Re: [RFC v2] Git User's Survey 2008

From: Stephan Beyer <s-beyer@gmx.net>
Date: Aug 20, 2008, 21:18 UTC
Message-ID: <20080820211852.GA27226@leksak.fem-net>
In-Reply-To: <200808200308.26308.jnareb@gmail.com>

Hi,

Jakub Narebski wrote:

> This is second revision (version) of proposed questions 
> for Git User's Survey 2008.

Great!

> By the way, should the survey be divided in pages, or simply use
> headers to divide survey into sections?

Divided pages have a psychological impact, they don't look much and you can say "Almost there!" on each page.

But headers and one-page surveys have a big advantage for users that pay for Internet access per time unit: they can go offline, answer the questions, and go online again to submit the survey.

So I've scrolled across your test survey on survs.com and I think it should be kept on one page. Looks nice and manageable.

> Third, where to send survey to / where to publish information about the 
> survey?

This question leads me to a question that could be put into the survey:

	Where have you read about this survey? (optional)
	[Free form]

Show 5 quoted lines

> Fourth, how long should the survey last?  When sending announcement we 
> should say where notice about Git User's Survey 2008 should be taken 
> down.  Last year the survey was meant to take three weeks, but was up 
> longer.  I'm thinking about having it last a month, or a month and a
> half, starting from September 1.

And lasting until 2008-10-10?  No, I do not really care.

So, some comments on the questions now:

> About you
> 
>    xx. What country are you in?

"What country do you live in?" perhaps?

> Getting started with GIT
> 
>    xx. How did you hear about Git?

There is a typo on survs.com (hear_d_). Should this by the way be multiple choice? I have heard about Git several times before I tried it.

I will only quote from survs.com now:

> told by friend (word of mouth)

                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ? :) I think this should be removed

> What other SCM did or do you use?
>[..]
>  custom ( ) ( ) ( )

custom?

> 20. Which porcelains / interfaces / implementations do you use?
>  [ ] core-git

Uh, this is ambiguous. Is this our git or some script on top of git? In both cases, this should be clarified.

> 22. Which git web interface do you use for your projects/have installed?
> (Web interfaces used by git hosting sites do not count[*])

[...]

> (*) Unless of cours you are hosting some git hosting site

             ^^^^^^^^                                      ^
	     typo, but I'd rather do s/of cours //   and s/$/./ :-)

> 26. How often do you use the following forms of git commands
> or extra git tools?
>
>		Never | Rare | Often

                                     | Not yet, but sounds cool   ;-)

No no :-)

But I wonder if we could split the "Never" case into several cases with
reasons like:
 - Do not know.
 - Not yet needed.
 - Other (did not understand; tried but did not work; ...)

But this will perhaps bloat the question even more, so we should keep "Never", though I think the reasons could be interesting. Could some "Comments" field for question 26 help?

Some other comment: I dislike that there is *one* "Reset" button for such matrix questions. But I guess you cannot change that?

> 28. Which of the following features do or did you use?

I think many of the possible replies have been used in several other
questions before, e.g. in 
 - 21. (gitk, git gui), 
 - 24. (git bundle),
 - 26/27. (git gui, gitk, git stash)
 - ...

But this question still seems to makes sense for:
 [ ] eol conversion (crlf)
 [ ] gitattributes
 [ ] reflog (ref@{23})
 [ ] shallow clone
 [ ] detaching HEAD   <- I think several people could have used that without knowing
 [ ] commit templates
 [ ] integration with IDE/editor
 [ ] non-default hooks

And btw:

> [ ] working with dirty tree      <- Eh? Is this a feature?

Big thanks for your efforts,
  Stephan

-- 
Stephan Beyer <s-beyer@gmx.net>, PGP 0x6EDDD207FCC5040F