From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "William G. Gardella" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Frequently Enabled Packages - Emacs-24.4 survey (Please participate) Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2013 05:24:44 +0000 Message-ID: <877gbek34z.fsf@motoko.kusanagi> References: <87ppp7nqqa.fsf@gmail.com> <87k3ffm18p.fsf@motoko.kusanagi> <87d2l6zkdp.fsf@gmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1386566731 29170 80.91.229.3 (9 Dec 2013 05:25:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2013 05:25:31 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Dec 09 06:25:37 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VptLd-0000EN-8R for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 09 Dec 2013 06:25:37 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41994 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VptLc-0003pf-JT for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 09 Dec 2013 00:25:36 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:33275) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VptL9-0003cK-Mv for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 09 Dec 2013 00:25:15 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VptL1-0002fG-MV for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 09 Dec 2013 00:25:07 -0500 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:53258) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VptL1-0002fA-FX for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 09 Dec 2013 00:24:59 -0500 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VptKy-0008HA-D9 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 09 Dec 2013 06:24:56 +0100 Original-Received: from politkovskaja.torservers.net ([77.247.181.165]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 09 Dec 2013 06:24:56 +0100 Original-Received: from wgg2 by politkovskaja.torservers.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 09 Dec 2013 06:24:56 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 32 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: politkovskaja.torservers.net User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:KAleNPicNlvUABsXWj7F4QLY2ME= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:94890 Archived-At: Jambunathan K writes: >> The implementation of this survey is insane, and as a result, > > Users are discovering (for first time?) features that are on that list > and reporting issues it. I have also seen bugs when two different minor > modes are mixed and matched together. > > I have a strong feeling that some of the bug reports are result of this > survey. On what evidence, exactly? >> the wiki page is horribly b0rken. > > I don't think so. Your methodology resulted in a bunch of modes which are very commonly used being added automatically to the table with erroneous results (auto-compression-mode and auto-encryption-mode, for example, are enabled by default, so I doubt vey much that their usage figure is really 0!). This wildly distorted evidence is likely to lead to bad policymaking over at emacs-devel; the best we can hope for is that it's simply ignored. If the purpose is to discover which packages are actually frequently used (for purposes of deciding what should be enabled by defaullt, for example), it's generating horribly inaccurate and unreadable data, for no good reason (report-emacs-bug demonstrates how much of this data is already available in an automated fashion). You're bringing some entirely collateral and until-now-unstated purposes of this survey without any evidence that it's achieving those aims at all.