Attached Link: The Great Poser User Survey

In around 6 hours or so, I will be closing this first Great Poser User Survey down. Alhtough my workstation is temporarily disabled, I still expect to have the results publically available within a couple days, and to start making occasional postings about some of the data from those results shortly afterwards. The link for the results will be posted here when they are available. I want to publically thank all the people who have helped to make this first large scale survey an overwhelming success. RevManfred, Leanna, Casette, Lairemjd, and the sites of Renderosity, Animotions, Sixus1, and DAZ3D have all contributed to the survey's goals of creating a sort of "open source" poll method that's of value to everyone. I owe an apology to the spanish speaking members of the community as well -- due to the failure of my main system, I was never able to effectively finish setting up the spanish translation. I will make sure that it is absolutely perfect before the next one. On June 1st, of 2006, barring something horrific happening to me, I will post the next survey, which will be a bit more intense, and will reflect adaptations requested and noted in the process of getting this one out. When I started this, I was hoping for 768 responses. As I write this message prior to posting at several sites I have 735. For those of you who are familiar with the way that polling works, and know me, you can likely expect that the survey results will have an error margin of +/- 14%. I can't make it any tighter and retain anonymity, which is one of the most important aspects of this first survey. With this number of responses, however, the survey numbers are more than effective for what I'm estimating to be a combined userbase potential of roughly 1 and a half million people, of which 37% are active in the community overall. The statistics, incidentally, can be applied with the same level of accuracy to a userbase roughly 10 times that size. My sources for the size of the userbase are published reports from prior ownership and some third party information from a company I have worked with previously in other surveys. I have been criticized for requiring some demographic information that is commonly optional in the survey. My reasons for this requirement are that this is the first poser survey of this order done across such a wide swath of the community and to such a depth. This is a necessary requirement, imo, for this first survey, in order to establish what is usually referred to as baseline data, or commonly called "the givens". Going forward, that data can be adjusted and corrected as additional surveys (which I plan to present once every six months) are done. But without a baseline of information, conducting a serious survey of us -- that is, we, the people who use the darn thing -- would be useless for any truly meaningful purpose. Surveys are done over a broad range of time inorder to build up a dataset that has tremnedous reliability. That's what I'm attempting to do here, and I'm doing something that I'm also occasionally (and strictly in private) chucked upside the head for doing: making the data free. I'd like to say it's my way of "giving back" to the community. But no, that'd be wrong. I give back by occasionally being an annoyance to moderators, having fun with people I like to play wordgames with in the forums, and occasionally answering a question or two, as well as providing yet another damnable site to try and remember to visit for cool stuff. I'd like to say I'm doing it out of the goodness of my heart, but well, nope. I'm makign information that's typically something you pay a few thousand dollars for available to anyone who wants it becuase, well, I'm crazy. I happen to think that it is the best way to do things right now. It is in my best interests to see the community grow and develop and expand, and my experience tells me that this information is necessary to achieve that end. And then I'm doing it because at this point, after so many years int he community, I pretty much know someone I like a lot at damn near every site out there. And I like to treat my friends well. Its a failing, I know. I'm working on it. The June survey will be presented in a similar format, but be paginated, and, after some serious thought, will use cookies for session information. It will still retain anonymity for the end user, as one of the goals for this is to retain that critical aspect. By paginating and saving session information, the survey can be done over a greater amount of time, and will "remember" your answers -- it just won't remember you. From some of the data in this survey, you can expect the sites listed, figures listed, and programs listed to all increase. You can expect more detailed questions about the nature of products in specific (mesh density, texture sizes, etc). You can expect a more focused, but also somewhat more involved survey. Its a tradeoff, and making the call is never easy. Its not possible for me to fully and accurately answer all of the questions I've recieved about why I chose this site or that site, or why I left this figure out but kept that one, or even why the lists aren't all the same in this survey (there's reason to all of it, but it's rarely immediately obvious). I can say that no omission was intentional in the sense of wanting to "snub" someone or purposely leave anyone out. Thank you, to all of you. Each and every person who filled out a survey has earned my personal gratitude. I hope that you will be willing to share agin with me come June, and I promise that the rewards then will be much, much more exciting and varied :D Thank you Elle

...and fill out Every box or else,,, no escape... Good survey, though. Good ammo,,,for later

+/- 14%?!!! Every number I've heard has never had the userbase at 1.5 mil or a site active at 37%. Last I heard it was more like 600k user base and less than 10% active. I did the survey. Interested in the results. Generally a survey with an error margin over 5% is considered bogus. How are you determining userbase and active member base numbers? making them up or are you going to disclose with the results? Sorry, don't mean to sound so harsh, you've done the work and are sharing it at no cost to others and taking your time. Just curious. Why not do the stats on the actuals and do percentages and leave it at that? Also was the survey IP specific and are the results all unique? When I took the survey it looked like I could have taken it again. Anyway, looking forward to seeing the numbers just out of sheer curiousity.

Every number I've heard has never had the userbase at 1.5 mil or a site active at 37%. Last I heard it was more like 600k user base and less than 10% active. Odds are your numbers don't take into account the legal, advertising, educational, and entertainment based users who rarely frequent the sites. To pull it down to a more active, community level participation type of situation, there are approximately 300K users in the overall community, of which less than 1% are active posters in the forums across the larger community overall. Speaking strictly of poser. Generally a survey with an error margin over 5% is considered bogus. Generally, that's in error. The goal is to reduce to less than 5%. Trying to do so on an intial survey with no previous data? No one in their right mind is gonna claim under 5% unless the survey isn't anonymous. This one was. Says so, right in the intro. As I said, it's the best I can do. How are you determining userbase and active member base numbers? making them up or are you going to disclose with the results? I disclosed above, in my first post to this thread. For clarity, the prior ownership provided sales data. Go dig it up. As far as making them up, No need to. It would take most folks with any reasonable ability to amass and assess the data probably about six weeks to come to close to the same numbers. One of the reasons for the survey, and a big reason for the anonymity of it, is that the forums themselves tend to present and reinforce a very skewed version of the overall marketplace and community that doesn't reflect the whole of the community. There is a huge gap, for example, between the galleries and the forums here. And that's just in purpose. Never, ever underestimate the number of people who lurk. Sorry, don't mean to sound so harsh, you've done the work and are sharing it at no cost to others and taking your time. Just curious. Why not do the stats on the actuals and do percentages and leave it at that? I know, MachineClaw. :) You and I've been running in these forums for a long time. You should be aware that I'm providing the raw data for free. That's it, hon. Interpretaton and analysis of that data is up to the individuals and companies. So, in response to your question -- that's exactly what I'll be doing. I'm personally going to do a broad and deep analysis and use additional extrapolation tools to create what I expect will be a fairly accurate portrait of many facets of psoerdom, and I will post some of that info. It's good stuff, and fun, and, well, you know how I am. This is, as I noted above, establishing a baseline that is not community specific. That is critical. That's the purpose and the mission. From that baseline, you do additional surveys to refine and sharpen. But the core data has to be there to provide reference. Also was the survey IP specific and are the results all unique? When I took the survey it looked like I could have taken it again. The survey is anonymous and honor based. An IP based system is not anonymous, and is niether foolproof nor does it allow for accuracy (some single ip locations have two or more poser users, and IP address sharing is prevalent among dial up systems at present). For the June survey, as noted above, I'm taking a slightly different approach, but, ultimately, it will still be anonymous. *********** When I conducted my last little survey (which grew into one that went beyond our little community and prompted a nice littel contract for me that gave me some of the data I used to establish my userbase numbers) I encountered a great deal of skepticism about the accuracy, the results, and was pretty much questioned on every little detail, lol. I learned then, that there's utimately nothing I'll be able to say or do to convince anyone of the accuracy of the numbers I present. The same applies to the "snapshots" and survey results in newspapers or on television. Its a question of do you trust your source or not. If not, don't sweat it. The numbers will be meaningless to you. If you do, but with reservations, then use the raw data and do your own analysis and interpretation (which is what I expect to be done). If you do pretty much, then you probably have a relationship with me of some sort and already know what sort of person I am and likely are going to get my analysis anyway. In any event, no big deal for me, other than the time I spend justifying the results and sources. Eh. If my goal was to cheat the community, I wouldn't bother being as open as I am about it. If my goal was to cheat the community, I wouldn't be sharing the results and working so hard to get the decent data set. I've been upfront about my goals, intentions, and purposes the whole time, and I don't intend to change them. I'm ynsaen, baby, and the whole world looks a lot different from my perspective :D And I'm dying to see the results myself. Do you have any idea how hard it has been waiting this whole month not to even peek!?!?!? Little over an hour left by my system clock. Then I get to have fun...

I'm very interested in the results. And I'd guess some people at DAZ and e-frontier are too! They should be.

I'm most curious about the "which program do you use" question. Not that I doubt which has the most users, but Im curious to know what the percentages are.

"I'm makign information that's typically something you pay a few thousand dollars for available to anyone who wants it becuase, well, I'm crazy." No you're not. You're ynsaen. There's a difference. [big grin and friendly wave!]

:D Thanks Bobasaur. Ok, ya'll, I'm diving in. I'll likely be scarce while i root around in the results and get 'em prepped for delivery. see ya again soon :D