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ch:qs:here

Namespace for RegenCHOICE → qs for question structure

A sub-namespace of RegenCHOICE.

Here are the RegenCHOICE question structures

  • OPTSQ — a list of options, multiple choice style
  • LEVLQ — like OPTSQ but ordered
  • FACTQ — a factual question with answer Yes or No or Don't Know
  • LIKSQ — a classic “Likert” scale question
  • AORBQ — a preference between two alternatives
  • TRIPQ — like AORBQ but with the mid-point named
  • RANGQ — a question with a numeric range

General points

Questions in RegenCHOICE must not have text as answers. The main question structure is the multiple-choice questions, but there are a few others, so here are the question structures currently envisaged. These structures may be changed in the future, so to leave that possibility open, without necessarily needing to change the rest of the software, they will be stored in a general store that is distributed and kept in synch.

For a rough general data specification, see the question-info. The differing details for each question structure are noted in the page for that structure.

Question dependency

While there are relatively few questions, and they are all centrally defined, care can be taken that they are all independent of each other. However, in a fuller, open-ended range of questions, it is easy to imagine some questions only being relevant or appropriate if some other question is answered in a certain way. This point will be explored in a separate page, later.

Two special cases: place and time

Location

Location isn't the same kind of thing as the other questions. The way that location is envisage to be handled is roughly this. Users do not have a single location, as there are many enquiries that would not be served by that, and most people do not stay in one place all the time. Instead, each enquiry can have its own location.

  • Enquiry location can be given as a political drop-down list, as nearly all web users will be familiar with that. This can be used in conjunction with the following.
  • Enquiry location can be given as a point on a map
  • have the option of giving a place to any enquiry, or specifying that it is “nowhere”
  • can optionally specify the maximum distance another party may be away from the place of the enquiry, or ask for “anywhere”

“Nowhere” means that neither party will be able to use or see the other party's location.

Time window

This may not appear in a first prototype, or a minimal viable product. However in the same spirit as other questions, it may be extremely useful to specify one or more time windows for an enquiry. Among other options, there could be these.

  • Start and/or finish dates, which could be multiple, for multiple time windows – essentially, availability
  • Weekly schedule times, because many people's calendars are organised on repeated weekly events
  • Proportional engagement, e.g. how many hours per week
  • Minimum and maximum cumulative times

Space and time together

This could be, for instance, derived from a recognisable event that implies a place and a time

  • a music festival
  • any other public event with physical presence
  • a timetabled journey using some public or open transport would allow people to have interesting conversations while travelling, with the (moving) place and times being specified by the relevant transport timetable.

How to implement these without any ambiguity is unclear.

But even without the help of specifying a particular known event, space and time can be used together. This capability is quite complex and quite powerful – not hard to compute, but hard to match without computational assistance. It may not be important to many people and many kinds of enquiry, but in line with the RegenCHOICE philosophy, it could be provided for those to whom it is important.

Commentary


see also

ch/qs/here.txt · Last modified: 2024-11-05 19:23 by simongrant