9 votes

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?

6 comments

  1. [4]
    DefinitelyNotAFae
    Link
    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...

    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

    5 votes
    1. [3]
      Bauke
      Link Parent
      Ah yes I should have added that would be optional (if added at all).

      Ah yes I should have added that would be optional (if added at all).

      1 vote
      1. [2]
        DefinitelyNotAFae
        Link Parent
        Just sharing my thoughts on it!

        Just sharing my thoughts on it!

        1 vote
        1. Bauke
          Link Parent
          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

          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

          1 vote
  2. [2]
    chocobean
    Link
    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...

    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

    4 votes
    1. hamstergeddon
      Link Parent
      I miss those big generated quizzes/surveys you used to see on social media. Mostly a Myspace thing, if I remember correctly, but they were fun. I tend to prefer fun over serious things here on...

      I miss those big generated quizzes/surveys you used to see on social media. Mostly a Myspace thing, if I remember correctly, but they were fun. I tend to prefer fun over serious things here on tildes anyway though!