Replies: 1 comment 7 replies
-
|
I must say I'm torn... I think that is because the priority of the various goals still hasn't settled with me. I'm thinking that
In case we think that providing "modern" versions of games is the most prioritised goal then the last suggestion with a As the top priority goal should align with the user community's needs one thing we could do is to create a poll with exactly that question: |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
I'm guessing that the different (and mutually exclusive) choices — which have a broader explorative goal than just the subfoldering question — should be thus interpreted on our side, in respect to which subfoldering approach to adopt:
although none of the above touches on the subfoldering aspect directly.
But the above would be our interpretations of which subfoldering system best fits the above uses (not to mention that there might be other primary uses that were not covered in the above list). I'm not quite sure about the exact purpose of (1) — why a user would choose just to play games for a specific ALAN version, unless the underlying goal is (4) i.e. studying sources. Point (2) and (3) have fuzzy and (partly overlapping) boundaries, for it's implicit that playing a game requires some knowledge of its locale, and many users are probably fluent in more than just one language — which to me implies that (3) is the choice for one-language speakers, and (2) the alternative choice for those who play in multiple languages. Most likely, (3) can only be opted by native English speakers, since if they can't play a game in English they they probably can't fill this questionnaire either, and are unlikely to be enrolled in the mailing list in the first place — which ultimately means that (3) could just as well be worded as "Find games in English", for all practical matters. I'm not entirely sure about the approach. If the goal is to dig into the broader needs and expectations of the userbase, then probably the answers might need to be fine-tuned a bit more, and having an "Other..." choice allowing to specify other primal uses which are not listed. On the other hand, if the goal is just to decide on the practical dilemma of ALAN-version vs locales, then maybe we should just ask about that, explicitly, i.e. whether users prefer to navigate the directory structure in one way or the other. When it comes to questionnaires, I must admit not being a huge fan of them. There was a point in time where I had huge expectations from questionnaires as an online tool that could be added to the arsenal, but the more I dug into them (and their multiple and divergent schools of thought) the more disillusioned I became about anything that wasn't based on clear-cut closed questions (yes/no) — the rest tend to be biased by the expectations of their designers, which affect the wording of the questions/choices, or even the assessment methodology (in large-scale processing). Ultimately, I came across an academic book that put into questions the entire field of questionnaires as reliable sources of data, one school after the other. I don't remember the book title right now (it's been decades since I read it), but the essence was that it's hard not to introduce biases when tying pre-defined answers to specific questions, since spoken languages are fuzzy in nature; and for large scale processing there's the added problem of evaluating via numerical models linguistic constructs (i.e. there's the underlying assumption that the questionnaires are linguistically unambiguous, and completely cover all needs and possible choices). Having said that, I think that direct questions would also work good for us, since the number of users involved is small enough for us to read through all the answers (including open replies which freely describe expectations). But I'm not against the above poll either, since it can provide some insight into the general direction of users primal use — but I'm not competent on the subject, for the reasons mentioned above, i.e. my dislike for questionnaires with pre-defined answers. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
I mostly agree with your views, including the interpretation of answers and opinion on surveys and questionairs, in general. Except for one little detail in the interpretation of answers. I think answer 2) in your list (the order will be randomized...) indicates if locale is even important. So, I would interpret many answers here to mean that the locale is a somewhat secondary search criteria. While the third answer, to me, would indicate that it is a primary criteria, but still not indicating that there is only one locale that is interesting, as your tounge-in-cheek reasoning about non-english users seems to indicate, but rather "I first look at Italian games, but also play others." Having worked with software development and its requirements process for a long time I know that you should avoid questions that directly asks about the implementation. Exploring the need is much more valuable in the long term, but also to understand if you actually understood what the customer/user needed (or rather think they need...). Although such questions are much more difficult to ask, especially in writing. Having partly overlapping answers is quite revealing when a respondent can only choose one. They have to think which answer is, in this case, most important. "If you had to choose..." These thinks work fairly well, in my opinion, when doing a qualitative survey. For quantative surveys I totally agree on the critisism that you raise and point to. We exposed to such surveys I often wonder "What could they possibly get from this?". It seems I misspelled the question about "source" which made for bad wording, but I rephrased inspired by your suggestion for that text. I also added a second, open, question so we can collect further explanations, ideas, needs and other things that relates to the Alan Games Repository. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
Good points you made — but I was already expecting to find in your answer some points I had totally missed out, because I knew beforehand that you wouldn't come up with this unless you knew what you were doing. I get the point about overlapping answers being there on purpose to force priorities when overlapping values are at play — but having been an amateur magician (as in sleight of hand, stage-magic) for a very long time, I'm also aware of the "bag of tricks" on how to force choices on volunteers from the public (as in "pick whichever card you like"), some of which are sleight-of-hand techniques, while others are subtle verbal cues in the way the proposition if formulated, which can turn what looks like a multiple choice into a "forced choice". Believe it or not, these centuries old tricks work — if they didn't, magicians would have been out of business a long time ago, because so many of their trick depend on these false choices in order to work (and prevent a total public failure of the trick). The main reason these techniques work is because the average person (i.e. a non-magician) likes to believe he/she is in control of his/her choices. The scientific and academic world won't admit these technique work unless they are "proven" according to their paradigm — but of course, magicians have no interest in revealing their secrets, and even less so other categories who's a living depends on similar trickery — from con-artists to ad-men (not sure if they differ though). But of course, this is one of those area which divide people so strongly that it's unlike that the scientific community will ever admit to it. The most amazing demonstration I've seen of these verbal techniques in magic shows is an entire magic routine where the magician forces the spectator to pick an imaginary card from an imaginary deck, directing him by verbal directions, and ultimately the "chosen card" will be the one that was predicted (enforced via subtle hidden verbal cues). As a magician, I was given access to the trick explanation too, which I've found quite impressive, although I already knew most of these verbal techniques from personal research in experimental linguistics. I simply don't believe in "verbal impartiality" — every word we chose is going to impact the perception of anything we say, and elicit different responses; we simply can't escape this process.
I think the most damaging "school" in this field has been "motivational research", a huge hype in the advertising world (but not only) that was inadvertently hugely promoted by Vance Packard's book The Hidden Persuaders, who was trying to warn people about it (as an alleged "control tool") but instead lead an entire generation to believe that it was a tool with unlimited powers. Although motivational questionnaires are still used today, I believe that today motivational research is no longer considered a reliable tool. It's worth mentioning that it relies on psychoanalytic concepts, none of which are universally accepted in either psychoanalysis (and its many schools) nor in psychology or science (psychoanalysis and psychology are branches of rhetoric and linguistics, not "hard" sciences).
The reason I really hate limited-answers surveys is because they became "fashionable" in Italy as an attempt to demonstrate that our public services are not as bad as people say, by offering end users the chance to evaluate these services. Usually these questionnaires allow you to describe your user experience by evaluating the service as: "(1) Excellent, (2) Very good, (3) Good." — which is adding insult to the damage. Of course, behind these there's not even the intent to find out what citizen think of public services (the answers are probably trashed without being processed in any way), it's just an expedient to pretend they care. But it's also true that even in consumers surveys (where it's actually in the best interest of the company to obtain real data) these questionnaires seem to be designed around already known consumers groups, i.e. they are not targeting the individual, just the dominant customers groups. As usual, the tyranny of the majority prevails.
That's really good! and I think it's important to allow space to express freely any needs, comments, etc. You never know, some open answers could tilt the scales. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
So, should we put it out there and see what people think? |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
Definitely. We can then announce it on the list and set a reasonable time period to allow people to read it and "vote" (keeping in mind that having just started the new working year some might still have not caught up yet with the usual rhythm for side projects). |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
@thoni56, I'm facing a project-blocking dilemma regarding how to subfolder the games: should the main category be the ALAN version of the games locale?
The former solution would simplify for end users to focus on games created with a specific ALAN major version — which is probably only helpful in case they are looking for games sources to study (i.e. most likely ALAN 3 games only):
The latter solution is probably cleaner since it focuses on the games locale, which in most cases is they key factor for end users, since they can only play (or study) games in a language they understand:
The way I see it, the former solution focuses on game sources studying, whereas the latter on games playing. If you're looking for multiple adventures source code for a specific ALAN version, then the former solution already pre-filters all games for you, so you only have to pick the locale you're interested in. If you're just looking to play adventures, then the latter solution is better since it pre-filters all games according to locale, and when it comes to enjoying adventures the ALAN version doesn't really matter.
I therefore tend to consider the latter solution more in line with the project goals, although the downside is that we'll eventually end up with more "games root folders" in the project:
which might look somehow untidy, especially if the project contains other game-unrelated root folders (
/docs/, etc.) that might end up between "locale folders" due to files sorting:The former solution, on the other hand, will always have just two "games root folders" (unless ALAN 4 comes out) and somehow look more tidy since no unrelated folder will end up between the
/alan2/and/alan3/directories due to filenames sorting.Therefore, I think that if we opt for the latter solution we might be better of subfoldering all games into a
/games/directory to make thing cleaners — which might also make sense in terms of its README file functioning as a game index, uncluttered from any repository info which is due in the main README.Before proceeding either way, I wanted to hear your thoughts on this.
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
All reactions