Help us improve Remix IDE
Matomo Analytics is coming to Remix
To improve the UX & UI and the general usability of Remix IDE, in an upcoming release, we will begin to use Matomo, an open source analytics platform.
This will be an opt-in program — meaning that you need to give your consent before we can collect anything.
We respect your privacy and do not collect any personally identifiable information (PII).
All data collected through Matomo is stored on our own server —and our analytics reports are public. Go here to check them out.
Our goal is to understand about how many users we have, what plugins people are using, what is not getting used, what is not being used to its full potential.
With this understanding, we can make adjustments to the UI as well as providing more tips and documentation.
It’s a way of getting constant anonymous feedback from our users.
When Matomo is integrated into Remix, you will see a modal asking your permission to allow the data collection. After you make your choice, the modal won’t appear again, unless you clear your browser’s local storage.
What are we collecting:
- Plugins that get activate & deactivate
- The usage of the Medium & Twitter panels on the homepage
- If you generate contract metadata
- If you clicked the box to publish to IPFS while deploying
- Which themes are used/used most/not used at all
- The usage of the links to documentation
- How users are importing files from links on the homepage
- The first three digits of users’ IP address — to get a general understanding about where our users are from
What are we not collecting:
We are not collecting any information about public accounts, private keys, balances. We are not collecting any code that you are writing or importing. IP addresses will be obfuscated before they are recorded by Matomo (e.g. 185.xxx.xxx.xxx). We are not collecting any information about any other application other than Remix IDE — other than your OS and browser brand/version.
See what we are collecting:
Here is a link to our codebase that shows where we are call Matomo.
Our analytics report is public. Go here to check them out. While we would appreciate 100% of our users opting in, this obviously won’t happen. So the actual numbers of people using Remix will be larger. Of course we will no idea how much larger — but at least the numbers will generally reflect what users are doing.
To reiterate:
- Remix will not collect sensitive data from users.
- Data collected will be anonymous. Individual data points are not collected so we are in compliance with GDPR regulations. And no personally identifiable information (PII) will be collected.
- Remix will only use the data to improve our User Experience & User Interface by understanding how people use the IDE.
Changing your mind
You can change your choice in the Settings panel.
What Happens If I Opt Out?
There are no consequences for not opting-in or opting-out.
Thank You Esteemed Users
By getting a better understanding of how Remix is used, we can make some targeted improvements. The Remix Team hopes you will help us out.
If you would like to reach out to us about Matomo — or any other reason, please do so.
To comment on our Matomo rollout, please post to this article.
We strive to make the IDE more convenient and easy to use. You can reach us on Twitter, Gitter, and via email (remix@ethereum.org) TIA!
