Usenet, help utilities most used, says freenet survey By Bruce MacDonald Realtime Online OTTAWA (1221 hr. Aug. 15/94) - A six-month survey of GO command use on the National Capital Freenet places Usenet and toolbox/tools at the top of a list of most accessed areas, delegates to the second annual Canadian Communities Networks Conference learned. The results are a taste of a much larger survey on "use behaviour" on Ottawa's freenet which is being prepared by the Communications Research Centre, said speaker Alex Black. Black, along with co-researchers Tom Whelan and Andrew Patrick, are planning a comprehensive survey of freenet users from the casual user to those who never fail to logon each day. "There's very little social research on freenets," Black told the gathering. "We want valid and reliable measures and results." To that end a detailed method of research which insures the privacy of freenet users is being prepared. Black assured that all user IDs will be encrypted and data maintained in a secure computer. The preliminary study of GO commands from January through June of this year showed Usenet (11.91%) and gopher (8.5%) were the most popular on the content portion of the survey while toolbox/tools (13.86%) and files (4.27%) were the favoured utilities. Information about the survey is available through the Web. -30-