zlacker

>>dale_h+(OP)
Pointy-haired boss: "According to the anonymous online employee survey, you don't trust management. What's up with that?"

<Dilbert looks back with a blank stare>

---

Godspeed Scott. Thank you for all the laughs.

>>CSMast+hf
I actually had this happen back in high school. The teacher gave us “anonymous” surveys to gauge her performance. She analyzed the handwriting to determine which one was mine. I actively tried to change my handwriting as well, but I guess not well enough. I’ve never trusted a survey was actually anonymous after that.

>>al_bor+Dh
We've been tasked by a client for 2 years to create an anonymized survey, and my mind has gone to great lengths to devise a survey where even our own employees (or superusers with full DB access) cannot figure out who a respondent is.

It's been a fun exercise in software architecture. Because I actually care about this.

But we keep pushing this annual survey another year since we never seem to be ready to actually implement it (due to other priorities)

>>atonse+ZC
There's commercial service providers and open-source projects doing that already.

The thing is, as soon as you allow free-text entry, the exercise becomes moot assuming you got a solid training corpus of emails to train an AI on - basically the same approach that Wikipedia activists used to do two decades ago to determine "sockpuppet" accounts.

>>mschus+ZO
unless you add a step where you ask an ai to paraphrase what this message is about.

>>nights+MR
Good point, but also liable to get crucial informations and details lost or, worse, completely misunderstood by an AI which by definition lacks contextual knowledge.