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docs: Add a section on surveys to the researcher guidelines

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It is common for university researchers to want to poll the community with
online surveys, but that approach distracts developers while yielding
little in the way of useful data.  Encourage alternatives instead.

Co-developed-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/87il9v7u55.fsf@meer.lwn.net
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Jonathan Corbet 2023-08-03 14:23:02 -06:00
parent ec62a746b6
commit ad93f083bd
1 changed files with 27 additions and 0 deletions
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27
Documentation/process/researcher-guidelines.rst
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@ -44,6 +44,33 @@ explicit agreement of, and full disclosure to, the individual developers
involved. Developers cannot be interacted with/experimented on without
consent; this, too, is standard research ethics.
Surveys
=======
Research often takes the form of surveys sent to maintainers or
contributors. As a general rule, though, the kernel community derives
little value from these surveys. The kernel development process works
because every developer benefits from their participation, even working
with others who have different goals. Responding to a survey, though, is a
one-way demand placed on busy developers with no corresponding benefit to
themselves or to the kernel community as a whole. For this reason, this
method of research is discouraged.
Kernel community members already receive far too much email and are likely
to perceive survey requests as just another demand on their time. Sending
such requests deprives the community of valuable contributor time and is
unlikely to yield a statistically useful response.
As an alternative, researchers should consider attending developer events,
hosting sessions where the research project and its benefits to the
participants can be explained, and interacting directly with the community
there. The information received will be far richer than that obtained from
an email survey, and the community will gain from the ability to learn from
your insights as well.
Patches
=======
To help clarify: sending patches to developers *is* interacting
with them, but they have already consented to receiving *good faith
contributions*. Sending intentionally flawed/vulnerable patches or