> > My basic point here is that the poll, while imperfect, is the best > > indication we have available so far. > > So? From a scientific process perspective, bad data is bad data. And > if all you have is bad data, then you really have no data at all.
>From a social science point of view (and the poll is some sort of social science methods) this dichotomous approach is imperfect. Any data, even conducted with perfect sociological methods, is biased and an unaccurate representation of the "real world". Said that one can legitimately view the poll as a first approximation and it is feasible to discuss in which direction it is biased. > So I stand by my claim that adventurous and conservative are both loaded > terms (maybe not to you, but certainly to some people, myself included), > and I stand by that they are too vague to be used in a single question > poll and have them produce any meaningful results. > > > By that token you could take any well-worded poll, replace it with bad > > wording, and say 'the fact that I can plug bad wording into this poll > > question means the original wording must also be bad!' It's a > > non-sequitur. > > Sorry, it wasn't well worded. That you think it was is part of the > problem and why I gave you the demonstration I did. The problem is not the wording. Sociological experience shows that differences of the kind mentioned above affects the distribution of answers, but in a limited extend. The current distribution is quite unambiguous. A more important point might be that the alternative used in the poll is rather an indirect measure of the target we are interested in: what are Fedora users doing with Fedora and what are they expecting. Would be interesting to have another poll asking for those items. Peter -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
