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Readers' Choice Awards (siteadm) Fri, 13 Jun
Wow!!! 300 hundred people!! (dhmjr) Sat, 14 Jun
Statistical Validity (sdugan) Sun, 15 Jun
So explain why (khasim) Sun, 15 Jun
Best Explaination I Can Offer (sdugan) Sun, 15 Jun
Rachel, can you confirm/deny? (khasim) Mon, 16 Jun
Customer focus (rparker) Tue, 17 Jun
Thank you. (imric) Tue, 17 Jun
Categories and vacations (Sandy Reed) Wed, 18 Jun

Categorical vacillations

Posted by: CRConrad
Date posted: Thu Jun 19 8:25:32 PDT 1997

Sandy Reed writes:
> How come when OS/2 won three of the five categories no one used the word "ridiculous" to describe the categories?

Oh, I've got a very simple explanation for that. Not that I know for sure wether it's true, but it seems reasonable:
When the more clueful segment of your readers -- self-selected poll, not excluding IT vendor employees (and recently IWE-only readers) -- were
the ones to determine the outcome, they probably just skipped the "Iomega Jaz drive as a Client" and similar idiotic suggestions, and voted according
to their _o_w_n_ perception of sensible categories -- comparing like with like, server OS with server OS, and so on. So the results of this last survey,
apples and oranges all mixed up into a fruit salad, actually only goes to show that sample was taken from the most clueless sub-population.

Hey, waitaminnit! Is she trying to imply "Why aren't you complaining about all the previous years' surveys, too?" Correct me if I'm wrong,
but these new categories followed a redesign of the magazine that was done only this year, didn't they? So the Web poll and this telephone survey
were the only ones with these screwed-up categories, right? (Rachel, care to comment?) In that case, many of the respondents to the original Web
poll (I'm not one of them) are here on this forum! Come on guys, tell me if I'm right: You just disregarded the new fruit-salad categories, and voted
by the old ones, comparing apples to apples, oranges to oranges, didn't you ?!? At least to me, that old model makes much more sense for a poll.


> I'm glad this forum got underway while I was out of town.

How far in advance _do_ you people book your vacations and meetings? And just how imprecise _were_ those survey consultants on the time-frame?
If ms Reed had *wanted* to -- or *dared* -- I'm sure she could have fit this in to her schedule. Or she's too bad an administrator to be Editor . . .


> Rachel Parker has done a great job focusing the discussion on the issues instead of on personal attacks.

Whereas ms Reed posted a couple of parrot-like repetitions of "300 is valid! 300 is valid!" and some personal attacks of her own,
before breezing off to her important booked-in-advance meetings. No plans whatsoever of giving up some of her _own_ time
to participate in this forum, it seems. Oh well, with that attitude on her part, it's probably for the best . . .


Sincerely,

Christian R. Conrad


I ignored the nonsensical entries (cjoffe) Today

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