[Strategic] User feedback or What does the community want / miss / annoy

[Richard Weait]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Steve Coast <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
> Pretty simple - you don't get any consensus therefore the data is pretty
> meaningless. If you get 50% of people saying there should be a big map on
> the front page and 50% say no map. What are you supposed to do? It will just
> randomize you.

How about this.  We've had a nice big map for a few years.  Draft and
launch a vastly different front page, say a portal type page.  Do this
with the goal of comparing the results for the new page after six
months with our historical data.

Do registrations increase or decrease?
Does the percentage of repeat editors increase or decrease?
Does traffic on $list / $wiki / $site increase or decrease?

Then rather than guessing, we can look at real "what if" results.  Of
course, the new page has to be good enough to be worth launching, but
it doesn't have to be perfect.  It can be improved during the test.
And if it is catastrophic, if everybody stops visiting OSM inside two
weeks, we can roll it back to the current page.  That seems unlikely.

Somebody still has to take the step of writing this new page.

Some folks will have to test it before launch.

Some group has to make the collective decision to stand behind the
test, and talk the inevitable nay-sayers into at least waiting out the
trial to say "I told you so."