1014217 - Add social media sharing buttons to Bugzilla.

Status: NEW

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: Extensions, enhancement)

Description

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

Sharing bugs we'd like to surface to the community is one way we're going to bring in collaborators. 

I'd like to add a couple of "share with social network" buttons to Bugzilla. Twitter, Facebook, etc. All that should be turned off for hidden bugs, obviously, but sharing options for regular bugs would go a long way.

Comment 1

[yac]

Just adding some buttons won't make people click them.

http://solomon.io/why-im-done-with-social-media-buttons/

Comment 2

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Could you help me understand some of the audiences you're talking about here?

Who is "we"?
Who is "the community"?

I think the goal here is laudable, but am concerned that it will become a way of making noisy bugs noisier. Are there mechanisms that we can use to ensure that the audience we export things to are given clear indications of what sort of engagement we're looking for?

Comment 3

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

Developers, contributors and the people who follow them on social networks because of their work. The sort of things I'd like to make super-easy are:

- "I'm mentoring this good-first-bug. Do you know C++/JS/whatever and want to help?"
- "We've got $THIS_ISSUE. If you have $THIS_HARDWARE, maybe you can test it!" 
- "I'm a new contributor, and I'd like to tell my friends I'm working on this bug."

That sort of thing. I think (hope?) that having it only show up for people with bugzilla accounts would be enough to keep the kind of mess you're thinking of from happening.

Comment 4

[:glob ✱]

while i understand where you're coming from, i think the use-case for adding social media buttons to every bug is minimal.

echoing comment 2, i fear they would still encourage "me too" comments, or add other noise to bugs.


i'll wait to hear from the other bmo owner (dkl), but this is strongly a WONTFIX from me.

Comment 5

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

(In reply to Byron Jones ‹:glob› from comment #4)
> while i understand where you're coming from, i think the use-case for adding
> social media buttons to every bug is minimal.

I hope to change your mind about this; making it easier to share contribution opportunities should be a net gain for the project, and we've seen evidence from other social networks that having to sign in to leave a comment is enough of a barrier to entry to dissuade drive-by pile-ons. In general, making it easier to tell people how they can participate in Mozilla is a net good, even if it's in a core tool.

We could certainly tie this effort into Google Analytics and see what the numbers have to say, should we decide to go ahead with it as a trial. I would certainly not oppose dropping this feature six months after its deployed if we've decided it's not worth whatever pain it causes.

Comment 6

[David Lawrence [:dkl]]

(In reply to Byron Jones ‹:glob› from comment #4)
> i'll wait to hear from the other bmo owner (dkl), but this is strongly a
> WONTFIX from me.

I am with Mike on this in that I am curious and optimistic that some good could come of it. As long as the buttons are not too invasive (do not harm workflows) and they do not cause any performance issues (shouldn't). If they are found to be not be as useful as hoped or lead to abuse in some way, we simple remove them.

dkl

Comment 7

[Benjamin Smedberg]

If the use-case is primarily to have mentors do the sharing, is there a way to have a bugzilla extension be optional per-user? So that e.g. I could turn this on but it wouldn't necessarily be on for everyone?

Comment 8

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

Not defaulting-to-visibile will translate directly into zero uptake, I think. Having said that I think that making it invisible to new-to-bugzilla users, if that's feasible, would mitigate some (many, most?) of the concerns I'm seeing here.

Comment 9

[:glob ✱]

while i'm still not a fan of the idea, let's experiment.



i think it should be visible to users with editbugs only, and the visibility needs to be controlled via a user preferences so people can turn them off.

all assets need to be hosted on bmo, and the buttons can't be displayed on non-public bugs.


we need to determine which platforms to target, find suitable icons which match sandstone, and determine the default text.

Comment 10

[Chris More [:cmore]]

FYI: Mozilla has a more secure social sharing widget that is used on a variety of websites. No data is transmitted to social providers on load of a page *unless* a user click the share button and then the JS from the social providers will execute. 

Code here: https://github.com/mozilla/SocialShare

See it in action here by click the "share this".

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/06/19/mozilla-announces-a-partnership-with-the-new-york-times-the-washington-post-and-knight-foundation-for-a-new-online-community-platform/

Comment 11

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

I think that if "editbugs only" is the criteria, this deflects many of our concerns about unhelpful bug pileons.

Does this seem like a reasonable balance between utility and risk here?

Comment 12

[:glob ✱]

yes; i agree that limiting this to editbugs is reasonable.  and i like the visuals in cmore's example :)

Comment 13

[Chris More [:cmore]]

(In reply to Byron Jones ‹:glob› from comment #12)
> yes; i agree that limiting this to editbugs is reasonable.  and i like the
> visuals in cmore's example :)

Feel free to use Mozilla social sharing widget! It's there to fork. :)

Comment 14

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

This has come back up in regards to current Firefox community goals for participation.