[SGVLUG] Test site update -- mambo stuff

[Dustin]

On Sun, 7 Aug 2005, Tom Emerson wrote:

> I'm really liking the Mambo site manger -- I think it will work well for
> the types of things we want to do with the site: meeting announcements
> (both for our own and for related user groups -- after all, it doesn't
> hurt us to advertise for others, and if they reciprocate, so much the
> better), tutorials and other tips, meeting archives, and so on.

Is that your way of saying that we have a winner? :-)

> answer...]  I think I can also enable "ratings" to get an idea of how well 
> liked a given meeting will be (was?)  [ok, I've already done that last one -- 
> "ratings" are now enabled, though it looks like it may be of limited use...]

There is a big danger in things like that.  Here's one version of how the 
greatest and most innovative wargame company (SPI) died: they did a lot of 
customer feedback and really listened to the results.  Problem was, their 
"best customers" were overrepresented in such polls, and being old hands, 
were eager for ever more challenging games.  The beginners they needed to 
bring in, of course, didn't fill out polls.  So the games got more complex 
and ever less suitable for newcomers, and eventually, there were no 
newcomers.  Finally, there was no SPI.

My point is simply that such polls tend to have inevitable self-selection 
bias, and it's very possible that talks that will benefit the LUG the most 
(for example, fairly beginner-oriented talks) may not "score" as well as 
those popular with the crowd that actively visits the website.  Or it 
might be that "old hands" don't bother with websites and won't vote while 
the new and enthusiastic will.  I'm not predicting the bias--only that 
there will probably be one, and it might be a bad idea to place too much 
emphasis on beauty contests.

Dustin