Anonymous feedback mechanism - research and requirements

[iteles]

As discussed in dwyl/hq#183, we are aiming to investigate/build an anonymous feedback mechanism.

It will need to guarantee anonymity for the sender of the feedback while still allowing a response to be sent to that person, without ever revealing their email address.

[jackcarlisle]

I have a couple of questions about the implementation of the platform:

1. How do we want to make questions available for feedback? For example do we want to be able to share a link and then anyone (even people who have not registered with the platform) can give feedback? Or do we want to have two types of user, an Organisation and a Member that feedback can be grouped into? Or both?

2. Do we want to give our users the opportunity to give their own un-prompted feedback without having to reply to a question? Should users be able to raise questions for feedback within a given organisation for feedback or should this be left to the organisation itself?

3. What form should the feedback take? Should it be a free-text discussion or should it be composed of answers to pre-determined questions like a survey?

4. Should users have the ability to answer more than once on a given feedback question? Or should we impose a limit so that results aren't skewed?

5. What measures should we put in place to ensure that the service doesn't get abused? Is there a way to prevent mis-use when we can't hold someone directly accountable for what they do? An example of this would be spam -> How do we prevent Spam? #4

[nelsonic]

@jackcarlisle great questions. I will answer them in order:
(please update ur Q-list to be an ordered list so it's clear which question my answer refers to)

1. Initially we don't need to ask people questions, just: "Have you spotted something we can improve? Please use this form to post anonymous feedback so we can get better! Thanks!"
   (later on we can construct feedback surveys which ask people specific questions but for now we just want people to be able to "vent" in a confidential way)
   1.b. Anyone can access the /feedback page regardless of their membership of dwyl. For now there is no "type" of user there's just a form on a page.
2. The first iteration is 100% Free Text. We need to give people complete freedom to express anything that is on their mind without any constraints or "leading questions".
   (note: we can/will refine this once we've launched it!)
3. The feedback will be "free text" for now. (we can build it out later. but for now let people say what ever is on their mind!)
4. Answering more than one question? not applicable for the first version. and probably not applicable for the second either. (but good question!)
5. Preventing Mis-use should only be considered once we have use. We should have guidelines like: don't write offensive things and don't attack people personally. but beyond that, we want to hear people's "unfiltered" feedback. As soon as there is any "spam" or "abuse" we will solve that problem. see: How do we prevent Spam? #4

More Detail:

• The feedback app will be hosted on dwyl.com/feedback (we will make it a "sub app" of our new Phoenix-based website ... for now just build it as a stand-alone app we can integrate later!) anyone else can deploy the app to heroku e.g: give-us-feedback.herokuapp.com.
• For now the purpose is to let anyone leave feedback regardless of if they are a member of dwyl or not. but in order to do that we need a couple of safeguards. As soon as we get a single spam submission we will need to act on it. see: How do we prevent Spam? #4
• Once someone posts a piece of feedback we give them a "permalink" url they can come back to.
  e.g: dwyl.com/feedback/123 this will be the "show" view that lists a few things about the submission:
  • Date/time when the submission was posted
  • Date/time of any response from anyone else who read it.
• Below the url we will have another form with an input for an email address and a submit button.
  see: Receive updates on your feedback #5

[jackcarlisle]

@nelsonic that's great thank you! I think further action hangs on the outcome of the discussion in #2 because it will impact the flow and layout of the initial application a lot. I'll continue with research into existing applications.