[Webcom] Survey and polling tools

[Jason Birch]

Depends on what the polls are going to be used for.
 
If they're going to be used to guide OSGeo direction, then I definitely don't want to just put up a bunch of ad-hoc questions and base our operations on the results.  We'd need a skilled surveyor (the other kind), a way of ensuring a random sampling of our (unverifiable) membership, and some form of identity verification.  In general, web polls suck.
 
If they're just to be used to guide marketing efforts or give us a better sense of how we're doing, then that's fine.
 
Personal opinion on web polls aside (sort-of), there are some practical questions that need to be answered.
 
Do you have a maintenance plan for this software?  Is it just a Drupal plugin, or is it another application that someone in SAC has to take responsibility for?  Is there someone willing to do so?
 
I'm not in favour of turning anything officially up on community.osgeo.net without:
 
- clear support from some SAC members for this site
- clear guidance / plan from Marketing on the site's role
- people that have time to make it a true community site and not just another fragmentation of OSGeo's web presense.
 
Jason
 
________________________________

From: Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)
Subject: [Webcom] Survey and polling tools

Hi all, following up from a few different conversations I'm wondering 
what others think of setting up the ability to running polls and 
surveys on "community.osgeo.net" or other domain.  The software is 
pretty much set up already and I don't mind getting a couple of them 
started.