On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath@redhat.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 6 Mar 2010, Adam Williamson wrote:
>
>> I thought to myself yesterday, 'what this long and fractious thread
>> about update policy *really* needs is some unscientific and
>> controversial numbers'. =) So, I ran a forum poll! Everyone loves those,
>> right?
>>
>> Here it is: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=241710
>>
>> I tried to present the poll in a very neutral way, and as far as I know,
>> it hasn't been linked to from anywhere else; only regular forum members
>> are likely to come across it. So it shouldn't be massively inherently
>> biased, and has a reasonable shot of giving us a vague idea of what some
>> Real Fedora Users think.
>>
>> The numbers do surprise me, to be honest. As I write this, it's 34-8 -
>> that's over 80% - in favour of 'adventurous' updates. A lot of the
>> replies make it clear that people really do see being 'bleeding edge' as
>> being a part of Fedora's nature, and a part of the reason why they run
>> it. I wouldn't honestly have expected that; I'd have expected much
>> closer to a 50/50 split if anything. A lot of people explicitly say
>> things like 'I run Fedora so I can have the latest stuff on my desktop,
>> if I want a more conservative system I'll run CentOS'.
>>
>> No, the voting numbers aren't huge, but it's still some kind of data. I
>> can promote the poll to the forum front page to try and get more input,
>> if desired.
>>
>> What do people make of this?
>>
>
> I don't think people realize what they're asking for. *I'll just defer to
> my favorite Ford quote:

How comes? I think they do. I suspect those people voted what they want.

> "If I had asked my customers what they wanted," Ford said, "they would
> have said a faster horse."

And the world would be a better place without cars but faster horses

Anyways, since we have now two automobile vendors in this discussion
(one here and one in another thread (Toyota), cant tell exactly which
one), let me add something from this sector:

Inventions, new techs, better and safer cars comes from race cars,
included into the mainstream (stable) series of consumer cars.

> The best part of all of this is, it doesn't matter anymore. *We've let
> Fedora go completely directionless for years now. *If we listen to the
> users, they'll all tell us different things. *Especially if you get a
> sample size large enough (your poll isn't anywhere near large enough to be
> scientific which is why you called it unscientific

Quite interesting to me here is that i see only posts from people who
wants something new in Fedora. The opposite of what the poll/voting
determined. Telling that this voting/poll isn't representative

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On 03/07/2010 12:34 AM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> I thought to myself yesterday, 'what this long and fractious thread
> about update policy *really* needs is some unscientific and
> controversial numbers'. =) So, I ran a forum poll! Everyone loves those,
> right?
>
> Here it is: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=241710
>
> No, the voting numbers aren't huge, but it's still some kind of data. I
> can promote the poll to the forum front page to try and get more input,
> if desired.
>
> What do people make of this?
>

I have promoted the poll to the front page in an effort to gather more
numbers and the stats are beginning to look different and if you want a
better measurement you can post in your blog and to the user mailing
list etc and gather more votes


Rahul

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On 03/06/2010 03:15 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:04:31 -0800
> Adam Williamson <awilliam@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> ...snip...
>
>> What do people make of this?
>
> I'm no expert on polls/polling, but I suspect that many of the people
> who are more interested in a 'stable/less updates' Fedora don't
> frequent things like the forums or users list. Sure, they might search
> it or post a question when they run into an issue, but they are more
> likely to spend their time... well, using their machine.

Indeed. I can't vote because I don't even have an account there.


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On Sun, 2010-03-07 at 03:58 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> On 03/07/2010 12:34 AM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > I thought to myself yesterday, 'what this long and fractious thread
> > about update policy *really* needs is some unscientific and
> > controversial numbers'. =) So, I ran a forum poll! Everyone loves those,
> > right?
> >
> > Here it is: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=241710
> >
> > No, the voting numbers aren't huge, but it's still some kind of data. I
> > can promote the poll to the forum front page to try and get more input,
> > if desired.
> >
> > What do people make of this?

> I have promoted the poll to the front page in an effort to gather more
> numbers and the stats are beginning to look different and if you want a
> better measurement you can post in your blog and to the user mailing
> list etc and gather more votes

I intentionally didn't post in my blog (and asked others not to post to
theirs) because it's possible - likely, in fact - that readers of any
one person's blog will be skewed somewhat to one side or the other (to
pick an obvious example, reader's of Kevin's blog would be mostly KDE
users and likely to skew to the adventurous side of the question). I
thought the best reliability we could get is to avoid having the poll
promoted outside the forums if possible. User mailing list would be
fine, though, please do post a link there!
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On 06/03/10 20:14, Rahul Sundaram wrote:

On 03/07/2010 01:40 AM, Adam Williamson wrote:



If that were the case, I'd have expected someone to bring it up in the
comments. No-one has.

I've never actually heard of anyone running FN-1 because they want a
'more stable' system; this thread was the first time I heard that
theory. In my experience, people run FN-1 because FN doesn't work for
some reason, or just because they installed it when it was FN and don't
want to take the time to upgrade...but that doesn't mean they want
'conservative' updates, necessarily.



A lot of users in our users list recommend and use a previous release
because they want more a more robust system with conservative updates
and do believe that using a older Fedora provides them with that since
the important bugs would have been found and fixed already and that's
one of the reasons I recommended that you subscribe to that list even if
you aren't actively participating so that you get a better idea of our
user base :-)

Rahul



then i seriously think we are following different lists :/



as adam's poll is starting to show the majority of fedora users choose
fedora for the fact that it is leading the way with the newer software
and that it has constant updates. (ie freedom,friends,features,first!)
this argument that most fedora users want a more stable system is not
what the fedora users i came across are after. tbh i think this whole
identity crisis is blown of of all proportion, you'd think that
something like this would have come with the fedora10 dbus probs or the
'stabilisation cannot be detected' not now with a little kde popup
window :0



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On Sun, 2010-03-07 at 16:02 +0000, psmith wrote:

> what the fedora users i came across are after. tbh i think this whole
> identity crisis is blown of of all proportion, you'd think that
> something like this would have come with the fedora10 dbus probs or
> the 'stabilisation cannot be detected' not now with a little kde popup
> window :0

Those kinds of issues are the driving force behind this (some people
have been thinking about it since that dbus problem). That KDE bug is
not, it's just something someone threw in halfway through the thread...
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On Sat, 2010-03-06 at 11:04 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:

> No, the voting numbers aren't huge, but it's still some kind of data. I

Just an update - we're now up over 100 votes, adventurous still solidly
in the lead, though it's now around 70/30 not 80/20.
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On Sun, 7 Mar 2010, psmith wrote:

> On 06/03/10 20:14, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
> On 03/07/2010 01:40 AM, Adam Williamson wrote:
>
>
> If that were the case, I'd have expected someone to bring it up in the
> comments. No-one has.
>
> I've never actually heard of anyone running FN-1 because they want a
> 'more stable' system; this thread was the first time I heard that
> theory. In my experience, people run FN-1 because FN doesn't work for
> some reason, or just because they installed it when it was FN and don't
> want to take the time to upgrade...but that doesn't mean they want
> 'conservative' updates, necessarily.
>
>
>
> A lot of users in our users list recommend and use a previous release
> because they want more a more robust system with conservative updates
> and do believe that using a older Fedora provides them with that since
> the important bugs would have been found and fixed already and that's
> one of the reasons I recommended that you subscribe to that list even if
> you aren't actively participating so that you get a better idea of our
> user base :-)
>
> Rahul
>
>
>
> then i seriously think we are following different lists :/
>
> as adam's poll is starting to show the majority of fedora users choose fedora for the fact that it is leading the way
> with the newer software and that it has constant updates. (ie freedom,friends,features,first!) this argument that most
> fedora users want a more stable system is not what the fedora users i came across are after. tbh i think this whole
> identity crisis is blown of of all proportion, you'd think that something like this would have come with the fedora10
> dbus probs or the 'stabilisation cannot be detected' not now with a little kde popup window :0
>

Adam's poll isn't representative of the majority of Fedora users at all,
and attempts to make it that are dangerous. That's not to say a poll
representative of Fedora users wouldn't come out with the same results.
It very well might. But this poll is poorly worded and only
representative of those who have found the poll, logged in and took the
poll.

-Mike
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On 03/07/2010 09:32 PM, psmith wrote:
> then i seriously think we are following different lists :/

No but I have been on that list for five years and follow a lot more
mails than the average reader and there have been recurrent threads
about users recommending to stay on one version behind to get a more
robust system

>
> as adam's poll is starting to show the majority of fedora users choose
> fedora for the fact that it is leading the way with the newer software
> and that it has constant updates. (ie
> freedom,friends,*features*,/*first!*/

These are well explained at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Foundations
and first in this context means innovation in driving upstream
development and not about pushing whatever latest versions as updates in
stable releases and it's always has been a discussion about the right
balance since both extremes are not going to be a good solution for Fedora

Rahul
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On Sun, 2010-03-07 at 11:06 -0600, Mike McGrath wrote:

> It very well might. But this poll is poorly worded and only

That's the first time you've suggested it's poorly worded; in what way,
might I ask?
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