Re: Gathering data on user preferences

[Tim Cross]

Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:

> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
>
>> On Tue, Sep 07, 2021 at 01:22:46PM +1000, Tim Cross wrote:
>>> 
>>> Recent threads on proposed changes to default settings, provision of
>>> configuration profiles, surveying Emacs users etc make me wonder if we
>>> could use ELPA more effectively to gather valuable data on settings of
>>> interest.
>>> 
>>> My thinking is that we could create an ELPA package [...]
>>>                            [...] for users to submit details about
>>> their current settings which could be used to help inform decisions
>>> regarding default settings.
>>
>> Basically a good idea. There's well-established precedent with
>> Debian's popcon [1]. At install you are asked whether you want
>> to take part in it, the default being "no". So it is active
>> "opt in".
>
> [...]
>
>> I.e. some categorising of variables into publishable and private
>> (perhaps with more than just two levels? Decisions, decisions)
>> seems in order (reminds one of that "safe variable" thing, doesn't
>> it?).
>
> At this point, couldn't the information attached to bug reports be
> used. I remember someone making the suggestion in last years
> discussion. The advantage is that there is already a lot of data
> available right now, and that this data contains the evolution of trends
> over a number of years.
>
> I might also imagine that if people knew bug reports contribute to a
> better representation of the entire user-base.

I would imagine the package I'm proposing would likely leverage off some
of the code which generates the data attached to bug reports. I also
think it would be good to be able to mine the data which exists in bug
reports, but have no idea how easily that could be done.

The reasons for considering a new package are

- Specific to purpose. Bug reports also include data we are not
  interested in for this specific exercise

- Formatted data which would be structured to make collation and
  processing easy

- Not yet sure if the data included in bug reports is the same as the
  data we want for analysis of user preferences and settings. I expect
  there is overlap, but there is likely data in bug reports we are not
  interested in and some which is missing that we do want.

- People tend to only report bugs when they have a problem. We would
  want people to report this information (possibly after a 'call' to do
  so) even when everything is working fine. We wouldn't want people just
  logging bug reports solely to report configurations as I suspect this
  would just clutter the bug tracker with non bug data. 

- I think it wold be good if the 'package' allowed easy configuration of
  what is requested. We could then update the package with specific
  'profiles' to report on specific areas etc.

I do think there is probably some really valuable data currently sitting
in the Emacs bug tracker and it would be an interesting project to try
and mine that repository to see what we could get out of it. However, I
have no idea what API the system provides or how easy this would be to
do (without significant human intervention).