From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Thien-Thi Nguyen Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Idea for determining what users use Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 07:35:08 -0400 Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: References: Reply-To: ttn@glug.org NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1054208253 10089 80.91.224.249 (29 May 2003 11:37:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 11:37:33 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Thu May 29 13:37:30 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19LLis-0002cU-00 for ; Thu, 29 May 2003 13:37:30 +0200 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 19LLxW-0003pO-00 for ; Thu, 29 May 2003 13:52:38 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.20) id 19LLhn-0006IS-Ho for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Thu, 29 May 2003 07:36:23 -0400 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.20) id 19LLhX-0006EA-7X for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 29 May 2003 07:36:07 -0400 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.20) id 19LLgg-0005t8-7N for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 29 May 2003 07:35:14 -0400 Original-Received: from colo.agora-net.com ([207.245.84.69]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.20) id 19LLgc-0005pN-ER; Thu, 29 May 2003 07:35:10 -0400 Original-Received: from ttn by colo.agora-net.com with local (Exim 3.34 #1) id 19LLga-0000Wb-00; Thu, 29 May 2003 07:35:08 -0400 Original-To: rms@gnu.org In-reply-to: (message from Richard Stallman on Wed, 28 May 2003 19:58:12 -0400) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1b5 Precedence: list List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Archive: List-Unsubscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:14415 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:14415 From: Richard Stallman Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 19:58:12 -0400 I think you must have misunderstood the proposal. We will insert these calls when and where we want them. I can't see why we would have any problems as a result. i deliberately widened the scope of my interpretation of the proposal because such a facility is useful for all programmers in a similar manner to how autoload.el, bytecomp.el and reporter.el facilities are useful to third party programmers. Mail sent to emacs-features-used@gnu.org will just be dumped into a file. We will search the file when we want to search it. that is one way to do it. It is impossible to avoid this. Whatever we put into the code, to indicate which functions etc. we are interested in, that thing will appear in certain Emacs releases and not others. this presumes emacs maintainers are the only ones to make use of such a facility. that is fine, but i think a little forethought about the mindset behind the initiative (to find out what is in actual use, i.e., to formalize one communication channel between users and programmers) is valuable to making the design useful outside the scope of the code that happens to be in the gnu cvs repo. Someone suggested "batching" these responses. That can't be done because you never know that the same user will encounter another one of these calls. The one he has encountered today may be the last one. whether one hit or multiple hits, IMHO it is better to separate the collection and reporting sub-activities, not only for efficiency but also to support user control/privacy. It is also unnecessary, because these calls will be few and not frequent. We will put them in features for which we don't know of any users. Most users will not encounter any of them. Of those who encounter one, most will never encounter another. like any code, its frequency of use is really up to its users once it gets into the wild. in this case, the code in question is code to get feedback on programs, so its users will likely be programmers interested in getting feedback on their programs, the numbers of which are hardly small and constantly growing (although not at a constant rate ;-). that is, although we apply the techniques extremely judiciously, you can't trust programmers not to be extreme in unexpected directions... We know about surveys. This is not a survey. the intent may not not be to do a survey, but the components of this idea share many aspects w/ those of a survey. it differs from the various surveys in the past in that the results are partially machine generated. perhaps it could be called an assay instead of a survey. thi