Re: Webizen survey launched

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 1:21 PM, Coralie Mercier <coralie@w3.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 11 Sep 2014 13:14:50 +0200, Tobie Langel <tobie.langel@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>  On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 1:11 PM, Coralie Mercier <coralie@w3.org> wrote:
>>
>>  On Thu, 11 Sep 2014 12:39:50 +0200, Tobie Langel <tobie.langel@gmail.com
>>> >
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>  I'm aware I'm a bit late to the party here, but it would have been very
>>>
>>>> useful to gather extra data about the survey participants, at least the
>>>> following:
>>>>
>>>> 1) Whether employed or freelance,
>>>> 2) size of company they work for, and
>>>> 3) country where they live.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> A number of people in the task force have made those suggestions already,
>>> but we chose to aim for the shortest possible survey, to avoid people
>>> being
>>> afraid it might take too long.
>>>
>>
>>
>> That's a reasonable goal to achieve, indeed.
>>
>> Why in that case insist on using WBS for the survey when there a plenty of
>> more approachable and user-friendly solutions out there (most of which are
>> free or really cheap)?
>>
>
> I was tasked with choosing the solution. I don't recall that anyone in the
> TF had any specific suggestion for solutions.
>
> Constraints I was operating under were: no budget, limited time to invest.
> I looked at Survey Monkey but found that it was not free. Therefore I
> turned to WBS which I am pretty familiar with.


I really not trying to blame you or anyone. And the reasons for this choice
are perfectly reasonable. But all of this small and seemingly innocuous
choices end up painting W3C as old, out of touch, etc.

In this particular case, this also risks biasing your respondents towards
those that already have a W3C account and/or who's eyes don't start
bleeding when looking at WBS. Neither of which are part of the
constituencies you really should be targeting with this effort.

Anyway, enough digression for today and thanks for your time answering my
comments,

--tobie