I am trying to complete the survey that Unity08 sent out this evening, a process that was supposed to take approximately 20 minutes. I have now been at it for more than an hour. Some pages have taken ten or more minutes to load, and I have no idea how far along I am. I don't know if anyone else has experienced the same difficulty, but whatever Unity08 is paying Linescale for their services, it seems like we got the economy package. That's not good news for a movement that's taking place almost entirely online, especially when people already have significant (and legitimate) doubts about electronic voting and the like. The last thing Unity08 should be doing is making technophobes even more technophobic. Am I going to forward the study to anybody else? Of course not. I don't want my friends and acquaintances to think of me as the jerk who wasted their time. Not to mention the discouraging focus-group style of the whole thing. Linescale is basically a marketing tool, and while good marketing is certainly necessary, a good product helps too.
- Sign in or Sign up to post comments
- send to friend
- report as spam
The study bottomed out while I was rating potential candidates on the Excellent to Terrible scale. John McCain crashed it. Here's the message I received:
"Software error:
session error in john_mcain
For help, please send mail to the webmaster (root@localhost), giving this error message and the time and date of the error."
On the lighter side, the phrase "session error in john_mccain" has an amusing ring to it.
just went right through it....your ISP speed is more likely the problem.
Bill"for what we are together"
bill713.unity08@sbcglobal.net
I had the same problem last night, tried several times and it kept timing out on me. Today it worked, but the questions were rediculous and very poorly designed. For example, one question asked about newscasters you watch (whatever that has to do with Unity 08). They listed about a dozen newscasters and gave you a choice only of "yes, I watch and I like", Yes, I watch and I don't like" or "No, I don't watch" In the case of Lou Dobbs, I absolutely cannot stand that arrogant so and so, and I immediately switch over from CNN to PBS when he comes on. I wanted to answer, "No I don't watch and I don't like" but no such choice. There were other examples of rediculous or poorly designed questions with limited choices, and the line scale format (IMHO) is not conducive to getting accurate responses. The user is inclined to click on a point between two others, and despite the warnings, I wanted to change some of my answers after reflecting on the first clicks.
We experienced a very high load on the study servers when the survey launched. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. This is a very popular study and we are attempting to send invitations to users in small batches. Yet, get it out to all of our users in a timely fashion.
Your responses are very important to us. I hope that you have gone back and taken the time to submit your study.
I just made a post in the blog about technology and Unity08.
Bob Roth
VP Online Marketing, Unity08
comments AT unity08 DOT com
**Don't forget to vote on forum topics!**
I had one area where the system locked up, I refreshed the page and was back up and running. For those of you not utalizing a high speed internet service such as cable or DSL, you might want to make sure you close out any other windows you have open as this tends to slow down dial up speeds.
If you are using a portal such as Yahoo or any other free service, you will experience trouble as their virus scanning programs are often busy and take seconds to screen. Also, it may be due to the new laws giving the government endless power to "tap" into your computer!!!!!!!!
Good Luck to all
Sgtbigred/usmc
Well, I'm not doing anything, out of or from my email. ThaT IS VERY SUSPICIOUS AND STUPID, WHEN A Survey can just as easily be done in the forum, itself.
An, hey. Did you know, there is a new worm circulating? It gets you when you click on any ecard or electronic greetings-card service , I think, they said not to even open one of these.
R. E. Robidas Sgt/USMC
That's why they sell security software such as Norton, Trend-Micro syp-ware and the such.
The people who get virusues usualy use the free e-mail accounts and off the wall computers.
It pays to spend a little to secure a lot.
I finally got the survey but I haven't done it yet. I'm concerned about security. Who sees these things? If someone calls up my house and wants to ask me a bunch of questions about my political views, I want to know who they are and how they will use the information. After all, it's not private, like voting. Your name is attached to it. So who gets to see the results and how will they be used? Will a copy be forwarded to my employer? Will it be sold to spammers and fundraisers?
The email with the link to the survey itself says the votes will be counted, but Bob Roth made some sort of statement that because of the problems they experienced only randomly selected votes will be counted. I don't think my vote counts here. I don't really know a good reason for completing the survey.
I received 2 e-mails one was survey the other was junk, I think. It stated unity08 digg tech in header. Some hacker got your number?
One email was your personal invitation to the survey, the other was our 10 Minute Tuesday action, which was about the survey link being posted on Digg.com.
Bob Roth
VP Online Marketing, Unity08
comments AT unity08 DOT com
**Don't forget to vote on forum topics!**