Update question: some user data

[Adam Williamson]

On Sat, 2010-03-06 at 11:04 -0800, 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.

It seems people are getting confused, so let me state it more clearly.
Here's the specific conclusion I draw from this data:

Those who asserted in these threads that 'users don't want adventurous
updates' shouldn't do so. The poll clearly indicates that some users do
want these updates.

If someone does a more comprehensive poll which demonstrates that these
users are actually a tiny minority; fine. It would then be appropriate
to assert that the majority of users do not want these updates, and use
that in an argument that Fedora should restrict them. At present,
however, it is not sustainable to do so.

That's all. I'm not presenting this as some kind of proof that all
Fedora users definitely want all updates all the time, I'm just plugging
it in to show that what users want may not be what some people _think_
they want, and if you want to rely on 'what users want' as a part of
your argument, you should provide some decent evidential basis for that.

If, on the other hand, you want to argue that it's not important what
users want, you don't need to, and this part of the discussion becomes a
no-op.

There, I hope that's clear.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net