Attached Link: Survey Results Download Link

Here are the results, presented in tab delimited format ready for setting up in a database. Zip file. Some observations: Poser 6 is now the preferred program by over 50% of the users. Poser 5 is number 2 DAZ studio is number 3 (but not by much, so it's a toss up). All other versions of poser consist of less than 10% of the preferred userbase, combined. This is inclusive of Poser 3, 4, and Propack. Victoria 3 is the most preferred figure. Victoria 3 is the figure for which the most is still wanted. Victoria 3 is the figure for which there is too much in the marketplace. Aiko is the #2 figure. There is a HUGE demand for Male clothing for all the figures. The least popular figures are Don and Judy. There's a tremendous amount of data available in these results. GOing through it requires patience, time and effort, as well as an interesting understanding of the way things work. There are 609 effective responses in the final break, and the final accuracy level is approximately +/- 7.3412%. The next survey results will be presented in a db style format. THank you to all who repsonded and participated -- the survey is an incredible snapshot of the community as a whole, and should begin the work of expanding botht he community and the market and enabe us all to start seeing things we really want. Thanks again to everyone. I'm off to see what I can do about actually *using* this info, lol....

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

It's only an informal survey on poser, not a national security survey done by the FBI. Relax :)

Message edited on: 02/13/2006 23:32

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Attached Link: http://poserpros.daz3d.com/

> Quote - isn't there a daz freebie you should be promoting?

Good point!

Poser Pros has some nice freebies on their front page this week. The V3 Teddy texture is quite cute :)

Message edited on: 02/13/2006 23:43

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Attached Link: http://www.oddditty.biz/Survey/Questions.html

Although I'm normally disinclined to respond to rudely phrased requests, I'm going to provide a "dead" version of the quiz again for reference. The capability of the end user is not something I can control. Everything is provided. not retarded. ynsaen. Significant difference...

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Thanks ysaen, it looks like an interesting read. I didnt find any problems getting into the data and getting some results, not sure why you'd need a common key. I'm guessing the IP add is largely useful for grouping the results by submission so overall would be the only key available. Otherwise you can get information from the individual tables. Interesting to see that nearly 70 of people dont use the CP figures but most people love P6 most. One of the brilliant things about P6 is the figures, especially James. John

Fugazi (without the aid of a safety net)

https://www.facebook.com/Fugazi3D

There are some really incredible results in there, John -- I've been limited while awaiting repair of my main system to using open office..org and peeking in at the data and some of it is just absolutely astonishing, lol. Some things I expected, but most of it is a total surprise to me!

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

It's cool ysaen, the Figures Most used info is interesting just to see how far ahead V3 is compared to other figures, 22% compared to Michael 3 and Aiko 3 at 13% and 1.9% for Jessi the highest non Daz figure. If you're a merchant and want to find out which figures to create content for then this will tell you. Sadly it may perpetuate the gap as I guess most will go for the most used figures. I think part of the reason that other figures arn't used so much is that there is less content available for them (if that makes sense). I'm a PHP/MySQL developer by trade so if you want a hand getting this lot into a db and displaying the results on a website give me a shout, I'd be very pleased to help. John.

Fugazi (without the aid of a safety net)

https://www.facebook.com/Fugazi3D

Considering V3 has been around the longest, its not surprising. Although, given her relatively short lifespan thus far, I think A3 is rapidly catching up. And I noticed that 8 people favor Furrette! Woot! Make that 9 ;)

I know she has been around a long time but I hate seeing poor poser figures left out. Just think of all those runtimes with unloved and ignored figures in them. I always root for the underdog :) John

Fugazi (without the aid of a safety net)

https://www.facebook.com/Fugazi3D

609 is not great turnout, and the problem with any survey where the participants select themselves is that only a certain kind of individual will select in. In this case, being on a retail site, and a tertiary one at that, it selects in those most likely to be early adopters or otherwise seek out new ways to use their money on Poser, so it is no surprise that Poser 6 comes in so high, and in fact it should have come in even higher.

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
Renderosity Gallery

Using industry standard metrics for adoption, Poser 6 probably comes in at around 74 to 82% of the total user base -- which is why the preference question is so important. Knowing what people prefer to use is more important, and I'm fairly satisified given the wide coverage of the survey (pretty much every major poser site featured it to some extent or other) that it's an excellent pull on the current userbase. Using only the estimated base of community specific active users, 609 respones is more than significant enough a number to be able to apply extrapolated data across the market with reasonable certainty. IT is indeed a great turnout in terms of polling. I'm rather excited now that I've acquired some exctremely effieicnt polling software for the follow up in June -- it will be muchmore smooth an operation with a more immediate and readily accessible dataset that when compared to this one will really rock as a decent comparative. Hell, it's soo good the frequency might even be able to be increased...

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

The survay may be skewed for other reasons. I tried three times to submit the survey. Each time I got an error and lost what I had filled in. Discouraged I gave up.

I wouldn't mind taking the poll in June. I didn't even know this poll existed until the results were posted. :P And I browse forums every day (which ones? You'll have to wait til June) I agree with the unloved & unused statement, though. As one of the early advocates of Sara (v1), I lobbied hard for more support. And sadly, she sits alone in her runtime folder now, rarely seeing the lights & cameras. Of course, Furrette dominates my images now - and she's a bit of an under... dog ;)

...interesting...but what you're getting, among other things, are stats generated from people who will do on line surveys. A lot of us won't.

I'm aware of that Tunesy. And that's factored into the survey. It's factored into any survey that is meant to cover a particular group. Although I'm ill equipped to explain it in detail, basically, each person's answer is effectively good for 3 or more people depending on several other factors (such as the population sample being looked at). By compiling several statistical results over a space of time, you slowly increase the accuracy level of the survey and require a smaller sample of the population in order to achieve an accurate portrayal. So not filling out a survey doesn't skew the results -- it's only the completed ones that actually skew it. From there, algorithms based on comparative areas or developed specifically to that grouping can be used, increasing the overall accuracy. For my personal analysis, I use a series developed from Software upgrade survey's done between 1991 and 2003. Once again -- it comes down to whether or not ya trust the source. If you don't trust the data, then ignore it. If you do, then use it. I trust the data. Its good stuff, and very useful, and while I'm surprised at a lot of the things that I'm pulling out of it (for example, the age-spending-fave figures info) it also still fits in with what I've observed within the community overall. but, above and beyond everything else: this is fun. I enjoy it -- all the business stuff aside, it's really cool jsut to see the info :D Gives us a better picture of the sort of community we are -- and it's a grand one :D

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Very interesting, thanks. I'm a sucker for stats :-)

---

"you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love." - Warsan Shire

retarded, cant even work with these files without some further information, the data makes no sence Sorry to hear about your disability, but it explains a lot, I must say. bonni

"When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch." - Bette Davis

Ahem... Please discuss the DATA or the survey itself. MachineClaw - please do not be so rude. ynsaen created this survey on her own time, at her own expense, for the benefit of the community as a whole. The fact that you are unfamiliar with raw data usage is not her fault. And being so impolite is hardly the way to ask for the results to be translated into something with which you might be familiar. Manners cost nothing. Thank you. Karen Poser Mod

---

"you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love." - Warsan Shire

Very interesting data set. Think I'll load those CSVs into a database myself too. I wonder why you published the IP address data I can see the need of a key, but I think it would have been better to hash the IP addresses. Privacy and Internet are touchy items these days, with good reason. By the way, what database format will you publish in?

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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Actually, I didn't set up the IP's as the key, but it was my error that allowed such to happen (I didn't say to generate a new key for the results, which was my bad). Fortunately, the next survey won't be limited in such a manner (which is nice -- I'm loving this new software and am considering doing the next survey in April). The database format I'll be releasing it in once I have access to my main system will be access format for this one. After this, the survey data will be released in MySQL formatted CSV, since this new system can export such. Probably would help if I had a better grip on database stuff, but it requires a bit of a different kind of insanity...

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Yansen - I know we disagree at times :) But can I make a sugestion for your next survey. [Which could be usefull if the data was sorted or graphed] A suggestion that might get more folks to take part. Lose the salary and age questions. That kinda info is not something I like to share with the outside world. I could've been untruthfull about that, but that skews the validity of the data instantly. If you lie about one part of survey you could be tempted to be not-so-honest with the rest of it. Also it's unlikely to happen, as most IP addresses are dynamic. But using the IP address as a form of 'personal identifer' means you could veer into breeching data protection laws. You need to anonomous it.

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.

Thanks. I'll wait for the Access format. By the way, will that Access DB only contain the data, or will it also contain queries for the different statistical operations you applied? If it's only the data, I'll import them in Access myself, no problem there.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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"Lose the salary and age questions." Follow up survey has them as optional. I'm very disinclined to use the ip data (saved automatically as part of the system I used previously) for a key, but I don't know enough about how to alter it or set it up differently, and I had already delayed the results three times, so finally caved in order to not appear to have been "holding back". Despite the occasional attempt at inferring commercial/sinister/whatever motives to this (and there's valid reasons for all such inferences), I'm really more interested in getting the information out and available to anyone who wants to use it. If I get two more requests, I will pull the survey data again for a short time and find a way to rekey it all. Thanks :D ********* The access db will only have the data, and, to be frank, the reason it's not released as of yet is that I can't get into my main system to set it up, and the computer I'm using doesn't have enough power/space to load office onto. Basically, I'm stuck -- I'm really not personally able at this time to do much at all with this stuff. Sorta frustrating, lol. I've been using openoffice.org to set the data up in spreadsheet format myself, and while it's not bad at all, it's slow going as I'm learning that the methods I'm used to using to generate charts and graphs are not the same, lol. That said, I will note that Calc does a pretty decent job for free spreadsheet!

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

"inferring commercial/sinister/whatever" No inference intended on that. I can see your intentions are good.

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.

What Office version do you use (when your main system is up again, I mean)? Loading those data into Access and replacing the IP numbers by something else is something I can do in less than an hour, I could send the Access db file back to you. I use Office XP UK.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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XP would work -- I actualy use 2003 myself. That would be great, actually :D

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Thanks for this, ynsaen :D It's great information :D

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Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it into a fruit salad.

If you want some help setting up the database for your next survey, give me a holler. Database design is one of my specialties (yep, that other kind of insanity...)

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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elizabyte...Sorry to hear about your disability, but it explains a lot, I must say. ROTFLBO !!!!...yes, it does explain a lot, doesn't it! ;P hehehehehehehehehehe

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

ynsaen, "available to anyone who wants to use it" - e.g. spammers and other "do-gooders?" :-O Will be interesting to see if anyone EVER completes one of your surveys again. You promised anonymity, and yet included IP addresses, plus personal information. There was an implied contract of trust from participants, no? Also the US does not have a Safe Habour agreement with the UK or Europe. So all entries with UK/Euro IP addresses contravene their Data Privacy Act. Can't remember the penalties off hand... IMHO you should withdraw this database from R'osity ASAP - if only to protect Renderosity from TPTB.

Penalty isn't applicable. I had already investigated that. The survey is still anonymous. However, I did say if I had three notes I would remove the data and correct that issue. I have three.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

ok, due to some people having issues, I've pulled the files off the server until such time as I can correct a problem with them. As this requires me to have my main system up and running, I'm unable to give a date for their further availability at this time. My apologies for the inconvenience.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Well I'll just say thanx for taking the time and effort to have a stab at doing what is an incredibly complex issue. here's to you Ynsaen, don't let the detractors put you off!

Injustice will be avenged.
Cofiwch Dryweryn.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but 609 reponses is a pretty sad turnout for a "community survey". After all, the top of this page says "1712 surfers currently online" (and I've seen the number as high as 2400). This means there are 3 to 4 times as many people online right now than took the survey. 609 responses is an especially bad turnout when Renderosity alone claims to have over 250,000 members. So, even though your survey was a very good idea, I don't think it's completely reprsentative of the Poser "community". For example, just because a majority of the 609 respondents said V3 was the most-used figure, you can not say that all 250,000+ people in the Poser community think this is the most-used figure. On the other hand, your survey can make definite statements such as "Of the people who responded, X% prefer using P6." --John

VanishingPoint... Advanced 3D Modeling Solutions

You know when anyone does "market research" which this survey is a form of, they only ever take a "sample size" and a sample size of 609 out of 200,000 isn't that bad a sample size really. Not aimed at anyone ;-))

Injustice will be avenged.
Cofiwch Dryweryn.

Well, it might look that way, but that's incorrect. There's a critical response point for polling. That response point is 600. Statistically speaking, a response point of 600 gives you a significance of 1000, meaning that it can be applied, with reasonable certitude to a base of 6 million people. 600 responses is the minimum required by most major polling houses, and in general they cull duplicates from there. Its a funky area, statistical polling -- but yes, John, I can say that the results apply within a roughly 8% variable to the entire community. Can I say what an individual will think? No. THere's no means of doing that. Can I say what the community as a whole will think? Yeah. Human group dynamics does follow known patterns that can be quantified. Your argument seems valid, but it isn't. And I'm not able to effectively refute it without getting into a class on sociological statistics. You can, however, google it out to your hearts content :)

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

RE:If you're a merchant and want to find out which figures to create content for then this will tell you. Sadly it may perpetuate the gap as I guess most will go for the most used figures. I think part of the reason that other figures arn't used so much is that there is less content available for them (if that makes sense). Looks like Poser user want to use other figures as well. [Quote] There is a HUGE demand for Male clothing for all the figures.[unquote] V3 doesn't enter into if for me. I no longer have Daz UnimeshMil Figures in my P6 Runtime. I much prefer Jessi, James, Miki, Koji, TY2. Cheers DR

"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."
Thomas Jefferson

Thanks to svdl, the data is once again available. It is now, however, in access 2003 format, and will require that program in order to read the results. The concerns expressed earier have been addressed.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Lose the salary and age questions.

I suspect a lot of people lie about those anyway. Freakonomics has a section about online dating sites, and wonders how so many users can be making $200,000 a year or more, when only 1% of Internet users make that much. ;-)

*After all, the top of this page says "1712 surfers currently online" (and I've seen the number as high as 2400). This means there are 3 to 4 times as many people online right now than took the survey.

Yeah, but how many of those are Poser users? That's the number for the whole site, not just the Poser forum.

I also get the feeling there are a lot of Rosity members who only come here to look at nekkid boobies in the gallery, and are not interesting in using Poser or buying Poser figures or content.

Just to clarify, yet again: THere is no IP information available in the files now. IP information is nt an effective means of establishing identity (if it was, there'd be a lot fewer spammers).

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

welp, one less point I'd have to make, randym77..thanks..;) Maybe a double-blind survey..;)
If you can export in excel format, comma-delimited, or even text (more steps, but I do it with server logs a lot to squeeze out data. Just replace commas with odd characters like |, import to something like Excel [which open office has an equivalent to], and break into fields by using the special character., etc).
Queries aren't that hard to do, once you know how. you can use a query to strip personalize info out, and maybe export that. Just a thought..

I wish I'd said that.. The Staircase Wit

anahl nathrak uth vas betude doth yel dyenvey..;)

Ynsaen Re:There are 609 effective responses in the final break, and the final accuracy level is approximately +/- 7.3412%. Question: If I see 916 records for User Software in the Survey, How did you arrive at 609? Which ones did you throw out? Cheers DR

"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."
Thomas Jefferson

To me that would indicate that 609 people responded, but some use more than one software package.

I have done customer satisfaction surveys for the company I work for, last year "my best for return reply" I sent out 1250 surveys and received 324 response those who used the info was ecstatic and congradulated me on a great response so if you got over 600 then that is very very good. besides my survey was sent to those who we told it was coming and gave a prize for responding and still got a low return "IMHO" so congrats, even though it is not "scientific" you can still guage the poser community with this type of info

You might as well PAY attention, because you can't afford FREE speech

The Access file in the link in post #1 is in Access 2000 format. The ZIP file also contains the CSV files.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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Dang ... wanted to see the survey results but can't use the Access stuff .. Oh well

"I sent out 1250 surveys and received 324 response" In this case, it was not a self selective group like an online poll, but a random sample of your customers, some of which responded. A phone poll works best as it makes it harder for them to select out. You method was second best, and the worst possible data comes out of any method in which the respondants select themselves. Such data is considered meaningless in the political research industry, and I suspect the same holds in marketing pollsters.

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
Renderosity Gallery

...the worst possible data comes out of any method in which the respondants select themselves. but all respondants select themselves. wether they choose to click the website, or mail the form in or talk to the person on the phone. unless your observing from afar then the data is from those who choose to respond. In this case i would think it is the best data avaible. Its not like we can ask E-F to hand over the addresses or phone numbers of people who use poser nor could we get the e-mail addresses from renderosity or DAZ or the like.

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On sample size: 609 actually is not bad. In political research you could accurately predict an election off of that. PROVIDED... that your selection means was valid. The utility of a poll is 99% an issue of the means that was used to select respondants, and 1% the questions asked. * Your method must be as random as possible, and must avoid as much as possible any level of self selection in or out by the pollees. On the question of incomes. I find that to be a very valid question. This is a market survey attempt after all - and you need to know what income bracket you should be targeting. If you did a valid random sample survey, and it came back with a majority of users ina low income bracket, you could state that prices on places like renderosity might be too high. By contrast if it came back with a high income bracket, the reverse might be true. But these of course with have to be contrasted against the luxury spending budgets of the respondants and whether they use the product as a hobby or in professional needs. And etc... the market people around here could pick those kinds of questions better than me... I could tell you how to structure a political poll in the basic, given my education, and how to set it up for accuracy (which applies to both types). But I'm guessing for questions on a market poll. That said, it seems a sound guess than income is important.

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
Renderosity Gallery

In this case i would think it is the best data avaible If the 'best data available' is still a meaningless sample, it is still not valid data. Any plan made based upon it is as likely to be misguided as well guided. The data is of no practical utility when it is entirely based on a self-selected sample. There are all sorts of means to improve the sample in a poll, and quite a lot of literature on how to do this. My own education began with: A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving (Paperback) Public policy analysis: An introduction (Paperback) Which deal in political research. There is like material available for commercial research. Likely more material available as they have better funding... :) the general gist of it all comes down to - you need to find a means to randimize your sample as much as possible, and to prevent self-selection either in or out as much as possible. While a pure random is impossible, it is not impossible nor even unduely hard to get a fairly random sample. This poll is 'fun' for anectdotal evidence of the online community's most proactive members, but that is all it should be seen as.

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
Renderosity Gallery

based on the methods avaiable how could one obtain a meaningfull sample?

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Arcady's means value is incorrect in sampling in this margin. arcady is correct that self selection is not the most desirable method -- however, there is no methodology present that allows any other method. Which is to say that the argument is valid. The view is too narrow, though. The data's valid.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

incidentally -- arcady -- you got guts, goin' polisci and all :)

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

...I agree with Arcady. Your starting population, from which you're culling a sample, is limited to people who use the various forums and further to people who read your posts for the survey, and then again to people who chose to respond to it. Compare the actual total population of Poser users with the very specifically filtered population sample you're working with. I'm not talking at all about sample size, but rather sample quality. It certainly can't be said to be accurate to 7 or 8 percent as a representation of the entire Poser population, but only of that very filtered population. Some results could and probably do have a very large error with respect to the total Poser user base. Still a neat poll though. Probably tells us which way the wind is blowing, but not how fast ;)

Bookmark till tomorrow...

Before they made me they broke the mold!
http://home.roadrunner.com/~kflach/

one other interesting observation of not having proportional representation of people who dont use the more popular Poser forums: the results obviously will be heavily slanted toward daz figures, as Im sure someone somewhere has pointed out by now. Who knows, for example, what the percentage of non forum users who only use Jessi might be? It could be 20, 40, 60 percent? I dont know, but it could be orders of magnitude higher than 1.9% and Id be willing to bet 1,024 pixels that it is. If I had Jessi and V3 next to each other the first time I ever fired up Poser V3 would never have seen any use on my comp. None of us knows, except possibly efrontierI guess they do hold a few cards ;) Some of those same people are buying, or will buy, Miki, TY, etc and dont even know what V3 is, because, remember, they dont read the forums. We just dont know if that percentage is insignificant or 50% or somewhere in between. The point is were missing a big chunk, maybe the biggest chunk, of the puzzle.

ebots. be gone.

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.

I'm with nerd. After filling out the long survey and taking my time, to have it return an error twice I wasn't willing to waste my time doing it again from the beginning.

Tunesy raises a good question. I'd say that a poll self-selected by the 'most active' users is likely to be valid, since the 'most active' users are exactly the likely buyers of new stuff. So there's no reason to seek out everybody who happens to own Poser, just for the sake of an ideal random sampling. But are the forum participants the most active users? The purchasing set very likely includes lots of folks who never read forums but just check the stores and freestuffs.

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..in related news, Dewey defeats Truman..;)

I wish I'd said that.. The Staircase Wit

anahl nathrak uth vas betude doth yel dyenvey..;)

Some quick notes: This survey cost 114 dollars. I paid for that. It was advertised through google and msn using fairly common keywords, and the link was passed through legal and advertising circles as well. There were over 18,300 unique visits. There were over 700 responses. Duplicates were culled. There were 2100 attempts to complete the survey. Rosity and animotions featured the survey in their newsletters which have a higher percentage of non-forum readers and greater response -- 60% of the survey responses came after that exposure. There were no active forum posts during those times. The one area I was unable to get the survey to that I know poser is used in is educational circles -- and I wasn't trying for the pre-viz market in general. All effective polls require a base. Regardless of the specific type of survey, all polls currently conducted today are built up on top of and utilize existing data from previously collected sample data -- in some cases stretching back 18 years for marketing, and 3 to 6 for political depending on the nature of the poll. That initial base sample did not exist for this particuar group until now. That initial base sample is always pretty much conducted exactly like this one. That baseline is critical to the developmetn of a core dataset that is then grown and refined. Average sample refinement runs over 6 to 12 runs in order to reach an accuracy level of less than 3%. 3 to 5 runs to get below 5%. The people active in the forums across the ten most frequented sites comprise less than 1% of an estimated 300,000 installed and active community users. You can nit pick and quibble all ya want. I'm known for doing something similar, so I understand the impulse. However, you weren't aware of those points above. I'm going to conduct the next survey in either April or June (I'm still parital to June, but the new software I have for the surveys is really incredible and might speed the process up a great deal). THe survey will be easier to take, but somewhat longer. It won't error out, and there will be additional capabilities for portection of information (it uses a non-identificable cookie so you can return to and complete). Each time I do the survey, I'm going to continue my quest to expand on the dataset and increase the accuracy. That's the way the methodology works, and not only is it sound, but its know to produce more accurate measures. As I've said before -- you'll get the value you want out of it. There's good value there. A lot of it. If you are predisposed to think it valueless, well, ain't nothin I'm gonna say is gonna change your mind, and I've forgotten that a couple times. Its good data. Its public data. I've got four sponsors for the next edition's freebies. I'm looking to get 10 total. They would provide some sort of free item as the incentive and it would be exclusive to the poll. IF anyone is interested, you can contact me through IM or email here. Again -- thanks to everyone who took the survey. Enjoy the data. I'll be back again with more...

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

I understand that there are limits to what can and can't be done. I understand that opinions vary about the best methods to do things and what is or isn't accurate. Most importantly, I also understand that this is justa starting point. A beginning. A first try. It appears that some have forgotton that. BTW, I downloaded the old one so I have the IP numbers. Will someone please explain to me how I can use them to find out who to hunt down and kill for using V3? That may be the best way to increase the sales of my A3 products. Oh, wait a minute. I don't have any products for sale at all. Never mind. Whew. That was close. I'm glad I don't have to kill again. It gets so messy sometimes. ;-)

Before they made me they broke the mold!
http://home.roadrunner.com/~kflach/

Will someone please explain to me how I can use them to find out who to hunt down and kill for using V3? Well if memory serves... If the person has a dynamic IP (ISP gives you a new IP every time you log on) then you will have to know when they took the survey (i.e. when they were logged on under that IP) then go find out which ISP has that IP block and ask them who was on at that time. This usually requires a search warrant. If they have static IP then you can skip the 'find out what time they took the survey' step but you still have to go to the ISP. The only way you might find out who it was or exactly where they are is if by some chance they are surfing under the static IP that they have registered for their website. Which is statistically improbable. Youd have better luck asking people to fess up to whom they voted for.

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ok. Who did you vote for? [grin]

Before they made me they broke the mold!
http://home.roadrunner.com/~kflach/

I voted for the hostile takeover of DAZ to dismantle the Victoria line and suppress aiko's coup d'etat attempt currently in progress. :)

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Well, AFAIK in Europe the distribution of the raw data is very close to illegality, and might discourage european users from participating again. :-(

Why?
Poser forum users are few enough so you can find who is who in the poll results. I'm a long time lurker, and I know bits & pieces about many people in the forum(s), things they said about themselves, their likes/dislikes etc. (insert evil laughter)
Using those informations, I was able to identify many of them in the database, including IP addresses which (usually) allow to pinpoint the region the user lives in... And get a view in personal things I'm not sure they intended to share with me, like their income, sex and age.

IMHO it would be better to only publish compiled data. After all, most merchants aren't statisticians and don't know what to do with a bunch of CSVs.

...a couple years ago my checking account, of all things, got 'hacked' over a period of a couple months for over $2,000 before I noticed it. After some heated back and forth with my bank for a short time I got it back, but it was a hell of an eye opener. I'd always expected credit card accounts to be targets, but some crook managed to hit my checking directly. After that experience I certainly wouldnt want my ip address to become a potential target, especially if any income info was available. I respect the fact that you spent money out of pocket and a lot of time to do this, ynsaen, but having ip addresses attached was a helluva a blunder.

I'd always expected credit card accounts to be targets, but some crook managed to hit my checking directly. not really supprising to me. especially if you write checks or throw away bank statements or canceled checks. checking account numbers can be easier to get than credit card numbers and less protected too.

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...yea. After looking at it closely the bank and I were both reasonably sure it was net related, but there's a small chance it could have been paper related.

The people active in the forums across the ten most frequented sites comprise less than 1% of an estimated 300,000 installed and active community users. That pretty much declares my point right there. From less than 1%, an online poll then uses self-select in to gather only those like us in this thread who are essentially a little curmudgeony or possessed of our own egos enough to want to bother. We select ourselves in for various reasons, those reasons can easily denote personality traits not typical of the average user. There is no method of online polling that can be said by anyone who deserves their credentials as a professional researcher to be able to gather a valid selection set. They are merely useful for annectdotes. For guaging the views of people with views like you, or for guaging the views of people who have the kind of views that are connected to people who can't stop mouthing off like I'm doing right now... :) Of people who feel a need to make you hear them. And frankly, we are not the people who need to be heard... And just because we want to be heard, that does not mean we are actually the ones driving the market / buying the product. It is simply too easy for it to be limited to only those that select in. Consider another common polling method - having your pollster stand outside a grocery store and ask people if they could fill out a form or answer some questions. It is rather easy to select out of this - you just say no and walk away. But the original sample is decently random, and you can still get a good cross selection. The end result here is that you are not choosing them, and they are not choosing you. Both situations when they happen void the validity of data. An online poll however, requires an active step from the user - they come to you by choice, you don't come to them by choice or by random. That is all it takes to destroy the validity of it. That is just one of many potential flaws. If you paid for it, I understand you have an investment in seeing it as good data, but I would not pay for it again... You bought 'a bill of goods' as they say. It may be 'a start' - but a building built on a bad foundation eventually falls down.

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
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Attached Link: http://www.ncpp.org/internet.htm

Here is the National Council on Public Polls statement on online polling: http://www.ncpp.org/internet.htm

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
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Some further news and related articles: http://www.ncpp.org/qajsa.htm#10 http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/11820.html http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/ncpp_doc.html http://www.poynter.org/dg.lts/id.31/aid.46154/column.htm http://civilities.net/InternetPolls http://www.wired.com/news/politics/1,34748-0.html

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
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sigh The less than 1% does not prove your point. The number of respondents is greater than the overall number of active Poser/D|S specific posters across the top ten sites. If the only place the survey had been advertised was inthe forums, this may be the case. It was not the only place -- those costs were associated with advertising it. All survey's are self selecting. Yes, all. Survey's are taken strictly on the basis of willingness to do so. Your concern is the random sample being representative of the overall user base. I believe it is, you do not. We both have valid reasons for our beliefs. Only time will say which of us is correct. As a matter of policy, the NCPP also opposes several other forms of polling, and for a very simple reason: the organization exists in order to further the goals of the members, who generally resent online polling. A great many established places do. To an extent, I feel that way as well. However, there's no other means available to do so that I'm aware of that wouldn't involve sizeable investment of the sort that would preclude the release of the data freely and publically. If you have a methodology that you feel is going to be more effective, please feel free to conduct your own survey and release the results publically and freely. If you want the data, have at it. Weight and interpret it as you feel correct. I haven't provided any weighting, haven't given anything other than a couple of basic stats that I pulled from it rather quickly. That's the analysis part of the equation, and is up to the end user of the data. Tunesy -- yes, it was. Won't happen again. I'll see ya all in June, when I do the next one.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

well from what i have had time to read it would seem to say that there is absolutly no valid information on the poser market and their is no possible way to get any valid information on the poser market. so merchentes are either blindly following perceved trends, following requests from proactive individual (or small groups of) forum members or looking at the opinions of 609 "self-selected" users.

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...that link arcady posted in #71 is enlightening. Just one page, a quick but informative read.

I don't think you intended it, ynsaen, but by not making an effort to alleviate obvious skews your poll ends up looking not only completely invalid, but rather like a blatant daz commercial.

That's an interesting analysis. I disagree. I think it points instead more to a rather large degree of market penetration. Look, say what ya want. I've now been defending this on three sites. I'm tired, and discouraged that something I put a lot of work into is being dissed as if it were some sort of bad thing. So I'm a teensy bit defensive. If you think it's crap, fine. THink that. AIn't nothin I'm gonna type gonna change your mind. There's the data, I'm gonna do another survey again down the road, I think the the data is good, useful, and worthwhile, and I gave it away for free to the community as a whole. No one's saying you have to use it. The information is valuable enough that a few of the larger sites have requested the information. Its something that I felt needed to be done, and the time was right, and I didn't feel that any other site was going to do it and make it publically available. I did something for the community, and I did it the best I could, and I'm going to keep doing it, and getting better, and ya know, at least I did something. Time will tell.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Oh yes. Don't get me wrong. I encourage your efforts, but it would be great if you could roll up your sleeves next time and think, "mmm. How can we get back some of the randomness we're lacking here?" I didn't realize how truly involved polling was until I read some of the links Acadia posted. Statistics is a funny animal. I always found calculus, geophysics and the like to be quite intuitive, but what 'seems' right with statistics frequently isn't. Here's a quote from one of Acadia's links: "The key reason that some polls reflect public opinion accurately and other polls are unscientific junk is how people were chosen to be interviewed. In scientific polls, the pollster uses a specific statistical method for picking respondents. In unscientific polls, the person picks himself to participate." ...the buzz words being "In unscientific polls, the person picks himself to participate". Maybe that could be eliminated some how next time? Anyway, good luck with it. Looks like a daunting task for a layman to me. I really admire your efforts.

That's actually not possible to do, Tunesy, in an open system. Think about it for a second. Unless you live in a police state, there is always a voluntary aspect to the poll, because the individual must choose to participate or not. The actual issue isn't "picks himself" -- it's how he ends up recieving that invitation to do so. Most scientific polls use an elimination algorithm on the final data gathered. What this means is that basically they would take the data offered above and sort it according to predefined criteria gathered primarily from previous polls and actually discard answers based on key demographic aspects (specifically: gender, income, zip code, and certain variable preferences). This algorithm utilizes a random generation rule as well, and, these days, is preprogrammed into the system for certain things such as phone surveys. Note the key there is the source of that algorithm, and the way it is implemented: after the collection process. The typical survey you see as a pretty snapshot in usa today with 500 respondents is actually pulled from a typical sampling of persons known to be willing to answer surveys. Usually, 2300 to 3100 are sampled, and then the algorithm is applied to reduce it down. Now, excepting the algorithm (which is an analysis level tool, not a data collecting tool) the methodology for getting the data is the same: the option is placed out there and the individuals choose to participate or not. In order to be sure the sample pool was wide enough, the survey was advertised across a great many sites and in several fields (the one I missed was education, which I need to find a method for getting in the next one). Language was a critical consideration as well (I had a spanish translation for it as well, but was unable to get it up and presented in time, so had to settle for only the german and French ones, and wasn't able to get a japanese one). The main impteus for the survey were newsletters and front page notices ont he major poser sites (which does skew things towards this overal community, it was intended as a community survey, so the effort was worthwhile). This ensured that the survey's reach went beyond the forums themselves and into the wider community that doesn't pay attention to the mad ramblings of us all. In order for the community as a whole to be able to be sampled randomly as that link describes it (and I know exactly what the point is -- one of my clients is a member of the NCPP that purchased and expanded on my previous poll from a few years back), there would need to essenitally be a single, combined database of all the various members of the community from which random samplings could be taken. That database would require basic demographic information already in it, or the culling algorithm would be needed to be used after the fact in order to reach the sampling rate specified. Establishing that database would require effort that's simply not possible: no site at present that I know can or would be willing to share their user information in order to form it, and I wasn't able to create a specific site for that purpose (registering to be eligible to take the quiz, essentially). There is too much competition between the various sites to allow for that level of cooperation on the scale that was involved here. So let's look at the numbers: I approached in a worldwide parking lot 200,000 people and asked them to answer a survey. Of that 200,000 people, 18,000 or so took a look. of that 18,000, 2100 started to do the survey. of that 2100, 700 or so finished it. That's an awfully random sample. Statistically speaking, it's roughly about as random as being able to randomly sample all of the purchasers across all of the main sites on a random basis -- which is how retail market research is done these days, as it's proven valid time and time again and is growing in popularity even more (and, I should note, from companies predominatly outside the ncpp as they are finding it more cost effective to move it in house). Since any of the sites doing so would be most unlikely to make that information freely available (which was the purpose of doing this and in part why the final results are so large a sample), that isn't an option. My own site -- Odd Ditty Foundry -- doesn't presently have a large enough population sample registered to be effective, and, again, to be honest, had I used it I wouldn't have shared the data. Basically, I did indeed roll up my sleeves. My problem isn't not understanding the nature of how to conduct a survey, but how to manage an online one of this scope with a limited toolset. One benefit of this experience has been that I was able to acquire a much more advanced tool for surveying that is more inline with my original goals and gives me a greater level of flexibility and control over the process and should reduce the difficulties involved in this one and still retain the integrity with which I've tried to operate this one -- and better, long term. It's also shown me a great many of the reasons that such a thing hasn't been done before, and why the community is still suffering from a huge disconnect between perception and reality insofar as the marketplace is concerned. As a community we need to be a little less cutthroat about some things, and a little more about others. Among those things that need to grow are the areas outside the "mainline" area where the "money" is -- particularly if we're going to grow and improve the overall reputation that users of poser have in the wider world. THis survey is one of the ways to do that. I resist going into this level of detail about my methods and motivations usually because, well, It's boring, it's never easily summated, and it means I make long ass posts that rendo always seems to lock on. But I do consider all of those things. I planned this survey for over a year. The questions alone took two months. I began the follow up in December, and made several changes in the time since the survey started, and now even more that I have this improved software for it. The arguments about the validity of the data are mostly off the mark -- they fail to take into account the fullness of the scope of it, or work off of aspects of analysis. I'm not supplying analysis (and I keep kicking myself for the observations I made in the first post), just the raw data. The rest is up to the individuals.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

...my bad. I shouldn't have used the word "eliminated". Sorry. The point was to emphasize randomness though.

oh, absolutely. And, well, eliminated is as good a word as culled, lol I did consider several possibilities for handling it, but none of them would be able to produce the level of responses sought in order to make the sample effective. Had the final sample only had 400 or so repsonses, it wouldn't have been an effective survey, and the value of it would be much more limited. The "magic number" for a good base really is 600, and this one squeaked by in the end, lol.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

I finally had a chance to look at the csv files and I am not sure on how to figure out the results :) I am almost completely unfamiliar with excel but it does open the files but I am really not sure how to figure out the results since the things are all repeated multiple times. Any clues on how to figure it out? Sadly, I cannot use the Access file if that is more concise. Thanks

Carefully? ok, yeah, that's not a great answer. Alright, here's a basic rundown of what I'm doing slowly but surely. I'm slowly combining all the files into a single spreadsheet. The first, and most important file, is the "MainFile". The very first column in the mainfile is "ID". This is the key to assembling the whole thing. Each of the other files has 2 columns. One of those columns is "owner". The number in that column corresponds to the number of the ID in column one of the mainfile. I'm taking each of the secondary files and manually inserting them into new columns in my MainFile, but since all the secondary pages have multiple answers, I'm having to go slowly and do it bit by bit. In Excell, you can open each of the pages in a new "page" within a single file (I'm stuck using open office.org and not very familiar with how it works). THis allows you to actually use excell to tie them together without all the copy paste stuff, but I'm not certain how to do it from memory (but I know there is a tutorial on doing so at the microsoft office site). Once you get all the data together, you start collating it according to different questions that you are going to ask. FOr example, let's say that you want to know how many poser 6 users are using the figure Jessie. First, you'll need to isolate all the poser 6 users. Then, from them, you'll go through the Figures columns/sheets and find all the spots where they selected Jessie as a figure. You can expand the question, as well, and look at how many of them are of what age group, how much they are willing to spend on items for her, and even what Items they would most likely want to see for her. I will be the first person to admit that the information isn't easy to use. THe reason the database is is useful is that it allows you to simply create queries once it's structured. Without the database, you have to do things the old fashioned way, and I'm still creeping through the set up of it, myself. That said, I'm hoping to get it all set up as a db on my website, but then I'll have to come up with a query form and such, lol. Generally speaking, it's a case of count it up and divide by 609. That won't give you the most accurate results, but it will give you a good guideline on how things work in general.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Thanks .. I will try and figure it out when I have excel around (it is only at work for me)