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Today I opened SO and noticed the new review queue icon. I did some searching and discovered that there was a survey. Ok, so I don't remember seeing anything about that. And then I noticed this line:

Over 600 people participated.

Err, ok... Over 600? On a site network with millions of registered users? Honestly I'm little annoyed that so few people were made aware of the survey, and that I didn't get a chance to participate.

Is there a reason this survey wasn't made more prominent?

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    They didn't actually pick one of the options from the survey, instead making it from scratch... so I'm not sure that it really matters? Also, worth noting that most surveys are of sample populations - often around 1000 people, so a 600 user sample size is actually pretty normal for a survey situation...
    – Catija
    Commented Nov 29, 2017 at 23:54
  • @Catija True about the sample populations, however those small sets are normally chosen at random from a large set. In this case that didn't happen; it was just whoever happened to read the announcement post, which automatically biases the survey. Of course it would also be biased by having a prominent notification for the survey specifically, as only people interested in that would participate, however I personally feel like it would be less biased.
    – Clonkex
    Commented Nov 30, 2017 at 0:23
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    Yeah, "millions of registered users". There aren't that many actual people who actually do something regarding SO. And most of those stick to programming and ignore meta matters.
    – user315433
    Commented Nov 30, 2017 at 0:30
  • @6'whitemale I know, I'm quite well-acquainted with SE in general. However with >9 million average visits per day on SO alone I think it's fair to assume a lot of people are actively using the site.
    – Clonkex
    Commented Nov 30, 2017 at 0:33
  • @Catija Actually the new icon was a modification of the one that won. We found that the version we posted had issues. You can blame me. I grabbed some design concepts and used them for the survey. Didn't realize that they were something of a work in progress. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
    – Joe Friend
    Commented Dec 6, 2017 at 19:34
  • @JoeFriend Sure. :D I figured that was the case. There seemed to be a pretty strong reaction by lots of people that none of the options were perfect, so it made sense that you all wouldn't just use one of them. I do like the new one, to be honest. It makes sense.
    – Catija
    Commented Dec 6, 2017 at 19:37
  • @JoeFriend This is 100% not worth mentioning but I'm going to do it anyway: just so you know, when you're posting a shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ you have to use two backslashes for his right arm (like ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯) or it will think you're trying to escape the underscore.
    – Clonkex
    Commented Dec 6, 2017 at 23:26
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    @Clonkex Saw it and figured it was some sort of escaping needed, but couldn't bothered. But you brought the answer to me!
    – Joe Friend
    Commented Dec 7, 2017 at 0:29

1 Answer 1

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It was announced, as you found, as part of the top bar status update. This announcement was featured on the sidebar of every site on the network for two weeks; this should've been more than enough exposure.

But of course, it was a big omnibus announcement - the bit about the review icon was only a small part of it. If we'd done a separate post that focused only on the icon, we probably would've seen more participation.

Ultimately, that's a trade-off; we can only do so many announcements at once without driving other important discussions off of the sidebar or potentially making folk so weary of them that they stop reading them entirely.

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  • Really? I don't remember seeing that in the sidebar, and I check SO every day. Maybe it didn't seem interesting enough for me to notice? Strange. I won't say it wasn't there, because I've been known to be very blind to obvious things in the past, but I'm a bit sceptical, because I feel like I would have noticed. Either way I appreciate the answer and what you say makes sense :)
    – Clonkex
    Commented Nov 30, 2017 at 0:19
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    @Clonkex You can see here that the featured tag was removed: meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/301845/9 So I hope that clears up any doubts. Anything on MSE that has the featured tag appears in the sidebar across the network. :)
    – Catija
    Commented Nov 30, 2017 at 0:24
  • @Catija Aha, I see now why I thought I missed it. It was last month! I assumed it would have been more recent than that, idk why. That definitely clears up my doubts, but I'm now I'm really annoyed that I didn't notice the survey. I love voting for stuff on SE.
    – Clonkex
    Commented Nov 30, 2017 at 0:29
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    @Clonkex yeah, I love voting too, specially of the down kind....
    – rene
    Commented Nov 30, 2017 at 7:00
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    @Clonkex Sorry you missed the survey. Now I feel like I need to set another one up just so you don't feel like you missed out. ;) FWIW, more survey's will be coming in the future, no doubt. Sorry I buried this one.
    – Joe Friend
    Commented Dec 6, 2017 at 19:32
  • @JoeFriend Haha no problem :)
    – Clonkex
    Commented Dec 6, 2017 at 23:24

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