site wide census for what?

5starpool

On the visitors vs registered thing, will there be a way to say how many visitors filled it out vs the registered people? Do you even care? As you said it is also been done for other group sites, will you know which ones were routed from boards as opposed to adverts? I assume so, but still curious anyhow.

DeVore

AFAIK we can divide the answers by originating site (I'll be quite annoyed and surprised otherwise!). As for the registered vs unregged.... I dont know about that one. Possibly not since I dont believe we tie this back to your boards account... could be wrong but I dont think so. Not particularly concerned about that one though... many regged users browse unregged and unregged users become regged users at a rate of about 400 a day

DeV.

Dav

One of the questions is "Do you have a Boards.ie Account" so I'm hoping that will sort it out. I'd guess a higher number of members will fill the census out than visitors mostly because I imagine that Boardsies might feel more inclined to help us out.

dahamsta

I stopped 2/3s of the way through simply because it was a ridiculous length and terribly constructed. I sent some feedback to the person mentioned at the start, and the response I received was essentially obnoxious "I know better than you" marketroid bullsh*t. I then fed back to Boards direct and got a much nicer answer, but I still believe my feedback is valid:

[...] my point was that a survey of that length /won't/ give you an really good insight into who your users are and how they're accessing the site. You don't know who I am or how I access either Boards.ie or Adverts.ie now, because of the crap way [they were] presented. I'm sure whoever put it together meant well, but meaning well and achieving it aren't the same thing.

A census that excludes a large proportion of the "population" because of the above isn't a census. It's what people here have been calling it all along, albeit for other (occasionally ridiculous) reasons: a survey. A much better approach would have been to come at it in sections, over time. It's not as if there's a major rush with it.

Steve

To me, a 'census of boards.ie' gathers demographic info about the inhabitants of the site (i.e. us. Us registered users who post here and cause the onlookers to read) and gives us a better picture of who we are and where we should go. We are the site after all.

Extending this survey to onlookers is not cool and will invalidate any result that would mean something to the inhabitants of this unique community.

That said, I may or may not have given deliberate false answers to this advertising market research survey that, if posted by any normal user, would have them sitebanned in a nanosecond.

thetonynator

Dav wrote: »

OK, so the last time we did a census on this site was February/March in 2007. In that census, we asked about where you browsed from and what times of the day/night you did. We also asked what you were using the internet for. Some of these questions are a little more specific this time around. For reference, I've attached the aggregated (and of course, anonymous) results of that last census - both DeVore and I were talking earlier and we both thought that Vexorg had published these results before, but if not, they're here now anyway.

Mobile Phone questions: This is a big focus for the entire group at the moment. touch.boards.ie went live this year and the Boards.ie iPhone App is in development and the Android one will soon follow. We need to make sure we're covering all the bases with that and should we give any serious consideration to something like a Windows Phone 7 or even Meego app. We want to make sure you're looked after not "the people we think are using the site" if you get my meaning. There are statistics on what sort of usage there is, but that's general and we're looking for something more specific to our members and visitors.

Ultimately *every* census that this site has done is designed to give us a sense of who's using this site so that 1) we can make sure that we're keeping that group of people in mind whenever we make any changes and 2) so that we can get more accurate information for sales so that we can keep our bills paid. I find it more than a little disappointing that some people seem to think we're trying to con anyone here or be dishonest - what on earth did you think the previous census' were for?

It is completely voluntary. You don't even have to be a Boards member to fill it out - the notice appears for visitors too (and lets not forget, the ratio of visitors to members on the site at any given moment is around 3.5:1). If you want to be rid of the notice, then click the red X button on the top right of the notice as others have said - notices aren't new, we've been using them for about 3 years.

I'll be looking at getting the results when this is all over and publishing them. We've handed the management of all this over to Sponge It because it's a big project and we're doing it for all of the sites in the group and so it's easier and more time efficient to have them take care of it.

How times have changed! No option for unemployed in the 2007 census.

Dude111

This is just insane!!!

This is an ANONYMOUS CENSUS,nothing like what FACEOOK does (Which is not anon)

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO UPSET ABOUT THIS?? Just dont do the census,dont sit here and complain about it

TouchingVirus

Steve wrote: »

That said, I may or may not have given deliberate false answers to this advertising market research survey that, if posted by any normal user, would have them sitebanned in a nanosecond.

That's incredibly poor form. Fill it out properly or just don't fill it out, you have achieved absolutely nothing by bullshítting answers except potentially skewing the results with inaccuracies - go you.

Chris P. Bacon

TouchingVirus wrote: »

That's incredibly poor form. Fill it out properly or just don't fill it out, you have achieved absolutely nothing by bullshítting answers except potentially skewing the results with inaccuracies - go you.

What about the questions,i did take it seriously up until it asked what computer you had and one of the options was Atari Jaguar.

minidazzler

Steve wrote: »

That said, I may or may not have given deliberate false answers to this advertising market research survey that, if posted by any normal user, would have them sitebanned in a nanosecond.

Yes, it would have a normal person sitebanned if they stood to gain financially from it. But this is boards as a whole that stands to gain, I don't understand how that's a bad thing. And a longtime user can post a survey if they have a valid reason and mod permission of the forums they want to ask. I completed at least 4 thesis student surveys this year on this site.

TouchingVirus

Chris P. Bacon wrote: »

What about the questions,i did take it seriously up until it asked what computer you had and one of the options was Atari Jaguar.

Oh come on, even I answered Atari Jaguar, I suspect most boards members would. It was pretty much a necessity to have that answer on that question given this is a Boards census.

There's a massive difference between an obvious in-joke answer to one question (which will probably be completely disregarded in statistical analysis) and deliberately providing false information over the entire survey. What's the point in the latter, seriously? It's pretty much breaking Boards' #1 rule tbh

Steve

TouchingVirus wrote: »

That's incredibly poor form. Fill it out properly or just don't fill it out, you have achieved absolutely nothing by bullshítting answers except potentially skewing the results with inaccuracies - go you.

I filled out anything that could be used to improve this site accurately.

I fail to see how stuff like the following is relevant to people using the site:

What make of phone do you have?
How much is your phone bill every month?
How much do you spend on groceries every week?
Do you you use travel agents to book your holiday?

The previous census asked a lot of detailed questions about the site, its usability, its look and feel and the results were used to focus where improvements were needed.
The least they could have done was to ask the same questions again to see if any of their efforts worked.

That survey was pure spam with a boards.ie logo splashed on the top - not a good way to entice a casual visitor to sign up either.

Steve

minidazzler wrote: »

Yes, it would have a normal person sitebanned if they stood to gain financially from it. But this is boards as a whole that stands to gain, I don't understand how that's a bad thing. And a longtime user can post a survey if they have a valid reason and mod permission of the forums they want to ask. I completed at least 4 thesis student surveys this year on this site.

As I said in my previous post, they could at least have asked questions that would enable them to make improvements - or see if their efforts had improved anything since the last census.

TouchingVirus

Steve wrote: »

What make of phone do you have?

Should Boards put more money/development effort into iPhone app or an Android app. Or would that be a waste considering boards users are still hanging with Nokia and co on WAP or using Touch.

How much is your phone bill every month?

Are you a mobile phone power user? Are there a lot of mobile phone power users browsing boards? Again, see above.

How much do you spend on groceries every week?

Guessing Boardsdeals related (see below)

Do you you use travel agents to book your holiday?

BoardsDeals, which I guess is a part of Boards offers plenty of little mini-breaks. Maybe they're looking to branch out a bit from domestic holiday offerings and want to see if there's a market for it. Any increase in revenue is likely to make things happen on Boards (i.e. faster development for new features).

In the first two questions at the very least, your answers could have been used to improve boards and usability of boards.