World Wide Words -- Survey feedback

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS   FEEDBACK FROM SURVEY    Wednesday 24 March 1999
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>From Michael Quinion               based in Thornbury, Bristol, UK
Web: <http://www.quinion.com/words/>   E-mail: <words at quinion.com>
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[This mailing refers to a survey that was sent out earlier in
March; if you have recently joined, you will not have seen it.]

Many thanks again for your most helpful replies to my questions.
A total of 1357 subscribers have responded, almost 30 per cent of
the total list.

Obviously, if you didn't like World Wide Words you would by now
have left the list, so it would have been surprising to get many
messages indicating disapproval. But I was pleasantly startled by
the large number of people who said things like "it's perfect",
"don't change anything", "it ain't broke so don't fix it", and
those who expressed concern that a survey might indicate some
intention to drastically change the format. I wasn't going to!

Within any format there's room to improve. But most answers on
specific points cancelled out. Those saying there was too much on
the history of words nearly matched those who felt there wasn't
enough; the few who complained about the British bias or British
style of writing (not a lot I can do about that), counterbalanced
a similar number who liked the British flavour; and so on.

A substantial number made comments to the effect that they liked
the diversity and unexpectedness of material in mailings. Many
said firmly that they were happy to trust my judgement over any
changes I might be considering; "Don't get too democratic," one
person wrote.

A small majority among those who mentioned the matter felt that
mailings were sometimes or often too long. In recent weeks, I've
been restricting them to some 240 lines of 65 characters, or 14K
all told, and will be keeping within this limit in future. Any
less, and longer pieces would take up too much of a mailing.

A significant proportion of respondents said that items were on
occasion verbose, too long, or too detailed. I shall keep this in
mind! The phonetic pronunciations irritated lots of people, so
I've dropped them (to my relief; it was a real pain producing the
Web page equivalents, as they had to be created as images). The
final section on housekeeping was thought by many to be overlong,
and you will have noticed it's been cut back.

Of the regular sections, Questions and Answers was voted the one
that would be most missed; three times as many mentioned it as
the next most popular, Weird Words. It also provoked more adverse
comment than any other section - it was argued that some items
had limited appeal or were commonplace, or that questioners could
have found answers in standard reference books, and that my time
would be better spent on other things. I shall keep Q&A going,
but will be more selective in the questions I answer.

There was a very large number of specific suggestions, too many
to detail here. Some of you wanted more on grammar and usage -
I've done usage notes in the past and there is a set on the Web
site, but have never put one into a mailing; there are some in
preparation and I'll see what can be done.

A few respondents felt that too many technical, scientific and
computing words were featured; others wanted more. There is a
high proportion of such words because those are the fields in
which new terms are being coined at a greater rate than any
other. I do try to keep a balance, but words fall as they will.

I found World Wide Words has more than double the number of UK
subscribers as the raw listing suggests, and nearly three times
as many Canadians. The estimate for the top ten countries is:

  USA 2634; UK 438; Canada 349; Australia 218; Israel 81;
  Germany 59; Netherlands 47; Brazil 44; Japan 42; France 39.

World Wide Words has subscribers from at least 87 countries, not
counting the one on "a yacht now based in the Adriatic". Apart
from those mentioned, mailings go to such countries as Egypt, the
Faeroe Islands, Fiji, Kazakstan, Panama, Tunisia, and Guyana.

Apologies, by the way, for assuming that the return address on
the survey would automatically be set to <survey at quinion.com>. I
had forgotten that the LISTSERV automatically inserts a return
address, overriding the one I put on, and I omitted to change it.
Just another of the trials of a tyro list owner.

The next normal mailing is due this coming Saturday, 27 March.

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