RE: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[Drew Adams]

> If survey is published, for example on Reddit, such survey is narrow
> and specific to Reddit users, and would represent only that
> communication channel.
> 
> My proposal on how to publish a survey is to include that in the Help
> menu, and let people do it straight from Emacs. That is similar to bug
> reporting, but it is not a bug, it is feature request.
                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Something like:
>   Tell us how we can improve?
> in the Help menu, would lead to description as how RMS said, and from
> there on, users would submit the email with their descriptions, likes,
> hates, whatever they wish to say.
> 
> It could go straight to specific mailing list.

I agree that the `Help' menu could/should have an item
for something like this.

Actually, we already have this functionality, which is
submitting free-form feedback of any kind.  We call it
an enhancement request, and we tell users to use
`M-x report-emacs-bug' for it.  This is not as well
known as it should be, IMO.

It would be good for the `Help' menu to have an item
that explicitly calls this `Suggest Improvements' or
similar.  It would be bound to `report-emacs-bug'.
___

I think that corresponds to what you are suggesting.

However, providing individual feedback to the "bug"
list, as helpful as it might be, inviting a thread
of discussion by interested parties, including some
Emacs core developers, does not also involve or
encourage any broader discussion/communication.

That might be OK, and in fact that aspect hasn't yet
been raised in this current thread.  So far, we've
discussed only submitting a survey, getting results,
and analyzing/discussing them here, on emacs-devel.

So as far as that goes, I think this suggestion from
Jean-Louis does fit the bill.

Well, it doesn't constitute a "survey", but it does
correspond to what RMS, I, and Jean-Louis have
emphasized here: getting users to say, in their own
words, what they want and what they do.

I've said this before (dunno whether I've proposed
a separate `Help' menu item).  We should make
`report-emacs-bug' better known as a recommended
way to submit ANY feedback about Emacs.

The command name can mislead wrt this role.  A
separate `Help' menu item would help (even though
redundant with item `Send Bug Report').  Or change
that item to `Send Feedback or Bug Report'.

It might also make sense, for discoverability etc.,
to add a `send-feedback' alias for `send-bug-report'.