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Take our reader survey!

May 5, 2007 at 4:32 AM

Greetings, everyone!

This is just a little pitch to ask you to Please take our reader survey!

The more we know about our readership, the more fun stuff we can offer on Violinist.com. This survey is part of the Blog Reader Project. So come tell us about yourself!

And as always, if you have ideas and suggestions for Violinist.com, please feel free to e-mail me.

Laurie

Finished the survey, I'm the agnostic green, who just drinks red wine! :)

Laurie, what about these two suggestions for violinist.com:

1.) a monthly feature like "20 questions to Mr. Chudnovsky or Mr. Zimmermann or Ms. Barton-Pine"

Once a violinist is contacted and agreed to answer those little 20 questions, we start a thread and gather questions. You as the editor sort out the best 20 and send them to the artist. After he/she completed it, it can be published. It's the best and cheapest PR an artist can dream of.
To make the effort for you as small as possible, someone else can make the contact and the coordination.

Why should a star refuse to take part? Would be fun. :)

2.) A list of great violinists providing the following:

* contact details (agency, some have mySpace etc.)
* links to recordings, writings, interviews
* schedule
* trivia

The list would be peu à peu completed, Joseph Hassid e. g. could get the most extensive biography on the web with all the informations we could gather.

Laurie, I just took the survey, but now I wonder why. Why is it important for you and Robert as owners of this site?
The beer question was very difficult for me in Australia as all the beers listed were ones you can't buy here.
Oliver
In honor of Derby Day, I would like to point out that the survey listed "Maker Mark" bourbon. It is actually "Maker's Mark".
Argh, I tried...but I did half of it last night, then decided to finish it later, and now when I click on the link it tells me I've already done it. For the record I'm a Unitarian/agnostic, political affiliation Independent, I prefer cats to dogs, I regularly read about four other blogs in addition to v.com (mostly random guys from Budapest sounding off on whatever they feel like) I blog for the purposes of sharing interesting ideas/factoids/anecdotes (and just generally sounding off on whatever I feel like), I enjoy artsy European films but am also somewhat addicted to "Desperate Housewives", "Myth Busters" and "Lost", my favorite actor is Adrien Brody and favorite actress is probably still Ingrid Bergman, as for my "race or ethnicity", I'm of Irish-English-Hungarian and possibly even a bit of Italian ancestry (and if anyone asks, I'm Hungarian, but you all know that already), I believe there IS a difference between classical and folk music, I'm sick and tired of President Bush and Barack Obama is my favorite of the current crop of candidates.

That seems to pretty much cover what they were after, hope it helps... :)

Mischa, I like those ideas. :)
I like those ideas, too! BTW, Mischa, do I know you from Encore?

I just finished the survey and mainly noted how interested they were in my drinking habits. And how limited their range was for people in the alcohol business. I take it that they ARE in the alcohol business on some level given the proportion of questions dedicated to booze.

Exactly. What does booze have to do with V.Com? Is this really a survey for someone else's marketing?
Mischa, Those are great ideas!

Let me ask Robert to answer to these questions about the survey.

Is Ilya Gringolts gone from v.com for good? He might be a good candidate for a 20-questions thing, but not if he's not around... :(
Anne, the queen of England's here this year. Her Majesty the royal Queen of England. And she's just regular folks!
i read several questions pertaining to your 'reader survey'...to me,these questions seem inappropiate to your cause for establishing the web site...
I know what you mean! I skipped the question about have you ever posed nude for an art class.
Hey Jim, I was at Keeneland back in the mid 80's when the Queen visited.
(Apologies for digression).
The old girl got her money's worth this time. From next to last, straight up the rail.
I don't remember seeing the question about having ever posed nude for an art class...

I suppose a few of those questions help with demographics for advertising. For example, if 90% of violinist.com members drank vodka daily, then it might interest vodka makers to put some advertisements up on the page.

Though I wonder what types of ads we'd be getting if 90% of the readership had posed nude...

There was something on the radio the other day about people lying in surveys. I think they had one with questions designed to get a handle on how much they lie. The results showed lots of lying. For example according to the results, 30% of Americans had posed nude for an art class. One out of three people :)
Warning: If you quit the survey and try to come back to it, even before you've answered a single question, you will be unable to take it at all (my situation). You will instead get an erroneous message saying you had already completed the survey. Obviously they didn't completely think this situation through. In any event I will never get to share my drinking and nude posing preferences, apparently, for whatever good that might do v.com. I do like the "ask a violinist" idea, BTW.
Eric, the same thing happened to me too!

I also wonder how can they identify me? I thought the process is anonymous. I really don’t feel comfortable to disclose so much sensitive personal information in a survey that someone I don’t know has the access to the information that can link to my ID.

It sets a cookie. Go to Tools-internet options-delete cookies and then you can take it.
It's a survey that is being used by several hundred websites, mostly ones on the BlogsAds network. So the questions include a whole bunch of stuff that we don't really need for V.com, but that other sites in the survey group do.

We will probably do another survey at a later date with more music-related questions, but this is the easiest way for us to get comprehensive demographic information about the readers of the site, which we need to provide to the site's sponsors. Because without sponsors, there is no site.

Thanks for explaining why you posted the survey.
Hi Emil,

unfortunately not, I never attended ENCORE. And even if I'd have attended there, you wouldn't recognize me: when I studied violin, I played in a completely different league. I played average Bundesliga-Niveau, not champions league. :)

That's weird. I thought I took the survey but there were no questions about drinking-- just endless questions about what time of day I read various media and in what order. Maybe I quit it too soon by accident? Or maybe it thinks my drinking habits are not that interesting. I suppose now when I log in the banner ads will all be for Atlantic Monthly, but others are going to get banner ads for exotic beers.
I think the questions you get depend on how you answered the previous questions. ie. They asked me how often I drank alcohol and I answered in the negative. No more questions about that. Jim must of said he liked art. Or nudity. Not sure I want to know. ;)
I'm guessing that if you clear your cookies and temporary files, you (the people who were unable to do the survey after leaving it incomplete) will be able to try it again.
Thanks for the tip on the cookies--the survey just worked! I never got the question about posing nude... :( did get all the drinking questions though, LOL
What about the question: "Do you believe in ufo's?" !!! Where the heck did THAT come from? Are we going to be beseiged with ads using aliens to sell eudoxa strings? "Out of this world!" ;-)
Laurie, thanks for the explanation. My work in privacy law makes me sensitive about disclosure of sensitive personal information, but now it looks that certain information stored in the cookie identified me as a previous survey participant, not that the information disclosed in survey will be linked to identifiable personal information. Right?

Of course we all want to support V.com – what can we do without it!

I deleted the cookie and went in and did it again, and this time it worked. Thanks Jim!

Likewise, I deleted the cookies (there were 3) and it worked. Thanks for the tip (above).