We’ve prepared a short survey to collect some basic demographic information about OS News readers and collect your opinions about what we can do to make OS News better. Please take a few minutes to fill it out. Link to Survey. If you’d like to share your thoughts about OS News, its present and future, with everyone, please comment on this posting below.
When asked to rate OSAlert.. it would be nice to know which is considered a better rating.. 1 or 5 =) …
When asked to rate OSAlert.. it would be nice to know which is considered a better rating.. 1 or 5 =) …
i’d guess 5
I would like to thank OSAlert and Eugina for maintaning a wonderful place to escape the horrors of Windows Admin.(lol) I visit frequently (5 or more times a day) to see what is going on in the OS world, although I usually am not vocal, Iam always around. Because of this site and and it’s readers, I now have a profound interest in Linux and other OSes. Taking the leap to Linux has been much easier with OSAlert around, GREAT JOB!
By the way, in regards to the survey I thought it was due, and I have a feeling that OSAlert has the right niche and will continue to be THE foremost OS news site around!
I have followed this site for years and have really enjoyed it since the format change went into place. Please post the results of the survey, including some kind of synopsis of the text comments received.
FM
>”When asked to rate OSAlert.. it would be nice to know which is considered a better rating.. 1 or 5 =)”
Same problem here.
I went for 5 as best and 1 as worst.
It would be a good idea to explain this on the survey page, otherwise the results would have little value.
Are there sites similar to OS News. I know there is OS Opinion, but I remember another closer in spirit to OSAlert. In fact, I believe I read about it on OS News, but I lost the link. I think the theme was more along the lines of “Alternatives to Windows.”
You can’t have too much OS news.
Thanks,
Rob
I have no problem with filling out a survery to make OSAlert better. However, it seems to me that most of this survery was to collect demographic information about visitors for direct marketing. If that’s the case, then Eugenia should be honest about the purposes instead of just tacking on some opinion questions (which, as some readers pointed out, are ambiguous anyway) in order to deceive us.
> If that’s the case, then Eugenia should be honest about the purposes instead of just tacking on some opinion questions (which, as some readers pointed out, are ambiguous anyway) in order to deceive us.
This is not my story. READ CAREFULLY.
I have nothing to do with marketings or this news story. I just write and publish my articles over here, doing *just* my hobby. OSAlert is not mine and I have never deceived you, neither I have any good reason to.
Neither I believe anyone around here wants to do something like that anyway.
As I mentioned at the top of the survey, one of its main purposes is to collect some demographic information, so people who advertsise at OS News will know who they’re reaching. We did in fact tack on some simple questions and requests for suggestions at the end, since that’s easier for everyone than having two seperate surveys. I was careful to mention, and I will reiterate, that the information from the survey will only be used in aggregate, and we are not collecting names, email addresses, or even IP addresses in the survey.
And by the way, 5 is good, 1 is bad. Sorry for the ambiguity.
Hi david,
Do we have access to the results of the survey??
I’d like to see it.
About suggestions I have one I forgot to mention on the survey, couldn’t you please try to post “news” spaced in time instead of 3 new stories all of suddent?? I personnally don’t like going to osnews for a long period of time and see that there is nothing new and a minute later there’s 3 new stories…
Anyway your’re doing a nice job, my other suggestions are in the survey!
Here’s how it works:
I wake up, I check out what’s new, I write the stories on a text editor, then I login to osnews and I put them up by copying/paste them. So, this is why you see all of them coming out in difference of seconds.
Slashdot has the stories timed and published by a Cron script. So, there is only one story every 1 hour or so. I haven’t played with cron yet… but I was thinking about it the other day.
Slashdot has the stories timed and published by a Cron script. So, there is only one story every 1 hour or so. I haven’t played with cron yet… but I was thinking about it the other day.
That would be a great idea!( unfortunately! I have no idea how hard it is to do) it should increase the pageviews by all those news hungry people and it gives the impression that there’s always someone on the job checking for new stories.
> If that’s the case, then Eugenia should
> be honest about the purposes instead of
> just tacking on some opinion questions
> (which, as some readers pointed out, are
> ambiguous anyway) in order to deceive us.
And congratulations to Eugenia for greatly improving her editorial skills. In the past, whoever wrote the above comment would have been canned properly
. I hope we readers will also continue to improve the tone of our discussions here.
BTW, for the two people who asked for WAP and PDA support on OSAlert. WE DO support them! Please read here about how to get access to it:
http://www.osnews.com/contact.php
> And congratulations to Eugenia for greatly improving her editorial skills
Thank you.
I had to only break one vaze today, not more. (kidding
One suggestion for spacing out the stories (I also mentioned this in the survey) would be for you to add a date-time field for your submission process and the front page then selects out of the database where date-time <= now(). That way you can set the stories to be released at different intervals during the day.
Oh, I forgot. This is for the people who complained about the popup ads.
There are no more popup ads on osnews! As of 2 weeks ago. I killed the iFrame that was loading them, and I changed the HTML in such a way that it won’t load the popups anymore.
I filled in everything as honestly as possible, except for household income. It’s no one’s business, so by default I choose the highest bracket ($150,000+ in this case). For marital status, I was probably too honest and filled in the Other category with “Living in sin.”
There’s no “not single, but not married” option for those of us who can’t get married due to the fact that the state/country we live in doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages
I don’t see the point in delaying posts just so they don’t all come out at the same time. I like it the way it is now. It is even worse at osopinion.com . They don’t put up new stories for days, then five go up. Over here, news goes up daily, usually more than once per day. Great job Eugenia. I love this site!!
I could write a simple chat server that accepts connections and forwards messages. People could then write their own custom front ends. This might be a neat alternative for those who like to rack up the comments to over 100, arguing over weather Mac OSX is unix. Real time discussions could relieve the comments area of that sort of thing.
One more thing. These servy didn’t have a university option. Collage and univeristy are two very different things over here. Maybe a Collage/University two in one option?
I’m having a little problem with question 2. At 18 years, I fit in both the 15-18 category and the 18-24 category. Which one to choose?! Is there some sort of curse on the age of 18? Too many choices, too many possibilities.I can’t even decide what I want to do with my life. How can I make a choice like this?
..no, it’s not easy being an 18-year-old
Same here, i checked 18-24, but my birthdays jan-28 so I’m now closer 19 than i am 17, thats kinda the way I decided.
bah, I get “page can not be displayed” on my nokia 7110.
Ahh well, been looking for a good excuse to blow some cash on a new phone…
There’s no “not single, but not married” option for those of us who can’t get married due to the fact that the state/country we live in doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages
I agree, I had to put “Have a same-sex partner or something along those lines.”
If you ask me, this is a perfect example of heterosexism: assuming everyone’s straight, or not giving a damn otherwise.
The Occupation/Industry question didn’t appear very well thought out.
What is “design” ? Web design? Interior design? UI Design?
What is “Engineering” ? Chem/Mech/Software?
I just went with IS/SysAdmin, but it’s not really what I do.
The Household income question was too US centric to even think about answering.
Maybe this is the right place to ask this… What’s up with those weird “ad council” ads? They tell me some nice message about how to treat your childs and such but when they are clicked, they lead to something completely different, like a website about arcade games. =)
Sorry, Eugenia,
I live in Germany and we are used to rate an 1 if we are very satisfied with something. 5 is the worst note in the school. So therefore my rating seems to be so bad. It’s just the other way round.
Greetings from Anton
Question 1 asks your gender but only provides answers for sex.
Question 2, as has already been pointed out, has two spaces for 18 (although until 25 July, I fit comfortably in the 15-18 category).
Question 3 is very misleading, lumping those of us who are single with those who have been living in sin for the past fourty years.
Question 4 doesn’t have any options for people still in secondary school, TAFEs, Unis etc. (What’s wrong with using ‘tertiary education/institute’ etc. instead of ‘college’?)
Question 5 seems to actually be okay!
Question 6 isn’t helpful if you don’t live in the US: an income of $A50 000 can correspond to so many different things in terms of US dollars, and anyway, some of us minors don’t really know how much their parents’ combined income is.
Question 12 doesn’t support any unopinionated options. I can’t say what I think of the discussion given I’ve read next to nothing.
Fortunately, you didn’t care if I left fields blank.
There is no “unemployed” option
(I unfortunatly would need this….)
Hi Eugenia
I was going to ask a question about data mining through all the archived comments. So just in case I tried google x y z.
I was surprised that all this was out there, I guess I will have to be alot more careful about what I say about M$ or int_el from now on.
It nows seem common practice for employers to data mine on prospective candidates to see what their net standing looks like. Was I supposed to know this?, I really thought the board was closed. I have to wonder if others are equally ignorent of this as well.
From now on I will only be saying the very nicest things about all the companies I might want to actually work for, maybe.
Great website anyway.
I would suggest removing all entries made from .de addresses that has been submitted before the clarification on the rating system came up on the survey page. This since 1 is best and 5 is worst after german standards.
I wouldn’t take it personally As others have pointed out, the options for that question are pretty limiting to begin with, even for those heterosexuals out there. For example, I know a good number of straight couples who live together but are unmarried. I would hardly lump them into the “unmarried” category because that doesn’t accurately represent them.
Thankfully, they were smart enough to put an “Other” option for the question.
I think the site should rename to TechNews or GeekNews because notice that most of the latest news aren’t about OS but about optional third party apps (like the few on GNOME…).
If I have bachelor degree and currently studying for MSc equivalent, am I graduate or undergraduate ? Does “graduated” mean MSc or PhD or both ?
My rating of OSAlert would be… 5.