RationalWikiWiki talk:Survey proposal

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This conversation edited from here: Talk:List_of_female_users#Deletion

.... Perhaps we could create a RWW survey. Create a list of "What is your position on xxx" questions and ask everyone to fill it out (on the talk page of their article page here? On a big RW article page?) and we'd collate the results here. It would be a complete shambles of course, but there's not a lot going down at the moment and it would raise the profile of RWW, and could be a bit of fun. I know something similar happened with Rem, so we'd need to chose new questions.--False Flag 21:09, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

....I like your idea of categorizing through a survey though. Refugee 09:05, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I like the survey idea. ........ -- Nx/talk 16:00, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

So do we think it's a good idea? What questions should we ask? Where? If we put up one long list we run the risk of lots of comments and responses. (though that might be fun.) We could dump a survey on everyday talk page on RW. We could do it on talk pages here and ask people to fill it out. I'm sure there are other possibilities as well.--False Flag 16:53, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps on a subpage of the article about the user, or in a central location such as RationalWiki:Survey with each user posting his/her answers on a subpage. As for the technicalities, we make a page with the questions, then we can make links with the preload parameter, which will open an edit page and insert the contents of the specified page into the edit box. We can put those links into the stalkbox (to be replaced by a link to the survey once it's filled out) or the welcome template, or the survey page. --  Nx/talk  17:04, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

All those sound great NX and if we go with this then one of those here would be indispensable. But I'd like to think there was some way to directly link to RW as well. We could use the intercom I suppose but not everybody sees that and once you click it, it's gone. Is there anything more intrusive dramatic noticeable that we could do on RW to stimulate interest? (On a spperate point - what would be nice would be some way to automatically analyse/summarise answers as well (ie. 70% of users are Hindu, 80% are Global Warming deniers etc.)) What to the rest of our hordes of users think?

We could spam the community chalkboard. I doubt we can automate it, not with satisfactory results anyway. --  Nx/talk  18:20, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking more of a note on everyone's' talk page. But we may be getting ahead of ourselves on the technical side. Perhaps a more important question would be: What questions do we want to ask? Perhaps if the questions are sufficiently appropriate they will generate their own interest. Thinking about it some more, another thing that would be nice would be for there to be some way for people to comment on other's responses.--False Flag 18:40, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

If we put the filled out form on its own page, then the talk page. --  Nx/talk  18:50, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

A project page and a talk page are obviously good things. I don't quite understand your proposed format though.--False Flag 19:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The thing is that I can think of three types of questions:

• Yes/no - easy to evaluate but restrictive.
• Multiple choice - also easy to evaluate and less restrictive - but still restrictive.
• What is your position on X? - The kind of question many RW users like to pontificate on at length, but which is hell to evaluate.--False Flag 19:34, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Number 3, definitely. There's no point in doing multiple choice questions restricted to a few predetermined answers, we already have the political compass and moral compass for that.

As for the format:

• Option 1: subpage of articles: e.g. RWUser would fill out the quiz and put it into RWUser/quiz (stalkbox on RWUser would link to it), and others would comment on Talk:RWUser/quiz. Looks like subpages for mainspace have been disabled though.
• Option 2: project page and subpages: We'd make a page e.g. RationalWikiWiki:Quiz, then each user could post it under that, e.g. RationalWikiWiki:Quiz/RWUser, and discussion would go into Talk:RationalWikiWiki:Quiz/RWUser. --  Nx/talk  20:07, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Good ideas! Some possible suggestions: there was a discussion at RW that generated a lot of interest a while back, many contributed, someone asked who believed in/did not believe in various things such as psychics, faith healing, bigfoot, UFO's, and other things. It was interesting and kind of gave a window into the thoughts of the person answering. How about a page like this, and maybe more pages on specific areas, maybe a religion survey, location survey, education survey? just some ideas off the top of my head, it might give us a better idea of who believes what and coming from what background, which may influence their point of view. I don't know if this would be too intrusive though, some people are not comfortable revealing personal info, but then again, it's all voluntary. Just a side note on the comment about the RW intercom.. you can get rid of the messages at the top of your page, but they are all still there on the "Intercom" page (click link on left side menu) if I'm not mistaken... Anyway this is a good idea, let me know if I can help. Refugee 22:32, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I've listed some other possible areas below. Perhaps a yes/no and/or a multiple choice followed by an opportunity to expand views. As has been said above, if you want to carry out any analysis of responses then you've really got to go with yes/no or multiple choice.--Bob M 08:55, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Then we might as well make some userboxes that categorize users and ask people to put them on their userpages. --  Nx/talk  20:40, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Bob, yes/no and expand answers. Refugee 21:18, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Possible Questions

• Atheist, theist etc.
• Creationism.
• Global Warming.
• Death.
• Drugs.
• Sexuality.
• Environment.

[edit] Paranormal

psychics faith healing bigfoot UFO's,