Hi Scott,
> In hindsight, we did not articulate it well. The funny thing is, we had a
> very heated debate about how to approach this, and I was quite happy with
> our final approach - but, since that was so long ago, we forgot to mention
> it in the announcement.
>
Well, I'm not keen on flame wars, so I decided to avoid suggesting that it
was badly put. But now you come to mention it...
> We are *very* sensitive to touching your end users. We *know* that is one
> of the reasons many partners are with us.
>
I appreciate that.
> The *exact* details have not yet been worked out. We would likely promote
> the survey by advertising a big prize.
>
Surveys are good, if run correctly. Prizes are even better. But even indirect
interference with RSP's customers is a minefield.
> I hope y'all know that we would not use UCE, nor would we target our
> customer base's customers base.
>
I'll need a minute to figure that one out... :)
> We *may* ask RSPs to (optionally) help promote it.
>
Might I suggest that rather than asking your RSP's to promote it, you ask us
to run it with our own customers? It wouldn't take long between us to create
a CGI script to stick on our servers, which would send the results of a form
submission to both us and OpenSRS. That way we both get results, and even
better, the RSP gets a subset of results that is appropriate to their own
business. For RSP's still using the Quickstart interface, the script could be
remotely hosted, and framed if necessary.
> As previously stated, a big part of the value is finding out why people go
> with other services, and passing that info along to you.
>
I don't disagree with you, but as I've mentioned in the past, my anonymity is
important to me. I can never hide my affiliation with OpenSRS completely
(don't get me wrong, I'm not embarassed about OpenSRS, it's just the model
I've decided to go with), but the more I can, the better.
I think the most important factors here are 1) not damaging the RSP's
relationship with their clients; and 2) how the survey is going to be
implemented.
If the survey is implemented well, I have no objection to you talking to my
customers. But if I don't like the way it's going to be done, I'd prefer that
my clients weren't involved at all. If I have to be punished for that, by not
receiving the end results as someone suggested, well and good, I'm prepared
to live with that.
adam
