RE: Follow-up to question about getting feedback from users

["Sharon Burton" <sharon -at- anthrobytes -dot- com>]

Robert, hang on. You're over-reacting to something I'm not saying. 

Feedback is server-based and this feature does nothing more than any web
server in this instance. My website provider, for example, provides me with
reports about IP addresses, number of visitors
daily/weekly/monthly/annually, search keywords that got people to my site,
pages viewed, international location of said IP addresses, and so on. I
can't tell you who visited, after a general IP address. I certainly can't
tell you what any individual did on my website. 

Feedback is *NOT* tracking what you, Robert, as a person does and then tells
people what you are doing. It doesn't do that. It tracks what users are
doing in that it tracks what words people are searching on and where they go
from there. It generates reports about what keywords people are searching,
what pages are getting how many hits, what keywords are not returning any
results and some other things. 

It's not doing any more than any website provider is doing for the most
basic of web sites. You don't know that is when you visit a website
happening and your life is going fine, right? Well, Feedback is doing
something similar to help tech comm people see what and how the docs are
being used. 

But Feedback doesn't track what Robert is doing, it track what this user is
doing. 


sharon

Sharon Burton
MadCap Software Product Consultant
Managing your content, one topic at a time
www.anthrobytes.com
951-369-8590
IM: sharonvburton -at- yahoo -dot- com
Twitter: sharonburton


-----Original Message-----
From: robert -dot- lauriston -at- gmail -dot- com [mailto:robert -dot- lauriston -at- gmail -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Robert Lauriston
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 1:15 PM
To: sharon -at- anthrobytes -dot- com
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Follow-up to question about getting feedback from users

"The users never know it's happening and it's completely non-intrusive."

Excuse me? If an application is tracking something I do without my
permission and submitting it to the vendor or a third party, that's an
intrusion. That sort of thing has to be opt-in or it's a violation of
trust. In some places, I believe it's illegal.

How does the app submit the information it collects? If it "phones
home" using the Internet, my security software would trap it and ask
if I wanted to allow the communication. If I had not previously opted
in, I'd be on the phone to the vendor immediately.

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Sharon Burton <sharon -at- anthrobytes -dot- com>
wrote:
> It's not tracked like "we know who you are and we'll visit you at home one
> dark and cold night". It's tracked like usage statistics, searches,
keywords
> and so on. You can see what users are looking for, where they are going in
> the help to find it, what aren't they finding, where do they spend time in
> the help docs, what do they never ever look at, and that sort of stuff.
>
> The users never know it's happening and it's completely non-intrusive.
>
> If you're interested, go look at MadCap's site or call the sales desk and
> talk to them. It's an amazing product that helps you find out what your
> users are doing, as tho you were looking over their shoulder while they
use
> the help.
>
> sharon
>
> Sharon Burton
> MadCap Software Product Consultant


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