Re: Emacs Survey 2022 - design

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

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