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Beehaw Support @beehaw.org alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

[CLOSED] a Beehaw survey on some policy and the site's vibes

good morning, Beehaw

this morning we have a survey for you, which will run for approximately three days. it contains three questions on site policy (plus an optional explanation field), and two questions about the site's current vibe (plus another optional explanation field).

you can find the survey here.

some caveats to this survey

you likely have some priors for how this "should" work, and i would like you to leave those at the door. to be up front:

  • this is not a referendum—it is more like a Wikipedia vote if anything. we're looking for a consensus or a synthesis of the community's opinions with the practical limitations we're working with, not a first-past-the-post winner.
  • this is not (currently) a democracy, and you should not expect public results from this. we talked this part over as an admin team and we don't see much value in publicly releasing the results of a survey like this. if we do release the results publicly, we'll be announcing that before it happens.
  • the same caveats just mentioned will apply to any surveys like this into the foreseeable future. i'm sure everyone understands that in online spaces it is very easy to manipulate surveys like this; accordingly, it is not a great idea to take them at complete face value until you can audit votes. since we don't have a foolproof, private system for doing that yet, these caveats are necessary to make any kind of vote involving site policy work.

(we do eventually want to create a foolproof enough private system, but this is way on the backburner and i'm guessing most of you prefer having an imperfect way to chime in on the site's direction than none at all until this system is created)

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  • The following question:

    In your opinion, has Beehaw gotten less enjoyable to use since you joined?

    Has some answers that confuse me. The options:

    • No, the site has not gotten less enjoyable

    • Have not observed a difference

    Sound identical to me. I could see that the former implies its equal or better than before, while the latter states its just equal. But there is another option: "Actually, the site has gotten more enjoyable", which clearly states its better than before.

    If an option states no change, and another states improvement, I see no reason why there is an option which implies both.

    • If an option states no change, and another states improvement, I see no reason why there is an option which implies both.

      some people don't have the frame of reference, don't have the confidence, or simply have not paid sufficient attention to state one way or the other whether anything has changed--which is distinct from actually being able to say the site hasn't gotten less enjoyable. both options have been used fairly consistently to mean these, based off of the explanations box.

67 comments