I started 6 months ago on an endeavor to reboot Firefox's "Report a Broken Website" feature by trying to do two simple things: extend its support over to Mobile Firefox and revamp reporter.mozilla.org's user experience. Thanks to Mario Alvarado, we were able to accomplish one of those feats in introducing Reporter for Fennec [1].
Unfortunately, while beginning to work on the second feat, I realized that there was **no one** actively maintaining or using the system on Firefox. On top of that, there were a variety of unmet feedback needs [2] not properly solved by that or any of our current feedback systems. So, a new, more flexible feedback system has been formulated and is being implemented right now [3] for both Firefox and Mobile Firefox. With this new system, though, we'll need to archive reporter.mozilla.org and remove the "Report a Broken Website" feature from Firefox Proper. For those who are fine with this, there's no reason to read further and you can go on with your day.
For those that are worried about this, the following links will help offer a better idea of what the system does, how it works and when we plan to ship it:
- Project Wiki [3] - **Rough** Workflow Mock-ups [4]
So, if there any objections to this plan or if anyone has a grounded reason as to why this new system may not work for them in place of the "Report a Broken Website" feature, please bring up your concerns on the action item bug [5] and we'll try to alleviate them as much as possible.
> I started 6 months ago on an endeavor to reboot Firefox's "Report a Broken Website" feature by trying to do two simple things: extend its support over to Mobile Firefox and revamp reporter.mozilla.org's user experience. Thanks to Mario Alvarado, we were able to accomplish one of those feats in introducing Reporter for Fennec [1].
> Unfortunately, while beginning to work on the second feat, I realized that there was **no one** actively maintaining or using the system on Firefox. On top of that, there were a variety of unmet feedback needs [2] not properly solved by that or any of our current feedback systems. So, a new, more flexible feedback system has been formulated and is being implemented right now [3] for both Firefox and Mobile Firefox. With this new system, though, we'll need to archive reporter.mozilla.org and remove the "Report a Broken Website" feature from Firefox Proper. For those who are fine with this, there's no reason to read further and you can go on with your day.
> For those that are worried about this, the following links will help offer a better idea of what the system does, how it works and when we plan to ship it:
> So, if there any objections to this plan or if anyone has a grounded reason as to why this new system may not work for them in place of the "Report a Broken Website" feature, please bring up your concerns on the action item bug [5] and we'll try to alleviate them as much as possible.
David E. Ross wrote: > On 6/14/10 5:33 PM, Aakash Desai wrote: >> Hi,
>> I started 6 months ago on an endeavor to reboot Firefox's "Report a >> Broken Website" feature by trying to do two simple things: extend >> its support over to Mobile Firefox and revamp >> reporter.mozilla.org's user experience. Thanks to Mario Alvarado, >> we were able to accomplish one of those feats in introducing >> Reporter for Fennec [1].
>> Unfortunately, while beginning to work on the second feat, I >> realized that there was **no one** actively maintaining or using >> the system on Firefox. On top of that, there were a variety of >> unmet feedback needs [2] not properly solved by that or any of our >> current feedback systems. So, a new, more flexible feedback system >> has been formulated and is being implemented right now [3] for both >> Firefox and Mobile Firefox. With this new system, though, we'll >> need to archive reporter.mozilla.org and remove the "Report a >> Broken Website" feature from Firefox Proper. For those who are fine >> with this, there's no reason to read further and you can go on with >> your day.
>> For those that are worried about this, the following links will >> help offer a better idea of what the system does, how it works and >> when we plan to ship it:
>> - Project Wiki [3] - **Rough** Workflow Mock-ups [4]
>> So, if there any objections to this plan or if anyone has a >> grounded reason as to why this new system may not work for them in >> place of the "Report a Broken Website" feature, please bring up >> your concerns on the action item bug [5] and we'll try to alleviate >> them as much as possible.
Yes, we're removing the "Report a Broken Website" as a capability and a new system is being implemented that makes submission for those issues easier and less cost.
Also, I did copy-and-pasted this e-mail from a text editor, so that may be why my paragraphs are not wrapping for you.
----- Original Message ----- From: "David E. Ross" <nob...@nowhere.invalid> To: dev-plann...@lists.mozilla.org Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 10:52:55 PM Subject: Re: Replacement of "Report a Broken Website" with new Feedback System
On 6/14/10 5:33 PM, Aakash Desai wrote: > Hi,
> I started 6 months ago on an endeavor to reboot Firefox's "Report a Broken Website" feature by trying to do two simple things: extend its support over to Mobile Firefox and revamp reporter.mozilla.org's user experience. Thanks to Mario Alvarado, we were able to accomplish one of those feats in introducing Reporter for Fennec [1].
> Unfortunately, while beginning to work on the second feat, I realized that there was **no one** actively maintaining or using the system on Firefox. On top of that, there were a variety of unmet feedback needs [2] not properly solved by that or any of our current feedback systems. So, a new, more flexible feedback system has been formulated and is being implemented right now [3] for both Firefox and Mobile Firefox. With this new system, though, we'll need to archive reporter.mozilla.org and remove the "Report a Broken Website" feature from Firefox Proper. For those who are fine with this, there's no reason to read further and you can go on with your day.
> For those that are worried about this, the following links will help offer a better idea of what the system does, how it works and when we plan to ship it:
> So, if there any objections to this plan or if anyone has a grounded reason as to why this new system may not work for them in place of the "Report a Broken Website" feature, please bring up your concerns on the action item bug [5] and we'll try to alleviate them as much as possible.
> I realized that there was **no one** actively maintaining or using the system on Firefox.
Is that part telling us that all of the people we suggested using "report a broken link" to get help, that their requests end up in a dead-letter box -- that would be so like Hendrix.
> Aakash Desai schrieb: >> With this new system, though, we'll need to archive >> reporter.mozilla.org and remove the "Report a Broken Website" feature >> from Firefox Proper.
> This will also need removing it from SeaMonkey. Would have been nice if > we have been informed earlier, but who cares anyhow.
> Robert Kaiser
It's always nice to know everything earlier, but this work has been ongoing for months, with docs in the wiki and noted in the weekly project-wide meeting so it shouldn't be a total surprise.
That being said, I'll bet it's not terribly difficult to remove. Also, I wonder if the SeaMonkey team was actually using Reporter data to triage website compatibility issues. I haven't seen any bugs filed by you (or really anyone else, for that matter) with Reporter links.
> "Aakash Desai" wrote >> I realized that there was **no one** actively maintaining or using the >> system on Firefox.
> Is that part telling us that all of the people we suggested using > "report a broken link" to get help, that their requests end up in a > dead-letter box -- that would be so > like Hendrix.
You were telling folks that Reporter would give them help? Then you don't understand what it was built for.
I designed reporter to be sort of like talkback/breakpad, where we could collect and analyze *aggregate data* on websites that weren't working so we could either file bugs on Gecko if it was at fault, or maybe reach out to websites to try to get them to update their code if it was their fault.
It was never intended as a means for delivering help to end users and anyone telling end users they'd be helped directly through that channel was doing those users a disservice.
> Is that part telling us that all of the people we suggested using "report a broken link" > to get help, that their requests end up in a dead-letter box -- that would be so > like Hendrix.
Aye, that's the unfortunate part of the matter. We want to fix that problem with providing this new solution. Would you be interested in being one of our triagers for the new system? The help we can get, the more likely this new system won't die like our previous mechanisms.
----- Original Message ----- From: "David McRitchie" <firefo...@verizon.net> To: dev-plann...@lists.mozilla.org Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 8:51:32 AM Subject: Re: Replacement of "Report a Broken Website" with new Feedback System
"Aakash Desai" wrote > I realized that there was **no one** actively maintaining or using the system on Firefox.
Is that part telling us that all of the people we suggested using "report a broken link" to get help, that their requests end up in a dead-letter box -- that would be so like Hendrix. _______________________________________________ dev-planning mailing list dev-plann...@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-planning
Asa Dotzler" wrote... > On 6/15/2010 8:51 AM, David McRitchie wrote: >> "Aakash Desai" wrote >>> I realized that there was **no one** actively maintaining or using the >>> system on Firefox.
>> Is that part telling us that all of the people we suggested using >> "report a broken link" to get help, that their requests end up in a >> dead-letter box -- that would be so >> like Hendrix.
> You were telling folks that Reporter would give them help? Then you > don't understand what it was built for.
> I designed reporter to be sort of like talkback/breakpad, where we could > collect and analyze *aggregate data* on websites that weren't working so > we could either file bugs on Gecko if it was at fault, or maybe reach > out to websites to try to get them to update their code if it was their > fault.
> It was never intended as a means for delivering help to end users and > anyone telling end users they'd be helped directly through that channel > was doing those users a disservice. - A
Some users actually mentioned that "Report a Broken website" would get someone from evangelism to look at it, and where did that loose connection come from, guess if they read your blog they would realize that both "Report a Broken Website" (in Firefox help) and "Hendrix" (talk back?) do not get help, in fact neither serve the purpose they were intended to because developers don't look at it and want someone to summarize Hendrix for them. But from a user's point of view (only Hendrix tells tells them not to expect an answer) but they still feel that is their only method of contacting Mozilla or Firefox (often as if they are a person) and get no help. I think some of them expected to get help from the support.mozilla.com/kb help articles when the article failed to answer their question.
Hendrix probably causes more people to say they are leaving Firefox forever than anywhere else because there is no feedback. It certainly gets attention of people who want help, needs to be turned around to provide help. It is in fact getting more questions asked there than in mozilla.support.firefox
"Report a Broken Website" is in Help, is not going to provide user help, if Aakash can turn it around to help developers and not confuse users that would be helpful.
"Report a web forgery" goes directly to Google and I can tell you that does not work, if the forger is a Google partner, maybe if they were phishing a bank it might get results.
In any case they are "feedback to developers" supposedly for bug reports, and developers don't pay attention to it.
Here is what I found on searching, so everything is for bean counting for developers, and regardless of being part of help is not intended to provide help to users at all.
> Asa Dotzler schrieb: >> That being said, I'll bet it's not terribly difficult to remove.
> Sure, as I said, who cares anyhow, I just would have liked to know.
Hey Robert,
I'm not sure what Aakash (or anyone) is supposed to do with this feedback. He's writing to this group to tell you that the current proposal is to remove the old feature and replace it with this new functionality, and providing background (annotated with links!) to the meetings and discussions (all done in public) which led to this proposal.
What's happening now is pretty standard: those with a proposal are widening the net, asking others for feedback and specific concerns and objections.
If you need us to keep the feature alive for a period of time, please let us know. It's hard to understand why that would be something you'd want, since from our analysis, nobody was looking at the data that was being collected, so it's not like it was doing your users any good.
If you'd like to know how to migrate SeaMonkey to use this new feature, that's a pretty reasonable thing to ask!
> On 2010-06-15, at 12:18 PM, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>> Asa Dotzler schrieb: >>> That being said, I'll bet it's not terribly difficult to remove.
>> Sure, as I said, who cares anyhow, I just would have liked to know.
> Hey Robert,
> I'm not sure what Aakash (or anyone) is supposed to do with this feedback. He's writing to this group to tell you that the current proposal is to remove the old feature and replace it with this new functionality, and providing background (annotated with links!) to the meetings and discussions (all done in public) which led to this proposal.
I guess I was in a somewhat bad mood when I read this, and I usually am happier to not read this in a manner that tells "I am working on this for 6 months for Firefox and now it's almost here" when I don't know yet that it affects SeaMonkey as well - even though I probably should already be used to that. ;-)
> If you need us to keep the feature alive for a period of time, please let us know. It's hard to understand why that would be something you'd want, since from our analysis, nobody was looking at the data that was being collected, so it's not like it was doing your users any good.
No, that's why I said "who cares" as I know that as much as it was thought to become potentially a good feature for evang efforts towards website, that never manifested (like so much in that area), and on our (Mozilla) side, nobody really cared too much about those reports, so nothing's really lost.
> If you'd like to know how to migrate SeaMonkey to use this new feature, that's a pretty reasonable thing to ask!
I won't believe that to be necessary unless I see this new effort to really work better then the last one.
What I worry more about is us needing to do patches on our side when reporter gets removed. That should be nothing that is hard to do, just something we should know about.
Asa Dotzler wrote: > On 6/15/2010 8:39 AM, Robert Kaiser wrote: >> Aakash Desai schrieb: >>> With this new system, though, we'll need to archive >>> reporter.mozilla.org and remove the "Report a Broken Website" feature >>> from Firefox Proper.
>> This will also need removing it from SeaMonkey. Would have been nice if >> we have been informed earlier, but who cares anyhow.
>> Robert Kaiser
> It's always nice to know everything earlier, but this work has been > ongoing for months, with docs in the wiki and noted in the weekly > project-wide meeting so it shouldn't be a total surprise.
> That being said, I'll bet it's not terribly difficult to remove. Also, I > wonder if the SeaMonkey team was actually using Reporter data to triage > website compatibility issues. I haven't seen any bugs filed by you (or > really anyone else, for that matter) with Reporter links.
> - A
I've reported bad websites to broken links in fact my recent has been just within the last couple of weeks. Even though I did so hoping someone would twist the arm of the website owner. I figured it was just really so unsuspecting user of it would feel good that they were trying to help. Just like some of use post bugs and the <quote> Experts</quote> just roll their eyes and say him again/ her again let just ignore it they don't know what they are talking about anyway.
Asa Dotzler wrote: > On 6/15/2010 8:51 AM, David McRitchie wrote: >> "Aakash Desai" wrote >>> I realized that there was **no one** actively maintaining or using the >>> system on Firefox.
>> Is that part telling us that all of the people we suggested using >> "report a broken link" to get help, that their requests end up in a >> dead-letter box -- that would be so >> like Hendrix.
> You were telling folks that Reporter would give them help? Then you > don't understand what it was built for.
> I designed reporter to be sort of like talkback/breakpad, where we could > collect and analyze *aggregate data* on websites that weren't working so > we could either file bugs on Gecko if it was at fault, or maybe reach > out to websites to try to get them to update their code if it was their > fault.
> It was never intended as a means for delivering help to end users and > anyone telling end users they'd be helped directly through that channel > was doing those users a disservice.
> - A
I never took it that way. I always it was for reporting Bad website That the Mozilla collective could contact the website owner and say hey we have these report about your website. I never thought it was so I would get feedback/help from Mozilla about the site. If the site is coded bad, its coded bad and the web designer need to fix it, not Mozilla.
Robert Kaiser wrote: > Mike Beltzner schrieb: >> On 2010-06-15, at 12:18 PM, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>>> Asa Dotzler schrieb: >>>> That being said, I'll bet it's not terribly difficult to remove.
>>> Sure, as I said, who cares anyhow, I just would have liked to know.
>> Hey Robert,
>> I'm not sure what Aakash (or anyone) is supposed to do with this feedback. He's writing to this group to tell you that the current proposal is to remove the old feature and replace it with this new functionality, and providing background (annotated with links!) to the meetings and discussions (all done in public) which led to this proposal.
> I guess I was in a somewhat bad mood when I read this, and I usually am > happier to not read this in a manner that tells "I am working on this > for 6 months for Firefox and now it's almost here" when I don't know yet > that it affects SeaMonkey as well - even though I probably should > already be used to that. ;-)
>> If you need us to keep the feature alive for a period of time, please let us know. It's hard to understand why that would be something you'd want, since from our analysis, nobody was looking at the data that was being collected, so it's not like it was doing your users any good.
> No, that's why I said "who cares" as I know that as much as it was > thought to become potentially a good feature for evang efforts towards > website, that never manifested (like so much in that area), and on our > (Mozilla) side, nobody really cared too much about those reports, so > nothing's really lost.
>> If you'd like to know how to migrate SeaMonkey to use this new feature, that's a pretty reasonable thing to ask!
> I won't believe that to be necessary unless I see this new effort to > really work better then the last one.
> What I worry more about is us needing to do patches on our side when > reporter gets removed. That should be nothing that is hard to do, just > something we should know about.
> Robert Kaiser
How do we report bum websites In the General Users Group wher non of the head Honchos even look at?
> Robert Kaiser wrote: >> Mike Beltzner schrieb: >>> On 2010-06-15, at 12:18 PM, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>>>> Asa Dotzler schrieb: >>>>> That being said, I'll bet it's not terribly difficult to remove.
>>>> Sure, as I said, who cares anyhow, I just would have liked to know.
>>> Hey Robert,
>>> I'm not sure what Aakash (or anyone) is supposed to do with this feedback. He's writing to this group to tell you that the current proposal is to remove the old feature and replace it with this new functionality, and providing background (annotated with links!) to the meetings and discussions (all done in public) which led to this proposal.
>> I guess I was in a somewhat bad mood when I read this, and I usually am >> happier to not read this in a manner that tells "I am working on this >> for 6 months for Firefox and now it's almost here" when I don't know yet >> that it affects SeaMonkey as well - even though I probably should >> already be used to that. ;-)
>>> If you need us to keep the feature alive for a period of time, please let us know. It's hard to understand why that would be something you'd want, since from our analysis, nobody was looking at the data that was being collected, so it's not like it was doing your users any good.
>> No, that's why I said "who cares" as I know that as much as it was >> thought to become potentially a good feature for evang efforts towards >> website, that never manifested (like so much in that area), and on our >> (Mozilla) side, nobody really cared too much about those reports, so >> nothing's really lost.
>>> If you'd like to know how to migrate SeaMonkey to use this new feature, that's a pretty reasonable thing to ask!
>> I won't believe that to be necessary unless I see this new effort to >> really work better then the last one.
>> What I worry more about is us needing to do patches on our side when >> reporter gets removed. That should be nothing that is hard to do, just >> something we should know about.
>> Robert Kaiser
> How do we report bum websites In the General Users Group wher non of > the head Honchos even look at?
I submit Tech Evangelism bug reports. However, I have advised other users who do not have Bugzilla accounts and would find submitting a bug report to be excessively daunting that they should use the "Report a Broken Website" feature. Only now do I discover that the feature is a black hole, that no report made through it will be acted upon.
When the decision is made to remove a capability -- even a dead-end capability -- or to make a major change in a capability, it should be announced here, not when implementation is almost done but when the decision is initially made.
No one -- NO ONE -- can review and track all bug reports. No one can be cognizant of all pending changes merely by following bug reports.
> How do we report bum websites In the General Users Group wher non of the > head Honchos even look at?
Starting to head off-topic for this group, but I'd say that unless you're willing to testcase it, then I wouldn't bother. Better to spend your time writing webmas...@bum-website.com and telling them that you're an unhappy customer and you'll be taking your business elsewhere.
If it's a major site and it's broken because of a change in Firefox and you can determine which day's build broke it, then a bug would probably be appreciated even without a reduced testcase.
The days when we had to do labor-intensive outreach (at least in the West) to top 1000 sites are gone. We needed it to bootstrap growth, but today if a site isn't supporting Firefox, they're out a very large chunk of their users so if it's their fault, they're likely to want to fix it and an email from an upset customer will probably help. If the problem is our fault, they're probably still try to work around it but if we're going to do something about it then we'll need a testcase or a regression window to make any progress and if you can help with that, a Bugzilla report is much better than hendrix or reporter.
> On 6/15/10 2:06 PM, Phillip Jones wrote: >> Robert Kaiser wrote: >>> Mike Beltzner schrieb: >>>> On 2010-06-15, at 12:18 PM, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>>>>> Asa Dotzler schrieb: >>>>>> That being said, I'll bet it's not terribly difficult to remove.
>>>>> Sure, as I said, who cares anyhow, I just would have liked to know.
>>>> Hey Robert,
>>>> I'm not sure what Aakash (or anyone) is supposed to do with this feedback. He's writing to this group to tell you that the current proposal is to remove the old feature and replace it with this new functionality, and providing background (annotated with links!) to the meetings and discussions (all done in public) which led to this proposal.
>>> I guess I was in a somewhat bad mood when I read this, and I usually am >>> happier to not read this in a manner that tells "I am working on this >>> for 6 months for Firefox and now it's almost here" when I don't know yet >>> that it affects SeaMonkey as well - even though I probably should >>> already be used to that. ;-)
>>>> If you need us to keep the feature alive for a period of time, please let us know. It's hard to understand why that would be something you'd want, since from our analysis, nobody was looking at the data that was being collected, so it's not like it was doing your users any good.
>>> No, that's why I said "who cares" as I know that as much as it was >>> thought to become potentially a good feature for evang efforts towards >>> website, that never manifested (like so much in that area), and on our >>> (Mozilla) side, nobody really cared too much about those reports, so >>> nothing's really lost.
>>>> If you'd like to know how to migrate SeaMonkey to use this new feature, that's a pretty reasonable thing to ask!
>>> I won't believe that to be necessary unless I see this new effort to >>> really work better then the last one.
>>> What I worry more about is us needing to do patches on our side when >>> reporter gets removed. That should be nothing that is hard to do, just >>> something we should know about.
>>> Robert Kaiser
>> How do we report bum websites In the General Users Group wher non of >> the head Honchos even look at?
> I submit Tech Evangelism bug reports. However, I have advised other > users who do not have Bugzilla accounts and would find submitting a bug > report to be excessively daunting that they should use the "Report a > Broken Website" feature. Only now do I discover that the feature is a > black hole, that no report made through it will be acted upon.
> When the decision is made to remove a capability -- even a dead-end > capability -- or to make a major change in a capability, it should be > announced here, not when implementation is almost done but when the > decision is initially made.
> No one -- NO ONE -- can review and track all bug reports. No one can be > cognizant of all pending changes merely by following bug reports.
I chased the Reporter reports for a quite a while. It hasn't always been a black hole but without sufficient volunteer help in triaging those lists, the database eventually became mostly useless. If no one's going to act on the feedback, there's no point in continuing to gather it (except that it can divert people from making useless reports in more focused environments like Bugzilla).
Perhaps when Aakash gets his new tool running, you and others will step up to help maintain the database, surfacing common issues and translating them into bug reports where appropriate. With sufficient help, it could be a valuable tool.
That being said, it wasn't completely ignored. I monitor Reporter and Hendrix reports right after releases to see if there are any spikes in specific problems or sites. I've been doing this for quite a while right after our releases (along with the Firefox Release Rapid Response Team) and so far I haven't found any regressions from the Reporter data in those few days after a release. Hendrix, yes, Reporter, nope. Probably just not enough volume to be useful for that purpose.
> Asa Dotzler wrote: >> On 6/15/2010 8:51 AM, David McRitchie wrote: >>> "Aakash Desai" wrote >>>> I realized that there was **no one** actively maintaining or using the >>>> system on Firefox.
>>> Is that part telling us that all of the people we suggested using >>> "report a broken link" to get help, that their requests end up in a >>> dead-letter box -- that would be so >>> like Hendrix.
>> You were telling folks that Reporter would give them help? Then you >> don't understand what it was built for.
>> I designed reporter to be sort of like talkback/breakpad, where we could >> collect and analyze *aggregate data* on websites that weren't working so >> we could either file bugs on Gecko if it was at fault, or maybe reach >> out to websites to try to get them to update their code if it was their >> fault.
>> It was never intended as a means for delivering help to end users and >> anyone telling end users they'd be helped directly through that channel >> was doing those users a disservice.
>> - A > I never took it that way. I always it was for reporting Bad website That > the Mozilla collective could contact the website owner and say hey we > have these report about your website. I never thought it was so I would > get feedback/help from Mozilla about the site. If the site is coded bad, > its coded bad and the web designer need to fix it, not Mozilla.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I had the same understanding of "Report a Broken Website" as Phillip Jones. That is, it would be a tool for users who do not understand Bugzilla, a tool in lieu of submitting a Tech Evangelism bug report.
Many, many responses in mozilla.support.seamonkey to queries about problems viewing Web sites -- especially invalid sniffing -- told users that they should go the [Help > Report a Broken Website]. Why, after so many years of such advice, are we only now learning that it was the wrong advice?
>> How do we report bum websites In the General Users Group wher non of the >> head Honchos even look at?
> Starting to head off-topic for this group, but I'd say that unless > you're willing to testcase it, then I wouldn't bother. Better to spend > your time writing webmas...@bum-website.com and telling them that you're > an unhappy customer and you'll be taking your business elsewhere.
> If it's a major site and it's broken because of a change in Firefox and > you can determine which day's build broke it, then a bug would probably > be appreciated even without a reduced testcase.
> The days when we had to do labor-intensive outreach (at least in the > West) to top 1000 sites are gone. We needed it to bootstrap growth, but > today if a site isn't supporting Firefox, they're out a very large chunk > of their users so if it's their fault, they're likely to want to fix it > and an email from an upset customer will probably help. If the problem > is our fault, they're probably still try to work around it but if we're > going to do something about it then we'll need a testcase or a > regression window to make any progress and if you can help with that, a > Bugzilla report is much better than hendrix or reporter.
> - A
What you are saying is that Tech Evangelism bugs are worthless. Is that really true?
> The days when we had to do labor-intensive outreach (at least in the > West) to top 1000 sites are gone. We needed it to bootstrap growth, but > today if a site isn't supporting Firefox, they're out a very large chunk > of their users so if it's their fault, they're likely to want to fix it > and an email from an upset customer will probably help.
Sort of. Trying that with a beta build gets a pretty negative response all around when I've tried, and a pretty large number of sites are broken in our nightlies and betas, comparatively speaking (two of the three bank sites I use on a regular basis are both broken, for example). Major sites like live.com don't work on trunk because of broken UA sniffing. That sort of thing interferes with us getting the nightly and beta feedback we need...
Unfortunately, I don't have a good solution to the problem (use random UA strings? Send Firefox in the UA no matter what? something else?).
> If the problem is our fault, they're probably still try to work around it
One other note. While true, this is not something we should overrely on. The end of the road there is the way web developers feel about IE6.
> but if we're going to do something about it then we'll need a testcase or a > regression window to make any progress
Not necessarily. We do have people who can produce both of those. If it's a regression, all we really need is being told that plus clear steps to reproduce (including a clear description, using screenshots if need be, of what the problem is and how to tell whether you hit it). Once we have that, finding the regression range is a 10-15-minute job (10 builds, one minute per build, covers more than 2 years of nightlies).
So, this discussion has gone a bit off-topic as a lot of the feedback has been geared around two things from what I can see:
1. Not enough communication when this plan was first finalized 2. No one was looking through the report sent in to reporter.mozilla.org
For the first point, I'd like to cut out the discussion and say that this plan wasn't finalized until about 2-3 weeks ago. It should have been mentioned from the onset rather than right before it's about to be completed, so I'll make sure to post to dev-planning in the future before starting the endeavor (to only garner **constructive** feedback).
As for the second point, unfortunately we as a community caused that to happen. The only way to fix that is to keep it live and going. I've added a section to the project wiki to ask for volunteers I can call upon to help triage, trend and/or report the data submitted by Input (**especially** the system once it's on a staging server). It's located here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Input#Volunteers
I'm hoping that those who have spoken out about this in this thread are the first to sign up. Once a more set proposal of actions is set, expect an e-mail from me.
----- Original Message ----- From: "David E. Ross" <nob...@nowhere.invalid> To: dev-plann...@lists.mozilla.org Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 2:19:09 PM Subject: Re: Replacement of "Report a Broken Website" with new Feedback System
On 6/15/10 2:06 PM, Phillip Jones wrote: > Robert Kaiser wrote: >> Mike Beltzner schrieb: >>> On 2010-06-15, at 12:18 PM, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>>>> Asa Dotzler schrieb: >>>>> That being said, I'll bet it's not terribly difficult to remove.
>>>> Sure, as I said, who cares anyhow, I just would have liked to know.
>>> Hey Robert,
>>> I'm not sure what Aakash (or anyone) is supposed to do with this feedback. He's writing to this group to tell you that the current proposal is to remove the old feature and replace it with this new functionality, and providing background (annotated with links!) to the meetings and discussions (all done in public) which led to this proposal.
>> I guess I was in a somewhat bad mood when I read this, and I usually am >> happier to not read this in a manner that tells "I am working on this >> for 6 months for Firefox and now it's almost here" when I don't know yet >> that it affects SeaMonkey as well - even though I probably should >> already be used to that. ;-)
>>> If you need us to keep the feature alive for a period of time, please let us know. It's hard to understand why that would be something you'd want, since from our analysis, nobody was looking at the data that was being collected, so it's not like it was doing your users any good.
>> No, that's why I said "who cares" as I know that as much as it was >> thought to become potentially a good feature for evang efforts towards >> website, that never manifested (like so much in that area), and on our >> (Mozilla) side, nobody really cared too much about those reports, so >> nothing's really lost.
>>> If you'd like to know how to migrate SeaMonkey to use this new feature, that's a pretty reasonable thing to ask!
>> I won't believe that to be necessary unless I see this new effort to >> really work better then the last one.
>> What I worry more about is us needing to do patches on our side when >> reporter gets removed. That should be nothing that is hard to do, just >> something we should know about.
>> Robert Kaiser
> How do we report bum websites In the General Users Group wher non of > the head Honchos even look at?
I submit Tech Evangelism bug reports. However, I have advised other users who do not have Bugzilla accounts and would find submitting a bug report to be excessively daunting that they should use the "Report a Broken Website" feature. Only now do I discover that the feature is a black hole, that no report made through it will be acted upon.
When the decision is made to remove a capability -- even a dead-end capability -- or to make a major change in a capability, it should be announced here, not when implementation is almost done but when the decision is initially made.
No one -- NO ONE -- can review and track all bug reports. No one can be cognizant of all pending changes merely by following bug reports.
