Re: C-d deleting region considered harmful

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>     This is not a rhetoric question: maybe Emacs history has shown polls are
>     not effective, leading to more debate and less consensus; or maybe users
>     don't like polls.  
>
> I did on the order of 10 polls while I was Emacs maintainer,
> and I am very glad I did.  They gave a lot of useful information.

[I seem to recall you making the point in the past that the polls are
not so much a "vote" as a way to solicit reasoned arguments from a
somewhat wider group than the regular developers.]

Of course, the Emacs user community does change, and probably is more
disparate now than it was in the past (with more people getting Emacs,
and Emacs support, indirectly through N levels, rather than directly
using emacs-help etc).

It seems like the usefulness of the results would depend very much on
the nature of the question -- e.g., the results might be a lot better
when you want the feedback of experienced long-time Emacs users (and
it's OK for the results to be heavily biased in that direction), than
when you want the opinion of the "mythical newbie" or even the average
Emacs user.

-miles

-- 
It wasn't the Exxon Valdez captain's driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill.
It was yours.  [Greenpeace advertisement, New York Times, 25 February 1990]