Is there any interest in regular short Tildes surveys?
I've been thinking about the demographics surveys recently and how they usually draw a good reception, but are difficult to compile in a privacy-minded way and finally visualize the data. I think the 2024 survey never ended up getting its results published?
So I thought maybe instead of one big yearly survey we could organize smaller weekly or monthly surveys that ask one or a couple questions at a time. And then while the current survey is running the question+answers for the next survey could be plannedy out. And the questions could be about anything and not just demographics related things.
In terms of technical setup I've been using a self-hosted n8n instance for a while and with tinkering around with it I've come up with a decent proof of concept to make these surveys happen via n8n's Form nodes. This makes it so all the data is in our own control and it's just a matter of building out any visualizations we may want.
And at the end of a survey the data could be anonymized and published so any further analysis can be done by whoever wants to.
One other thing I've come up with is a way to "authenticate" responses so we can know when a response was made by a real Tildes user. In the survey flow the server can generate a UUID and give it to the user to put in their profile bio. Then we scrape the user's bio and check if that UUID is present and now we know that yes, this is a real user. And then the UUID can be removed again from the user's bio (so it can't be linked back to them). This would also enable us to not have to save usernames at all (yay privacy). Edit: this would be entirely optional if it were to be added. There would be no requirements to fill in the survey unless we start seeing a bunch of spam or bogus responses.
What do you Tildoes think? That's what we settled on right? Is this something you'd be interested in?
Edit: Since the topic has a good amount of votes I quickly set up a server and a form to collect questions for anyone that has ideas! :)
-> https://survey.tildes.community/form/submit-your-question
Alternatively, I would be very interested in more posts of existing Internet silly surveys we can choose to share answers here for fun discussion together. Like the recent German Or Autistic was popular and fun
Then they're completely optional, no need to compile results, and people posting their results are already authenticated
Not interested in putting something in my bio to connect to my survey results, but I'm happy to answer surveys more broadly.
I don't think we're a big enough community where we would get a ton of inauthentic survey results anyway
Ah yes I should have added that would be optional (if added at all).
Just sharing my thoughts on it!
It's a very valid point! :D And it's always good to keep in mind not to over-complicate things if we don't need to
I think this is an awesome idea. I’d love it in any format, but to me, the idea of an official, weekly one-off question feels right. Low barrier to participate; low barrier for data aggregation and reporting; focused discussion on that one area.
I think it would give us some nice insights into the community. Also, by doing it in small, frequent chunks, it not only makes it more manageable to run but also opens us up to doing some more fun or interesting questions, rather than just the usual demographic ones. For example: “Pick your Pokémon starter” or “Choose the color that most represents you”
Speaking of demographics, I also like the idea of having a set of recurring questions that run, say, once or twice a year every year. These could be standard demographic ones (age, gender, occupation, etc.) and then we’d build recurring data sets that could help us track trends over time.
Hell, maybe we make January and July our “demographics” months and ask the same set of questions for the weeks in those, leaving the other months open to whatever variety of question we have.
I’m just spitballing here, but I really do think this has a ton of potential and I will be happy with however it gets rolled out. Great idea, Bauke!
Thank you kfwyre! You very concisely put into words what I was going for with this idea and what I was thinking :D
And I agree we could have categories of questions (fun ones, demographics ones, interpretive ones, ...) and switch them around week to week/month to month.
Thank you for putting this together! The tech wizardry of people like you never ceases to amaze me.
An additional thought:
On one of my recent
asktopics, someone mentioned how an anonymous posting mode would be good for it.In lieu of an anonymous posting option built into the site (which is its own bag of worms), this could be a way for us to essentially achieve the same outcome. It would let us ask more sensitive or personal questions and get honest answers that people aren’t necessarily comfortable putting their usernames to.
Tbh I don't want that, myself. I think the benefit of the community is in sharing those things as a discussion. A more sensitive survey question, maybe, but I wouldn't want it for the deeper topics. Folks can make throwaways (and probably get invites for it via Deimos if needed)
My thought was that the results would get posted and then people would talk about those responses in the topic, so there would still be good potential for discussions with the added benefit of anonymity for those that want it. Does that make sense?
Maybe but it becomes less kind to talk about anonymous answers like that IME
Oh, I see now. I thought you were focused on a procedural aspect.
I would hope that Tildes would approach those with the usual empathy and thoughtfulness that we see in most topics, but I can also see how people might approach it in a less positive or more distanced manner.
Yeah it's easier to disconnect from the human and I think those deeper topics need connection to the human.
Since the topic has a good amount of votes I quickly set up a server and a form to collect questions for anyone that has ideas! :)
-> https://survey.tildes.community/form/submit-your-question
I love this! A survey to build surveys.
This is also a great way to head off that reflex we seem to have where someone releases a survey and then everyone talks about the way the survey questions should have been written.
I spent a little more time setting up Metabase for data visualizations so you can now also see the responses so far for the submitted questions. :D
-> https://viz.survey.tildes.community/public/dashboard/5fdf224d-5023-448e-9a4d-0304c526f001
The data sync isn't instantaneous between Metabase and n8n yet so there'll be some delay from when you submit a question and it shows up in the dashboard, but it should eventually end up there!
Here's a preliminary schedule for questions I'm thinking would be interesting to start out with and get a feel for how it would all work.
The idea would be that every Sunday at 18:00 UTC a survey is opened and responses can start to be collected. That would then give an entire week to discuss the next survey and prepare everything else still needed like visualizations for the running survey or the backend for the next one, etc. The current survey would then be closed on the following Sunday at 10:00 UTC and its results would be published.
What do you think?