I think it could be useful to collect this data, both for administrative and research purposes.
I’m unsure, currently, exactly what data should be collected by the censuses (that would be proposed and discussed here). The data that is collected, should be collected anonymously. Furthermore, participation should be entirely voluntary.
Nah, that idea can bugger right off.
Lemmy doesn’t need a “corpus of data”. Researchers can either request that people contribute, or they can bugger right off and scrape like anyone else.
Admins don’t need demographic data at all.
What makes you so certain of that?
Because it’s lemmy, not some corporate bullshit.
They might want it, but they don’t need it
For clarity, if admins do want (not necessarily need) the survey data, you would still oppose it? If so, why?
They can fuck right off.
Why? Because they don’t need to know shit about you, me, or the cookie monster as long as we follow the rules.
If I wanted some random stranger to know about me for their own purposes, I’d sign up for Facebook.
Even a voluntary survey is defeating the purpose of avoiding corporate forums. Why are they gathering the data? What are they going to do with it? How can we be assured they’re destroying the data even if we are okay with their goal? Nah. It’s a step in the wrong direction for lemmy as a whole.
I could certainly be misinterpreting, but your statement seems to imply that the census is intended to be non-anonymous and that it won’t be publicly released. For clarity, I am proposing a census whose data is anonymously collected, and will be publicly released by the admins once completed. Although, from this statement:
Perhaps you don’t trust that they’ll release the data? If so, perhaps there would be a way to publicly host the data live as it comes in?
You specify that they “don’t need to know”. I was specifically proposing a hypothetical where they only had some level of desire for the data and not a need.
Well said!