For what it's worth... I'm just a casual user of LO. It was
installed on my new computer when I bought it a year and a half ago.
I got on this list because the spell checker wouldn't work. I've
remained here because a) I sometimes learn stuff and b) I like it
when you guys disagree with one an other (or someone) and have
arguments. It's a little bit of diversion for an old man. And I
enjoy Anne Ology's occasional remarks too :-)
Anyway, I started taking the survey but couldn't finish it because as
others have said it seemed to be somehow steering me. It didn't have
the check boxes I wanted!!!
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles-H. Schulz
[mailto:charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org] Sent: Monday, November
11, 2013 4:09 PM To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging users: initial results
of the survey
Hello Ken,
Ken Springer <snowshed1@q.com> a écrit :
Hi, Charles,
On 11/11/13 4:19 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
Hello Alex,
Le Mon, 11 Nov 2013 09:05:46 +0100,
Alex Thurgood <alex.thurgood@gmail.com> a écrit :
Le 10/11/2013 19:46, Charles-H. Schulz a écrit :
Hi Charles,
Whilst I appreciate the effort in designing such a survey and the
objective behind it, I too, must admit that the survey was not
worded
in a way in which I felt comfortable responding. Indeed, it seemed
to
be distinctly biased towards getting the participants to answer
in a given direction.
Next time I'm sure you can join us in the weeks during which we
discussed the survey on the marketing and project's list :-)
I hope you are making a list of the concerns voiced in this thread,
and
the other thread about the survey. That will give you additional
points
to look at for the next survey.
Ken, I am not only making a list, I am reading this thread and the
other one about LibreOffice vs. MSO with great attention. Lots of
stuff to digest but lots of things to say from my side as well.
Additionally, I would question the statistical relevance of 600
responses, when the project is alleged to have tens/hundreds of
thousands of users. If only 600 hundred people took the time to
respond, what does this say about :
- penetration of the product;
I honestly would not think there's relevant data for this in the
survey and from the respondents.
- reach of the survey;
Good question with no easy answer. The survey was localized in 5
languages aside English. The link was posted here and on the
several other users mailing lists. The word was spread on the
Facebook LibreOffice page and Google+ and to a lesser extent on
Twitter.
Once I've said this I guess I didn't say much. Here are two
additional
facts:
- the survey was not translated (and not propagated) to three
countries
where we know we have an active community and anywhere between a
non
trivial number of users up to a large number of them: Russia,
Japan,
Brazil. Judging by the survey results, it would seem that their
impact has been minimal or virtually non-existent. So the survey
reached out to some categories of users, but not all of them.
I'd
be
however confident in stating that the users that responded are
representative of the LibreOffice users in general.
Let's work with Alex's comment there were 600 responses to the
survey. You often read how LO has thousands and thousands of users.
Just to make it simple, let's say there's 100,000 users. That's
probably miniscule to MSO and possibly even WordPerfect.
That means, at best you got the opinions of .6% of the users.
Personally, I would never consider that to be representative of the
user
base, especially when you noted in the next paragraph of the
limitation
of the survey's distribution. I would seriously consider junking
this survey's results, using it as a learning experience, and doing
a better
survey.
Really, all you have is the opinions of the users of the mailing
list, not users in general.
You are right on your last statement however I still maintain that
this fraction of users which is by the way even smaller than 0.6% is
representative of the users in that the respondents have concerned
that are similar to everyone else.
One other point on the survey is that it did not pop out from my
head. It was designed over the course of over a week by a team of
contributors. And this team was open to anyone (hence my remark to
Alex).
- the survey could have had a bigger and much deeper outreach if
it had been pushed directly to the users, say at the installation
phase
or even through a mechanism allowing users to respond to it via
the
StartCenter. That was obviously not the case, so in the end we
reached out the users who are on the project's mailing list and
connected to us through our social networks. This leaves out
plenty
of users irrespective of their language.
- design of the survey;
What would you like to know? The survey was designed in order to be
progressive in its questioning as should be all the surveys. Beyond
that, don't look too much into survey methodologies, I'm not sure
they
are that sophisticated, unless of course you would like to get a
particular answer in advance, and that's precisely what we wanted
to avoid.
As I and someone else pointed out, you limited the range of the
responses. When you do that, you automatically color/bias the
results of any survey. Easy to correlate the data received, but no
guarantee of
accuracy. Which is why, so often, election results don't match the
polls and surveys. :-)
Good point here too. I guess I will answer on the other thread but
please always keep in mind that most of us are volunteers and that
this is a FOSS project. It means among other things that we do not
work like a company nor sell a product but also that we tend to be
short handed when it comes to resources at least compared to
Microsoft :-)
Best,
Charles.
- length and time for which the survey ran ?
The survey started on the 31st of October and expired yesterday.
Best,
Charles.
Alex
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