@carlgnash Thank you for your thoughts on the project. I considered options similar to what you said when creating this survey but found that an open survey will work much better over the long run. The main reason is one of the core resources provided by the Steem blockchain in the form of its proof of brain abilities. While this admittedly doesn't completely shine through yet on this first iteration I sincerely believe we'll see continued progress in future surveys. Here's why:
By allowing comments unfiltered it allows the community to ask whatever it, as a whole, feels is most important. If I were to provide an editorial outlook to the questions then I would be continuing what I feel is a huge issue with what we've become used to from traditional surveys. I would be at best indirectly applying my perspectives and desires for the questions and thus making my own voice more prominent than that of the rest of the community. This doesn't mean the questions can't come in the form you presented but it will only happen if the community derives this as valuable.
This is where Steem's ability to derive a proof of brain shines. By applying the limit of seeking only the top 25 questions for response I allow the community to determine if a chosen question is valuable enough to be included. Unfortunately there was limited knowledge of the survey, despite paying to promote the initial post to one of the top posts on trending, so there was a limited community to provide editorial access to the questions. This will change over time and as more people begin to follow the survey's progress. As awareness grows we should see better questions voted to the top of the survey while less valuable questions will fall below the top 25 inclusion line and thus not be directly asked of the witnesses.
I will certainly say that I feel I made a mistake in this first iteration by not limiting the inclusion number to a lower level. I failed to take into consideration that the account's growth would be limited and thus the potential for proof of brain would not fully suffice yet. I mistakenly assumed that my paid promotion would rally enough users to create a level of proof of brain worthy of this cause. That is where I hope you, any many more Steemians, will partner with me to create questions worthy of the cause while curating the best questions to the top of the survey.
There are things decentralization makes sense for and things it doesn't. IMO you would be wise to work with someone knowledgeable about survey design and to brainstorm with some people knowledgeable about witnesses to construct the base survey structure, and ask the community for maybe a couple of open ended questions.
It is admirable that some witnesses are taking the time to answer the questions in their current iteration, but this needs a lot of work. Even if you get better questions from the community, you will never end up with something as useful as a well designed survey gathering quantitative data on these topics. But again, my humble opinion, etc. Sorry I was snarky on my initial response. But honestly, I think you kind of blew it by including some of those questions without exercising editorial control.
Good luck! - Carl
No offense taken at all @carlgnash! I enjoyed reading your thoughts and certainly think they would help provide more quantitative data but don't feel that is the mission of this project. I'm more interested in expanding the ideas of each witness and allowing the community to democratically ask what they feel is the most important questions. There are certainly drawbacks to this method but my belief is that the benefit of openness outweighs the costs.
I do sincerely hope to partner with you in future iterations though! I hope you will review version 2's questions next quarter and help move the most important questions to the top. If you find questions that are not quite to what you'd consider par I hope you will submit a new comment with a better formatted question. This will allow the project to have editorial abilities while still keeping the decentralized mission alive.