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Grex member opinion survey
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Aug 17 02:46 UTC 1996 |
Following are the compiled results of a survey I sent out to Grex's 92
members in early July, with an end-of-July deadline. 43 surveys, or just
under half, were returned. One member's mailbox was full, one member's
account was gone, and two replies were for a jointly-paid membership on
one account (I decided to count both).
The request and survey is in /u/ajax/survey. Results for questions 1-18
(given below) are in /u/ajax/results1 (264 lines), answers for question
19 (given in the next item) are in /u/ajax/results2 (149 lines), and
comments for questions 1-18 are in /u/ajax/outtakes (422 lines; not in
an item - they're there if you're particularly curious).
On some non-specific answers, I tried to clarify them for tallying
purposes; e.g., when a was range given, (30-40 hrs), I averaged, or
when a multiple choice answer was C+, I stripped the +.
NOTE: THIS ITEM TEXT GOES FOR ANOTHER TEN SCREENS OR SO. If you don't
want to read it, type "q" at a "press space bar to continue" prompt. Then
type "1" at the "Respond or pass?" prompt to just read people's responses.
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1. Where did you hear about Grex?
21 - Friends/word of mouth
7 - Heard of it before grex came on-line (including founders)
5 - Read about (2 in AA Observer, 1 in PFC Connector, 1 in AA News, 1 in ?)
4 - Meetings (2 at JCC sale, 1 at AACS meeting, 1 at CE)
3 - Surfing (gopher.msu.edu, metronet list at library, & unknown)
2 - On M-Net
2. Roughly how long have you been using Grex?
Average: About 2.6 years
0-1 years 8 (19.0%)
1-2 years 11 (26.2%)
2-3 years 9 (21.4%)
3-4 years 6 (14.3%)
4+ years 8 (19.0%)
Seven respondees were in the 60-61 month range, which is the length of
Grex's existence.
3. Roughly how long have you been a member?
Average: 1.6 years
0-1 21 (50.0%)
1-2 10 (23.8%)
2-3 4 ( 9.5%)
3-4 4 ( 9.5%)
4+ 3 ( 7.1%)
4. What is your occupation, age and gender? (Remember, skip if too nosy!)
GENDER OCCUPATION
Male 31 (75.6%) Computer/Technical: 12
Female 10 (24.4%) College students: 7
Retail: 4
AGE Clerical: 3
Medical: 3
10-20 7 (17.5%) Writing: 2
21-30 10 (25.0%) Teaching: 2
31-40 9 (22.5%) Law enforcement: 2
41-50 9 (7.5%) Pre-college students: 2
51-60 3 (7.5%) Business: 1
61+ 2 (5.0%) Law: 1
Theater: 1
2 are retired, but I counted them under things they do now.
1 is a homemaker, but I counted them under their part-time work.
Many students also had jobs, but I listed them as students.
5. What city do you live in? If Ann Arbor or Ypsi, what part of town?
Ann Arbor: 22 (55.0%)
Distribution of areas was very even
Ypsilanti/Pittsfield Township: 10 (25.0%)
Mostly northwest area
Other Michigan cities: 6 (15.0%)
Saline, Plymouth, Southfield, Dowagiac, Alpena, Marquette
Other states: 2 (5.0%)
Illinois, Massechussetts
6. How many hours a week do you sit in front of a computer?
Average: 34.6
1-10 4 (10.3%)
11-20 13 (33.3%)
21-30 4 (10.3%)
31-40 1 (2.6%)
41-50 3 (7.7%)
51-60 10 (25.6%)
61+ 4 (10.3%)
(Uncountably high: 3 - not used for average or percentages)
Several people who responded under 20 hours a week added comments
such as "way too much." The person who responded 84 did not.
7. How many hours a week do you think you spend using Grex?
Average: 11.4
0-5 14 (35.0%)
6-10 7 (17.4%)
11-15 13 (32.5%)
16-20 0 (0%)
21-25 3 (7.5%)
26-30 2 (5.0%)
31+ 1 (2.5%)
8. What percentage of time do you connect to Grex by dailing
in directly versus telnetting in from the Internet?
90-100% dial-in 23 (56.1%)
11-89% dial-in 8 (19.5%)
0-10% dial-in 10 (24.4%)
One respondee reported dialing in 50% of the time, telnetting in
25% of the time, and using the console 25% of the time. :-)
9. What share of time on Grex do you spend on various activities?
For example, 30% e-mail, 40% conferences, 20% party, 10% lynx.
(There are plenty of other activities you could list).
Averages, of 39 respondees:
Conferencing: 44%
E-mail: 26%
Party: 8%
Lynx: 7%
Maintenance: 6% (includes writing help-seekers, board stuff)
Telnet: 5%
Misc.: 4% (includes talk, games, ftp, talk, irc)
10. Grex's board of directors is made up of volunteers. How do you rate
their effectiveness and responsiveness in "governing" Grex and
representing its members?
A) Poor B) Mostly poor C) Mixed D) Mostly good E) Great
A 1 (3.2%)
B 0 (0%)
C 2 (6.5%)
D 15 (48.4%)
E 13 (41.9%)
Only 31 people responded; several weren't familiar enough to comment,
while a couple abstained because they were board members.
11. Grex's technical staff is also made up of volunteers. How do you
rate their effectiveness and responsiveness to your and Grex's needs?
A) Poor B) Mostly poor C) Mixed D) Mostly good E) Great
A 0 (0%)
B 0 (0%)
C 2 (5.7%)
D 16 (45.7%)
E 17 (48.6%)
35 people responded; again, several weren't familiar enough to comment,
while a couple abstained because they were staff members.
12. Phone lines are a big expense for Grex, but people still get busy
signals when calling. While nobody likes busy signals, how annoying
is the current level of busy signals to you?
A) No problem D) Quite annoying
B) Rarely annoying E) I HATE IT
C) Moderately annoying n/a) I hardly ever dial directly anyway.
A 2 (4.8%)
B 7 (16.7%)
C 15 (35.7%)
D 5 (11.9%)
E 3 (7.2%)
n/a 10 (23.8%)
13. All available telnet ports are also filled up a lot of the time.
How annoying is the current "busyness" or "wait to telnet in" to you?
A) No problem D) Quite annoying
B) Rarely annoying E) I HATE IT
C) Moderately annoying n/a) I hardly ever telnet in anyway.
A 4 (9.5%)
B 5 (11.9%)
C 10 (23.8%)
D 7 (16.7%)
E 4 (9.5%)
n/a 12 (28.6%)
14. Grex members have few capabilities that non-members have
(primarily voting, and being able to telnet *from* Grex).
Do you feel Grex should...
A) allow even non-members to telnet from Grex.
B) leave this as it is.
C) consider limiting some minor capabilities of non-members
(e.g., only members could add party noises)
D) consider limiting some major capabilities of non-members
(e.g., deny e-mail, or make some phone lines "members only")
A 1 (2.6%)
B 23 (60.5%)
C 9 (23.7%)
D 5 (13.1%)
There were a *lot* of comments on this. Several people put B or C,
except "make phone lines members-only." Asking about specific
restrictions may have been a better question. See the outtakes to
see what people wrote.
15. Was the benefit of being able to telnet from Grex to other systems
among the reasons you originally became a member?
Would it be among the reasons you'd renew your membership?
No/no 20 (46.5%)
Yes/no 9 (20.9%)
Yes/yes 12 (27.9%)
16. Party, Grex's main multiuser chat program, is arguably the most
popular attraction on Grex. But some detractors say that it drains
Grex's resources, thereby detracting from other services, such as
conferencing, that Grex should promote. What is your feeling?
A) Party should be shut down.
B) I lean toward shutting it down.
C) No opinion on this topic.
D) I lean toward leaving it in place.
E) Party should be left in place.
A 1 (2.6%)
B 4 (10.3%)
C 15 (38.4%)
D 7 (17.9%)
E 12 (30.1%)
17. While Grex's budget is fairly tight, and improvements cost different
amounts of time and money, how would you rank the importance of the
following improvements? (Place a 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in the blanks, in
the order you deem appropriate.)
__ Keeping Grex up during power outages
__ Adding Usenet news access to Grex
__ Getting a better (faster) Internet link
__ Adding more modems and phone lines
__ Speeding up Grex's main computer
People who ranked it
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5
-- -- -- -- --
Outages 0 4 10 5 20
Usenet 3 9 2 12 15
Internet 15 8 10 5 2
Phones 13 8 9 6 3
CPU Speed 8 12 12 8 0
This is a hard one for which to present succinct statistics, since the
table above doesn't show the number of people, say, who felt a faster
Internet link was more important than more phone lines.
18. Do you think you'll renew your membership when it expires? If not,
or if you're not sure, what are your reasons? Is there something
Grex could do that would make you want to renew?
No 2 (4.9%)
Probably not 1 (2.4%)
Maybe 1 (2.4%)
Probably 3 (7.3%)
Yes 34 (79.1%)
Some yesses had qualifications, mostly along the lines of Grex
maintaining its current quality.
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