Mood affiliation questions could give a kind of baseline. Offhand, “On a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being very unpleasant, 4 being neutral, and 7 being very pleasant, how do you feel about engaging with commenters on LW?” seems serviceable? If I went down this path for my own curiosity though, it would be in pursuit of something more specific about figuring out what the expectations or norms are.
I’m sort of suspicious that “in the last year, I have written less/the same number of/more LW posts” wouldn’t get a useful answer because the selection effect has already happened. I’m even assuming I reach people in the first place! Like, if you went from writing a post a month in 2021 to writing zero posts in 2022, and then also had zero posts in 2023, you’d answer “the same number of LW posts.” Asking over a longer timespan works would work, asking people who used to write posts and now write less why they stopped could work. Though for the second, I’d be tempted to put the question somewhere else in the census so as to not blatantly prime people. (Does priming work like that? Replication crisis I think suggests no.)
At least one question about crossposts seems worthwhile but I don’t know what to ask. “If you crosspost, about how hard was it to set that up?” But then we’re trying to strain information out of a small subset of users. “Do you write elsewhere?” and “Do you crosspost to LW?” perhaps catches more.
Mood affiliation questions could give a kind of baseline. Offhand, “On a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being very unpleasant, 4 being neutral, and 7 being very pleasant, how do you feel about engaging with commenters on LW?” seems serviceable? If I went down this path for my own curiosity though, it would be in pursuit of something more specific about figuring out what the expectations or norms are.
I’m sort of suspicious that “in the last year, I have written less/the same number of/more LW posts” wouldn’t get a useful answer because the selection effect has already happened. I’m even assuming I reach people in the first place! Like, if you went from writing a post a month in 2021 to writing zero posts in 2022, and then also had zero posts in 2023, you’d answer “the same number of LW posts.” Asking over a longer timespan works would work, asking people who used to write posts and now write less why they stopped could work. Though for the second, I’d be tempted to put the question somewhere else in the census so as to not blatantly prime people. (Does priming work like that? Replication crisis I think suggests no.)
At least one question about crossposts seems worthwhile but I don’t know what to ask. “If you crosspost, about how hard was it to set that up?” But then we’re trying to strain information out of a small subset of users. “Do you write elsewhere?” and “Do you crosspost to LW?” perhaps catches more.
I like the train of thought!