>Maybe it's me being jaded, but I'm tired of seeing people expecting we help for no or little incentive, or without doing thorough research.

No it's rude as fuck. Not blind but am in here because I do a lot of web accessibility and product work and you all have some great resources to help me do my job better. Unless you are already paying for the product (and hence have some incentive to make it better) it's a basic part of product management to offer some compensation for interviews, ditto for research (usually a small amazon gift card)

I worked in market research. We would search for willing participants in various studies, often for fast food but sometimes for political round tables or the like. We would offer everything from $50 to $500 for participation because companies need that data.


These leeches are trying to get responses without compensation. I personally do not believe that nine-tenths of these people are students like they say. They are PREYING on your needs and your desire to make a difference for your community. They aren't making these products because they want to help you. They exist for one reason: to make a profit. If they can get your responses without compensating you for it, even better.


Don't play into their hands.

I don't mind threads asking me to answer questions here on reddit, but refuse to follow links to third-party sites to fill out surveys or provide other contact details in order to talk to the researchers. In the former case if they can't even be bothered to interact with me then I'm not going to leave my comfort zone either, and in the latter case I think that private conversations are too invasive and inappropriate for the purpose. Essentially my issue are not the research posts but the way they expect us to reply without publicly engaging with the community that bothers me.

I honestly hate it too. Makes me feel like a lab rat or an animal on display. Plus, why should I bother giving them my time for free? Other developers pay for feedback

What really gets to me aren’t the uni students trying to do their assignments, it’s the people who think they’ve created a revolutionary life changing products but who sound like they have never googled the world blind before and seemingly know nothing of accessibility and the spectrum of blindness.

I agree

I made a post similar to this a while ago, talking about people that want to interview us without compensation... but still expect to be greeted warmly by the community and what not.

I got similarly positive feedback, again, I will reiterate, that perhaps the best solution might simply be to make a community rule for the sidebar to not bother us with interviews unless you're willing to compensate, unless you're a high schooler or whatever. Check my post history if you're interested.

either way, it's evident that the community finds these people annoying and something needs to be done.

Would it be possible to require that surveys be submitted for approval before posting? Are there enough mods to do that?

Not a bad idea other subs I go to have rules like this. There’s a sub i go to it’s a typology one and everyone wanted to know there type and it gets annoying I am on this one with no rules about it and the entire sub is type me. So what did this sub do? Created another sub but also created a single sticky type me thread and you’re only allowed that. That sub is bigger and much much busier then this one. And any such post is rejected.

What about instead we just have a stickied thread that stays around permanently, just for this stuff. People who are interested could simply keep checking it, and others wouldn't have to be bothered.
To avoid having too many stickys, we could also move the info from the current thread about researcher etiquette to the first post of the new one (it needs to be clarified and cleaned up anyway).

If we do this, people won't look at that post. I'd rather what we have now so I can remember to fill out their surveys or whatever.

Thus why the minute I see one report on any of the posts I Immediately delete them.

What would be a fair incentive? Mind you, I'm not sure if Reddit has rules against that.

As one of those people who posted a product design survey recently, I apologize for doing so.

I didn’t mean to treat others as lab rats used for tests results.