how will you ensure that grievances held by our users are fairly sampled? This current methodology is sure to only capture feedback from a sufficiently motivated part of the forum-going community, which has a noted anti-comments bias.
This current methodology which I never elaborated on? I have sent PMs and commented on a number of user's walls, and plan to PM more to help get larger samples of comment-focused users.
Via the required section "Which section(s) of the site do you contribute to / use the most?", I am able to learn of the exact bias. Add in the fact that due to fancy mod powers by some fellow moderators, we can estimate that forum activity is somewhere around 5% of the site commenting activity, with comments making up the rest. If I have a large enough sample of commentators, and I believe I will, I simply weight the results to give the "true" nature of the results.
Unfortunately, an issue I cannot think of a reasonable way to get around is the number of accounts that only lurk, and those that make an account, do one thing, and then leave, never coming back. Depending on how many clicks they give KYM, they may or may not be significant to the issue at hand.
However, as I said, I don't think there's a reasonable way to get around this. Thus, I believe my methodology is, at worst workable, at best excellent for the aforementioned limitations. Furthermore, the users whom are most affected by site issues are those that stick around longer and do more.
by what means will you enforce regreatification? “The mods will take a look at it” is not particularly reassuring.
I cannot promise anything. However, the admins job is to keep KYM running and, ideally, get as much revenue as they can without being utter and total sellouts, ruining the purpose of the site. Improving the site necessarily helps towards this goal. It would, likely, decrease the number of users who leave KYM, and encourage more traffic.
As moderators, admins are a bit more likely to listen up and talk to us. The moderator-admin rift is still a bit of a thing, but it's not like they'll never ever respond to us. A list of places people want things improved is likely to draw their attention.
What will you do in the very likely case that detailed feedback turns out to be too little and/or too discordant to confidently act upon?
In the case of too little, I don't think that'll be an issue. I'm seeing wonderful results in a short period of time already, and I can PM more users to get a larger sample size (this was approved my a number of other moderators already, so unless a large number comes up saying they disagree or the admins step in saying to stop it, I can do this for quite a while).
In the case of discordant feedback – I'm not seeing much of that thus far. A couple ideas have already been mentioned several times over.
Will there be follow-up surveys to solicit more suggestions in regards to poorly-rated areas of the site?
I do not have plans to do so, but that does not mean there will be none. My current plan doesn't include it, but if it works to even a small degree I would be motivated to look into doing more.
How will you handle the inevitable suggestions of things outside of your control as a group of glorified volunteers working for mostly disengaged administrators?
Something along the lines of telling people "sorry, you're out of luck."
We aren't demigods. If you expected to go into this poll and have all everything you didn't like about the site fixed, you need to re-evaluate.
I believe the admins will have motivation to listen to the results, and there are areas moderators alone can potentially work on. The entire thing isn't in vain because some suggestions might not end up being responded to.