1) it may sound blunt, but users often don't know what they
want.
Henry Ford nailed it by this quote: “If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
In fact, my original idea is to ask to people what they are, what they
do, what they use, what they know, and what they like(?), NOT (at least
not exactly/directly) what they want.
But, BTW, a car IS a "faster horse". Isn't?
And I would be happier if populations worldwide promoted effective
public transportation, instead of flooding streets with cars (and
social isolation, and non-stopping capitalism, and [...]) - especially
cars with 5 available seats and just 1 used.
2) the users who take part in this survey are not usually a
representative sample of the whole user base. For example my parents
are long-time Fedora users, but they would never participate in such
surveys, does it mean they should be thrown overboard?
I think I didn't make the idea all clear, so, of course, it's OK to see
it this way. But, to be fair, my idea behind the "Official" word, is to
heavily promote this survey (in the downloads page, Fedora Magazine,
whatever) so people can, at least, collect a bit of useful information
about a (small?) set of the (participative?) user base, knowing that
"this" means "this" and represents exactly "this", and
stopping making
such guesswork in random places (Distrowatch? Reddit?) and random data
(downloads statistics? results from independent blog surveys with
non-caring people and "void" questions?).
I was thinking about it yesterday, and came to the conclusion that this
idea is way more about a "database" than about a "survey".
It's important to listen to users, collect user feedback, work
with
it, but I think some formal surveys would shift it more to voting "Do
you want A or B?" ... hey, A won, how come you goddamn didn't go for
it? ... and that's not a way to go IMHO.
I understand that a "survey/database" may not be a useful thing. But
your initial assumptions about this idea were a bit wrong. Do you mind
writing your opinion again but now based on this little clarifications?