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Re: Wolfram | Alpha: Acres per square mile? (oddities)

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg101269] Re: Wolfram | Alpha: Acres per square mile? (oddities)
• From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
• Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:30:53 -0400 (EDT)
• Organization: Stanford University
• References: <h27fg7$coc$1@smc.vnet.net>

In article <h27fg7$coc$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
 Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> On 6/27/09 at 6:02 AM, siegman at stanford.edu (AES) wrote:

> >Doesn't WIA, with all its resources, have someone on staff whose
> >responsibility it is to do the same; make informed judgments on
> >which if any posts seem useful and important enough for WIA to
> >consider further; and then slapshot-forward those posts to the right
> >people within WIA?
> 
> I believe it has been pointed out Wolfram doesn't have anyone
> assigned to scan posts here. Simply put, posts here are not
> official bug reports for either Wolfram|Alpha or Mathematica.
> 
> >If WIA doesn't do that on its own initiative, well, I'm not going to
> >go out of my way to do what you suggest -- especially knowing my own
> >limited knowledge and understanding as to what contributions might
> >be important or of interest to them.
> 
> What do you see as going "out of your way"? There is an input
> box and send button right on the page that returns results.
> Surely, it is no more effort to type comments in that box which
> ensures they will be looked at by those interested in fixing
> bugs than to make a post here.

Take your points, stick by mine.  I'm spending my time participating in 
c.s-s.m.m, not serving as a bug reporter for WIA; and am quite often not 
sure whether what I'm commenting on is a bug or inadequate understanding 
on my part.

If WIA were to assign some knowledgeable staff member to do a quick scan 
of c.s-s.m.m every morning, looking not only for bugs but other feedback 
on glitches, misunderstandings, confusions on documentation, and the 
like -- well, I think that would be useful feedback to WIA; would show 
whether a problem of any type was widespread; and would show whether 
there were multiple or threaded reports on a problem.  

Some companies spend big bucks on surveys, focus groups, product testing 
exercises to get precisely that kind of feedback.  If WIA wants to 
ignore this free source of such info (and from a generally knowledgeable 
group of users) . . .  well, I think that as a company they make a fair 
number of other odd decisions also . . .

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Re: Wolfram | Alpha: Acres per square mile? (oddities)
    • From: Murray Eisenberg <murray@math.umass.edu>