[WikiEN-l] Worst. Survey. Ever.

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 11:47 AM, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
> Come on, every bank statement of yours will tell you the ISO code of
> the currency your account is in, you will probably find it on every
> magazine that you read and so on and so on. Please don't tell me that
> this is such an academic thing...

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 7:02 PM, Elias Friedman <elipongo at gmail.com> wrote:
> You've never gotten anything from  Canada and had to compare Canadian
> dollars (CAD) to United States dollars (USD)? Also the "$" symbol stands for
> pesos as well as dollars- and a few other currencies too (check the [[$]]
> article). The survey is intended for a worldwide audience- you can't expect
> them to cater to just us from the US.

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 5:41 PM, Martijn Hoekstra
<martijnhoekstra at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know about the creators of the survey, but to tell you the
> truth, I had never expected that people don't know the ISO code of
> their own currency. It's something I assume that they never expected
> it either, how common or uncommon it might be.

People often complain about Americocentrism, but Eurocentrism can be
just as much of a problem.  America has close to four times the
population of the most populous European nation, and 18 times the land
area of the largest Western European nation.  We're a lot more
self-sufficient than any European nation, and *definitely* more than a
small place like the Netherlands.  Most Americans do not have frequent
contact with anything relating to other countries.  Most rarely buy
things from Canada or Mexico.  Most rarely travel to Canada or Mexico.
 Most rarely speak to people from Canada or Mexico, except immigrants
and tourists who typically do their best to accommodate themselves to
us.

Most Americans have little to no *reason* to know about non-American
currency, units of measurement, languages, systems of writing, ideas,
cultural concepts, or anything else.  This is not because we're
arrogant and think we're better than everyone else (although some of
us do, of course).  It's because of simple geographic and demographic
reality.  Most Europeans are living with foreigners close by on all
sides.  Americans are not.  This fact needs to be respected by
Europeans who are trying to make an international product, just as
much as Americans doing the same need to do things as Europeans
expect.

Put simply, if you're going to conduct a survey that includes a lot of
Americans, you'd better make sure you have plenty of American input in
the survey creation.  You can't test it on Dutch people and expect
that a simple translation will work fine for Americans.  Not that I'm
saying that's what happened here, but "I wouldn't have expected them
to think of it" isn't an excuse for a serious survey.  They're not
supposed to *think* of it, they're supposed to *observe* it during
usability testing.

I definitely know my currency code -- but only because I've read a lot
of Wikipedia articles and it's come up in a few, probably due to
British or other non-American influence.  I've never seen it anywhere
within America.  It might have been on plane tickets, but I think I've
taken four plane flights in my life, and only two were international.
I wouldn't expect almost any American to be able to easily come up
with "USD".  Likewise I doubt almost any American would be sure of his
language code, and the country code might pose no problem only because
it's so obvious.

(Disclaimer: Yes, some Americans have plenty of contact with people
from other countries, and obviously there are many exceptions to all
of the above.  If you're reading this, ipso facto you're most likely
accustomed to reading a fairly international mailing list and using a
fairly international encyclopedia, so the above might not apply to you
personally.  It doesn't apply to me, in fact: I had no problem with
the Eurocentrism issues in the survey, although all the other problems
did really annoy me.)