.gov organizations, like your boring standard-issue commercial ones, also want to know who is using their site and how. It helps inform decision-making about changes.
If you don't mind another dumb question, is the benefit great enough for the hassle of complaints and the possible compromise of ostensibly private information?
There are self-hosted solutions, but I imagine they'd entail experts to interpret and implement. I wonder if they could just do A/B testing and get the same results or if they could simply do surveys? Though, I suppose those come with new faults, variables, and expenses.
Generally,yes. It's also good for stuff like knowing what browsers are used and thus what technologies can be used.
The hassle of complaints and the possible compromise of "private" information (like what your browser sends) isn't that significant. The pain from complaints is trivial, largely confined to Hacker News threads of no significance whatsoever. The ostensibly private data is protected contractually and legally.
I'm not aware of any approach that both yields useful information and eliminates any possible risk of compromise. Surveys and A/B testing and self-hosted solutions all have the same problems and risks, and generally extra costs to boot.
In short, the cost-benefit analysis isn't all that different from that of a company considering an analytics tool.
Again, much thanks. No more questions, for now. Just a sincere thanks. I don't actually read HN for the articles. I do read many of them, but I'm here for the informative answers, insightful responses, and chances to get an education in subjects I'd not normally consider.
Once in a while, chaos theory or traffic modeling come up. So, I get to give back. ;-)
