James's Weblog

As much as I like PalmSource (the company that makes Palm OS), its registration forms always bug me.

There are always questions that are required but don’t apply to me, such as job title, company name, number of employees, what distribution systems I use, what type of market I’m targeting, and so on. Admittedly, the majority of registrants shouldn’t have any trouble answering these questions. On the other hand, a significant number of Palm OS developers are hobbyists who don’t represent their employers, and these days a lot of people are unemployed.

If your marketing department demands that you require demographic information in your registration forms, remind them that disinformation is worse than no information. If nothing else, provide “not applicable” or “I don’t know” options.