In 2022, I was advised to make the privacy state of answers clear (that is, what would be released in the public dataset and what wouldn’t be) so I put three options for the only required question on the census.
Release the responses, including the row
Use the responses when I summarize the census, but don’t release the row
Don’t use the responses to summarize, and don’t release the row.
Note that it’s a required radio select: you have to pick an answer before it will let you hit submit. This year I removed 3, because I wasn’t going to do anything with those responses so why bother collecting them.
The main argument I see for bringing 3 back is to say I won’t use the responses to summarize and won’t release the row, but will show it to the LessWrong team. That gives people a way to potentially exert a little influence on what the devs are up to without showing up in the public statistics. I don’t think that’s a strong argument though since there’s lots of ways to make the LW team aware of feedback.
In 2022, I was advised to make the privacy state of answers clear (that is, what would be released in the public dataset and what wouldn’t be) so I put three options for the only required question on the census.
Release the responses, including the row
Use the responses when I summarize the census, but don’t release the row
Don’t use the responses to summarize, and don’t release the row.
Note that it’s a required radio select: you have to pick an answer before it will let you hit submit. This year I removed 3, because I wasn’t going to do anything with those responses so why bother collecting them.
The main argument I see for bringing 3 back is to say I won’t use the responses to summarize and won’t release the row, but will show it to the LessWrong team. That gives people a way to potentially exert a little influence on what the devs are up to without showing up in the public statistics. I don’t think that’s a strong argument though since there’s lots of ways to make the LW team aware of feedback.
(Correction, by “in 2022” I mean “for the 2022 census,” which actually happened in early 2023.)