[Popcon-developers] The number of popcon.debian.org-submissions is falling

[asheesh@asheesh.org (Asheesh Laroia)]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2010, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:

> Anyone got any idea how to can get more machines to report to 
> popcon.debian.org?  Or can there be some other problem causing the fall 
> in the number of submissions?

One thing Fedora does for their stats tools in the install is that if you 
say "No" to stats collection, they ask you once more -- "But but it would 
be so cool if you told us what hardware you have! Then we can figure out 
what people use, and know what works! Pretty please?"

As I recall, it's for hardware stats, actually, not package installs.

CC:ing Mel Chua, who I *think* is the one who said that to me, so that she 
can record as appropriate. (-:

So we don't have to change the default. We can nag more, as above.

We could also show a different message in the installer, one showing how 
cool popcon is. Something like, "Did you know that Apache is the most 
commonly installed web server in Debian, but nginx usage is increasing? We 
know this because many people choose to report package installs through 
popcon. If you say yes, we'll anonymously report which packages you have 
installed and other statistics to Debian."

That's just my total rough-draft first pass, but there you have it. If you 
like the idea we can refine it together (or you can ask me to give it a 
better shot). (-:

-- Asheesh.

-- 
He was part of my dream, of course -- but then I was part of his dream too.
 		-- Lewis Carroll