Hi cscgal (and other site administrators),

I recently received a PM from cscgal asking me to fill in an online survey. I was willing to do so, but just before I pressed the Submit button, I wondered if maybe her account had been hacked by a spammer. Does anyone know if this request from cscgal is genuine or not?

Cheers,
darkagn

I ignored it. Here's why:
I don't like advertisements, so if my response will result in more ads, I won't respond

@Dani:
To be honest, I really didn't like getting this spam in my inbox. If you wanted some input you could've started a thread here or in the geek's lounge. I don't like people PM'ing me for help and I don't really care if that's a newbie or a site-admin. It's even in your own rulebook:
So pretty please, with sugar on top, don't do it again (or I'll have to add you to my ignore list... )

That's why I was thinking it was a hack and not Dani herself.

>> It seems someone is still mad about the code snippety thing ;-)

These are two very different cases, trust me. If the "code snippety thing" didn't happen, I would still have posted the exact same comment. I guess it's in my nature to disagree with people

Dani has not been hacked, it was a genuine survey request.

I do try to run these surveys once a year. The reason I send them via PM is because if I were to petition for feedback here, I'd get 10, maybe 20 responses. However, the survey let me easily assemble thousands upon thousands of responses in one place and completely organize them. Unfortunately, there were some technical difficulties, and the PMs went out to everyone with Private Messaging enabled as opposed to being friendly to the option to opt out of messages from the administration (aka the monthly newsletter) as it was in the past.

As far as choosing not to take part in them because they help us land advertisers ... that's just silly We're going to have ads either way.

If people take part in the survey, we are able to get well known, quality ads that are highly relevant and targeted to our visitors and therefore charge a premium rate to advertisers who will be able to put appropriate, targeted messages in front of the perfect audience.

If people don't take part in the survey, our advertisers won't know as much about our audience demographics and what type of products would interest our visitors and therefore we'll just have low quality Punch the Monkey style ads that are generic to all untargeted audiences and not be able to get a lot of money for them.

However, we were able to collect over 5,000 responses so far and I've especially immensely enjoyed reading the questions about "What are your favorite features of DaniWeb?" (Over 3,000 responses so far!) and "What could we do to improve DaniWeb in the future?" (Over 2,500 responses so far!)

I take feedback very seriously and was surprised to find that thousands of people all had the exact same things to say. Therefore, work is already halfway underway to address some of your major concerns Stay tuned ... that's all I'm going to say for now, but expect some big changes within the week.

I've been a member for 3 years now, but I've never gotten such a request before? I do receive the monthly newsletter however.

I know, I was trying to make a little joke, hence the smily

Yes, yes I know. And although I complained, I actually did take the survey.

Already answered those in my member of the month "interview".

Ah come on, don't be like that! You know we can't wait an entire week to find out what the changes will be? What should I complain about in this time?

I have never received that PM before either. And I ignored it because most of the questions do not apply to me and there were no appropriate answers for someone like me. I started to fill it out, but quit when I got to the part that asked for personal information.

I opened with some pondering, but the first Q was a little vague.

Company size? Am a teacher, so is that relating to staff numbers, or entire school population??

Personally ignore any ads I see in any of the forums on principle anyhow, as they have nothing to do with why I come here in the first place... sorry

The part asking for your name and email address is optional and included only to participate in the drawing for a free iPod nano. It won't be shared with anyone.