Board Surveys (BS)

[PNKBULLSHT]

Ok...I am trying to have a survey on a board that help moderate. Can anyone tell me how I do that please

[live2trade]

[ZoZoStockWatch]

40.00 important area

[2manystucks]

test

[Threejack]

Authoring Surveys


re: If a few folks will check in and report any bugs or functional difficulties they'd like to see improved, or lack thereof, I'll be happy to make it a more widely-available feature. First, let assistants manage surveys, then make a version that *anyone* can use.

Bob,

Any plan to let *anyone* author a survey? Think it would be a good idea.

Threejack

[bbgold]

New Survey
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board_surveymenu.asp?board_id=41

[stack]

A Wish:

Automation of the survey feature, meaning when starting a survey I should be able to enter a survey duration (e.g. 7 days), after which the survey is automatically closed and the results are posted as an "ordinary" post on the board.

And maybe an automatic notice on top of the post-list that a survey is open. Maybe even a sign in "Favorites" that a board has an open survey.

Great idea to have surveys...

Thanks
S.

[The Original dpb5!]

NEW SURVEY...

....only takes a moment!

http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board_surveymenu.asp?board_id=1611

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Can't believe I missed what I missed in that one. Should work now. And I've tested it in production. Let me know if you find differently.

[The Original dpb5!]

Bob,

It was right after 130AM EST. I think that is when you auto reboot or something.

I used manage and then survey, add survey. Created q&a's and submitted. It auto logged me off ihub. Tried 3 times.

I will try again this weekend sometime and let you know.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Are you using the "Manage" link for the board?

What happens when you try?

I'm able to add and edit surveys on the Q&A board, where I'm an assistant.

I can't imagine WebTV causing any problem with that routine.

[The Original dpb5!]

FWIW....

I still cannot create a survey as an assistant to a board

WEBTV USER!

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Got confused by the darned buttons again and replied privately instead of publicly!

I've made a few changes to the Surveys:

1. Now Moderators and Assistants have access to Add/Edit Surveys.

2. If a Survey isn't activated, you've got a link available where the surveys are listed so you can Preview the survey.

3. If a Survey has been answered, you're warned on the edit screen not to edit the questions and answer choices.

Let's really torture-test these things. Once I'm satisfied that they're solid, I'll make a version available that any premium member of the site can use.

The approach I would recommend using for creating Surveys now is:

Create the Survey but don't check the "Activated" box. When you hit the "Save Changes" button, you're taking to the survey listing box. Preview the survey you just made. If it looks good (or if it doesn't), hit the "Edit Survey" button and either edit it or activate it.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Because it's still very much in beta.

If a few folks will check in and report any bugs or functional difficulties they'd like to see improved, or lack thereof, I'll be happy to make it a more widely-available feature. First, let assistants manage surveys, then make a version that *anyone* can use.

[The Original dpb5!]

It appears that only the Chairman of The Board can create surveys and not Assistants. Any particular reason why?

[EZ2]

THANKS Bob.....I caught your previous msg. AFTER I had
already deleted the new one ie. #4, but sounds like you got
it fixed !!

Appreciate the help !!

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

That bug is fixed. Now it's not possible to delete a survey that has been answered.

However, you need to add a couple of surveys (they can just have some filler text for the questions and answers and should indicate in the survey header that it's a defunct survey) so that the next *real* survey you make doesn't re-use an old number.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Hold off before you do. You might've uncovered a major bug in the way I'm handling new surveys. As soon as you said "DELETED", it occurred to me that I might be re-using survey numbers from deleted ones.

The correct approach would be for me to allow de-activation of surveys that've been answered at least once, but not deletion. So that any new survey will have to have a new number.

I'll get right on it.

[EZ2]

Bob,
I had 2 other surveys up.....those were both DELETED....and then I built the new one ie. questions correct / replies from OLD survey. But, I will just delete this and start from scratch.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Haven't there been other surveys on that board?

My guess is that you've edited an existing survey rather than adding a new one. It says it's survey number 4, but there is only one survey in the database for that board.

I see that the answers being shown in the results don't match the answers currently available for that survey, which also tells me its an edit of an existing survey rather than a fresh new one.

Try to make a new survey from scratch and see if that happens. Shouldn't. If you're working on a survey and it contains any text in any fields, it's an old survey.

[EZ2]

Bob -- new survey questions show up.....but, old survey answers remain ?!?!?!?
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board_survey_results.asp?board_id=485&Survey_Num=1

[Data_Rox]

Hi Bob-

And aren't you supposed to drink a shot of something everytime someone greets me? <g>

these days it would be coffee....but I remember when... ?^0

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Matt's suggestion could work to address some of the computer overhead problem, but not the philosophical ones. Although it brings up a problem that's both technical and philosophical in that it's my philosophy to never use Javascript unless there's just no other way to do something. <g>

And aren't you supposed to drink a shot of something everytime someone greets me? <g>

[Data_Rox]

Hi Bob (I always like saying that B^) )

In this anonymous world of cyber space that you have created here on iHUB there are vast numbers (you hope and I hope) of people that come here and lurk as well as participate. For all of these people there are different levels of personal involvement (read investment) to the board(s) beyond their financial investment in a particular stock offering that may or may not be the subject of conversation on your site.

With my goal of having both pros and cons of the financial investment discussed within the community of the board for the betterment of all, and knowing that we are anonymous to each other in these discussions, I find the ignore tabulation statistic to be a valuable tool in weighing a poster's motivation and opinion in the discussion without having to read through all of their previous postings potentially on multiple boards. When I have to do that, my investment in these boards is lessened.

When discussing something with another person face to face there are many ways to judge the credibility and or motivation of that person in the discussion, when doing it from behind a keyboard with a yet unknown entity it is valuable to me to know what other people may think of that person to either help further the discussion or to just ignore and not take up any more disk space.

Just as you have membermarks that show what people think of that poster (presumably in a positive way) , I and 84% of my survey respondents feel it would be valuable to also know what people think of that particular poster - potentially in such a negative way that they were forced to put that person on ignore. Another 10% don't care if it's calculated or not, and only 5% didn't want to see it (what's their motivation?).

IMO, it takes a lot for me to put someone on ignore, but if I've done it it's for reasons that will keep the focus on the appropriate conversations I think you would like to take place here on iHUB.

Thanks for your consideration on this Bob. Maybe's Matt's idea could work?

Data

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

It begs the question "Why is such a thing useful?"

I think it'd be really tough to make a case for it being such an important feature that it'd be worth the programming time and computer loading.

I see it having lots more potential on the negative side than on the positive side. The negative outcome is potentially very large (witness RB's move to do away with those "$" ratings things -- not an identical situation but it's in the same vein) while the positives that I can see are tiny, at best.

Well, actually, I'm just not seeing positives aside from satisfying statistical curiosity, which I can personally relate to as I'm very much a stats junkie.

I really do think it's more than enough that people can opt to make another user almost totally invisible and it's completely unnecessary that their doing so can be used as a way to "punish" the target of their disaffection.

[Data_Rox]

Matt and Bob re: "ignored" user survey

Thanks for checking into it guys. It appears that those in favor or desiring such a feature continue to rate about 84% over the past couple of days.

I hope it helps turn the perception of creating "bad vibes" into one of creating a better user experience here on iHUB.

Thanks for everything

DR

[Mattu]

>>Even in that scenario, any profile that was filtered even once would still have to process every single filter record. Very, very expensive. Especially when done thousands of times per day, which is how often the Profiles routine is used.<<

A compromise between doing it and including it on the Profile page could be doing something similar to how PayPal shows "more information"

You could show the profile information as normal, but have a link that says "Member Stats" or something of that nature. When they click that, they get a little pop-up box or another page that displays peoplemarks, ignores, and whatever else.

Then, you are only running that expensive query when you *know* that's what the user was looking for.

MB

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board_surveymenu.asp?board_id=238

Survey #5 on that board is a good one. I'm kinda curious to see the results, although it's doubtful survey results will change my philosophy about showing how many people have someone ignored.

Not only do I have a philosophical problem with that, the way filtering works doesn't lend itself to easy tallying of how many times a particular person shows up in the filters. I wrote a system to calculate the totals for each person and had considered posting a one-time "Most Ignored" list but not only didn't like the "negative energy" aspect of it, I also didn't like how hard the database server had to work to produce the list and knew I could never get away with posting it only once.

And it'd be a helluva workload if that same basic query were run everytime a Profile screen were pulled up. It's the 5th most frequently used routine on the site.

For those who're technically inclined, filters are stored as a string of numbers (account numbers) separated by commas. Each user who uses the filtering feature has a record in the filter table and their filterees are part of that string.

When the user reads messages, his particular filter record is pulled up and the author number of the next and previous post is compared with that user's filter string. If the author (or recipient, if that filtering option is enabled) is found in the filter string, the system skips that message and goes to the next one and does the same check again until it finds both a Next and a Previous message that aren't filtered out.

As you can imagine, that can be a pretty expensive process. And that's when pulling up only one filterer's filter record.

If I implemented something like that in profiles, the system would have to step through *all* filter records and see if that user's number occurs in any filter strings and tally them up if it does.

That processing would happen on every profile, even if nobody ever placed a filter on them. Granted, the overhead wouldn't happen on a non-filtered person if I added a field called "is_filtered" or something like that to the member table and only call the filter-tallying subroutine anytime that's set to true, but doing that would add the overhead of updating that anytime a filter record is modified or someone turns their filtering on or off.

Even in that scenario, any profile that was filtered even once would still have to process every single filter record. Very, very expensive. Especially when done thousands of times per day, which is how often the Profiles routine is used.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

I believe I've got a 100-character limit for answer choices.

Edit: I just bumped the limits to 200 characters for questions and for answer choices.

[EZ2]

well, tried to "edit" it and get the original listing in there......but, seems it will not SAVE the edit ??? Is
there a maximum allowable in pick list ?
Here is what I get:


The page cannot be displayed
There is a problem with the page you are trying to reach and it cannot be displayed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please try the following:

Click the Refresh button, or try again later.

Open the www.investorshub.com home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
HTTP 500.100 - Internal Server Error - ASP error
Internet Information Services

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Technical Information (for support personnel)

Error Type:
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (0x80040E57)
String or binary data would be truncated.
/boards/post_survey.asp, line 40


Browser Type:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; T312461; Q312461)

Page:
POST 490 bytes to /boards/post_survey.asp

POST Data:
SurveyName=%232&Survey_Header=GEOGRAPHIC+DOMINANCE&Survey_Status=ON&Q1=I+reside+in+the+state+of%3A&A1=AL%2C+AK%2C+AS%2C+AZ%2C+AR%2C+CA%2C+CO%2C+CT%2C+DE%2CDC%2CFL%2CGA%2CGU%2CHI%2CID%2CIL%2CIN%2CIA%2C . . .

Time:
Monday, February 03, 2003, 12:39:12 PM


More information:
Microsoft Support



EZ 2 :)
"Show me an insect with an attitude.....and, I'll show you a COCKY..ROACH"

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

The survey only shows 17 confirmations for that survey. Even if there are multiple questions in a survey, taking the survey only counts as one survey taken. Not one per question.

[EZ2]

Yikes.....thanks !!

EZ 2 :)
"Show me an insect with an attitude.....and, I'll show you a COCKY..ROACH"

[Tatari Gami]

The state choices on your survey stop at Nevada.

[EZ2]

Bob -- am I missing something, should this not show
that -34- people took the survey ???
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board_survey_results.asp?board_id=485&Survey_Num=2

EZ 2 :)
"Show me an insect with an attitude.....and, I'll show you a COCKY..ROACH"

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Board Surveys are now part of the Surveys list in the "Other" menu.

Currently, the 25 most recently-created ones are in there. Later, I'll add a separate list for the most frequently answered surveys.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Survey Stats:

There are currently 30 board-run surveys. All together, they've been filled out 646 times for a total of 2562 answers.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Fixed some bugs in the Survey system.

1. If you put spaces before or after the answer choices (easy thing to do since we're all in the habit of putting a space after the comma, which the Survey thing didn't like), the system now trims out those spaces before saving the answers.

2. It'll now accept apostrophes in questions and in answer choices.

[Rick Faurot]

The categories sound good to me.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

No, I mean that's what I'm proposing as a way to do the Surveys screen.

[Rick Faurot]

I don't see four sections under Survey. I still see the same seven old surveys that were there yesterday. The interface link is fixed.

I have plenty of room for a new button for surveys.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

580 Survey answers submitted so far with 164 surveys taken. A total of 18 surveys have been put up so far.

What do people think of this?

In the Surveys screen from the Other menu (I just fixed the menu funkiness there, btw), we have 4 sections:

1. Site-wide surveys
2. Top 10, 20, whatever most-answered surveys
3. Most recent surveys you haven't participated in
4. Surveys you've taken most recently (so you can check results).

On most peoples' screens, do we have enough room in the top menu to make "Surveys" its own menu option, right between Tools and Other? Since they're currently, from the server perspective, very cheap hits, I'd like to make them real easy to find.

Whether I put the Surveys on the top menu as a separate item or include them where the site-wide surveys already are, that does give more exposure to the voluntary demographic survey, which would help me a bit.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Ahhh, that old and ageless bane of programmers: storing "string delimiters" inside strings. I know what I need to do to fix it and will do so tomorrow. It doesn't like the apostrophe.

[Tatari Gami]

I went ahead and fixed it both times. It is okay now, so don't sweat it.

From memory, my answers should have read:

Yes,No,Not sure but hope so,Don't care

When I went back to edit, it read:

Yes,No,Don

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

When I took it, I think there were 4 answers. I'll look at it tomorrow at the office. Don't have that kind of access from here.

[Tatari Gami]

cool feature

Here's the first bug report.

Twice now, as I've gone back to edit my survey, some of my answer choices are either gone or missing characters. Since all of my answer choices have not yet been answered, there is no way to see what choices I have offered besides going into the manage surveys/edit screen. Then, with some of my answers missing...well, you get the idea.

Aside from the bug, I think it would be helpful to have even those answers with 0% show up in the results.

Also, I can't think of a single good reason to allow someone the option of choosing "No Answer."

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Yeah, the 5-question limit is completely arbitrary and I can change it to any number I like. Let's see how it goes with 5 first. Seems to me that in most cases, 5 questions should be enough and if it's not, maybe it's something that needs to be broken up into 2 or more separate surveys.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

What I think will probably happen is someone will end up putting up a board before too long where they'll put up any survey anyone wants.

Want to test the waters for a while first.

We had these things back in the BBS days and though they could be really popular, it was also possible to "dilute" them to the point they lost their charm and drawing power.

[The Original dpb5!]

Yes Rick,

At GO.COM anyone was able to create a survey. And it wasn't a big problem or overwhelming. I mean it wasn't overkilled. Posters came up with quite the interesting surveys about issues!!!

[Rick Faurot]

While you are looking at the Surveys page, it doesn't seem to be linked to the My Interface options the way other pages are.

[The Original dpb5!]

Bob,

I am happy to see that you have finally rolled out surveys for each board. If you remember, I have been wanting this for over a year now and I was disappointed when you originally created it but it was only able to be used by you.

Only suggestion I have is that when they used to have this feature on the old GO.COM message boards, they started it also with five question choices. It was soon determined that five was not enough, so they upped it to seven, which then made it quite fun and primo.

Can you allow that ??