starter kit's default" => "framework default",
>              "package.el (built-in)" => "package.el",
>              "straight.el" => "straight.el",
>              "use-package" => "use-package.el",
>              "manual (git clone/download)" => "manual",
>              "not sure", :other]),

`use-package` looks out of place, since I don't think it offers any
facilities to download/install/update/uninstall packages.

>         MultiSelect(:package_repositories,
>             "Which package repositories do you use?",
>             ["My framework/starter kit's default" => "framework default",
>              "GNU ELPA" => "ELPA", "Melpa", "Melpa Stable",
>              "Built from source (e.g. using straight)" => "Source",
>              "not sure", :other]),

NonGNU ELPA?

>         MultiSelect(:theme, # people can use a light and dark theme
>             "Which theme do you use?",
>             ["The default theme" => "default",
>              "my own custom theme",
>              "doom-one", "dracula", "gruvbox",
>              "modus-operandi", "modus-vivendi", "nord",
>              "solarized", "solarized-dark", "zenburn",
>              :other]),

The default theme is actually 2 themes (a dark one and a light one), so
it would make more sense to split it into two (or otherwise to merge
modus-operandi and modus-vivendi as well as solarized and solarized-dark).

>         RadioSelect(:melpa_contribution,
>             "Have you ever contributed to a Melpa package?",
>             ["No", "Occasionaly", "Frequently"]),

[ BTW, last I checked it's spelled "MELPA" and not "Melpa".  Don't know
  if the MELPA guys care about the difference, tho.  ]

Not sure what the question means, really: you can't contribute via
MELPA, and most packages are on MELPA, so if you contributed to an ELisp
package, that contribution probably found its way to MELPA even if you
never heard of it.

To a large extent the same holds for GNU ELPA, so maybe the distinction
between "contributed to MELPA packages" vs "contributed to GNU ELPA
packages" just doesn't make much sense.

Without knowing what you're hoping to do with the result of that
question it'shard to know what to do with it, but maybe you're rather
interested to distinguish contributions via `M-x report-emacs-bug` or
emacs-devel from contributions via things like merge requests on
some forge?

>         RadioSelect(:has_donated,
>             "Have you ever contributed financially to Emacs development (via the FSF)",
>             ["No",
>              "Yes",
>              "I would if I could donate to Emacs directly" => "Would directly",
>              "I would like to, but cannot" => "Cannot"])),

I think FSF membership does contribute (to a very small extent), so
maybe you want to clarify whether you'd count this as a valid
contribution or whether you're thinking of more
significant/targeted contributions?

>              "Asosociate's Degree" => "Asosociates",

I don't know that one.  I'm tempted to say it's a typo for "Associates"?


        Stefan

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Philip Kaludercic]

Great to see another survey being organised!  Looking through the
questions I'd like to note the following:

- Add "College" to who introduced someone to Emacs
- Add NonGNU ELPA to the package repositories
- The list of favourite packages should not mandatory
- The built-in themes should be added to the theme list
- The terminal emulator question should be rephrased "how do you use a
  shell within emacs", though this is nit-picking
- Email clients should also have Rmail, Mew and MH
- Perhaps a question on what spell checking programmes are used
- I think adding vundo to the undo package list would be nice (points
  like these should also be presented with some explanation, because I
  can imagine a lot of users don't even know about these packages to
  begin with)
- A general comment on the "My framework/starter kit's default".  Will
  you be able to infer what they use, from the framework or is this just
  a vauge option?
- Perhaps mention fido-mode in the "selection" package
- Are the "gender" and "nationality" questions necessary?  I can imagine
  that the former one can cause a lot of complaints (especially when
  there is no "I'd prefer not to say") option.
- Are the "other" option plain text fields or a kind of "none of the above"?

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Juri Linkov]

> Of course, this being a fiercely FOSS community, the situation with survey
> platforms leaves quite a bit to be desired. To resolve this issue, I spent
> some time last year writing a 100% FOSS, survey framework which is
> completely functional without any JS. I have attached some screenshots of
> it to this email.
>
> It would be good to maximise the utility of the survey to the three groups
> mentioned earlier. In this vein I hope some of you, emacs-devel, would be
> willing to provide some feedback on the survey :)
>
> Attached you may find the current draft survey questions, both as
> survey-questions.org file and the configuration file used by my survey
> framework, survey.jl.

Do you plan to add some Statistics?  The combination of
using DataFrames.jl, Query.jl, VegaLite.jl produces quite nice results.

> Lastly, if any of you would like to chat about this over IRC you can find
> me as “tecosaur” on libera.chat, and @tecosaur:matrix.org over on Matrix.

        > MultiSelect(:languages,
        >     "Which languages do you program (in Emacs) in?",
        >     ["Assembly", "C++", "C", "C#", "Clojure",
        >      "Erlang", "Go", "HTML/CSS", "Haskell", "Javascript",

Erlang but not Elixir?

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Tassilo Horn]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> I think "taking" is the better verb here instead of "doing", tho
> hopefully some native anglophone can confirm.
>
>>     SurveyPart("Packages",
>>         MultiSelect(:package_manager,
>>             "How do you manage third-party packages?",
>>             ["My framework/starter kit's default" => "framework default",
>>              "package.el (built-in)" => "package.el",
>>              "straight.el" => "straight.el",
>>              "use-package" => "use-package.el",
>>              "manual (git clone/download)" => "manual",
>>              "not sure", :other]),
>
> `use-package` looks out of place, since I don't think it offers any
> facilities to download/install/update/uninstall packages.

Really?  (use-package foobar :ensure t) will download and install the
foobar package.  If it does that itself or tells package.el to do it
doesn't really matter.

FWIW, I'd select use-package in that question + package.el (for
deletion) and auto-package-update (missing!) for updates without having
to manually go through the *Packages* buffer.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Howard Melman]

Timothy <tecosaur@gmail.com> writes:

> I’ve recently been chatting with Adrien Brochard (who ran
> the 2020 Emacs survey), and I’m pushing for a 2022 Emacs
> survey.

I was just looking the other day if there was an updated survey. :)

I think it would be great if you let people submit the
generated blank template of M-x report-emacs-bug that
includes all the configured features, enabled minor modes,
and features enabled in emacs and then generated statistics
based on that to find out what's popular.

I would not include Marginalia or Consult in the selection
packages responses.


-- 

Howard

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Stefan Monnier]

>> `use-package` looks out of place, since I don't think it offers any
>> facilities to download/install/update/uninstall packages.
> Really?  (use-package foobar :ensure t) will download and install the
> foobar package.  If it does that itself or tells package.el to do it
> doesn't really matter.

AFAIK it uses package.el for that, tho IIUC `straight.el` hooks into it
so that it installs via `straight.el` for those who use that.

In both cases, `use-package` delegates the job to an actual
package manager rather than being a package manager itself.

> FWIW, I'd select use-package in that question + package.el (for
> deletion) and auto-package-update (missing!) for updates without having
> to manually go through the *Packages* buffer.

Then maybe we should distinguish between the "backend" (package.el here)
and the UI layer on top of it (use-package, list-packages,
auto-package-update, ...)?


        Stefan

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Howard Melman]

I think it would be great if you let people submit the
generated blank template from M-x report-emacs-bug and then
generated statistics of the features and minor-modes that
people enable.

-- 

Howard

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Will Mengarini]

I was confused by the absence of "United States citizen",
and had to scroll back to find "American".

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Stefan Monnier]

Will Mengarini [2022-05-17 15:44:19] wrote:
> I was confused by the absence of "United States citizen",
> and had to scroll back to find "American".

Yeah, I was slightly bothered by that as well :-)


        Stefan "(Canadian) American"


PS: The absence of support for multiple nationalities is also somewhat
annoying.  Maybe it's more relevant (and less troublesome) to ask where
people currently live rather than worry about their nationalities.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Corwin Brust]

On Tue, May 17, 2022 at 6:00 PM Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>
> PS: The absence of support for multiple nationalities is also somewhat
> annoying.  Maybe it's more relevant (and less troublesome) to ask where
> people currently live rather than worry about their nationalities.
>

On that note, how about asking in terms of geographical regions?  E.g.:

Where do you live?
- Africa
- Asia/Pacific (including the Indian Subcontinent)
- Europe
- North America
- South America

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Visuwesh]

[செவ்வாய் மே 17, 2022] Will Mengarini wrote:

> I was confused by the absence of "United States citizen",
> and had to scroll back to find "American".

And on this note, Sri Lankan is broken into two checkboxes:

    - [ ] Sri
    - [ ] Lankan

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Tassilo Horn]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> FWIW, I'd select use-package in that question + package.el (for
>> deletion) and auto-package-update (missing!) for updates without
>> having to manually go through the *Packages* buffer.
>
> Then maybe we should distinguish between the "backend" (package.el
> here) and the UI layer on top of it (use-package, list-packages,
> auto-package-update, ...)?

Yes, that makes sense.  And probably the backend isn't even interesting
(or even known) from a user's POV.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Philip Kaludercic]

Corwin Brust <corwin@bru.st> writes:

> On Tue, May 17, 2022 at 6:00 PM Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>>
>> PS: The absence of support for multiple nationalities is also somewhat
>> annoying.  Maybe it's more relevant (and less troublesome) to ask where
>> people currently live rather than worry about their nationalities.
>>
>
> On that note, how about asking in terms of geographical regions?  E.g.:
>
> Where do you live?
> - Africa
> - Asia/Pacific (including the Indian Subcontinent)
> - Europe
> - North America
> - South America

I believe this is better than nationality, though a little more details
wouldn't be bad.  If you group the middle east with New Zealand you
might as well not ask where people live at all.  The question seems
interesting to get a rough idea of how popular Emacs is in different
parts of the world, the difference between two neighbouring countries
seems negligible.

In this context it might also be interesting to ask what kind of
Hardware is being used and how they perceive performance to be like.  I
can imagine that more people in the western world will have access to
newer and faster hardware, on which grounds they would argue for this or
that feature to be enabled.  The survey could help show if e.g. people
in the global south are bound to older hardware that would suffer from
computationally intensive features.

Another semi-unrelated question might be to estimate the popularity of
Emacs or other editors amongst other developers they know.  I'd expect
less interesting or consistent information to result from this, but it
might also help draw a picture of what options people consider in what
parts of the world.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Jonas Bernoulli]

> I’m pushing for a 2022 Emacs survey.

Always fun.  Thanks!

> provide some feedback on the survey

> ** How do you manage third-party packages?

Please include borg (https://github.com/emacscollective/borg).  It may
not have many users but then again, it may.  Only one way to find out.

> - [ ] Frequently
> - [ ] Rarely
> - [ ] Never

That's like those scientific studies that only offer four levels of X to
choose from, except here it's only three choices here.  What about "All
the time", to get at least to the level of detail, that that Covid study
I took part in, had?  Maybe also add "Occasionally" in the middle; the
neutral option that is so often missing?

[Is anyone aware of a study about whether leaving out a neural option
leads to more polarized results? I.e., is mildly-pro+mildly-contra ~=
mildly-pro+neutral+mildly-contra, or are respondents encouraged to
pick the extremes (e.g., because both mild variants are seen as neutral
in the absence of a fully neutral choice)?]

> ** Do you have any general feedback on the survey?

That's it?  That wasn't many questions.

They would need some work, but here are some I would be interested in:

- How do you learn about new packages?
- Do you try out new interesting packages immediately, or wait for them
  to mature?
- Do you sometimes discover old package and use them instead of newer
  alternatives?
- Do you research established alternatives when a new shiny package
  comes along?
- Do you install the packages that you maintain yourself using package.el?
  (As opposed to manually adding the appropriate directory to the load-path.)
- Do you publish your own packages on an *ELPA as soon as they are
  usable, or do let them mature a bit first?  (Why the former?)
- How often do you contribute new features to the packages you use?
- How often do you contribute bugfixes to the packages you use?
- How often do you ask the maintainers of the packages you use for help?
- Where do you request help with packages that are part of GNU Emacs?
- Where do you request help with packages that are not part of GNU Emacs?
- If you use a starter-kit, who do you usually ask for help first; the
  starter-kit maintainers, the package maintainers, the wider community?
- What do you do if your feature request or contribution is rejected?
- What documentation do you wish package authors would more often
  provide? [] Comparison with alternatives [] Tutorials [] Design
  rational [] Info manual [] Screenshots [] Videos [] Concise
  introduction [] ... [ ] <input field>.

     Cheers,
     Jonas

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Stefan Monnier]

> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>>> FWIW, I'd select use-package in that question + package.el (for
>>> deletion) and auto-package-update (missing!) for updates without
>>> having to manually go through the *Packages* buffer.
>> Then maybe we should distinguish between the "backend" (package.el
>> here) and the UI layer on top of it (use-package, list-packages,
>> auto-package-update, ...)?
> Yes, that makes sense.  And probably the backend isn't even interesting
> (or even known) from a user's POV.

Those users who "don't care" or "don't know" about the backend are
almost guaranteed to use `package.el`.


        Stefan

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Jostein Kjønigsen]

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On 17.05.2022 16:51, Timothy wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I’ve recently been chatting with Adrien Brochard (who ran the 2020 
> Emacs survey), and I’m pushing for a 2022 Emacs survey.
>
> Even with detailed telemetry (urgh) it can be hard to understand the 
> range of experiences and opinions users have. As such, particularly 
> once we have past surveys to reference and some consistent questions, 
> I see quite a bit of value in helping:
>
>  1. Emacs developers,
>  2. Emacs package developers/maintainers,
>  3. The Emacs community itself
>
> better understand the Emacs community.
>
> Of course, this being a fiercely FOSS community, the situation with 
> survey platforms leaves quite a bit to be desired. To resolve this 
> issue, I spent some time last year writing a 100% FOSS, survey 
> framework <https://github.com/tecosaur/emacs-survey> which is 
> completely functional without any JS. I have attached some screenshots 
> of it to this email.
>
> It would be good to maximise the utility of the survey to the three 
> groups mentioned earlier. In this vein I hope some of you, 
> emacs-devel, would be willing to provide some feedback on the survey :)
>
> Attached you may find the current draft survey questions, both as 
> survey-questions.org file and the configuration file used by my survey 
> framework, survey.jl. If you’d like, you can even try running the 
> survey locally.
>
> Lastly, if any of you would like to chat about this over IRC you can 
> find me as “tecosaur” on libera.chat, and @tecosaur:matrix.org over on 
> Matrix.
>
> All the best,
> *Timothy*
>

A few comments:

- How were you introduced to Emacs? "Emacs recommended by collegue" is 
not an option, despite using Emacs for work being an option.
- Survey seems programmer-centric. What about people using Emacs for 
non-programming purposes? I.e. as a text-editor?
- Which Industry do you work in? Could use a creative/writing? 
Media/publishing? Etc.

My 2 cents

-- 
*Jostein Kjønigsen*
jostein.kjønigsen.no <https://jostein.kjønigsen.no>
jostein@kjonigsen.net - jostein@gmail.com

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Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Philip Kaludercic]

Jonas Bernoulli <jonas@bernoul.li> writes:

>> ** Do you have any general feedback on the survey?
>
> That's it?  That wasn't many questions.
>
> They would need some work, but here are some I would be interested in:
>
> - How do you learn about new packages?
> - Do you try out new interesting packages immediately, or wait for them
>   to mature?
> - Do you sometimes discover old package and use them instead of newer
>   alternatives?
> - Do you research established alternatives when a new shiny package
>   comes along?
> - Do you install the packages that you maintain yourself using package.el?
>   (As opposed to manually adding the appropriate directory to the load-path.)
> - Do you publish your own packages on an *ELPA as soon as they are
>   usable, or do let them mature a bit first?  (Why the former?)
> - How often do you contribute new features to the packages you use?
> - How often do you contribute bugfixes to the packages you use?
> - How often do you ask the maintainers of the packages you use for help?
> - Where do you request help with packages that are part of GNU Emacs?
> - Where do you request help with packages that are not part of GNU Emacs?
> - If you use a starter-kit, who do you usually ask for help first; the
>   starter-kit maintainers, the package maintainers, the wider community?
> - What do you do if your feature request or contribution is rejected?
> - What documentation do you wish package authors would more often
>   provide? [] Comparison with alternatives [] Tutorials [] Design
>   rational [] Info manual [] Screenshots [] Videos [] Concise
>   introduction [] ... [ ] <input field>.

Will is be possible to filter out questions, depending on previous
answers?  I don't think the average user is interested in questions
about how they maintain Elisp code.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Philip Kaludercic]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>>>> FWIW, I'd select use-package in that question + package.el (for
>>>> deletion) and auto-package-update (missing!) for updates without
>>>> having to manually go through the *Packages* buffer.
>>> Then maybe we should distinguish between the "backend" (package.el
>>> here) and the UI layer on top of it (use-package, list-packages,
>>> auto-package-update, ...)?
>> Yes, that makes sense.  And probably the backend isn't even interesting
>> (or even known) from a user's POV.
>
> Those users who "don't care" or "don't know" about the backend are
> almost guaranteed to use `package.el`.

From what I hear, a lot of people also use their system's package
manager to install packages, that should be mentioned too.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Thanks for working on another Emacs survey.

When you publish it, would you please use the term "free/libre software"
rather than "FOSS"?  We don't advocate "FOSS" -- see
https://gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.html for why we don't.
What we advocate is "free/libre software",
See https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
for more explanation.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

   the situation with survey
  > platforms leaves quite a bit to be desired. To resolve this issue,
  > I spent some time last year writing a 100% FOSS, [survey
  > framework] which is completely functional without any JS. I have
  > attached some screenshots of it to this email.

It sounds like you've done some very useful work, and made a free
program we should urge everyone to use.

Would you like to make your survey platform a GNU package?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Mike Kupfer]

Hi Timothy, thanks for giving us an opportunity to comment on the draft
survey.

> ** What features motivated you to initially try Emacs? :MultiSelect:

Please add "other" as a response.  I started using Emacs because it was
the only way I knew of to get multiple windows on a 24x80 terminal, back
in 1983 or 1984.

> * Packages

If you're going to make these questions mandatory, please allow for
responses along the lines of "I don't use third-party packages".

> ** Do you use an Email client in Emacs? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:

Please add MH-E.

Also, please make this MultiSelect.  I use both MH-E and Gnus.

> ** Do you maintain any Emacs packages? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:

Please clarify the wording: does "packages" here refer only to
third-party packages, or does it also include things that ship as part
of Emacs?

best regards,
mike

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

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Hi Visuwesh,

Thanks for the feedback!

Visuwesh <visuweshm@gmail.com> writes:

> Maybe we should have a “none” option in “** Which languages do
> you program (in Emacs) in?”

I’ve added “Prose (writing)”.

> A nit: in “** Do you use a terminal emulator in Emacs?
> :MultiSelect:Mandatory:”, you have shell and eshell as options but they
> aren’t terminal emulators are they?

You are correct, however they largely satisfy the same use case, and so I think
it’s worth lumping them together.

> “** Do you use a spell checker in Emacs? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:”:
> I think you should add ispell (M-$) to the list as well.

Added :)

> “** Do you use any selection packages? :MultiSelect:Mandatory:”:
> Marginalia is not a selection package, I think the same goes for
> consult?  Perhaps, users of those packages can comment on this.

The wording over this question has been difficult. I think maginalia and consult
fit into the ’selection process’, but I’m not 100% sure how this question should
look.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

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Hi Stefan,

Thanks for all the feedback!

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>>             validators = v -> if v < 0
>
> Could also just be a wrap around.

Perhaps, I’m inclined to leave it as “yelling at the user for doing something
silly” though.

>>         MultiSelect(:emacs_mode,
>
> You can use the daemon with GUI frames or with text frames (or both), so
> the 3 choices aren’t mutually exclusive.

“MultiSelect” corresponds to a set of checkboxes, any number of which can be
selected (as opposed to “RadioSelect”). So, these options aren’t mutually
exclusive :)

>>         MultiSelect(:languages,
>
> ELisp is strangely missing here.

How did I miss that!? Added.

>>     SurveyPart(“First time questions”,
>>         “All of these questions are <i>optional</i>. Answer these if you’re
>> doing the survey for the first time.”,
>
> I think “taking” is the better verb here instead of “doing”, tho
> hopefully some native anglophone can confirm.

That sounds better to me.

>>     SurveyPart(“Packages”,
>
> `use-package` looks out of place, since I don’t think it offers any
> facilities to download/install/update/uninstall packages.

This seems to have been well-discussed in replies. I’m inclined to leave it in
for now.

>>         MultiSelect(:package_repositories,
>
> NonGNU ELPA?

Added.

>>         MultiSelect(:theme, # people can use a light and dark theme
>
> The default theme is actually 2 themes (a dark one and a light one), so
> it would make more sense to split it into two (or otherwise to merge
> modus-operandi and modus-vivendi as well as solarized and solarized-dark).

Default has been split into -light and -dark variants.

>>         RadioSelect(:melpa_contribution,
>>             “Have you ever contributed to a Melpa package?”,
>>             [“No”, “Occasionaly”, “Frequently”]),
>
> [ BTW, last I checked it’s spelled “MELPA” and not “Melpa”.  Don’t know
>   if the MELPA guys care about the difference, tho.  ]
>
> Not sure what the question means, really: you can’t contribute via
> MELPA, and most packages are on MELPA, so if you contributed to an ELisp
> package, that contribution probably found its way to MELPA even if you
> never heard of it.

Mmm. I’ve changed this to the more general “contributed to an Emacs package?”.

> To a large extent the same holds for GNU ELPA, so maybe the distinction
> between “contributed to MELPA packages” vs “contributed to GNU ELPA
> packages” just doesn’t make much sense.

I think Emacs/ELPA are a little different with the ML process and FSF approval.

> Without knowing what you’re hoping to do with the result of that
> question it’s hard to know what to do with it, but maybe you’re rather
> interested to distinguish contributions via `M-x report-emacs-bug` or
> emacs-devel from contributions via things like merge requests on
> some forge?

My thinking here is that it could be interesting to see what the contributed
with/without using a mailing list and getting FSF approval ratio (i.e.
Emacs/ELPA) looks like, and particularly any shifts in it over time.

>>         RadioSelect(:has_donated,
>>             “Have you ever contributed financially to Emacs development (via the FSF)”,
>
> I think FSF membership does contribute (to a very small extent), so
> maybe you want to clarify whether you’d count this as a valid
> contribution or whether you’re thinking of more
> significant/targeted contributions?

The idea here is looking at financial contributions to Emacs, but I’m not sure
what would make the most sense. Perhaps it would be worth asking about donations
to package maintainers? I’d appreciate hearing other people’s thoughts on this.

>>              “Asosociate’s Degree” => “Asosociates”,
>
> I don’t know that one.  I’m tempted to say it’s a typo for “Associates”?

Neither do I, but apparently it’s a 2 year degree usually from a community
college, common in the US.

Yep, there’s a typo there. Fixed.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

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Hi Philip,

Thanks for the suggestions!

Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:

> Great to see another survey being organised!  Looking through the
> questions I’d like to note the following:
>
> - Add “College” to who introduced someone to Emacs

I’ve changed “University” to “University/College”. Let me know if you think this
should be two separate options.

> - Add NonGNU ELPA to the package repositories

Done.

> - The list of favourite packages should not mandatory

Hmm, is it not reasonably to assume that everybody has at least a few packages
they think look pretty good? Hmm, it doesn’t seem too bad if we were to just
have a maximum.

> - The built-in themes should be added to the theme list

If we have all the built-in themes, the list gets a bit long. The approach I’m
taking is trying to prioritise the most popular options, and leave the “other”
box for everyone else.

> - The terminal emulator question should be rephrased “how do you use a
>   shell within emacs”, though this is nit-picking

Perhaps. I’m not sure on this.

> - Email clients should also have Rmail, Mew and MH

The previous survey indicated a small fraction of responses for these, is there
a reason why you think the “other” box would not be good enough?

> - Perhaps a question on what spell checking programmes are used

It’s there, I think you might have missed it :)

> - I think adding vundo to the undo package list would be nice

Added!

> (points like these should also be presented with some explanation, because I
>  can imagine a lot of users don’t even know about these packages to begin
>  with)

Hmm. Not a bad idea. I won’t do this right now, but this is worth revisiting
later.

> - A general comment on the “My framework/starter kit’s default”.  Will
>   you be able to infer what they use, from the framework or is this just
>   a vauge option?

Since we ask earlier what framework/starter kit they’re using (if any), yes! In
fact, I’m hoping this will be more informative/accurate in the case of users
that haven’t changed the framework/starter kit default and aren’t exactly sure
what they’re using.

> - Perhaps mention fido-mode in the “selection” package

Is it used enough to be lifted out of the “other” box? I don’t recall seeing it
much in the 2020 survey results.

> - Are the “gender” and “nationality” questions necessary?  I can imagine
>   that the former one can cause a lot of complaints (especially when
>   there is no “I’d prefer not to say”) option.

There’s no “I’d prefer not to say” option as the entire question is optional. If
it seems like adding that is a good idea though, I’m happy to do so.

The 2020 survey asked what people thought of adding demographic questions, and
the response was (IIRC) overwhelmingly “sure, why not”. So these questions are a
response to that.

> - Are the “other” option plain text fields or a kind of “none of the above”?

Text fields :)

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

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Hi Juri,

Thanks for your thoughts!

Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net> writes:

> Do you plan to add some Statistics?  The combination of
> using DataFrames.jl, Query.jl, VegaLite.jl produces quite nice results.

I’m planning on making something like
<https://tecosaur.com/public/EmacsSurveyAnalysis2020.html>, julia-generated of
course ;)

The survey data will also be made available as a CSV, JSON, and SQLite db, for
anybody else interested to play with :)

>         > MultiSelect(:languages,
>
> Erlang but not Elixir?

Added.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

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Hi Will,

> I was confused by the absence of “United States citizen”,
> and had to scroll back to find “American”.

I’ve now added “United States citizen” as an alias for “American”, hopefully
that will sidestep any potential confusion.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

Hi Jostein,

Jostein Kjønigsen <jostein@secure.kjonigsen.net> writes:

> A few comments:
>
> - How were you introduced to Emacs? "Emacs recommended by collegue" is
> not an option, despite using Emacs for work being an option.

Added :)

> - Survey seems programmer-centric. What about people using Emacs for
> non-programming purposes? I.e. as a text-editor?

Do you have any suggestions for questions along those lines?

> - Which Industry do you work in? Could use a creative/writing?
> Media/publishing? Etc.

Added and added.

> My 2 cents

Thanks, let me know if you have any more cents to add ;)

All the best,
Timothy.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

Hi Jonas,

Jonas Bernoulli <jonas@bernoul.li> writes:

>> I’m pushing for a 2022 Emacs survey.
>
> Always fun.  Thanks!

I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes :)

>> ** How do you manage third-party packages?
>
> Please include borg (https://github.com/emacscollective/borg).  It may
> not have many users but then again, it may.  Only one way to find out.

The "other" boxes are actually text fields in the survey, so people can
actually just type "borg" in should they use it :)

>> - [ ] Frequently
>> - [ ] Rarely
>> - [ ] Never
>
> That's like those scientific studies that only offer four levels of X to
> choose from, except here it's only three choices here.  What about "All
> the time", to get at least to the level of detail, that that Covid study
> I took part in, had?  Maybe also add "Occasionally" in the middle; the
> neutral option that is so often missing?
>
> [Is anyone aware of a study about whether leaving out a neural option
> leads to more polarized results? I.e., is mildly-pro+mildly-contra ~=
> mildly-pro+neutral+mildly-contra, or are respondents encouraged to
> pick the extremes (e.g., because both mild variants are seen as neutral
> in the absence of a fully neutral choice)?]

This is a very good point, thanks for raising it! How about:
Frequently, Often, Sometimes, Rarely, Never ?

>> ** Do you have any general feedback on the survey?
>
> That's it?  That wasn't many questions.

I'm inclined to be conservative to maximise value/respondent time, but I
think there's plenty of room for good suggestions. There's good reason
why I called this a draft :)

> They would need some work, but here are some I would be interested in:
>
> - How do you learn about new packages?
> - Do you try out new interesting packages immediately, or wait for them
>   to mature?
> - Do you sometimes discover old package and use them instead of newer
>   alternatives?
> - Do you research established alternatives when a new shiny package
>   comes along?
> - Do you install the packages that you maintain yourself using package.el?
>   (As opposed to manually adding the appropriate directory to the load-path.)
> - Do you publish your own packages on an *ELPA as soon as they are
>   usable, or do let them mature a bit first?  (Why the former?)
> - How often do you contribute new features to the packages you use?
> - How often do you contribute bugfixes to the packages you use?
> - How often do you ask the maintainers of the packages you use for help?
> - Where do you request help with packages that are part of GNU Emacs?
> - Where do you request help with packages that are not part of GNU Emacs?
> - If you use a starter-kit, who do you usually ask for help first; the
>   starter-kit maintainers, the package maintainers, the wider community?
> - What do you do if your feature request or contribution is rejected?
> - What documentation do you wish package authors would more often
>   provide? [] Comparison with alternatives [] Tutorials [] Design
>   rational [] Info manual [] Screenshots [] Videos [] Concise
>   introduction [] ... [ ] <input field>.

I'll get a second opinion on this list, but I think a bunch of these
questions look like very promising candidates for inclusion.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Timothy.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Thanks for working on another Emacs survey.

Thanks for the encouragement. I'd love to see this become a part of the
community traditions (i.e. annual survey, results presented at emacs-conf).

> When you publish it, would you please use the term "free/libre software"
> rather than "FOSS"?  We don't advocate "FOSS" -- see
> https://gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.html for why we don't.
> What we advocate is "free/libre software",
> See https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
> for more explanation.

I'll make sure that anywhere "FOSS" is mentioned "free/libre software"
is used instead :)

--
Timothy.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>   > the situation with survey
>   > platforms leaves quite a bit to be desired. To resolve this issue,
>   > I spent some time last year writing a 100% FOSS, [survey
>   > framework] which is completely functional without any JS. I have
>   > attached some screenshots of it to this email.
>
> It sounds like you've done some very useful work, and made a free
> program we should urge everyone to use.
>
> Would you like to make your survey platform a GNU package?

I like to think that what I've made could be broadly useful, but it
really is just made for the Emacs survey and I don't think I can spare
the time/effort to build it into a bigger project currently. So, while I
very much appreciate the interest I think I'll need to pass at this
point.

All the best,
Timothy.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

Hi Mike,

Mike Kupfer <mkupfer@alum.berkeley.edu> writes:

> Hi Timothy, thanks for giving us an opportunity to comment on the draft
> survey.

Thank you for taking the time to have a look and write down your
thoughts :)

>> ** What features motivated you to initially try Emacs? :MultiSelect:
>
> Please add "other" as a response.  I started using Emacs because it was
> the only way I knew of to get multiple windows on a 24x80 terminal, back
> in 1983 or 1984.

Added.

>> * Packages
>
> If you're going to make these questions mandatory, please allow for
> responses along the lines of "I don't use third-party packages".

Not a bad idea, but this will need a bit more thought. For instance, I
currently have no support for conditional logic in the survey (i.e. if
using packages answer these questions).

>> ** Do you use an Email client in Emacs? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:
>
> Please add MH-E.
>
> Also, please make this MultiSelect.  I use both MH-E and Gnus.

You can write "MH-E, Gnus" in the other text field.

>> ** Do you maintain any Emacs packages? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:
>
> Please clarify the wording: does "packages" here refer only to
> third-party packages, or does it also include things that ship as part
> of Emacs?

I was only thinking of the former, but really I think both work. I'll
revisit the wording.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

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Hi Visuwesh,

> And on this note, Sri Lankan is broken into two checkboxes:
>
>     - [ ] Sri
>     - [ ] Lankan

Thanks, fixed.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

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Hi Philip,

Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:

> Corwin Brust <corwin@bru.st> writes:
>> On that note, how about asking in terms of geographical regions?  E.g.:
>>
>> Where do you live?
>> - Africa
>> - Asia/Pacific (including the Indian Subcontinent)
>> - Europe
>> - North America
>> - South America
>
> I believe this is better than nationality, though a little more details
> wouldn’t be bad.  If you group the middle east with New Zealand you
> might as well not ask where people live at all.  The question seems
> interesting to get a rough idea of how popular Emacs is in different
> parts of the world, the difference between two neighbouring countries
> seems negligible.

Nationalities is a bit finer that what I think we want, but similarly I find
continents a bit too coarse.

> In this context it might also be interesting to ask what kind of
> Hardware is being used and how they perceive performance to be like.  I
> can imagine that more people in the western world will have access to
> newer and faster hardware, on which grounds they would argue for this or
> that feature to be enabled.  The survey could help show if e.g. people
> in the global south are bound to older hardware that would suffer from
> computationally intensive features.

Not a bad idea! How about a question along these lines:

┌────
│ RadioSelect(:emacs_performance,
│     "How well does Emacs perform in your experience?",
│     ["Very well, it's snappy", "Good but not great",
│         "Alright", "Not well", "Poorly, it's slugish"])
└────

As well as say a question on how many years old the hardware is.

> Another semi-unrelated question might be to estimate the popularity of
> Emacs or other editors amongst other developers they know.  I’d expect
> less interesting or consistent information to result from this, but it
> might also help draw a picture of what options people consider in what
> parts of the world.

Hmm, perhaps. I’m not sure here.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 963 bytes --]

Hi Stefan,

> Will Mengarini [2022-05-17 Tue 15:44]  wrote:
>> I was confused by the absence of “United States citizen”,
>> and had to scroll back to find “American”.
>
> Yeah, I was slightly bothered by that as well :-)

(fixed)

>         Stefan “(Canadian) American”
>
> PS: The absence of support for multiple nationalities is also somewhat
> annoying.  Maybe it’s more relevant (and less troublesome) to ask where
> people currently live rather than worry about their nationalities.

I’m not sure what’s best here. Nationality feels like the right thing to me, but
as you say some people could reasonably check two or even three of them.
However, I’d consider a list of 237 checkboxes to be pretty bad (as opposed to
the current single-select dropdown menu). Would it be unreasonable to ask for a
primary nationality, if that works for 99% of people that may be good enough
overall for us.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Benjamin Riefenstahl]

Hi Timothy,

Lots of work goes into supporting various natural languages, e.g. there
seems to be significant interest in indian languges lately.  So
shouldn't there be a question about what non-programming languages
people use?  I would suggest a text field, otherwise this can become
unwieldy and, more importantly, non-inclusive.

benny

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Philip Kaludercic]

Timothy <tecosaur@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Philip,
>
> Thanks for the suggestions!
>
> Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:
>
>> Great to see another survey being organised!  Looking through the
>> questions I’d like to note the following:
>>
>> - Add “College” to who introduced someone to Emacs
>
> I’ve changed “University” to “University/College”. Let me know if you think this
> should be two separate options.

I don't think that it should be necessary.

>> - Add NonGNU ELPA to the package repositories
>
> Done.
>
>> - The list of favourite packages should not mandatory
>
> Hmm, is it not reasonably to assume that everybody has at least a few packages
> they think look pretty good? Hmm, it doesn’t seem too bad if we were to just
> have a maximum.

I think there are plenty of people who use Emacs without any major
changes, just because it works for them.  If they have been doing this
for 20, 30 or even 40 years now they might have never bothered using
packages as such, beyond maybe a script they got from a friend or wrote
a few decades ago ^^

>> - The built-in themes should be added to the theme list
>
> If we have all the built-in themes, the list gets a bit long. The approach I’m
> taking is trying to prioritise the most popular options, and leave the “other”
> box for everyone else.

Ok, fair enough.

>> - The terminal emulator question should be rephrased “how do you use a
>>   shell within emacs”, though this is nit-picking
>
> Perhaps. I’m not sure on this.

I think everyone should get what the question in.

>> - Email clients should also have Rmail, Mew and MH
>
> The previous survey indicated a small fraction of responses for these, is there
> a reason why you think the “other” box would not be good enough?

In that case no, it should be fine.

>> - Perhaps a question on what spell checking programmes are used
>
> It’s there, I think you might have missed it :)

Nevermind then.

>> - I think adding vundo to the undo package list would be nice
>
> Added!
>
>> (points like these should also be presented with some explanation, because I
>>  can imagine a lot of users don’t even know about these packages to begin
>>  with)
>
> Hmm. Not a bad idea. I won’t do this right now, but this is worth revisiting
> later.
>
>> - A general comment on the “My framework/starter kit’s default”.  Will
>>   you be able to infer what they use, from the framework or is this just
>>   a vauge option?
>
> Since we ask earlier what framework/starter kit they’re using (if any), yes! In
> fact, I’m hoping this will be more informative/accurate in the case of users
> that haven’t changed the framework/starter kit default and aren’t exactly sure
> what they’re using.

Great!

>> - Perhaps mention fido-mode in the “selection” package
>
> Is it used enough to be lifted out of the “other” box? I don’t recall seeing it
> much in the 2020 survey results.

I believe Fido came out in 27.1, so there probably was not much time for
people to start using it back then.

>> - Are the “gender” and “nationality” questions necessary?  I can imagine
>>   that the former one can cause a lot of complaints (especially when
>>   there is no “I’d prefer not to say”) option.
>
> There’s no “I’d prefer not to say” option as the entire question is optional. If
> it seems like adding that is a good idea though, I’m happy to do so.
>
> The 2020 survey asked what people thought of adding demographic
> questions, and the response was (IIRC) overwhelmingly “sure, why
> not”. So these questions are a response to that.

I missed the "Optional" annotation, in that case forget this comment too.

>> - Are the “other” option plain text fields or a kind of “none of the above”?
>
> Text fields :)
>
> All the best,
> Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Mike Kupfer]

Timothy wrote:

> Mike Kupfer <mkupfer@alum.berkeley.edu> writes:
> >> * Packages
> >
> > If you're going to make these questions mandatory, please allow for
> > responses along the lines of "I don't use third-party packages".
> 
> Not a bad idea, but this will need a bit more thought. For instance, I
> currently have no support for conditional logic in the survey (i.e. if
> using packages answer these questions).

Maybe add a "n/a" choice to the remaining questions in that section?

> You can write "MH-E, Gnus" in the other text field.

Yes, that works; thanks.  (I didn't realize that "other" would have an
associated text field.)

cheers,
mike

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Stefan Monnier]

> I’m not sure what’s best here. Nationality feels like the right thing to me, but
> as you say some people could reasonably check two or even three of them.
> However, I’d consider a list of 237 checkboxes to be pretty bad (as opposed to
> the current single-select dropdown menu). Would it be unreasonable to ask for a
> primary nationality, if that works for 99% of people that may be good enough
> overall for us.

To be honest, I have no idea why we'd care about nationality.  I can see
why we'd care about where our users reside (e.g. country of residence),
or maybe which is their mother's tongue, or the language they speak most
comfortably, but nationality?  only as a proxy for some of those.


        Stefan

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[sr]

I was wondering whether the average Emacs user, especially those who are non-developers would be able to easily understand the distinction between NonGNU ELPA and GNU ELPA and how it matters. Perhaps as a measure of increasing awareness and refreshing memories, it may be meaningful to include a link to this information.

Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:

> - Add NonGNU ELPA to the package repositories
> - The list of favourite packages should not mandatory

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Philip Kaludercic]

sr@eml.cc writes:

> I was wondering whether the average Emacs user, especially those who
> are non-developers would be able to easily understand the distinction
> between NonGNU ELPA and GNU ELPA and how it matters. Perhaps as a
> measure of increasing awareness and refreshing memories, it may be
> meaningful to include a link to this information.

A link would certainly help, but the interesting demographic are those
who are using a release prior to 28.1 who have manually decided to add
NonGNU ELPA.  I think that these people should know what they are doing.

> Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:
>
>> - Add NonGNU ELPA to the package repositories
>> - The list of favourite packages should not mandatory

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I'll make sure that anywhere "FOSS" is mentioned "free/libre software"
  > is used instead :)

Thanks.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > Would you like to make your survey platform a GNU package?

  > I like to think that what I've made could be broadly useful, but it
  > really is just made for the Emacs survey and I don't think I can spare
  > the time/effort to build it into a bigger project currently.

Is there anyone else who would like to take it further?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Johan Myréen]

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I see there are six editors listed under the question "Which editor did you
use before you started using Emacs?", five of which had an initial release
in this century. Emacs is now 46 years old. Is there a reason for limiting
the choice to these relatively recently created editors?

My answer to the question would have been the "Edit" editor on the TOPS-20
operating system.

Other notable missing choices are the original vi editor and TECO. There
are so many editors in this world that I think a better approach would be
to provide a text area for providing the name of an editor.

Johan Myréen

Ps. Sri Lankan is not the only two word nationality that has been split up,
I spotted Hong and Konger.

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Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Akib Azmain Turja]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1207 bytes --]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > > Would you like to make your survey platform a GNU package?
>
>   > I like to think that what I've made could be broadly useful, but it
>   > really is just made for the Emacs survey and I don't think I can spare
>   > the time/effort to build it into a bigger project currently.
>
> Is there anyone else who would like to take it further?
>
> -- 
> Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>
>

The software looks interesting.  Can I get the source code?  No, I don't
have enough time to spend on it right now, but I may do that later if I
have enough time, unless I forget about it.

-- 
Akib Azmain Turja

This message is signed by me with my GnuPG key.  It's fingerprint is:

    7001 8CE5 819F 17A3 BBA6  66AF E74F 0EFA 922A E7F5

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 832 bytes --]

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Philip Kaludercic]

Akib Azmain Turja <akib@disroot.org> writes:

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
>> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
>> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>>
>>   > > Would you like to make your survey platform a GNU package?
>>
>>   > I like to think that what I've made could be broadly useful, but it
>>   > really is just made for the Emacs survey and I don't think I can spare
>>   > the time/effort to build it into a bigger project currently.
>>
>> Is there anyone else who would like to take it further?
>>
>> -- 
>> Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
>> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
>> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
>> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>>
>>
>>
>
> The software looks interesting.  Can I get the source code?  No, I don't
> have enough time to spend on it right now, but I may do that later if I
> have enough time, unless I forget about it.

Timothy gave this link in his first message: https://github.com/tecosaur/emacs-survey.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Stefan Monnier]

Johan Myréen [2022-05-22 11:38:41] wrote:
> I see there are six editors listed under the question "Which editor did you
> use before you started using Emacs?", five of which had an initial release
> in this century. Emacs is now 46 years old. Is there a reason for limiting
> the choice to these relatively recently created editors?

I'm not sure what's the intention behind the question, but I suspect
it's only useful/interesting to know for relatively new users.


        Stefan

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - 1st question

[Jean Louis]

** Which of the following activities do you use Emacs for? :MultiSelect:Mandatory:
- [ ] Work
- [ ] Hobby projects
- [ ] *other*

The question is vague, rather general. Some people will say "work" for
hobby projects. In my life I work what I like, and I make money too
and on hobby projects there is some money, so is it work. For me that
question is vague.

It is interesting that the whole survey is not talking about "text
editing" -- I understand, this is Emacs, but you should be talking
about text editing so much more. Text editors are about text.

In that above question, in the context of the question, I suggest that
you expand it to following (while editing my English):

** Which of the following activities do you use Emacs for? :MultiSelect:Mandatory:
- [ ] I use it as employee on my job
- [ ] I use it in my personal business or company
- [ ] I use it as student or pupil in school
- [ ] I use it for scientific research
- [ ] I use it for art related activities
- [ ] I use it for my hobby projects
- [ ] *other*, specify which: ________________

People do science which may not be necessarily "work" in their sense,
as we speak of global Emacs users. Work is too general. Try to make it
more specific, there is different work when somebody is employed,
there is different nature of work when somebody is self-employed or
businessman, students have their "works" too, scientific research is
not necessarily the main "work" of the person, art is free to
everybody, it could be considered work, it could be considered not, my
point is that you should give more specifics, as that is what you wish
to get with the survey.

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - 2nd question

[Jean Louis]

** Which operating system to you use Emacs on? :MultiSelect:Mandatory:
- [ ] GNU/Linux
- [ ] Windows
- [ ] MacOS
- [ ] BSD
- [ ] *other*

I suggest adding Android based systems, as Emacs does work well in
Termux and there is also graphical version which I personally don't
use. 

** Which operating system to you use Emacs on? :MultiSelect:Mandatory:
- [ ] GNU/Linux
- [ ] Android/Replicant/Lineage OS
- [ ] Windows
- [ ] MacOS
- [ ] BSD
- [ ] *other*, tell us which one: ___________________

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - 3rd question

[Jean Louis]

I find this question very nice, good one.

** What is your level of elisp proficiency? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:
- [ ] No knowledge
- [ ] I can copy-paste and tweak some code
- [ ] I can write simple functions
- [ ] Fairly proficient, I can/have written my own package.
- [ ] I maintain multiple packages

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - which editor question

[Jean Louis]

** Which editor did you use before you started using Emacs? :RadioSelect:
- [ ] None
- [ ] Vim
- [ ] VS Code
- [ ] IntelliJ
- [ ] Atom
- [ ] Eclipse
- [ ] Nodepad++
- [ ] *other*

People use Emacs for years, you have forgotten to include "vi" -- Vim
is rather the new "vi", those people using Emacs for 20+ years did not
possibly use VS Code or IntelliJ or such new editors. 

You should include the old editors, and not just let it as a list of
modern editors.

I remember at that time there was elvis, there is "ed" which I still
use today, including from within Emacs especially when I need to
change single line on a remote server, there is "Notepad" on Windows
which you forgot, that may be one of most used editors, "SimpleText"
was default in Classic Mac OS, TeachText, TextEdit, XEDIT, you should
include default editors from various OS-es and not just assume that
people come from newer times as Emacs users, to know just those new
editors.

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - how you were introduced to Emacs

[Jean Louis]

** How were you introduced to Emacs? :RadioSelect:
- [ ] Friend
- [ ] University
- [ ] Some part of the internet
- [ ] *other*

Emacs was mainly distributed in GNU/Linux distributions and before
that on CD-ROMs by GNU.

The main introduction to Emacs may not come from a friend, but it
comes from the simple fact that it exists on GNU/Linux distribution.

I was introduced to Emacs that way, it was in the Window Manager
menus. 

Then there was book with the distribution, Emacs was in the book.

There are many Emacs books, too.

Thus, proposal is:

** How were you introduced to Emacs? :RadioSelect:
- [ ] Within my GNU/Linux or other operating system distribution
- [ ] Through books
- [ ] Friend
- [ ] University
- [ ] Some part of the internet
- [ ] *other*


-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - what features?

[Jean Louis]

** What features motivated you to initially try Emacs? :MultiSelect:
- [ ] Extensibility
- [ ] Package/ecosystem
- [ ] Community
- [ ] Part of the GNU project / FSF

You are forgetting the main feature of "text editing". The main reason
why I have started using Emacs is because it was text editor and
displayed in every Window Managers' menus. I could not possibly know
of extensibility neither of packages, as I have not opened Emacs, I
have clicked on it and started studying, only then I could find
extensibility and packages. Without opening it, launching it, I would
not know about the community neither, and I would not easily find out
it is GNU project.

Thus:

** What features motivated you to initially try Emacs? :MultiSelect:
- [ ] Text editing
- [ ] Extensibility
- [ ] Package/ecosystem
- [ ] Community
- [ ] Part of the GNU project / FSF


"Extensibility" is not understandable to many users, make a survey in
simple English.

Myself I do not understand how "package" would motivate me to use
Emacs, but if you wish to say that, then please:

Ecosystem
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Ecosystem

I would suggest this:

** What features motivated you to initially try Emacs? :MultiSelect:
- [ ] Text editing
- [ ] Extensibility
- [ ] Particular Emacs package
- [ ] Community talking about it
- [ ] Part of the GNU project / FSF



-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - email client

[Jean Louis]

** Do you use an Email client in Emacs? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:
- [ ] No
- [ ] Gnus
- [ ] Mu4e
- [ ] notmuch
- [ ] Wanderlust
- [ ] *other*

please include options:

** Do you use an Email client in Emacs? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:
- [ ] No
- [ ] Rmail (standard)
- [ ] MH-E (built-in)
- [ ] Gnus
- [ ] Mu4e
- [ ] notmuch
- [ ] Wanderlust
- [ ] Partially Emacs and external client 
- [ ] *other*

That is because it is important to mention that Emacs may be used to
send email, not just read email. I am sending emails from within
Emacs, but often reading email by using Mutt either as external
process in xterm or within vterm inside of Emacs.


-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - nationality

[Jean Louis]

Nationality may be multiple to many people. 

Instead, it is better if you ask for "Country where you are located"
as what is of interest is "where are users" located but what is their
nationality is rather personal question that does not matter for
Emacs.

By understanding where are users located, one may know which languages
to develop for Emacs, or what to do, but with their nationality, what
you want to do with it?

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - industry

[Jean Louis]

** Which industry do you work in? :RadioSelect:
- [ ] Academia (Student)
- [ ] Academia/Research
- [ ] Education
- [ ] FinTech
- [ ] Healthcare
- [ ] Legal
- [ ] Manufacturing
- [ ] Software Development
- [ ] Telecom
- [ ] *other*

That question of industry provides some defaults which are rather
subjectively choosen, it is better that people enter industry
themselves.

Or make a proper list of industries, something like:

https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag_index_alpha.htm

https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/types-of-industry

https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/list-of-industries/

"Student" is not an industry.

Academia is not a specific industry, you maybe wish to say
"University"

"Education" is not an industry, maybe "Education Services" is better.


-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - how did you fid out about survey

[Jean Louis]

** How did you find out about this survey? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:
- [ ] r/emacs
- [ ] Hacker News
- [ ] Direct message
- [ ] Discord
- [ ] Twitter
- [ ] Blog post
- [ ] Mailing list
- [ ] lobste.rs
- [ ] Telegram
- [ ] Emacs China
- [ ] IRC
- [ ] *other*

I suggest that you include:

- [ ] Fediverse (GNU Social, Mastodon, Pleroma)
- [ ] XMPP Chat
- [ ] Emacs Mailing List (to be more specific)
- [ ] Friend

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - which editor question

[Philip Kaludercic]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> ** Which editor did you use before you started using Emacs? :RadioSelect:
> - [ ] None
> - [ ] Vim
> - [ ] VS Code
> - [ ] IntelliJ
> - [ ] Atom
> - [ ] Eclipse
> - [ ] Nodepad++
> - [ ] *other*
>
> People use Emacs for years, you have forgotten to include "vi" -- Vim
> is rather the new "vi", those people using Emacs for 20+ years did not
> possibly use VS Code or IntelliJ or such new editors. 
>
> You should include the old editors, and not just let it as a list of
> modern editors.
>
> I remember at that time there was elvis, there is "ed" which I still
> use today, including from within Emacs especially when I need to
> change single line on a remote server, there is "Notepad" on Windows
> which you forgot, that may be one of most used editors, "SimpleText"
> was default in Classic Mac OS, TeachText, TextEdit, XEDIT, you should
> include default editors from various OS-es and not just assume that
> people come from newer times as Emacs users, to know just those new
> editors.

I think this has been mentioned already in this thread, the question is
what relevant information does the editor someone used 20+ years ago
give, especially considering that the "other" field is a text field.

The best I can think of would be an interesting infographic visualising
trends between how long someone has been using Emacs and what they used
prior to that.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - which editor question

[Jean Louis]

* Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> [2022-05-23 11:06]:
> > I remember at that time there was elvis, there is "ed" which I still
> > use today, including from within Emacs especially when I need to
> > change single line on a remote server, there is "Notepad" on Windows
> > which you forgot, that may be one of most used editors, "SimpleText"
> > was default in Classic Mac OS, TeachText, TextEdit, XEDIT, you should
> > include default editors from various OS-es and not just assume that
> > people come from newer times as Emacs users, to know just those new
> > editors.
> 
> I think this has been mentioned already in this thread, the question is
> what relevant information does the editor someone used 20+ years ago
> give, especially considering that the "other" field is a text field.
> 
> The best I can think of would be an interesting infographic visualising
> trends between how long someone has been using Emacs and what they used
> prior to that.

Yes, that is not so relevant IMHO, but then if one is asking for prior
editors, list should rather be extensive as to make it more specific.

List of text editors - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_editors

Those issues most relevant would be IMHO usability, accessibility,
user interface, understanding and learning Emacs and problems in using
it. There is question covering it, but is general.

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - nationality

[Ihor Radchenko]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> Nationality may be multiple to many people. 
>
> Instead, it is better if you ask for "Country where you are located"
> as what is of interest is "where are users" located but what is their
> nationality is rather personal question that does not matter for
> Emacs.

I changed my country of residence multiple times since I started using
Emacs. I do not think that _current_ country makes any meaningful sense.
At least, not more than nationality.

Best,
Ihor

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Timothy <tecosaur@gmail.com> writes:

> It would be good to maximise the utility of the survey to the three
> groups mentioned earlier. In this vein I hope some of you,
> emacs-devel, would be willing to provide some feedback on the survey
> :)

Thanks for doing this survey -- and I just wanted to mention that while
it's nice that you're collecting feedback on the survey, you should also
feel free to ignore any of that feedback you don't agree with.  It's
your survey, after all, so you should do what you want to.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - 1st question

[Timothy]

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Hi Jean,

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> It is interesting that the whole survey is not talking about “text
> editing” – I understand, this is Emacs, but you should be talking
> about text editing so much more. Text editors are about text.

If there are any specific questions you think would be good, please suggest
them.

> ** Which of the following activities do you use Emacs for? :MultiSelect:Mandatory:
> - [ ] Work
> - [ ] Hobby projects
> - [ ] *other*
>
> The question is vague, rather general. Some people will say “work” for
> hobby projects. In my life I work what I like, and I make money too
> and on hobby projects there is some money, so is it work. For me that
> question is vague.
>
> In that above question, in the context of the question, I suggest that
> you expand it to following (while editing my English):
> [*snip]

To me it seems like your suggestions conflate work and the nature of one’s
work. Since we ask that later anyway, I don’t think having that extra
specificity here is actually of much benefit. E.g.

> - [ ] I use it as student or pupil in school

To me seems equivalent to use=work + job=student.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - 2nd question

[Timothy]

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Hi Jean,

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> ** Which operating system to you use Emacs on? :MultiSelect:Mandatory:
> - [ ] GNU/Linux
> - [ ] Windows
> - [ ] MacOS
> - [ ] BSD
> - [ ] *other*
>
> I suggest adding Android based systems, as Emacs does work well in
> Termux and there is also graphical version which I personally don’t
> use.

Android etc. can just be written in the other field.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - how you were introduced to Emacs

[Timothy]

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Hi Jean,

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> ** How were you introduced to Emacs? :RadioSelect:
> - [ ] Friend
> - [ ] University
> - [ ] Some part of the internet
> - [ ] *other*
>
> Emacs was mainly distributed in GNU/Linux distributions and before
> that on CD-ROMs by GNU.
>
> The main introduction to Emacs may not come from a friend, but it
> comes from the simple fact that it exists on GNU/Linux distribution.

The fact that this list is not exhaustive is why the *other* field exists,
“Discovered on my GNU/Linux distribution” can just be entered there.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - what features?

[Timothy]

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Hi Jean,

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> ** What features motivated you to initially try Emacs? :MultiSelect:
> - [ ] Extensibility
> - [ ] Package/ecosystem
> - [ ] Community
> - [ ] Part of the GNU project / FSF
>
> You are forgetting the main feature of “text editing”.

Added.

> The main reason why I have started using Emacs is because it was text editor
> and displayed in every Window Managers’ menus. I could not possibly know of
> extensibility neither of packages, as I have not opened Emacs, I have clicked
> on it and started studying, only then I could find extensibility and packages.
> Without opening it, launching it, I would not know about the community
> neither, and I would not easily find out it is GNU project.

If somebody is trying Emacs from word of mouth etc. I’d imagine the
extensibility of Emacs may have been mentioned.

> “Extensibility” is not understandable to many users, make a survey in
> simple English.

Hmm, personally I don’t see the issue here.

> Myself I do not understand how “package” would motivate me to use
> Emacs, but if you wish to say that, then please:

Well, I’d say Magit and Org-mode are pretty motivating packages.

> Ecosystem
> <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Ecosystem>

I’m talking about the Emacs package ecosystem, to which the comments there do
not seem to apply. It may be clearer just to say “Package(s)” though.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - email client

[Timothy]

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Hi Jean,

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> please include options:
>
> ** Do you use an Email client in Emacs? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:
> - [ ] No
> - [ ] Rmail (standard)
> - [ ] MH-E (built-in)
> - [ ] Gnus
> - [ ] Mu4e
> - [ ] notmuch
> - [ ] Wanderlust
> - [ ] Partially Emacs and external client
> - [ ] *other*
>
> That is because it is important to mention that Emacs may be used to
> send email, not just read email. I am sending emails from within
> Emacs, but often reading email by using Mutt either as external
> process in xterm or within vterm inside of Emacs.

The options listed simply aim to catch the most common responses. Rarer options
like Rmail can simply be entered into the other field, as mentioned in a
previous reply.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - industry

[Timothy]

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Hi Jean,

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> ** Which industry do you work in? :RadioSelect:
> - [ ] Academia (Student)
> - [ ] Academia/Research
> - [ ] Education
> - [ ] FinTech
> - [ ] Healthcare
> - [ ] Legal
> - [ ] Manufacturing
> - [ ] Software Development
> - [ ] Telecom
> - [ ] *other*
>
> That question of industry provides some defaults which are rather
> subjectively choosen

Any list of industries is subjective.

> it is better that people enter industry themselves.

They can do so via the other field. The aim here is to capture what I suspect
will be the most common responses.

> Or make a proper list of industries, something like:
>
> <https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag_index_alpha.htm>
>
> <https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/types-of-industry>
>
> <https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/list-of-industries/>

> “Student” is not an industry.

No, but I think it’s the most helpful response students could give.

> Academia is not a specific industry, you maybe wish to say
> “University”

I picked “academia” to avoid any potential confusion with student/university.

> “Education” is not an industry, maybe “Education Services” is better.

Changed.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - how did you fid out about survey

[Timothy]

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Hi Jean,

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> ** How did you find out about this survey? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:
> (snip)

> I suggest that you include:
>
> - [ ] Fediverse (GNU Social, Mastodon, Pleroma)
> - [ ] XMPP Chat

Hmm, I’m not sure if these should be added or left for people to enter into “other”.

> - [ ] Emacs Mailing List (to be more specific)

Changed.

> - [ ] Friend

Merged with “Direct message”.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - which editor question

[Timothy]

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Hi Jean,

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> ** Which editor did you use before you started using Emacs? :RadioSelect:
>
> People use Emacs for years, you have forgotten to include “vi” – Vim
> is rather the new “vi”, those people using Emacs for 20+ years did not
> possibly use VS Code or IntelliJ or such new editors.

1. I’m not sure if it’s any more helpful to us to know that people came from vi
   not vim.
2. They can enter “vi” in the other field should they so wish.

> You should include the old editors, and not just let it as a list of
> modern editors.

In these rare cases, the other field is more appropriate than an exhaustive
list.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - how did you fid out about survey

[Philip Kaludercic]

Timothy <tecosaur@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Jean,
>
> Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:
>
>> ** How did you find out about this survey? :RadioSelect:Mandatory:
>> (snip)
>
>> I suggest that you include:
>>
>> - [ ] Fediverse (GNU Social, Mastodon, Pleroma)
>> - [ ] XMPP Chat
>
> Hmm, I’m not sure if these should be added or left for people to enter into “other”.

Fediverse seems appropriate enough, but a special field for XMPP (as
opposed to any other private messaging service) seems superfluous.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - how you were introduced to Emacs

[Philip Kaludercic]

Timothy <tecosaur@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Jean,
>
> Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:
>
>> ** How were you introduced to Emacs? :RadioSelect:
>> - [ ] Friend
>> - [ ] University
>> - [ ] Some part of the internet
>> - [ ] *other*
>>
>> Emacs was mainly distributed in GNU/Linux distributions and before
>> that on CD-ROMs by GNU.
>>
>> The main introduction to Emacs may not come from a friend, but it
>> comes from the simple fact that it exists on GNU/Linux distribution.
>
> The fact that this list is not exhaustive is why the *other* field exists,
> “Discovered on my GNU/Linux distribution” can just be entered there.

As a general question, do you have the means to recognise similar
answers written into the "other" field.  E.g. in the best case that that
"Discovered on my GNU/Linux distribution" and "Distributed in a linux
distro" can be aggregated into the same statistic?

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - how you were introduced to Emacs

[Timothy]

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Hi Philip,

> As a general question, do you have the means to recognise similar
> answers written into the “other” field.  E.g. in the best case that that
> “Discovered on my GNU/Linux distribution” and “Distributed in a linux
> distro” can be aggregated into the same statistic?

Yep, we can take the pile of “other” responses and look for similarities.

All the best,
Timothy

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - industry

[John ff]

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I am not sure what I would answer to this question.  I am retired from an academic post but still do the kind of things I did from the 1970s.  Even as an academic did stuff for other areas, computing mostly.  Buy I must choose one, so I guess "other".
==John ff


On 23 May 2022, 18:29, at 18:29, Timothy <tecosaur@gmail.com> wrote:
>Hi Jean,
>
>Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:
>
>> ** Which industry do you work in? :RadioSelect:
>> - [ ] Academia (Student)
>> - [ ] Academia/Research
>> - [ ] Education
>> - [ ] FinTech
>> - [ ] Healthcare
>> - [ ] Legal
>> - [ ] Manufacturing
>> - [ ] Software Development
>> - [ ] Telecom
>> - [ ] *other*
>>
>> That question of industry provides some defaults which are rather
>> subjectively choosen
>
>Any list of industries is subjective.
>
>> it is better that people enter industry themselves.
>
>They can do so via the other field. The aim here is to capture what I
>suspect
>will be the most common responses.
>
>> Or make a proper list of industries, something like:
>>
>> <https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag_index_alpha.htm>
>>
>>
><https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/types-of-industry>
>>
>> <https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/list-of-industries/>
>
>> “Student” is not an industry.
>
>No, but I think it’s the most helpful response students could give.
>
>> Academia is not a specific industry, you maybe wish to say
>> “University”
>
>I picked “academia” to avoid any potential confusion with
>student/university.
>
>> “Education” is not an industry, maybe “Education Services” is better.
>
>Changed.
>
>All the best,
>Timothy

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Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - 2nd question

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > ** Which operating system to you use Emacs on? :MultiSelect:Mandatory:
  > > - [ ] GNU/Linux
  > > - [ ] Windows
  > > - [ ] MacOS
  > > - [ ] BSD
  > > - [ ] *other*

It is important to make it clear that nonfree operating systems are
not choices "just as good" as free ones.  We can't tell people what to
do, but we hope for their sake that they discard those soon .

How about adding this text:

  (If you're using Windows or MacOS, we hope, for your freedom's sake,
  that you are making arrangements to cease using it soon.  See
  https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html
  and https://gnu.org/malware/.)

This way, people won't assume that the GNU Project shares the usual
attitude that which operating system to use is a purely practical question.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Timothy]

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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).

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>

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.

All the best,
Timothy

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

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

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

Could we possibly move this discussion to a different list?
Just to keep it separate from Emacs development discussions.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Philip Kaludercic]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > We have already been discussing this in private, but I'd like to re-post
>   > it here for others to comment on:
>
> Could we possibly move this discussion to a different list?
> Just to keep it separate from Emacs development discussions.

Sure, but it seems that there are no comments on the issue anyway.  Or
are you saying that discussions on the survey in general are off-topic?

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Richard Stallman]

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  > Sure, but it seems that there are no comments on the issue anyway.  Or
  > are you saying that discussions on the survey in general are off-topic?

The Emacs survey is certainly on topic for emacs-devel.  I just
expected there to be a lot of discussion about the survey, so
separating it would be more convenient for everyone.

If it isn't a lot of discussion, then there's no problem.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
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Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
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Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Akib Azmain Turja]

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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).
>
> 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>
>
> 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.
>
> All the best,
> Timothy
>

Everything looks good, except the following question:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
        RadioSelect(:respondent_education,
            "What is the highest level of education you have completed?",
            ["High school" => "School",
             "Associate's Degree" => "Associates",
             "Bachelor's Degree" => "Bachelors",
             "Master's Degree" => "Masters",
             "PhD or equivalent" => "PhD"],
            mandatory=false),
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

What if someone is still in high school?

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Akib Azmain Turja

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Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Po Lu]

Akib Azmain Turja <akib@disroot.org> writes:

> Everything looks good, except the following question:
>
>         RadioSelect(:respondent_education,
>             "What is the highest level of education you have completed?",
>             ["High school" => "School",
>              "Associate's Degree" => "Associates",
>              "Bachelor's Degree" => "Bachelors",
>              "Master's Degree" => "Masters",
>              "PhD or equivalent" => "PhD"],
>             mandatory=false),
>
> What if someone is still in high school?

I think the number of those individuals using Emacs is small enough that
they can simply choose not to answer.

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Philip Kaludercic]

Akib Azmain Turja <akib@disroot.org> writes:

> 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).
>>
>> 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>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> All the best,
>> Timothy
>>
>
> Everything looks good, except the following question:
>
>         RadioSelect(:respondent_education,
>             "What is the highest level of education you have completed?",
>             ["High school" => "School",
>              "Associate's Degree" => "Associates",
>              "Bachelor's Degree" => "Bachelors",
>              "Master's Degree" => "Masters",
>              "PhD or equivalent" => "PhD"],
>             mandatory=false),
>
> What if someone is still in high school?

The question is not mandatory so I think it is fine.

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).
>
> 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>

Another thing that came to mind is that the survey appears to implicitly
assume that Emacs is a participants main or even only editor.  I know
plenty of people where this is not the case, who perhaps use Emacs only
for Org, Magit or for some other mode.  So perhaps questions like

  "Which editor did you use before you started using Emacs?",

should be generalised to

  "Which editor do/did you use besides Emacs?",

and a questions could be added to the effect of "How frequently do you
use Emacs a week?", "Where does Emacs fall short?".

Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Gregor Zattler]

Hi Stefan, Timothey,
* Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> [2022-05-19; 13:37 -04]:
>> I’m not sure what’s best here. Nationality feels like the right thing to me, but
>> as you say some people could reasonably check two or even three of them.
>> However, I’d consider a list of 237 checkboxes to be pretty bad (as opposed to
>> the current single-select dropdown menu). Would it be unreasonable to ask for a
>> primary nationality, if that works for 99% of people that may be good enough
>> overall for us.
>
> To be honest, I have no idea why we'd care about nationality.  I can see
> why we'd care about where our users reside (e.g. country of residence),

+1 for country of residence.

Regarding the idea of asking for region instead: If people
answer country of residence it's possible to aggregate the
answers to regions.

> or maybe which is their mother's tongue, or the language they speak most
> comfortably, but nationality?  only as a proxy for some of those.

Makes sense to me, especially if there would be a next
question how well they find their language supported by
Emacs.  Or if they need additional packages for supporting
their language.


Ciao; Gregor
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