Introduction
This article is intended to analyse the results of the survey that has been conducted from October 27th to November 1st, 2009.
74 responses were received, and no filter was applied. It does not appear to have been abused in responses (Alts. ..), which could distort the results.
General remarks and caveats
- This survey is based on a personal approach and is not intended in any way to give a comprehensive overview of the SL community in a whole.
- This article and the associated comments express my own understanding of the received answers, and thus is only my opinion.
- The survey itself, the questions as well as the predefined list of possible answers, are necessarily related to my own interests, although for each subject, text boxes were provided to give free rein to your imagination (and you have a lot!).
- I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of responses in general and their constructive aspect.
- This kind of survey may be slightly deflected by the activities currently proposed in SL Sailing: some people are influenced by their current or past experience, while others have the necessary perspective, as starting from a blank sheet.
A few regrets however
- It seems that some people, in the most active of SL Sailing, have strangely “forgotten” or disdained to reply to the survey. I was amused but not really surprised to see that in a particular group, no members replied. One wonders if it is a mere coincidence, an internal slogan, or because they disagree with the approach, or is simply representative of the mentality of the group in question. Fortunately this case is isolated, and the effect is offset by the number of responses received. This survey was intended to apply to the sailors, to serve sailors, and not to serve already established entities.
- A more collaborative mode would probably permit to expand the spectrum of the survey, and to get answers more targeted or more specific on certain points. This is the first draft of this experiment, which could be conducted from time to time with a better concerted voluntary approach.
Results: The survey
3 themes were proposed, with a free text zone for comments and suggestions. The 3 themes included:
- your interests
- your opinion on competition events
- the points you would like to see improved
For each of the themes, a list of predefined responses was proposed, as well as a text zone to add more ideas. All questions were multiple-choice format with several possible answers (ie a sum of more than 100%).
74 responses were received and taken into account.
Some proposed options or terms used were probably not sufficiently explicit on some points (I will be more explicit in next chapters).
Results: Overview
To say that you love sailing is a gentle euphemism. As we shall see, you seem more drawn to spend time on your boat than on the dance floors. It seems that you expressed some inclination to go further, to see new horizons, to advance in skill, and you like to compete against your peers. Least, you are very receptive to new forms of events as we shall see.
Let’s enter into the details with next chapters, where you will find:
- a graphical overview of your answers
- your comments (in Italic)
- other ideas some of you suggested on each points (Italic)
- A few personal remarks by the author …
Chapter 1: Sailor character sketch
The community you form is pluralistic and it is great, isn’t that the proper definition of a “community”?. The graph below aims to represent a typical character sketch, with a percentage value regarding your interests in the environment of SL Sailing.
I would summarize as follows: the sailor is a bad dancer, spending more time on his boat than at the Bar in the harbor (except maybe a few I know…)… To socialize, he/she prefers to bring a few friends on his/her boat to chat, eventually raising sails to explore unknown horizons, but only if his/her competition schedule allows him/her time … Indeed, he/she has a marked tendency to want to compete with (against ?) others … As one said “any reason to raise sails are good!“.
- More than 2/3 of you enjoy the competition.
- Half enjoy sharing the pleasure of sailing with some friends, quietly
- Only 1/3 seem attracted to the “social events” offered around.
In the free comments, suggestions and additional ideas, I noticed:
“A mix of racing and other sailing events.”
Chapter 2: Competition, what else…
More cups? A wider variety? New forms of competitions? Do you have enough? …
Exhausted by racing? Certainly not, except a few “no more cups for a while please !”… As shown in the graph below, there is an almost unanimous request for more sporting events in various forms. I also received comments such as:
- “MAYBE J classic was a little long with 8 heats. the more heats you have the more it get like a ladder.“
- “J-Class must be a wonderful boat, but why every second race is related to it?”
- “I would dearly love to see more events that are more inclusive of all the racers in SL, not just a particular class of boat. Bea no offense please and also none intended to Jane, but the past few months the J-Cup has (and yes maybe just in my perception) taken over a great deal of the racing in SL. For me Saturdays are pretty much a wash, and the racing is limited to roughly 15 sailors that have been chosen for the racing that day. Other events, weekly long ocean races etc have fallen by the wayside or have converted over to J-Cup pre-races. Not this not a criticism of the RDs (most being friends of mine) but just what has happened.”
- “Please make the progress of the event smoother. “
I believe those remarks are not related with the Trudeau’s boat neither the J-Classic event. If I had ran this survey during the World Fizz Cup, I guess I had received comments like “No more Fizz Races please”, since the Fizz fanatics invaded the grid for practice at this time. But I think this is good information for Cup’s organizers (including myself), there is a risk of “overdose”. Maybe people involved in the committee of such events could think about a new way to schedule the races.
I think we can speak of a clear trend here …Well, you like the competition … But how? Which one, which form? ….
…to be continued …
Coming next in Part II:
The next section of this paper will detail your expectations for competition, and we will also see the responses to the question “What would you like to see improved?” Many constructive suggestions were provided for these aspects. Stay tuned!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
thanks for running this survey Bea. It gives one very promising outcome: while you may claim there is a group of people that complain about an ‘overdose’ in J-class ro any other boat during a cup, this should also mean that there is room for events to do besides a cup, to accomodate the people who want to race in other boats.
Great news! I have been waiting to meet fellow ‘alternative boat classes’ racers for a while. Who steps up now to organise those races?
Chapter II:
I was one of the maybe 2 ppl who made up the 4% saying we have enough races. I can’t understand how ppl want even more races if they mostly don’t even bother to show up for the existing ones?
And also, like stressed out very often and like everyone should know by now: SL lives from usergenerated input. We don’t have any moderators or game masters to provide us with a game plan or such. So if you want more races/events/activities – go start them yourself! How come there is only a small handful of dedicated RDs, party hosts, event organizers, and yet ppl want to see more action???
Can’t you see the discrepancy?
If of those 96% maybe 50% would move their asses and start to organize and host 1 weekly activity it would already help. A lot. But since most of you guys prefer to sit on your hands why don’t you just shut the fuck up and be ashamed instead of calling for more?????
PS: Before any of you start asking: my personal plate is rather full, thank you. I run 3 weekly events, could easily run a fourth and have ideas for roundabout a dozen more. If my SL would be only about sailing and I could spend 24 hours in world every day I would even feel tempted to do more. But as it is now I think it would be in order for YOU to do something by YOURSELF!!!
…Crosspost from org, cause it may add also to points raised up in the comments here:
I have also filled in the form of this survey, cause I liked to do so, just for fun. What I just want to add is that the results may show the moods and desires of the ppl who are active in the forums and who may hang around the racelines of the various yacht clubs around Blake Sea, but I met really a lot of sailors out there, who do not care about this forum or any other and which names one never read in race results, and which Avas one never see hovering around a race line, and these ppl are also SL sailors, there are lots of them out there all over the grid. For example reading that result, that 96% want more competitions and challenges, while 4% are saying that there is already enough of them… well, that may be the mood in the group of ppl who are active in this forum and others, but all over the grid I have experienced another reality, there are much more than just 4% who simply don´t miss competition, who simply don´t care about racing and so on.
I wish ppl having fun with planning new race events, inspired by results of this survey, pls enjoy to do so, it´s about having fun, I am just saying that I can´t regard this survey as representative for all SL sailors out there, cause I have experienced something different.
So the more reasonable title of this could be “SL sailor´s wishlist of this forum, of org/com,….”… or anything like that.
Thank you Bea Woodget, you seem to have spent a great deal of time and effort into this survey and for that you have my sincere admiration and regards. As to your regrets I have no idea who you are referring to but since I didn’t respond to your survey let me tell you one reasons besides being busy with the boat show, I did not respond.
First of all, I do not accept and will not acknowledge slsailing.com as an “official” or “unofficial” publication for all sailors in second life. There are many blogs about sailing in second life – Tradewinds Yacht Club has their own as well. I personally don’t read this publication on a regular basis – maybe twice this year. I personally have a very high regard for you as an individual but have had serious problems with past editors of this publication. The reporting. In the past, has been unbalanced, slanted and exclusionary nor did they ever show any interest in welcoming a balanced presentation.
SLSailing has a right to say whatever it wants and hold its editorial opinions in whatever fashion it wants but having a survey publish in an opinionated and biest publication instead of the public forum (which is supposed to be more neutral) sends up immediate red flags to me.
However, I realize, you did the survey, and you did the work so why not publish this in your publication –I don’t have a problem with that. But its Bea’s survey for SLsailing.com this isn’t a community wide survey.
I think what is shows is a very good survey for the people that inhabit the USS and their mentality. I do not think it reflects the feelings of the more independent minded sailors. In other words, it’s a piece of very good reporting on a very unscientific survey weighted towards the people that read this publication.
Under your editorship – I assume your editor now – I have great faith that this publication has probably improved a 1,000 times over from its pathetic history that this publication has shown to me.
Having read the your article here, I give you kudos for a beautifully put together synopses of the respondents. And I applaud your efforts — if you are truly attempting to be more neutral now, I would welcome those efforts
As I already answered to Manul (on .org) about the scope of this survey, I won’t come back on that point .
@ Tasha : Let me add some details. Yes, most of the YCs have their own blog or web site, I have mine also. Some are club centric, or dedicated to a particular language (german, french, japanese…), some others focalise and/or promote some technical choices, and I am happy this way: each of us is free to read the site which best suits his own tastes and tendancies. I think none of these blogs, neither .COM, pretends to be a sort of “official” or “unofficial” publication for all sailors. If I have choosen .COM to publish the results of my survey, it is simply because the format/features for editing (word processing) is much better and powerful than a basic forum (I have however posted a link to this article on .org) and also because I think (but we may disagree on that, np), that SLSailing.com is more “open”, less “centric” than the other publications I know.
Also, this is very important for me, I can assure you that this is not “Bea’survey for SLSailing.com”, but Bea’s survey for all of you, with the limitations and caveats I wrote in the introduction of this article and on .org. Least, I am not “Editor” of .COM, I simply have the right to write some articles from time to time, in a relation based on trust. In consequence, I am not “attempting to be more neutral now”, I think I always have been, as I am independant and I think I proove it in the past (if not, please tell me again and louder).
I wanted to reply to your comment just to restablish the truth, and to tell you I agree with the rest of your remark. Ty Tasha.
Oh btw, have you seen the TYC area on .ORG has re-open now since our last posts on the subject?