============= survey results for each question ===============
1. Are you interested in a Usenet Newsgroup about Zoomers? It would be called
"comp.sys.zoomer".
34 yes
01 no
01 no opinion or indifferent
2. If such a newsgroup were created, would you prefer to receive zoomer-list
information via the newsgroup or continue to use the mailing list or both?
22 newsgroup
05 mailing list
07 both
02 no opinion or indifferent
3. If the newsgroup were created, would you be in favor or opposed to a
gateway between the newsgroup and the zoomer-list mailing list? A gateway
would mean that all postings to the newsgroup would be forwarded to the
mailing list, and all mail sent to the mailing list would be posted to
the newsgroup. A gateway would cause there to be more traffic on both
the newsgroup and the mailing list.
13 in favor of a gateway
08 opposed to a gateway
15 no opinion or indifferent
4. Do you have access to the World Wide Web (aka WWW or "Mosaic")?
35 yes
00 no
01 don't know
5. Have you ever used the Zoomer WWW information server?
32 yes
04 no
00 don't know
6. If you answered "yes" to 5., have you ever used the zoomer-list mailing
list archives on the Zoomer WWW information server?
18 yes
13 no
01 don't know
04 not applicable; I answered "no" or "don't know" to 5
========== table of responses ============
1 2 3 4 5 6 <- question #
Y N I N M B I F O I Y N D Y N D Y N D X <- choices
---------------------------------------
x x x x x x <- each row is an individual response
x x x x x x with selections marked by an "x"
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x
---------------------------------------
3 0 0 2 0 0 0 1 0 1 3 0 0 3 0 0 1 1 0 0 <- total for each choice
4 1 1 2 5 7 2 3 8 5 5 0 1 2 4 0 8 3 1 4 (read the number vertically)
=========== analysis =================
I found this pretty interesting and rather surprising in some ways. Before
getting into that, let me point out a few things about how these results should
be interpreted in general:
The results represent the opinions of the respondents and aren't statistically
representative of the opinions of the subscribers as a whole. While 36 of 255
is a good response ratio, the fact that the respondents selected themselves can
cause the results to be skewed. In this particular case, it's reasonable to
assume that people who were interested in a Zoomer newsgroup were more likely
to respond than people who weren't interested in a newsgroup, and the results
seem to support that assumption. On the other hand, Usenet is largely ruled by
self-selecting respondents -- that's how the newsgroup voting process works.
OK, about those results:
Clearly, there's interest in a comp.sys.zoomer newsgroup. Many indicated that
they'd switch to newsgroup-reading instead of mailing-list-reading for their
daily dose of Zoomer info.
The issue of "to gateway or not to gateway" had a much less clear-cut result.
The 13-8 vote in favor wasn't all that strong, and I was surprised by the 15
"no opinion or indifferent". More about gateways in the plan...
I was pleasantly surprised by the large number of respondents who have WWW
access at their disposal -- I'm in the WWW business at work :-) -- and most of
those people had visited the Zoomer WWW site which I maintain. The surprise
here was that almost half had not visited the Zoomer WWW site's zoomer-list
archives.
=========== plans ============
I'm going to go ahead and start the process of getting a comp.sys.zoomer vote
going. Usenet votes are performed by a group of impartial vote-takers (bless
their hearts) and I'll forward the voting instructions as soon as I get them.
As far as I'm concerned, the gateway issue remains unresolved. Since a gateway
can have a significant impact on the traffic for the mailing list (both quality
and quantity), I think it's worth asking about it again. Everyone on the list
should care about this a little, even if you don't care about the existence of
a newsgroup. I'll post yet another survey -- a simple one -- momentarily.
Thanks to everyone who responded,
-- -Brian Smithson brian@grot.starconn.com