Survey begging.

[Dason]

Do we have a set policy on what to do when first time posters just post links asking for people to take their survey?

Example: http://www.talkstats.com/showthread.php/23361-Stats-Project

This particular case isn't too bad but we see this enough that I was just wondering. Should we tolerate this from first time users? Should the links be deleted? Is there anything in the forum rules that would prohibit this type of behavior? Should there be?

I guess I'm looking for:
1) An opinion from quark since he is the admin.
2) Opinions from other mods on how you handle this
3) Opinions from everybody else about what you think should be done.

Data does need to be collected for surveys and school projects - I understand this. But asking people at a stats forum to take your survey isn't a very good random sample and it straddles the line between actual content and spam.

 

[trinker]

It is annoying to some extent but my thoughts are that we're here to get people interested in stats. I got the impression from this poster that he's a high school student so maybe this would be a good time to talk to them about sampling and give them direction. Also at that age they may think this is a stats project let me search for stats websites and post my survey there. I think we can take negatives like this and turn them into a positive. That being said if this becomes overwhelming I'd then have a change of opinion.

I was annoyed but still took the survey because I'm an cynical optimist and thought who knows maybe this kid will be the next Denny Borsboom.