Staff —

For the empire: Please take the 2012 Ars Reader Survey

Last call for our survey. Just 1,000 more takers, and we'll share the results.

Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock

Happy Black Friday!

This is just a reminder (and the only one we'll foist on you) that every year we reach out to you, oh great readers, to participate in our big survey extravaganza. We’ve been conducting yearly surveys since 2006, and when combined with other reader feedback, traffic analysis, and our close reading of goat entrails, the surveys help guide us into the mysterious future. We take your responses quite seriously!

In fact, these surveys are perhaps the most important line of feedback you can give us. Generally, only hardcore readers take them, which means we’re less likely to hear from someone who doesn’t really read or care about the site. It’s also the case that we’re usually blessed with a mountain of respondents, which lets us get statistically significant data. All of this means that your taking ten minutes to fill out this survey will help us out greatly. If we break 7,000 respondents, we’ll even publish the results. [Update: we're almost there!]

This year’s survey has three components. One is to tell us how we’re doing on a number of fronts. The next is to tell us more about yourself (we really, really need this information, but the data we collect will only be used in aggregate and will never be sold to anyone). Last but not least is something new: the final page has freeform questions that are optional to answer. We’re going to read through all of the responses, so don’t leave any opportunities untouched!

The 2012 Ars Reader Survey.

95 Reader Comments

  1. Attempting to write in an "Other" answer for "what is your occupation?" will not let me progress, because it thinks I haven't filled out the question.

    Editor Moonshark says:

    This is fixed now, thanks! We're going to remove other posts complaining about this issue just to clean up the discussion a bit.
    11 posts | registered
  2. 3. What is your job title (or close approximate job function)? [Note: we couldn't list all jobs, so please write in Other if you need to. The list was based off a previous survey.]

    The other box does not work properly. When I submit the page I get "This question requires an answer" even though I filled in the box
    72 posts | registered
  3. I assume for "do you invest in the stock market" you mean do I do it directly, right? As in, go on something like ScottTrade and hit "buy all the GOOG!". I mean, everyone who has a retirement plan is invested in the stock market through intermediaries like Vanguard.
    148 posts | registered
  4. Woo! Good timing, I had been thinking of sending an email to you guys with some feedback but now I've got a proper place to put it.

    One grip: the poll asked me to rate a few major topics. I feel like there should have been a few more topics covered by this, for example some of my favourite Ars topics are the legal/political/social ones but that one wasn't in the poll.

    Does that mean you don't take those topics as seriously as, say, the latest gadgets? That would be a shame.
    1550 posts | registered
  5. Anachronisms wrote:
    I assume for "do you invest in the stock market" you mean do I do it directly, right? As in, go on something like ScottTrade and hit "buy all the GOOG!". I mean, everyone who has a retirement plan is invested in the stock market through intermediaries like Vanguard.

    Good point.

    I put down "no" without thinking about it, but due to local government legislation 9% of my gross income is deposited into a retirement fund (my boss does it for me, with each pay cheque).

    Since I don't really have a choice and I'm not directly involved in where the money gets invested, I still think "no" is probably the right answer.
    1550 posts | registered
  6. Yet another fail on question 3. Perhaps it knows I have a calling, not a job.
    950 posts | registered
  7. Ars doesn't care about feedback from Short Order Cooks, guys
    8505 posts | registered
  8. question 3 works for me
    25 posts | registered
  9. abhi_beckert wrote:
    One grip: the poll asked me to rate a few major topics. I feel like there should have been a few more topics covered by this, for example some of my favourite Ars topics are the legal/political/social ones but that one wasn't in the poll.

    Does that mean you don't take those topics as seriously as, say, the latest gadgets? That would be a shame.


    Totally agree.

    I honestly do not care which phone OS uses squares and which uses squovals for its buttons. I'm more interested in how the inevitable patent lawsuits are going, or schemes for reforming the patent system, or the kinds of cases the supreme court is hearing, or all the great articles explaining cool scientific results, or hearing more about how technologies I use daily actually work (e.g. the SSD article from a while back).

    I want to read about stuff that is both interesting and important. Obviously, those are two very subjective terms, and people are very interested in gadget news, but no one is going to be coming back two years from now to read an account of the unboxing of the Nexus 10. Gadgets are cool, and they totally have a place here, but I don't think they should take center stage.
    30 posts | registered
  10. abhi_beckert wrote:
    Anachronisms wrote:
    I assume for "do you invest in the stock market" you mean do I do it directly, right? As in, go on something like ScottTrade and hit "buy all the GOOG!". I mean, everyone who has a retirement plan is invested in the stock market through intermediaries like Vanguard.

    Good point.

    I put down "no" without thinking about it, but due to local government legislation 9% of my gross income is deposited into a retirement fund (my boss does it for me, with each pay cheque).

    Since I don't really have a choice and I'm not directly involved in where the money gets invested, I still think "no" is probably the right answer.


    I put yes thinking of this the opposite way. Meh.

    OT1: Surveys are extremely difficult to write and get meaningful feedback.
    OT2: Seemed like a question that didn't fit as much as the others. I wonder what the thought is behind it. More stock/investment tech related articles? Or more ads for stock related services? Doesn't matter to me either way, just curious.

    edit: option 3 other didn't work for me either. i selected the closest applicable and still filled in other.

    Last edited by gli_liphon on Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:48 pm

    614 posts | registered
  11. Poll fail fixed, FYI
    4219 posts | registered
  12. abhi_beckert wrote:
    Woo! Good timing, I had been thinking of sending an email to you guys with some feedback but now I've got a proper place to put it.

    One grip: the poll asked me to rate a few major topics. I feel like there should have been a few more topics covered by this, for example some of my favourite Ars topics are the legal/political/social ones but that one wasn't in the poll.

    Does that mean you don't take those topics as seriously as, say, the latest gadgets? That would be a shame.


    To each his own. I respect your opinion, but for me gadgets have always been a fun hobby and a way to distract myself from all the day-to-day stuff. Especially politics, which I get plenty of (willingly or not) elsewhere in life. I've noticed some political bias seep through in otherwise unrelated stories, which to me is sort of annoying (but not a huge deal). Nobody has to define for me the difference between a journalist and a blogger, I get it: I just hold Ars to a higher standard.

    At the end of the day, I think you guys do the best job of any tech sites I visit, and I applaud you for that. Keep up the great work.

    EDIT: I should clarify, I agree with OP - if there is going to be more political/social/legal focus, that could probably be included in the poll. Personally, I would prefer less of that stuff.

    Last edited by thebonafortuna on Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:57 pm

    1069 posts | registered
  13. Should have had more questions regarding science, but other than that and the above mentioned error, not too painful.
    106 posts | registered
  14. Would have liked some more options for topics. For example, I think 4+ articles about how bad the Romney IT team is more then enough. We get it. They are old, out of touch, and failed miserably. We do't need a new article every other day about it.
    56 posts | registered
  15. Under the "What else do you do to entertain yourself?" question, I assume Audiophilia simply means you like to listen to music? Or, does it mean you're into audio gear? And, if it means the latter, why wasn't Music on the list? You have "Listen to Live Music", afterall.

    And, under the Job Description, I'm assuming Designer means Software Designer? And not Graphic Designer.
    766 posts | registered
  16. Filled it out. Hope it helps.
    8161 posts | registered
  17. Filled out. Can't wait to see the summary article.
    14817 posts | registered
  18. Done and done.

    And now I regret calling out infosec and science coverage for being great, but not mentioning the tech law coverage which is just as compelling. :(
    18564 posts | registered
  19. Please lose Survey Monkey. It might be an easy way to get the job done but I hate those guys.
    4205 posts | registered
  20. Poll aside. Is there any place where I can complain about certain Ars writer?
    847 posts | registered
  21. One more survey filled in. ;)
    4100 posts | registered
  22. Done, hopefully the results are useful.
    19065 posts | registered
  23. Not working on an iPad. iOS 6.
    665 posts | registered
  24. until we are also given the option of LIGHT ON DARK in the forums, such surveys are pointless
    639 posts | registered
  25. Survey filled, was quick and clean which I found very nice.
    Also want to say I really love the law and legal section and wish I had mentioned it on the survey.
    24 posts | registered
  26. In the comments section at the end I added that I hope Ars turns away from the continuing temptation to promote meaningless android/apple tribalism. It seems like a certain fraction of the articles here are published knowing that they will get people worked up and flaming at each other. It may be good for page views and number of comments, but in the end it will just drive people like me away, and bring in partisan blowhards who will never be satisfied anyhow. I understand that the comments section is going to contain people expressing their opinions, but the writing and editorial staff need to take the difficult route and stick to publishing reasoned and objective news and analysis. For the large majority of the reporting, Ars does that admirably. I have noticed a worrying trend the last half year or so however, especially around legal and IP reporting pertaining to google/apple/android, that I feel has undermined Ars credibility somewhat.
    5 posts | registered
  27. Now I'm getting a screen-filling video advertisement with every page. If you want me to go away, just say so. :(
    4205 posts | registered
  28. jarvy wrote:
    Not working on an iPad. iOS 6.


    For the record, it worked on my iPhone 4 (not S) with iOS 6.
    4100 posts | registered
  29. Done.
    1087 posts | registered
  30. Done. Had no issues filling it out.
    800 posts | registered
  31. One of the things I _love_ about Ars is the white text on black background. My iPhone's screen's brightness cannot be wound down enough to not wake me fully when I wake up and want to read.

    Ars is the only site I can read on it without the brightness fully waking me and preventing me from sleeping again that night. More sites should have this.

    Or devices should, for the love of God, allow the brightness to be adjustable all the way to zero.
    7 posts | registered
  32. Damn, just realised that I didn't put in my most wanted 'one thing I'd like to see changed' - your habit of not publishing whole posts to your RSS feed. The 'Read 1/2/3/4/n remaining paragraphs' is a real pain: fine, you need the visits and page views for selling ad space, and you probably have no say in it anyway due to your evil corporate overlords, but it means I end up not reading many of your articles because I can never finish them... there is no mobile signal on the Tube to let me load the site folks. Consequently, I have to go somewhere else with less craptastic policies for their RSS feed to get the same story.
    383 posts | registered
  33. Stuff I did not mention in the survey but wish I did:

    1 - I have spent a fair amount of time bitching about the comment system, and I want to tell you that I finally don't really have anything to bitch about. Nice work.

    2 - Like someone else mentioned, I missed the rating item for the tech policy/law articles. I enjoy this coverage greatly and think it's generally of the highest quality I've ever been exposed to on or in any media anywhere. Again, nice work.

    3 - While I'm still not a fan of the site design change (I tried to like it though, I really, really did), I will say that you guys continue to be one of the best when it comes to keeping your site generally usable for visitors with script and cookies disabled. Yeah I'm paranoid that way.

    4 - This is probably the christmas I buy myself a subscription.
    1101 posts | registered
  34. I forgot to say in the survey, bring back the Job Board. We hired one of our awesome web devs through it. The current Monster.com powered one sucks and doesnt even work half the time. You search for a position and just get a blank screen.
    56 posts | registered
  35. Keep up the good work. As for the investment question are we going to start getting some financial news and reports? There wasn't a section asking about the law and legislative news sections, I absolutely love it!
    1367 posts | registered
  36. Done. Where's my pony?
    2846 posts | registered
  37. Quote:
    The next is to tell us more about yourself (we really, really need this information, but the data we collect will only be used in aggregate and will never be sold to anyone).

    I did not see any of the usual age, income, etc. questions during the survey. Did you mean something else by this?
    5373 posts | registered
  38. In general I don't respond to surveys that are basically companies asking me how to market to me. You're being given the benefit of the doubt here, Ars. Don't abuse it.
    2970 posts | registered
  39. Yarhj wrote:
    ......but no one is going to be coming back two years from now to read an account of the unboxing of the Nexus 10. ......


    Strangely I did similar just now, for the "How long have you been reading Ars?" question I went back to the iPod Nano destruction article to get the date as that was the first one I ever read here and ended up reading the whole review again.

    Occasionally it can be fun/funny to look back at these sorts of things, marking down the Nano for lack of backward compatibility with old accessories and no firewire support sounded eerily familiar to some of the summary of the iPhone 5 review :)

    I used to read theregister a lot and it was them that linked to the above article but the steep decline in quality over there at the time coinciding with them linking here made my reading habits drift in this direction.

    Anyway in summary, keep up the good work Guys & Gals and I'll second the above comments about the legal and science sections that I also forgot to make in the free comment section.
    372 posts | registered

You must to comment.
https://arstechnica.com/staff/2012/11/for-the-empire-please-take-the-2012-ars-reader-survey/?comments=1&post=23513053
arstechnica.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-30
132512
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:3CVZSZIPXPD2D65X3EFVMMEDRNNWOAGN
<urn:uuid:c57a1cfa-3a48-4fe8-abcf-131d86a0e43a>
2017-07-28T19:55:46Z
50.31.169.131
text/html
sha1:MMR2QKJECZNSGFPJ6FSEQAQ2OP7DZFON
<urn:uuid:ae5252ac-24a9-4e9c-a360-3745b4d5be85>
https://arstechnica.com/staff/2012/11/for-the-empire-please-take-the-2012-ars-reader-survey/?comments=1&post=23513053
length
response
<urn:uuid:96577e2a-6a18-47f3-8ca5-fe7339c982cd>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-148-41-166.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-30
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for July 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf