Don't ask the question if you don't want to hear the answer!

I put survey polls on www.tsquarepaintball.com. Writing survey questions is an art. So much so that there are professional survey writers that make high six figure incomes just creating surveys. Surveys can be carefully written or placed in order to insure the results will be in your favor. And the opposite is true. A poorly written or placed survey can sink a battleship!

Take my last survey question for instance: "Do you think the 20 foot rule is a good rule?"

Forty percent said "yes" and forty percent said "no"!

Now you might think I would be concerned that a full forty percent of my players appear to be unhappy with this particular T2 rule. But consider the placement of this poll. A large majority of the people who regularly check out the T2 web page are regulars who tend to be advanced or tournament players (who are a small minority of the T2 player population). Imagine how different the results would be if I placed the survey in a way that insured a majority of birthday and church group players responded!

I could have written the survey question in a different way. Instead of "Do you think the 20 foot rule is a good rule?" I could have written "Do you think the 20 foot rule is a good rule for rec (recreational) ball players?" The results would have been much different and I wouldn't have had to deal with comments like:

"NONONO - Forget the 20 foot rule. Its for wimps! If you ever play a real tournament you will hate the 20 foot rule. It should be banded forever!!!!"

or

"20 foot my a$ - there is no need to have a rec ball style field and have tourney players on it. it only lowers your (the tourney player's) standards and your effectiveness in a real tourney style or X-ball game so all you wimps, pansy's, fruits, or old school refs with that 20 foot bull leave it to the parents and mick who need it"

Comments, by the way, that remind me why I detest tournament player mentality.

Peace. Out!

Mick (wimp) Gray