Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Richard Eisenberg]

OK. Thanks for sharing some statistics. I'm now convinced as to the 
characterization of the attack. I'm still glad for how the public post 
diplomatically handled this.

> I will also say, though there's speculation about "false flags" and

Oof. That thought never crossed my mind. I can only imagine this is on some 
social media where I don't participate. Every day, I am more and more pleased 
with my non-presence on most social media. :) Besides, just keeping up with 
email is enough of a challenge.

Thanks for the clarification.

Richard

> other silliness floating around that I personally have a very good
> guess as to who did this. There's one well-known troll who has these
> preoccupations and is known for creating serial sockpuppet accounts,
> and is just the right amount of obsessed to do something like this. A
> few of the bogus responses actually had comments, and the comments
> were all written in a voice that was unmistakeable as this troll as
> well. Occam's razor seems to apply.
> 
> Finally, let me add why I don't think this was a "false flag" -- while
> there were enough telltale markers that the fake answers could seem to
> be detected, I don't think this was on purpose. There was _too much_
> effort put into distributions of other choices, etc. If they had
> wanted the fakes to be detected they would have left much stronger
> evidence. Rather, from a forensic standpoint, this seems pretty clear
> to me that the pattern of data is of someone _trying_ to cover their
> tracks, but just making four or five errors which I could assemble
> into a pattern. If they hadn't made those errors -- likely based on
> bad priors about what the organic data would be that theirs would need
> to "mesh" into -- then I think the deception would have been much
> harder to detect.
> 
> --Gershom
> 
>> Given the contention around cabal vs stack, I agree that sociological 
>> concerns suggest that the troll meant to tilt those scales. But I wouldn't 
>> want a public accusation without at least some statistical analysis that 
>> independently supports that conclusion.
>> 
>> In any case, thanks to all for putting this together!
>> 
>> Richard
>> 
>> On Nov 18, 2018, at 4:31 PM, Taylor Fausak  wrote:
>> 
>> Oops, the ordering of the answer choices is manual because some questions 
>> have a natural order while others should just be most to least popular. I've 
>> made another run through to make sure everything is sorted properly. I'll 
>> probably hit publish in the next half hour or so unless there are any 
>> objections.
>> 
>> https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/blob/fce97d07c369856d4c05b756c492eb6229a1b5c7/_posts/2018-11-18-2018-state-of-haskell-survey-results.markdown
>> 
>> 
>> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 3:07 PM, Gershom B wrote:
>> 
>> The language extensions section doesn’t appear to be sorted properly. 
>> Outside of that, I think that these results are looking much better and any 
>> effort to find any additional outliers is probably not worth it for the 
>> moment. Thanks for your work on this, and I appreciate you being responsive 
>> and attentive when problems with the data were pointed out. There’s 
>> certainly some interesting and helpful information to be gleaned from this 
>> data.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Gershom
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On November 18, 2018 at 2:55:10 PM, Taylor Fausak (tay...@fausak.me) wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Ok, I updated the function that checks for bad responses, re-ran the script, 
>> and updated the announcement along with all the assets (charts, tables, and 
>> CSV). Hopefully it's the last time, as I can't justify spending much more 
>> time on this.
>> 
>> https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/blob/6f9991758ffeed085c45dd97e4ce6a82a8b1a73f/_posts/2018-11-18-2018-state-of-haskell-survey-results.markdown
>> 
>> 
>> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 2:32 PM, Michael Snoyman wrote:
>> 
>> Just wanted to add in: good catch Gershom on identifying the problem, and 
>> thank you Taylor for working to remove them from the report.
>> 
>> On 18 Nov 2018, at 21:17, Taylor Fausak  wrote:
>> 
>> Great catch, Gershom! There are indeed about 300 responses that tick all the 
>> boxes except for disliking the new GHC release schedule. The main thing the 
>> attacker seemed to be interested in was over-representing Stack and 
>> Stackage. Also, bizarrely, Java.
>> 
>> That brings the number of bogus responses up to 3,735, which puts the number 
>> of legitimate responses at 1,361. For context, last year's survey asked far 
>> fewer questions and had 1,335 responses.
>> 
>> 
>> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 1:26 PM, Imants Cekusins wrote:
>> 
>> What if the announcement mentioned a large number of potentially bogus 
>> responses, explained the grounds for this conclusion, with a new survey 
>> conducted early next year?
>> 
>> The next survey would then need to be done differently from this one 
>> somehow. To improve the reliability, some authentication may be necessary.
>> 
>> 
>> Maybe Stack, 

Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Francesco Ariis]

Hello Richard,

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 11:20:52PM -0500, Richard Eisenberg wrote:
> I have not analyzed the data myself, but I wonder how we jumped to the
> conclusion that the troll was trying to promote Stack. Is there
> statistical data that supports that conclusion? For example, just reading
> this thread, it sounds like the bogus responses also really don't like
> the new release schedule. Maybe the troll wants the old release schedule
> back and was just lazy about programming the tool to vary the
> stack/cabal question answers adequately.

If you filter the results for the (impossible) "linux/mac AND notepad++"
combination, you can check the pattern-of-action of the troll.
Every demographic question is skipped; every "write in" answer is skipped;
all the other questions are filled in with a random value, bar the
"build tools" one and the "release schedule" one, both having a constant
value.
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Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Chris Smith]

> For example, just reading this thread, it sounds like the bogus responses
also really don't like the new release schedule. Maybe the troll wants the
old release schedule back and was just lazy about programming the tool to
vary the stack/cabal question answers adequately.

There is another scenario, though, which should caution against making
official statements about motivation.  There was a set of people who worked
very hard while the survey was open to preemptively cast doubt on its
motivation and goals.  It may be that someone was mainly attempting to
sabotage the survey results themselves, rather than taking a side in any
specific dispute.  Of course, had the results been published claiming that
a mere 12% of Haskellers use Cabal, it would have been immediately
dismissed by many people as obviously biased, which would have achieved
that goal, too.

I think Taylor's post handled this well, saying what we know to be true,
that the attack targeted divisive issues, but without drawing unnecessary
conclusions.

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 11:21 PM Richard Eisenberg 
wrote:

> I have not analyzed the data myself, but I wonder how we jumped to the
> conclusion that the troll was trying to promote Stack. Is there statistical
> data that supports that conclusion? For example, just reading this thread,
> it sounds like the bogus responses also really don't like the new release
> schedule. Maybe the troll wants the old release schedule back and was just
> lazy about programming the tool to vary the stack/cabal question answers
> adequately.
>
> Given the contention around cabal vs stack, I agree that sociological
> concerns suggest that the troll meant to tilt those scales. But I wouldn't
> want a public accusation without at least some statistical analysis that
> independently supports that conclusion.
>
> In any case, thanks to all for putting this together!
>
> Richard
>
> On Nov 18, 2018, at 4:31 PM, Taylor Fausak  wrote:
>
> Oops, the ordering of the answer choices is manual because some questions
> have a natural order while others should just be most to least popular.
> I've made another run through to make sure everything is sorted properly.
> I'll probably hit publish in the next half hour or so unless there are any
> objections.
>
>
> https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/blob/fce97d07c369856d4c05b756c492eb6229a1b5c7/_posts/2018-11-18-2018-state-of-haskell-survey-results.markdown
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 3:07 PM, Gershom B wrote:
>
> The language extensions section doesn’t appear to be sorted properly.
> Outside of that, I think that these results are looking much better and any
> effort to find any additional outliers is probably not worth it for the
> moment. Thanks for your work on this, and I appreciate you being responsive
> and attentive when problems with the data were pointed out. There’s
> certainly some interesting and helpful information to be gleaned from this
> data.
>
> Cheers,
> Gershom
>
>
>
>
> On November 18, 2018 at 2:55:10 PM, Taylor Fausak (tay...@fausak.me)
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Ok, I updated the function that checks for bad responses, re-ran the
> script, and updated the announcement along with all the assets (charts,
> tables, and CSV). Hopefully it's the last time, as I can't justify spending
> much more time on this.
>
>
> https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/blob/6f9991758ffeed085c45dd97e4ce6a82a8b1a73f/_posts/2018-11-18-2018-state-of-haskell-survey-results.markdown
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 2:32 PM, Michael Snoyman wrote:
>
> Just wanted to add in: good catch Gershom on identifying the problem, and
> thank you Taylor for working to remove them from the report.
>
> On 18 Nov 2018, at 21:17, Taylor Fausak  wrote:
>
> Great catch, Gershom! There are indeed about 300 responses that tick all
> the boxes except for disliking the new GHC release schedule. The main thing
> the attacker seemed to be interested in was over-representing Stack and
> Stackage. Also, bizarrely, Java.
>
> That brings the number of bogus responses up to 3,735, which puts the
> number of legitimate responses at 1,361. For context, last year's survey
> asked far fewer questions and had 1,335 responses.
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 1:26 PM, Imants Cekusins wrote:
>
> What if the announcement mentioned a large number of potentially bogus
> responses, explained the grounds for this conclusion, with a new survey
> conducted early next year?
>
> The next survey would then need to be done differently from this one
> somehow. To improve the reliability, some authentication may be necessary.
>
>
> Maybe Stack, Cabal questions could be grouped as separate distinct
> surveys, conducted by their maintainers through own channels?
>
> Not sure how much value is in exact numbers of users of Stack or Cabal.
> Both groups are large enough. The maintainers of both groups are aware
> about usage stats.
>
> Is either library likely to be influenced by this survey?
> 

Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Richard Eisenberg]

I have not analyzed the data myself, but I wonder how we jumped to the 
conclusion that the troll was trying to promote Stack. Is there statistical 
data that supports that conclusion? For example, just reading this thread, it 
sounds like the bogus responses also really don't like the new release 
schedule. Maybe the troll wants the old release schedule back and was just lazy 
about programming the tool to vary the stack/cabal question answers adequately.

Given the contention around cabal vs stack, I agree that sociological concerns 
suggest that the troll meant to tilt those scales. But I wouldn't want a public 
accusation without at least some statistical analysis that independently 
supports that conclusion.

In any case, thanks to all for putting this together!

Richard

> On Nov 18, 2018, at 4:31 PM, Taylor Fausak  wrote:
> 
> Oops, the ordering of the answer choices is manual because some questions 
> have a natural order while others should just be most to least popular. I've 
> made another run through to make sure everything is sorted properly. I'll 
> probably hit publish in the next half hour or so unless there are any 
> objections.
> 
> https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/blob/fce97d07c369856d4c05b756c492eb6229a1b5c7/_posts/2018-11-18-2018-state-of-haskell-survey-results.markdown
>  
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 3:07 PM, Gershom B wrote:
>> The language extensions section doesn’t appear to be sorted properly. 
>> Outside of that, I think that these results are looking much better and any 
>> effort to find any additional outliers is probably not worth it for the 
>> moment. Thanks for your work on this, and I appreciate you being responsive 
>> and attentive when problems with the data were pointed out. There’s 
>> certainly some interesting and helpful information to be gleaned from this 
>> data.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Gershom
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On November 18, 2018 at 2:55:10 PM, Taylor Fausak (tay...@fausak.me 
>> ) wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Ok, I updated the function that checks for bad responses, re-ran the 
>>> script, and updated the announcement along with all the assets (charts, 
>>> tables, and CSV). Hopefully it's the last time, as I can't justify spending 
>>> much more time on this.
>>> 
>>> https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/blob/6f9991758ffeed085c45dd97e4ce6a82a8b1a73f/_posts/2018-11-18-2018-state-of-haskell-survey-results.markdown
>>>  
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 2:32 PM, Michael Snoyman wrote:
 Just wanted to add in: good catch Gershom on identifying the problem, and 
 thank you Taylor for working to remove them from the report.
 
> On 18 Nov 2018, at 21:17, Taylor Fausak  > wrote:
> 
> Great catch, Gershom! There are indeed about 300 responses that tick all 
> the boxes except for disliking the new GHC release schedule. The main 
> thing the attacker seemed to be interested in was over-representing Stack 
> and Stackage. Also, bizarrely, Java. 
> 
> That brings the number of bogus responses up to 3,735, which puts the 
> number of legitimate responses at 1,361. For context, last year's survey 
> asked far fewer questions and had 1,335 responses.
> 
> 
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 1:26 PM, Imants Cekusins wrote:
>> What if the announcement mentioned a large number of potentially bogus 
>> responses, explained the grounds for this conclusion, with a new survey 
>> conducted early next year?
>> 
>> The next survey would then need to be done differently from this one 
>> somehow. To improve the reliability, some authentication may be 
>> necessary.
>> 
>> 
>> Maybe Stack, Cabal questions could be grouped as separate distinct 
>> surveys, conducted by their maintainers through own channels?
>> 
>> Not sure how much value is in exact numbers of users of Stack or Cabal. 
>> Both groups are large enough. The maintainers of both groups are aware 
>> about usage stats.
>> 
>> Is either library likely to be influenced by this survey?
>> ___
>> Haskell-community mailing list
>> Haskell-community@haskell.org 
>> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community 
>> 
> 
> ___
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> 

Re: [Haskell-community] Creating a new @haskell.org mailing list?

[Gershom B]

Ok, education@ should now be created, and chris should be list admin.
Feel free to reach out to me if there are any issues.

Cheers,
Gershom
On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 8:00 PM Chris Smith  wrote:
>
> Any news on this?  Would love to help any way I can, but I am not sure what 
> to do next.
>
> Thanks,
> Chris
>
> On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 3:12 PM Gershom B  wrote:
>>
>> Sounds good. Ccing Sandy, who has volunteered to start helping with
>> mail stuff. Sandy -- do you need any further details in setting this
>> up, or do you think it should be straightforward?
>>
>> -g
>> On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 10:18 AM Chris Smith  wrote:
>> >
>> > Good point, Simon.  education@ sounds like a good choice, with the 
>> > understanding that we mean education for the general population, not 
>> > classes in type theory or category theory!
>> >
>> > Is this a possibility?  Anything else I can do to move this forward?
>> >
>> > On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 11:32 AM Simon Peyton Jones 
>> >  wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Good idea.   “k12” is rather USA specific. What about 
>> >> educat...@haskell.org?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Simon
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> From: Haskell-community  On Behalf 
>> >> Of Chris Smith
>> >> Sent: 22 October 2018 15:32
>> >> To: Haskell-community 
>> >> Subject: [Haskell-community] Creating a new @haskell.org mailing list?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Hey,
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Is there a process to request a new mailing list on the haskell.org 
>> >> domain?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Here's my use case.  About 25 Haskell programmers met at ICFP to discuss 
>> >> uses of Haskell in K-12 education (for non-US readers, that means before 
>> >> university).  I'm also in touch with another half-dozen people who either 
>> >> have done, or are doing, something pre-university with Haskell, but could 
>> >> not be at ICFP.  The main result of our conversation was that we wanted a 
>> >> common place to discuss, report on our experiences, look for productive 
>> >> collaborations and common threads, etc.  There are already a few 
>> >> project-specific places, e.g. the codeworld-discuss mailing list for my 
>> >> own project, but we were explicitly looking for something general-purpose 
>> >> and universal.  It would be great if this could be, say, 
>> >> "k...@haskell.org" or something like that.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> I'm pretty open in terms of how we'd administer the list.  I'm willing to 
>> >> do the work of handling obvious spam bots and things like that.  If 
>> >> there's a feeling we'd need something more than that, then let's have 
>> >> that discussion.  We explicitly don't want a strict topicality 
>> >> enforcement, though.  For example, several people who attended the dinner 
>> >> at ICFP were also interested in functional programming for non-majors at 
>> >> the university level, or were using Elm and other Haskell-like languages 
>> >> - even a few people from the Racket community.  I'd hope to rely on the 
>> >> name of the mailing list to keep things a bit focused, but not really 
>> >> police it at all.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Thoughts?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Thanks,
>> >>
>> >> Chris Smith
>> >
>> > ___
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>> > Haskell-community@haskell.org
>> > http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community
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Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Gershom B]

The language extensions section doesn’t appear to be sorted properly.
Outside of that, I think that these results are looking much better and any
effort to find any additional outliers is probably not worth it for the
moment. Thanks for your work on this, and I appreciate you being responsive
and attentive when problems with the data were pointed out. There’s
certainly some interesting and helpful information to be gleaned from this
data.

Cheers,
Gershom



On November 18, 2018 at 2:55:10 PM, Taylor Fausak (tay...@fausak.me) wrote:

Ok, I updated the function that checks for bad responses, re-ran the
script, and updated the announcement along with all the assets (charts,
tables, and CSV). Hopefully it's the last time, as I can't justify spending
much more time on this.

https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/blob/6f9991758ffeed085c45dd97e4ce6a82a8b1a73f/_posts/2018-11-18-2018-state-of-haskell-survey-results.markdown


On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 2:32 PM, Michael Snoyman wrote:

Just wanted to add in: good catch Gershom on identifying the problem, and
thank you Taylor for working to remove them from the report.

On 18 Nov 2018, at 21:17, Taylor Fausak  wrote:

Great catch, Gershom! There are indeed about 300 responses that tick all
the boxes except for disliking the new GHC release schedule. The main thing
the attacker seemed to be interested in was over-representing Stack and
Stackage. Also, bizarrely, Java.

That brings the number of bogus responses up to 3,735, which puts the
number of legitimate responses at 1,361. For context, last year's survey
asked far fewer questions and had 1,335 responses.


On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 1:26 PM, Imants Cekusins wrote:

What if the announcement mentioned a large number of potentially bogus
responses, explained the grounds for this conclusion, with a new survey
conducted early next year?

The next survey would then need to be done differently from this one
somehow. To improve the reliability, some authentication may be necessary.


Maybe Stack, Cabal questions could be grouped as separate distinct surveys,
conducted by their maintainers through own channels?

Not sure how much value is in exact numbers of users of Stack or Cabal.
Both groups are large enough. The maintainers of both groups are aware
about usage stats.

Is either library likely to be influenced by this survey?
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Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Michael Snoyman]

Just wanted to add in: good catch Gershom on identifying the problem, and thank 
you Taylor for working to remove them from the report.

> On 18 Nov 2018, at 21:17, Taylor Fausak  wrote:
> 
> Great catch, Gershom! There are indeed about 300 responses that tick all the 
> boxes except for disliking the new GHC release schedule. The main thing the 
> attacker seemed to be interested in was over-representing Stack and Stackage. 
> Also, bizarrely, Java. 
> 
> That brings the number of bogus responses up to 3,735, which puts the number 
> of legitimate responses at 1,361. For context, last year's survey asked far 
> fewer questions and had 1,335 responses.
> 
> 
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 1:26 PM, Imants Cekusins wrote:
>> What if the announcement mentioned a large number of potentially bogus 
>> responses, explained the grounds for this conclusion, with a new survey 
>> conducted early next year?
>> 
>> The next survey would then need to be done differently from this one 
>> somehow. To improve the reliability, some authentication may be necessary.
>> 
>> 
>> Maybe Stack, Cabal questions could be grouped as separate distinct surveys, 
>> conducted by their maintainers through own channels?
>> 
>> Not sure how much value is in exact numbers of users of Stack or Cabal. Both 
>> groups are large enough. The maintainers of both groups are aware about 
>> usage stats.
>> 
>> Is either library likely to be influenced by this survey?
>> ___
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>> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community 
>> 
> 
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Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Taylor Fausak]

Great catch, Gershom! There are indeed about 300 responses that tick all
the boxes except for disliking the new GHC release schedule. The main
thing the attacker seemed to be interested in was over-representing
Stack and Stackage. Also, bizarrely, Java.
That brings the number of bogus responses up to 3,735, which puts the
number of legitimate responses at 1,361. For context, last year's survey
asked far fewer questions and had 1,335 responses.

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 1:26 PM, Imants Cekusins wrote:
> What if the announcement mentioned a large number of potentially bogus
> responses, explained the grounds for this conclusion, with a new
> survey conducted early next year?> 
> The next survey would then need to be done differently from this one
> somehow. To improve the reliability, some authentication may be
> necessary.> 
> 
> Maybe Stack, Cabal questions could be grouped as separate distinct
> surveys, conducted by their maintainers through own channels?> 
> Not sure how much value is in exact numbers of users of Stack or
> Cabal. Both groups are large enough. The maintainers of both groups
> are aware about usage stats.> 
> Is either library likely to be influenced by this survey?
> _
> Haskell-community mailing list
> Haskell-community@haskell.org
> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community

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Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Chris Smith]

If I could make a suggestion... although this is at the forefront of our
minds right now, I don't think that you want the attempted hack of survey
responses to be THE big news about the survey.  I have no doubt it will
garner lots of attention anyway, and you are certainly right to explain
what happened and what your methodology was; but I think it would be better
to state the legitimate results first... i.e., by saying "This year we
received 1,679 [*] responses, which is quite an improvement.", and waiting
until later to explain about the bogus submissions.  Hopefully, then, more
of the reaction will be around the data this provides, and less around ugly
drama with what seems like only ONE bad actor.

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 10:58 AM Taylor Fausak  wrote:

> I have filtered out the bogus responses and re-generated all the charts
> and tables. You can see the updated results here:
> https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/blob/ee29da5bd8389c19763ac2b4dbe27ff5204161f5/_posts/2018-11-16-2018-state-of-haskell-survey-results.markdown
>
> Note that until I post the results on my blog, they are not published.
> Please don't share the preliminary results on social media!
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 8:11 AM, Taylor Fausak wrote:
>
> Thanks for finding those anomalies, Gershom! I'm disappointed that someone
> submitted bogus responses, apparently to tip the scales of Cabal versus
> Stack. I intend to identify those responses and exclude them from the
> results. The work you've done so far will help a great deal in finding
> them.
>
> You said that there are about 1,200 responses with demographic
> information. That makes sense considering the number of submissions I got
> last year. Also, there are 1,185 responses that included an answer to at
> least one of the free-response questions. So perhaps whoever wrote the
> script didn't bother to put an answer for those types of questions.
>
> Unfortunately I do not have precise submission times or IP address
> information about submissions. Beyond what's in the CSV, the only other
> thing I have is (some) email addresses.
>
> Fortunately I wrote a script to output all the charts and tables from the
> survey responses. Once I've identified the problematic responses, I should
> be able to update the script to ignore them and regenerate all the output.
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 3:40 AM, Chris Smith wrote:
>
> Sadly, it looks like a Cabal/Stack thing.  Of the responses with a country
> provided, 618 of 1226 claim to use Cabal, and 948 of 1226 claim to use
> Stack. Of the responses with no country, only 35 of 3868 claim to use
> Cabal, while 3781 of the 3868 claim to use Stack.  Assuming independence,
> you'd expect that last number to be about 50, meaning there are probably
> around 3700 fake responses generated just to answer "Stack".
>
> To partially answer Simon's question, the flood of no-demographics
> responses started on November 2, around the 750-response point, and
> continued unabated through the close of the survey.  And, indeed, looking
> at just the first 750 responses gives similar distributions to what we get
> by ignoring the no-demographic responses.  For example, of the first 750
> responses, 359 claim to use Cabal, and 568 claim to use Stack.
>
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 2:31 AM Simon Marlow  wrote:
>
> Good spot Gershom. Maybe it would be revealing to look at the times that
> responses were received for the no-demographics group?
>
> On Sun, 18 Nov 2018, 07:17 Gershom B 
> I also noticed a number of other bizarre statistical anomolies when
> looking at the full results. I know this is a bit much to ask — but if you
> could rerun the statistics filtering out people that did not give
> demographic information (i.e. country of origin or education, etc) I think
> the results will change drastically. By all statistical logic, this should
> _not_ be the case, and points to a serious problem.
>
> In particular, this drops the results by a huge amount — only 1,200 or so
> remain. However, the remaining results tend to make a lot more sense. For
> example — of the “no demographics” group, there are 713 users who claim to
> develop with notepad++ but all of these say they develop on mac and linux,
> and none on windows — which is impossible, as notepad++ is a windows
> program. Further if you drop the “no demographics” group, then you find
> that almost everyone uses at least ghc 8.0.2, while in the “no
> demographics” group,  a stunning number of people claim to be on 7.8.3.
> Even more bizarrely, people claim to be using the 7.8 series while only
> having used Haskell for less than one year. And people claim to have used
> haskell for “one week to one month” and also to be advanced and expert
> users!
>
> The differences continue and defy all probability. Of the “no
> demographics” group, almost everyone dislikes the new release schedule. Of
> the “demographics” group there are answers that like it, were not aware of
> it, or are indifferent, but 

Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Gershom B]

Hi Taylor. I think we're closer to the real results here, but I'm
still pretty sure that there are a fair number of phony responses. In
particular, looking at your filter function, I don't think that _all_
bogus responses said "I dislike it" with regards to the ghc release
schedule. A fair number that hit all the other criteria also seem to
have left it blank. I suspect this will be enough to do the trick, but
can't be sure...

This attempted sabotage of the survey is really frustrating and disappointing.

-g
On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 10:58 AM Taylor Fausak  wrote:
>
> I have filtered out the bogus responses and re-generated all the charts and 
> tables. You can see the updated results here: 
> https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/blob/ee29da5bd8389c19763ac2b4dbe27ff5204161f5/_posts/2018-11-16-2018-state-of-haskell-survey-results.markdown
>
> Note that until I post the results on my blog, they are not published. Please 
> don't share the preliminary results on social media!
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 8:11 AM, Taylor Fausak wrote:
>
> Thanks for finding those anomalies, Gershom! I'm disappointed that someone 
> submitted bogus responses, apparently to tip the scales of Cabal versus 
> Stack. I intend to identify those responses and exclude them from the 
> results. The work you've done so far will help a great deal in finding them.
>
> You said that there are about 1,200 responses with demographic information. 
> That makes sense considering the number of submissions I got last year. Also, 
> there are 1,185 responses that included an answer to at least one of the 
> free-response questions. So perhaps whoever wrote the script didn't bother to 
> put an answer for those types of questions.
>
> Unfortunately I do not have precise submission times or IP address 
> information about submissions. Beyond what's in the CSV, the only other thing 
> I have is (some) email addresses.
>
> Fortunately I wrote a script to output all the charts and tables from the 
> survey responses. Once I've identified the problematic responses, I should be 
> able to update the script to ignore them and regenerate all the output.
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 3:40 AM, Chris Smith wrote:
>
> Sadly, it looks like a Cabal/Stack thing.  Of the responses with a country 
> provided, 618 of 1226 claim to use Cabal, and 948 of 1226 claim to use Stack. 
> Of the responses with no country, only 35 of 3868 claim to use Cabal, while 
> 3781 of the 3868 claim to use Stack.  Assuming independence, you'd expect 
> that last number to be about 50, meaning there are probably around 3700 fake 
> responses generated just to answer "Stack".
>
> To partially answer Simon's question, the flood of no-demographics responses 
> started on November 2, around the 750-response point, and continued unabated 
> through the close of the survey.  And, indeed, looking at just the first 750 
> responses gives similar distributions to what we get by ignoring the 
> no-demographic responses.  For example, of the first 750 responses, 359 claim 
> to use Cabal, and 568 claim to use Stack.
>
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 2:31 AM Simon Marlow  wrote:
>
> Good spot Gershom. Maybe it would be revealing to look at the times that 
> responses were received for the no-demographics group?
>
> On Sun, 18 Nov 2018, 07:17 Gershom B 
> I also noticed a number of other bizarre statistical anomolies when looking 
> at the full results. I know this is a bit much to ask — but if you could 
> rerun the statistics filtering out people that did not give demographic 
> information (i.e. country of origin or education, etc) I think the results 
> will change drastically. By all statistical logic, this should _not_ be the 
> case, and points to a serious problem.
>
> In particular, this drops the results by a huge amount — only 1,200 or so 
> remain. However, the remaining results tend to make a lot more sense. For 
> example — of the “no demographics” group, there are 713 users who claim to 
> develop with notepad++ but all of these say they develop on mac and linux, 
> and none on windows — which is impossible, as notepad++ is a windows program. 
> Further if you drop the “no demographics” group, then you find that almost 
> everyone uses at least ghc 8.0.2, while in the “no demographics” group,  a 
> stunning number of people claim to be on 7.8.3. Even more bizarrely, people 
> claim to be using the 7.8 series while only having used Haskell for less than 
> one year. And people claim to have used haskell for “one week to one month” 
> and also to be advanced and expert users!
>
> The differences continue and defy all probability. Of the “no demographics” 
> group, almost everyone dislikes the new release schedule. Of the 
> “demographics” group there are answers that like it, were not aware of it, or 
> are indifferent, but almost nobody dislikes it. There is naturally a 
> difference in proportions of cabal/stack and hackage/stackage responses as 
> well.
>
> There are a lot of 

Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Taylor Fausak]

I have filtered out the bogus responses and re-generated all the charts
and tables. You can see the updated results here:
https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/blob/ee29da5bd8389c19763ac2b4dbe27ff5204161f5/_posts/2018-11-16-2018-state-of-haskell-survey-results.markdown
Note that until I post the results on my blog, they are not published.
Please don't share the preliminary results on social media!

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 8:11 AM, Taylor Fausak wrote:
> Thanks for finding those anomalies, Gershom! I'm disappointed that
> someone submitted bogus responses, apparently to tip the scales of
> Cabal versus Stack. I intend to identify those responses and exclude
> them from the results. The work you've done so far will help a great
> deal in finding them.> 
> You said that there are about 1,200 responses with demographic
> information. That makes sense considering the number of submissions I
> got last year. Also, there are 1,185 responses that included an answer
> to at least one of the free-response questions. So perhaps whoever
> wrote the script didn't bother to put an answer for those types of
> questions.> 
> Unfortunately I do not have precise submission times or IP address
> information about submissions. Beyond what's in the CSV, the only
> other thing I have is (some) email addresses.> 
> Fortunately I wrote a script to output all the charts and tables from
> the survey responses. Once I've identified the problematic responses,
> I should be able to update the script to ignore them and regenerate
> all the output.> 
> 
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 3:40 AM, Chris Smith wrote:
>> Sadly, it looks like a Cabal/Stack thing.  Of the responses with a
>> country provided, 618 of 1226 claim to use Cabal, and 948 of 1226
>> claim to use Stack. Of the responses with no country, only 35 of 3868
>> claim to use Cabal, while 3781 of the 3868 claim to use Stack.
>> Assuming independence, you'd expect that last number to be about 50,
>> meaning there are probably around 3700 fake responses generated just
>> to answer "Stack".>> 
>> To partially answer Simon's question, the flood of no-demographics
>> responses started on November 2, around the 750-response point, and
>> continued unabated through the close of the survey.  And, indeed,
>> looking at just the first 750 responses gives similar distributions
>> to what we get by ignoring the no-demographic responses.  For
>> example, of the first 750 responses, 359 claim to use Cabal, and 568
>> claim to use Stack.>> 
>> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 2:31 AM Simon Marlow
>>  wrote:>>> Good spot Gershom. Maybe it would be 
>> revealing to look at the times
>>> that responses were received for the no-demographics group?>>> 
>>> On Sun, 18 Nov 2018, 07:17 Gershom B >>> I also noticed a number of other bizarre statistical anomolies when
 looking at the full results. I know this is a bit much to ask — but
 if you could rerun the statistics filtering out people that did not
 give demographic information (i.e. country of origin or education,
 etc) I think the results will change drastically. By all
 statistical logic, this should _not_ be the case, and points to a
 serious problem. 
 In particular, this drops the results by a huge amount — only 1,200
 or so remain. However, the remaining results tend to make a lot
 more sense. For example — of the “no demographics” group, there are
 713 users who claim to develop with notepad++ but all of these say
 they develop on mac and linux, and none on windows — which is
 impossible, as notepad++ is a windows program. Further if you drop
 the “no demographics” group, then you find that almost everyone
 uses at least ghc 8.0.2, while in the “no demographics” group,  a
 stunning number of people claim to be on 7.8.3. Even more
 bizarrely, people claim to be using the 7.8 series while only
 having used Haskell for less than one year. And people claim to
 have used haskell for “one week to one month” and also to be
 advanced and expert users! 
 The differences continue and defy all probability. Of the “no
 demographics” group, almost everyone dislikes the new release
 schedule. Of the “demographics” group there are answers that like
 it, were not aware of it, or are indifferent, but almost nobody
 dislikes it. There is naturally a difference in proportions of
 cabal/stack and hackage/stackage responses as well. 
 There are a lot of other things I could point to as well. But,
 bluntly put, I think that some disaffected party or parties wrote a
 crude script and submitted over 3,000 fake responses. Luckily for
 us, they were not very smart, and made some obvious errors, so in
 this case we can weed out the bad responses (although, sadly,
 losing at least a few real ones as well). 
 However, assuming  this party isn’t entirely stupid, it doesn’t
 bode well for future surveys as they may get at least 

Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Taylor Fausak]

Thanks for finding those anomalies, Gershom! I'm disappointed that
someone submitted bogus responses, apparently to tip the scales of Cabal
versus Stack. I intend to identify those responses and exclude them from
the results. The work you've done so far will help a great deal in
finding them.
You said that there are about 1,200 responses with demographic
information. That makes sense considering the number of submissions I
got last year. Also, there are 1,185 responses that included an answer
to at least one of the free-response questions. So perhaps whoever wrote
the script didn't bother to put an answer for those types of questions.
Unfortunately I do not have precise submission times or IP address
information about submissions. Beyond what's in the CSV, the only other
thing I have is (some) email addresses.
Fortunately I wrote a script to output all the charts and tables from
the survey responses. Once I've identified the problematic responses, I
should be able to update the script to ignore them and regenerate all
the output.

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 3:40 AM, Chris Smith wrote:
> Sadly, it looks like a Cabal/Stack thing.  Of the responses with a
> country provided, 618 of 1226 claim to use Cabal, and 948 of 1226
> claim to use Stack. Of the responses with no country, only 35 of 3868
> claim to use Cabal, while 3781 of the 3868 claim to use Stack.
> Assuming independence, you'd expect that last number to be about 50,
> meaning there are probably around 3700 fake responses generated just
> to answer "Stack".> 
> To partially answer Simon's question, the flood of no-demographics
> responses started on November 2, around the 750-response point, and
> continued unabated through the close of the survey.  And, indeed,
> looking at just the first 750 responses gives similar distributions
> to what we get by ignoring the no-demographic responses.  For
> example, of the first 750 responses, 359 claim to use Cabal, and 568
> claim to use Stack.> 
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 2:31 AM Simon Marlow
>  wrote:>> Good spot Gershom. Maybe it would be revealing 
> to look at the times
>> that responses were received for the no-demographics group?>> 
>> On Sun, 18 Nov 2018, 07:17 Gershom B >> I also noticed a number of other bizarre statistical anomolies when
>>> looking at the full results. I know this is a bit much to ask — but
>>> if you could rerun the statistics filtering out people that did not
>>> give demographic information (i.e. country of origin or education,
>>> etc) I think the results will change drastically. By all statistical
>>> logic, this should _not_ be the case, and points to a serious
>>> problem.>>> 
>>> In particular, this drops the results by a huge amount — only 1,200
>>> or so remain. However, the remaining results tend to make a lot more
>>> sense. For example — of the “no demographics” group, there are 713
>>> users who claim to develop with notepad++ but all of these say they
>>> develop on mac and linux, and none on windows — which is impossible,
>>> as notepad++ is a windows program. Further if you drop the “no
>>> demographics” group, then you find that almost everyone uses at
>>> least ghc 8.0.2, while in the “no demographics” group,  a stunning
>>> number of people claim to be on 7.8.3. Even more bizarrely, people
>>> claim to be using the 7.8 series while only having used Haskell for
>>> less than one year. And people claim to have used haskell for “one
>>> week to one month” and also to be advanced and expert users!>>> 
>>> The differences continue and defy all probability. Of the “no
>>> demographics” group, almost everyone dislikes the new release
>>> schedule. Of the “demographics” group there are answers that like
>>> it, were not aware of it, or are indifferent, but almost nobody
>>> dislikes it. There is naturally a difference in proportions of
>>> cabal/stack and hackage/stackage responses as well.>>> 
>>> There are a lot of other things I could point to as well. But,
>>> bluntly put, I think that some disaffected party or parties wrote a
>>> crude script and submitted over 3,000 fake responses. Luckily for
>>> us, they were not very smart, and made some obvious errors, so in
>>> this case we can weed out the bad responses (although, sadly, losing
>>> at least a few real ones as well).>>> 
>>> However, assuming  this party isn’t entirely stupid, it doesn’t bode
>>> well for future surveys as they may get at least slightly less dumb
>>> in the future if they decide to keep it up :-/>>> 
>>> —Gershom
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On November 18, 2018 at 1:10:31 AM, Gershom B (gersh...@gmail.com)
>>> wrote: 
 
 This is interesting, but I’m thoroughly confused. Over 2500 people
 said they took last year’s survey, but it only had roughly 1,300
 respondants? 
 
 On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 9:56 PM Taylor Fausak 
 wrote:
> Hello! It took a little longer than I expected, but I am nearly
> ready to announce the 2018 state of Haskell survey results. Some
> 

Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Chris Smith]

Sadly, it looks like a Cabal/Stack thing.  Of the responses with a country
provided, 618 of 1226 claim to use Cabal, and 948 of 1226 claim to use
Stack. Of the responses with no country, only 35 of 3868 claim to use
Cabal, while 3781 of the 3868 claim to use Stack.  Assuming independence,
you'd expect that last number to be about 50, meaning there are probably
around 3700 fake responses generated just to answer "Stack".

To partially answer Simon's question, the flood of no-demographics
responses started on November 2, around the 750-response point, and
continued unabated through the close of the survey.  And, indeed, looking
at just the first 750 responses gives similar distributions to what we get
by ignoring the no-demographic responses.  For example, of the first 750
responses, 359 claim to use Cabal, and 568 claim to use Stack.

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 2:31 AM Simon Marlow  wrote:

> Good spot Gershom. Maybe it would be revealing to look at the times that
> responses were received for the no-demographics group?
>
> On Sun, 18 Nov 2018, 07:17 Gershom B 
>> I also noticed a number of other bizarre statistical anomolies when
>> looking at the full results. I know this is a bit much to ask — but if you
>> could rerun the statistics filtering out people that did not give
>> demographic information (i.e. country of origin or education, etc) I think
>> the results will change drastically. By all statistical logic, this should
>> _not_ be the case, and points to a serious problem.
>>
>> In particular, this drops the results by a huge amount — only 1,200 or so
>> remain. However, the remaining results tend to make a lot more sense. For
>> example — of the “no demographics” group, there are 713 users who claim to
>> develop with notepad++ but all of these say they develop on mac and linux,
>> and none on windows — which is impossible, as notepad++ is a windows
>> program. Further if you drop the “no demographics” group, then you find
>> that almost everyone uses at least ghc 8.0.2, while in the “no
>> demographics” group,  a stunning number of people claim to be on 7.8.3.
>> Even more bizarrely, people claim to be using the 7.8 series while only
>> having used Haskell for less than one year. And people claim to have used
>> haskell for “one week to one month” and also to be advanced and expert
>> users!
>>
>> The differences continue and defy all probability. Of the “no
>> demographics” group, almost everyone dislikes the new release schedule. Of
>> the “demographics” group there are answers that like it, were not aware of
>> it, or are indifferent, but almost nobody dislikes it. There is naturally a
>> difference in proportions of cabal/stack and hackage/stackage responses as
>> well.
>>
>> There are a lot of other things I could point to as well. But, bluntly
>> put, I think that some disaffected party or parties wrote a crude script
>> and submitted over 3,000 fake responses. Luckily for us, they were not very
>> smart, and made some obvious errors, so in this case we can weed out the
>> bad responses (although, sadly, losing at least a few real ones as well).
>>
>> However, assuming  this party isn’t entirely stupid, it doesn’t bode well
>> for future surveys as they may get at least slightly less dumb in the
>> future if they decide to keep it up :-/
>>
>> —Gershom
>>
>>
>> On November 18, 2018 at 1:10:31 AM, Gershom B (gersh...@gmail.com) wrote:
>>
>> This is interesting, but I’m thoroughly confused. Over 2500 people said
>> they took last year’s survey, but it only had roughly 1,300 respondants?
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 9:56 PM Taylor Fausak  wrote:
>>
>>> Hello! It took a little longer than I expected, but I am nearly ready to
>>> announce the 2018 state of Haskell survey results. Some community members
>>> have expressed interest in seeing the announcement post before it's
>>> published. If you are one of those people, you can see the results here:
>>> https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/blob/7e4937e284a3068add9e9af6b585c8d0215ff360/_posts/2018-11-16-2018-state-of-haskell-survey-results.markdown
>>>
>>> If you would like to suggest changes to the announcement post, please
>>> respond to this email, send me an email directly, or reply to this pull
>>> request on GitHub: https://github.com/tfausak/tfausak.github.io/pull/148
>>>
>>> I plan on publishing the results tomorrow. Once the results are
>>> published, the post is by no means set in stone. I will happily accept
>>> suggestions from anyone at any time.
>>>
>>> Thank you!
>>> ___
>>> Haskell-community mailing list
>>> Haskell-community@haskell.org
>>> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community
>>>
>> ___
>> Haskell-community mailing list
>> Haskell-community@haskell.org
>> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community
>>
> ___
> Haskell-community mailing