Feedback from Polls

I suggest that we have a “Poll” section in the forum so that when feedback is wanted in support or against a proposed feature users can easily find the poll and vote.

For example, do users want an option in the export dialogue for “Apply Dither on Export: Yes/No/Don’t Know/Other”

If there are just a small number of polls running at any one time, users may be encouraged to give their views and provide vital feedback for future development.

Maybe we need a pol to answer this question that you’ve raised Steve :question: :wink:

An example of the futility of Polls in the ordinary forums: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/combining-effects/20023/1
Running for over six months and only 4 people have voted, which is hardly surprising given that it is now hidden below thousands of other posts.

Personally I feel that user feedback is essential. Adding a “Have your say” board where user opinion can be polled could provide valuable feedback.

I have no idea whether my use of the Audacity forum is typical or not.

Because it is a fairly busy forum, I connect several times each day - at least four times daily: morning, mid-day, mid-afternoon and evening. Each time I connect, I click on “View unread posts” and then work through the list from the bottom up (i.e. oldest to newest). I don’t look to see what is where in the forum structure, which is why I sometimes have given a Windows answer to a Mac user (sorry about that! I will try and “look before I leap” in future).

From my experience on another fairly busy forum, poll topics are posted as “sticky” topics (i.e. they sit at the top of the list in that section of the forum). But they tend to gather most of their answers within the first few days of opening. This suggests to me that there is a small core of regular visitors to that forum. Further, I would say that most of those regular visitors are all in the “more experienced” category.

I may be totally wrong on this, but I suspect that the same may well apply to the Audacity forum membership. I think that most of the registered members here on the Audacity forum will fall into one of two categories:

  • those who came, looked and went quietly away
  • those who came with a specific problem, asked their question, got their solution and went away happy

I suspect that someone like myself, who wishes to learn something new about sound engineering and sound mixing, in the hope that it might, at some future date, come in useful, is actually a rare breed.

Make of that what you will.

It’s an interesting idea, Steve.

Could work, specially if there’s a link to it in the website/wiki/manual. Could be of most interest for collecting votes regarding new features requests.

That’s the sort of thing I had in mind.

I think that it would be important to only have a small number of active polls at any one time.
Perhaps new polls could be announced on the Audacity Users mailing list so that anyone on that list is particularly interested in one of the current polls is encouraged to have their say. It could be quite a “fun” way for people to get involved :slight_smile: