From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.ciao.gmane.io!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: How to poll the users Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2020 22:18:16 -0400 Message-ID: References: <87k12bdgx7.fsf@yahoo.com> <87a736wyed.fsf@yahoo.com> <2F7AD0CB-FF83-4244-BD77-7E0460A77762@icloud.com> <87wo6a7abj.fsf@yahoo.com> <87o8rlbnic.fsf@yahoo.com> <45098d13-2770-4a19-6f82-b22276eb51c8@yandex.ru> <877dy91mb0.fsf@yahoo.com> <0ce06d95-0593-bc55-983f-6b6601503a1a@yandex.ru> <38f07534-f9db-64eb-5256-e73bcebafef4@yandex.ru> <8e4a5b46-f9a6-400e-f573-f73b419e229f@yandex.ru> <8f1cf2d3-4d55-4ad3-9322-9876fa9862a9@default> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="ciao.gmane.io:159.69.161.202"; logging-data="100543"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: pcr910303@icloud.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org, luangruo@yahoo.com, seb@k-7.ch, dgutov@yandex.ru, drew.adams@oracle.com To: Stefan Kangas Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Mon Apr 27 04:19:05 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jStMN-000Q0Y-P4 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Mon, 27 Apr 2020 04:19:03 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:50406 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jStMM-0000xz-ML for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sun, 26 Apr 2020 22:19:02 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:60006) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jStLf-0008JN-TY for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 26 Apr 2020 22:18:20 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:54456) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jStLd-0000z2-Ee; Sun, 26 Apr 2020 22:18:17 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1jStLc-0004We-Ix; Sun, 26 Apr 2020 22:18:16 -0400 In-Reply-To: (message from Stefan Kangas on Sat, 25 Apr 2020 18:15:24 +0200) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:247874 Archived-At: [[[ 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. ]]] > > If the poll doesn't contain an implicit promise (e.g. "we considering a > > change of default"), the turnout is likely to be much lower. Which is > > not what we want, I think. > I agree. I would add I think this could be an important way for > emacs-devel to interact with regular users, and make them feel more > involved. A poll of the users is not about counting votes. The aim is to learn more about what users find convenient or inconvenient, and especially how and why it is convenient or inconvenient. The ideal outcome is NOT that we choose the default that 65% of the users prefer rather than the one 25% prefer. Rather, the ideal outcome is to invent another option that nearly everyone will like. The only proper "promise" to make is that we will use what we learn from the poll to make Emacs better. > Perhaps we could even consider asking for their input on a number of > important questions (not too many, say 4-5) where it would be > interesting to get feedback. Responses of "yes" or "no" are not very helpful, because they give us little understanding. We seek responses that tell us more than that. To encourage users to think about and report why and how certain behaviors help them or annoy them, we raise one issue at a time. If there are several issues we want to learn more about, we do separate polls about them. We can do as many polls as we like, subject to the limits on our time to study the results. -- Dr Richard Stallman Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)