Re: [RFC v2] Git User's Survey 2008

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008, Stephan Beyer wrote:

Jakub Narebski wrote:

quoted

By the way, should the survey be divided in pages, or simply use
headers to divide survey into sections?

Divided pages have a psychological impact, they don't look much and you
can say "Almost there!" on each page.

But headers and one-page surveys have a big advantage for users that pay
for Internet access per time unit: they can go offline, answer the
questions, and go online again to submit the survey.

So I've scrolled across your test survey on survs.com and I think it
should be kept on one page. Looks nice and manageable.

I also prefer single page surveys; it would be better if this survey
was shorter (by the way, how long did you took to complete test survey?),
but there are so many interesting questions...
 

quoted

Third, where to send survey to / where to publish information about the 
survey?

This question leads me to a question that could be put into the survey:

	Where have you read about this survey? (optional)
	[Free form]

But where to add it?  Additionally I'd rather limit free-form questions
to absolute minimum.

This is the question I was lacking, so I'll think about adding it to
the survey.

So, some comments on the questions now:

quoted

About you

   xx. What country are you in?

"What country do you live in?" perhaps?

This is better phrasing.  Changed.
 

quoted

Getting started with GIT

   xx. How did you hear about Git?

There is a typo on survs.com (hear_d_).
Should this by the way be multiple choice?
I have heard about Git several times before I tried it.

 
Good idea, I think, and doesn't lead to more work when analysing.
And it would perhaps make it easier to choose appropriate answer.

Changed. 

I will only quote from survs.com now:

quoted

told by friend (word of mouth)

                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ? :) I think this should be removed

O.K.

quoted

What other SCM did or do you use?
[..]
 custom ( ) ( ) ( )

custom?

I mean here custom, not published (or no longer existing) SCM; something
that would be hard to write about.

I agree that it is not the best phrasing.

quoted

20. Which porcelains / interfaces / implementations do you use?
 [ ] core-git

Uh, this is ambiguous.  Is this our git or some script on top of git?
In both cases, this should be clarified.

There is "my own scripts" at the bottom; I mean here using no additional
porcelain, no interface on top of git command line.

But it is here for completeness only; however if you have some good
explanation for "core-git" option I can put it below this question.

quoted

22. Which git web interface do you use for your projects/have installed?
(Web interfaces used by git hosting sites do not count[*])

[...]

quoted

(*) Unless of cours you are hosting some git hosting site

             ^^^^^^^^                                      ^
	     typo, but I'd rather do s/of cours //   and s/$/./ :-)

Thanks.  Done.

quoted

26. How often do you use the following forms of git commands
or extra git tools?

	Never | Rare | Often

                                     | Not yet, but sounds cool   ;-)

No no :-)

But I wonder if we could split the "Never" case into several cases with
reasons like:
 - Do not know.
 - Not yet needed.
 - Other (did not understand; tried but did not work; ...)

But this will perhaps bloat the question even more, so we should keep
"Never", though I think the reasons could be interesting.
Could some "Comments" field for question 26 help?

Now it is 'never/rarely/sometimes/often'.  I think there are enough
free form questions that one can put his/her own comments about git
commands in this survey...

Some other comment: I dislike that there is *one* "Reset" button for
such matrix questions. But I guess you cannot change that?

Yes, this is canned web survey site.  I can only send feedback,
but I guess so can you (unless this requires subscription/invite...).

quoted

28. Which of the following features do or did you use?

I think many of the possible replies have been used in several other
questions before, e.g. in 
 - 21. (gitk, git gui), 
 - 24. (git bundle),
 - 26/27. (git gui, gitk, git stash)
 - ...

But this question still seems to makes sense for:
 [ ] eol conversion (crlf)
 [ ] gitattributes
 [ ] reflog (ref@{23})
 [ ] shallow clone
 [ ] detaching HEAD   <- I think several people could have used that without knowing
 [ ] commit templates
 [ ] integration with IDE/editor
 [ ] non-default hooks

And btw:

quoted

[ ] working with dirty tree      <- Eh? Is this a feature?

This is distinguishing feature.  What I mean here that you can use
"git add" and "git commit" (not "git commit -a") and have some
uncommitted changes, like for example change of version in Makefile.

Big thanks for your efforts,
  Stephan

You are welcome.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland