[Foundation-l] Dumb survey about Commons

Mon Oct 26 14:21:16 UTC 2009

2009/10/26 Guillaume Paumier <gpaumier at wikimedia.org>:
> Yes, we tested the survey, but with a smaller number of people, because
> of the time constraints (the multimedia usability project really started
> only 2 weeks ago, and the fundraising campaign is going to be the major
> focus of sitenotices from next week to January). And the problem didn't
> appear during the tests.

It would probably be better to take your time to do proper tests, even
if you have to wait until after the fundraiser. It is very difficult
to draw useful results from a poor survey and if you haven't done
enough testing to spot something as simple as that then you haven't
done enough testing to spot more serious problems. Who is your
statistician? As far as I can tell, nobody on staff has significant
training in statistics, so presumably you are using a consultancy
firm? Did they not tell you you needed to do more testing?