Closed Bug 1357821 Opened 4 years ago Closed 4 years ago

[Meta] Kitsune => Lithium Migration Requirements

Categories

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
General
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: elan, Assigned: elan)

References

Details

Attachments

(2 files)

Good KB display in Kitsune Windows
206.16 KB, image/png
Details
Bad KB display, Lithium Windows
125.06 KB, image/png
Details 
The temporary rollback is captured in Bug 1357606

This ticket tree will encompass: 

(1) Defining what criteria blocks the migration back to Lithium
(2) Capturing the impact of this change across the Firefox eco-system (MoCo and Community) and figuring out what should be taken care of prior to or in parallel with the migration from Kitsune back to Lithium.  

It seems that the #1 blocker is having Accept Language Header support (Bug 1324426) which is a Lithium deliverable but this ticket can capture other non-Lithium deliverables that have to happen across the company and our community.
Assignee: nobody → elancaster
I'm sorry, in (2) Our users should have been the first thing if that wasn't implicit. The bottom line is that this back-end change should be completely transparent for Users, Community, Moco. If there are things that need to change in order to adapt to this back-end change, let us capture it here.
= Any news on progress to enable end users and|or contributors access to the Lithium content? = 


Some users will have ongoing question threads in Lithium. The change to Kitsune is far from transparent for such users.
The problem that causes could be mitigated if the Lithium content was easily indexed and discoverable. The announcement yesterday did say 
> (from https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/712410 
>or https://support.mozilla.org/t5/SUMO-community-discussions/Important-Announcement-Temporary-Rollback-to-Kitsune-Tomorrow/td-p/1392543 )
>  Will I still be able to access Lithium?
>Lithium will still be up and should be accessible through a different URL (possibly password protected). We are not going to do any migration, just temporarily point support.mozilla.org back to Kitsune.

I have already seen an end user asking how to access their previous posts & replies.


= Additionally note that the KB article groups were easily browsable in Lithium, = 
Even if the grouping may have been sub optimal. 
In the restored Kitsune I do not see any method of easily browsing the KB.
(We can still search, and I can think of a couple of user unfriendly methods of getting at article groups)
The articles when displayed in Kitsune are likely to be much better of course as the showfor in Lithium was broken in multiple ways.
(Bug1348889 & Bug1350856 )  As long as articles are discoverable it is an advantage staying on Kitsune.
Blocks: 1358221
That makes bug 1358221 & this bug 1357821 close to duplicates of one another I would have thought, although they are in different components. Maybe that is a very important distinction between the two.

We probably need some separate discussion somewhere defining what each bug encompasses. 
Or at least a short summary or definition within each bug so that we can stay on topic.

I will use this comment to highlight some subjects I consider may be appropriate to these bugs.

(In reply to Erin Lancaster [:elan] from comment #0)
> The temporary rollback is captured in Bug 1357606
> 
> This ticket tree will encompass: 
> 
> (1) Defining what criteria blocks the migration back to Lithium
> (2) Capturing the impact of this change across the Firefox eco-system (MoCo
> and Community) and figuring out what should be taken care of prior to or in
> parallel with the migration from Kitsune back to Lithium.  
> 
> It seems that the #1 blocker is having Accept Language Header support (Bug
> 1324426) which is a Lithium deliverable but this ticket can capture other
> non-Lithium deliverables that have to happen across the company and our
> community.

= "(1) Defining what criteria blocks the migration back to Lithium " = 
If we use a low bar as blocking migration back to Lithium we will meet the criteria once the redirects issue is fixed.
But even on the redirects issue what is a  successful fix ?
Ideally for the redirects issue to be fixed it would be nice to define that as the links for KB articles work in a similar manner to how they did in Kitsune.
 * Localle agnostic links in-product 
Links to Kitsune help articles. That is links to KB articles were locale|language agnostic like many links within the Mozilla ecosytem. A link to a KB article posted within Kitsune could be made language specific or locale agnostic. The standard links generated automatically within Kitsune were locale agnostic. Such links could be used externally i.e. inproduct,on websites or within KB articles and relied on to work.
 * "Bug 1324426 - Redirects should auto-detect language from Accept-Language"
That bug is the hi priority high profile blocker with the rollback issue. I am not sure the bugs current title and current objectives match one another. At least to me it is unclear what is and is not within the scope of that bug. Bug1324426 comment0 including:  "This redirect serves two things: 1. Set the proper language in the UI 2. For KB articles: fetch the proper, localized content if it exists.I understand that (2) is out of scope for now. (1) needs to be fixed."
 * " this ticket can capture other non-Lithium deliverables that have to happen across the company and our community."
Perhaps this bug is accepting that for KB articles we do need to easily access proper localised content somehow.
Perhaps even on a low bar we will block migration back to Lithium until that is either solved or at least some plan is put in to place to resolve the issue. 
But what about the myriad of other issues relating to use of Sumo Lithium.

(In reply to Erin Lancaster [:elan] from comment #1)
> I'm sorry, in (2) Our users should have been the first thing if that wasn't
> implicit. The bottom line is that this back-end change should be completely
> transparent for Users, Community, Moco. If there are things that need to
> change in order to adapt to this back-end change, let us capture it here.

= Should is a nice concept. Migration between the two is far from transparent. =
Anyone involved in migration to or discussion of migration from Kitsune to Lithium realises the two are very different indeed when used by the end user or contributor. They may look cosmeticly similar; an effort was made to ensure that; but they differ greatly in their capabilities, features & documentation. 
Of course we now  rely on a third a party to fix issues - but hey why should that be bad? As long as they deliver the fixes it is of no concern to the end user or contributor. My concern is that reported bugs have not & will not get fixed in a timely manner.
LITHIUM BUGS 
What I see as a major change that should be a concern is end users and contributors report issues in Bugzilla, but there is a disconnect between the report in Bugzilla, and any triage and fix with no guarantee bugs will be assessed & triaged by Mozilla. Any action is then in a closed Lithium Case System. Heroic efforts are made to report Lithium case details back to Bugzilla bugs but I am sure something needs doing to improve communication with sumo <=> bugzilla <=>Lithium Case  
Note the main discussion about the initial migration and pre acceptance testing of Lithium is at and linked from:
> IMPORTANT: Help us migrate SUMO!
> https://support.mozilla.org/forums/contributors/712103
On top of that we have rolled back to a slightly broken Kitsune because it has lost: 
 - The web page enabling browsing for KB articles. 
 - Recent support questions some are or were  still active 
   and those that were not would include recent solutions and so are a missing resource for contributors and end users. 
SUPPORT QUESTIONS
The workflows and features of asking and answering support questions differ. Migration to Lithium did not try to specify or recreate some of the Kitsune features provided to contributors answering support questions.
KB HELP ARTICLES 
The procedures for writing editing and reviewing KB articles differ completely,and the Lithium methods are not even documented with contributor facing explanations and instructions. The way the KB documents display to end users differs. The showfor feature of Kitsune is badly flawed in Lithium. Taking a simple trivial example Erin bug1357563 comment7 refers to a KB article. That I am sure is broken in regards to how it displays by default for many end users if seen from Lithium.(I would post a screenshot but I can not get in to sumo-lithium at present - I did access the Lithium sumo test site post rollback, but can not even get in there at the moment) 
LOCALISATION 
The English language KB articles are the parents of the localised articles.
Problems with localisation affect both the very large numbers of contributors working on localisation and make their tasks very much more difficult, and then of course the quality of KB articles or even the availability of KB articles to non English users of our products. 
Personally I am not involved in Localization of KB articles.  My knowledge of this is limited but my possibly flawed understanding is the L10n team & community
 (1) Will have been hit (as I mentioned directly above) with similar issues as the en-US KB producing community
 (2) Have a really major double whammy of having the localisation features of Kitsune effectively disconnected from Lithium 
GENERAL
I see issues with Lithium Search & Android that I have not yet filed bugs for. There are also other general issues including moderation related ones. (Approved and published KB articles will disappear to end users if marked as spam for instance).

= A Higher bar to reverting to Lithium =
The Elephant in the Room here is that Sumo probably does not even have the resources to discus and analyse the problem.
How will reported Lithium Bugs be handled once we revert to Lithium, will it still be the responsibility of overworked Sumo staff for instance or could other Mozilla resources assist with this?
 
I understand one of the post mortem conclusions of the Migration to Lithium was that the whole migration was under resourced.
Note that post migration there are already quite a few bugs filed in the sumo-lithium component but most have not yet really even been effectively triaged. (There may well also be many untriaged &/or stalled bugs from the pre migration era, but nearly all of those will be irrelevant now)  

Months after migrating to Lithium Sumo contributors are still not certain how best to file reports of issues and try to ensure progress on Sumo problems. IMHO Mozilla just has not put sufficient resources in to the initial migration, or the post migration problems. Breaking out of this firefighting mode is likely to be a big challenge to everyone involved.

It would be very nice to be able to say that once we migrate back many of the already known issues with use of  Lithium will be rapidly resolved.  

= Loss of information & likely duration of Rollback =
Any ideas as to whether this rollback is likely to be for a few days, a few weeks or longer ?
We need to consider that contributor discussions, & support questions could be lost if they are on the Kitsune Rollback but not then Migrated back to Lithium. There would also be issues with keeping L10n & KBs up to date.
I imagine we will be changing back to Lithium ASAP, within days, but do we need to start to make contingency plans in case we stay rolled back for more than a few days. No doubt those concerned have already assessed this and concluded a rapid reversal of the rollback is both desirable & very much doable.
I seem to recall we had an issue with some Kitsune users trying to move over to Lithium. Was this fully resolved. This following is a post made Today by a core contributor one of our localisers:
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/712410#post-71517
> SUMO on Lithium is a dead duck. The issues have already begun when I couldn't take my login information along, I had to create a new user name. And, what is worse, Sorbian articles were not migrated to Lithium so I could not translate or edit articles. Since then months are passed and it is still uncertain if Sorbian articles will ever be on Lithium .
A post by the lead en-US KB volunteer contributor
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/712410?page=2#post-71531
>I'm still contributing to the KB even though there are lots of KB-related SUMO-Lithium bugs , such as Archived articles appearing in search results,  [ShowFor] bugs, problems with the Rich Text and  HTML editor and lack of KB editor/reviewer resources such as a comprehensive KB dashboard and list of recent revisions.  
>https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=support.mozilla.org%20-%20Lithium&bug_status=__open__%2Cfixed&order=changeddate%20DESC
>The elephant in the room is WHY did Mozilla pull developer resources from SUMO?  Is Mozilla Support not worth it?
The KB article shows both sets of text instead of one. The showfor feature in Sumo Lithium is faulty in several ways. We Know end users will get confusing instructions by default when they try to read many KB articles in Lithium yet months after migration there is no sign of these issues being worked on and fixed.
I am doing a bit of bug cleanup. There is a lot going on in this one but I would propose we use a single tracker for the Rollforward to lithium bug #1368221

I will capture things such as accept-language, validating in product links etc as bugs tied to that single tracker.

If no one objects (in a day or so) I will just close this out.
Hi Ben,
This particular bug has two facets and so I could see a possible case for leaving it open.

( Erin Lancaster [:elan] from comment #0)
> The temporary rollback is captured in Bug 1357606
> 
> This ticket tree will encompass: 
> 
> (1) Defining what criteria blocks the migration back to Lithium
> (2) Capturing the impact of this change across the Firefox eco-system (MoCo
> and Community) and figuring out what should be taken care of prior to or in
> parallel with the migration from Kitsune back to Lithium.
> ....  



(In reply to Ben (:bensternthal) from comment #8)
> I am doing a bit of bug cleanup. There is a lot going on in this one but I
> would propose we use a single tracker for the Rollforward to lithium bug
> #1368221
> 
> I will capture things such as accept-language, validating in product links
> etc as bugs tied to that single tracker.
> 
> If no one objects (in a day or so) I will just close this out.

Ben my understanding was that bug1358221 (was #13-6-8221 a typo) may have been to capture the mechanics and procedures of the rollback to Lithium,

But that this bug1357821 was also looking at what else needs fixing as a priority before rolling back.
I would hope that encompass keeping Kitsune working in the interim  -- maybe improve KB access from Kitsune because we seem to have broken that in the current rollback -- and then ensuring we move back to a Lithium that works much better than when we rolled back to Kitsune because we fix & then test some of the many known issues that Lithium has, not just the redirect issue before we move back to Lithium.
One current buglist for Lithium is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?list_id=13555970&resolution=---&query_format=advanced&product=support.mozilla.org%20-%20Lithium 

( Erin Lancaster [:elan] from comment #1)
> I'm sorry, in (2) Our users should have been the first thing if that wasn't
> implicit. The bottom line is that this back-end change should be completely
> transparent for Users, Community, Moco. If there are things that need to
> change in order to adapt to this back-end change, let us capture it here.
John:

You are correct that I had a typo :)

My thinking is that bug 1358221 captures both the mechanics and procedures of the rollforward to Lithium and the items that MUST be fixed prior.

Bugs that fit that criteria block 1358221 and block launch. 

Essentially I want a check list of bugs to know where we are tracking to switch to Lithium. 

The items in that bug list are quite varied and look to be of differing priorities, if any of those would block launch I would say they should be moved to block 1358221.

That should only be done with discussion with Patrick and folks, because they are going to need to make some hard decisions/judgements on what must be done and what can wait.

I think I understand what you are saying but if I am not interpreting correctly let me know!
NI Patrick
Ideally I would hope that because we know Kitsune works far better than Lithium we do not need to move back to it immediately & to do so would be detrimental to Sumo

I have posted my ideas in the platform agenda google doc & hope they get discussed tomorrow. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iz1xp2Iie4dvdy5WKC6aL8Nyx1tbLZE_6WQop4htTw8/edit#

I would hope that we could agree some of these items are hard blockers to moving back to Lithium. Such as 

*  Showfor issues  bug1350856  otherwise a lot of our many KB articles are broken

*  Contributor facing documentation Contributor    Bug 1348891  
   There is no reason that could not have been prepared and accurate before we even came out of Beta testing.

*  Bug handling procedures, Particularly with respect to how bugs are tracked and escalated to Lithium or Mozilla staff. 
  How else are we ever going to get out of this firefighting mode and start getting things fixed. Bug 1341574 comment 8  

I know the L10n issues are problematic. However they likely have no quick or easy answers so I am not trying to suggest those problems be a blocker even though they may well badly affect our ability to keep providing and maintaining good quality localised help articles.
Flags: needinfo?(pmcclard)
(In reply to John Hesling [:John99] (NeedInfo me) from comment #11)
> I know the L10n issues are problematic. However they likely have no quick or
> easy answers so I am not trying to suggest those problems be a blocker even
> though they may well badly affect our ability to keep providing and
> maintaining good quality localised help articles.

Seriously? Since when has L10n become such a second class citizen? Please remember: the majority of users are non-English speakers, so ignoring L10n means ignoring most of the users. Please keep that in mind.
Hi Adrian,
I agree with your thoughts and empathise. 
L10n is important and no one suggests such contributors or the majority of product users are second class citizens. 
I certainly did not intend to imply that or to cause offence. 

What I am trying to deal with is that fact that we have unfortunately got in a mess with migrating to Lithium, and those taking the decision will; I feel, have been aware that L10n features and facilities would be taking a big hit, as the result of that decision. We are now in a situation where we are trying to make the best of a poor situation and unfortunately I am not able to argue the point successfully that we should have stayed on Kitsune for the benefit of L10n.

The best I can do is suggest staying on Kitsune a while longer whilst we try to sort out some of the problems. My understanding of the L10n issues are rather limited but I am not aware that there are any easy fixes. Your L10n community will need to make your own thoughts and suggestions known and I would suggest doing so very quickly.

> though they may well badly affect our ability to keep providing and
> maintaining good quality localised help articles.
Those are my personal opinions of the situation. 
They may not be accurate and may not be the official Sumo opinion. 
The same with what I am saying in this post. 
I am only a volunteer contributor myself, but I am trying to offer constructive criticism and suggestions based on my own opinions as someone involved in KB writing and Beta testing of the Lithium Sumo software.

Note that  this bug is likely to be closed down any time now.

I also posted (bug1360005 comment3)
>...
>I agree the L10n issues are not going to be quickly and easily solved.
>It is not something I am directly involved with.
>I am not suggesting L10n issues should block reverting to Lithium use.
>( No idea of our user base but it may even be true to say the majority is not English. 
> We certainly have a lot of active or partially active Locales )  
So I am keeping in mind that we are affecting a lot of users and contributors.
:john99 Addressing your points above.


>*  Showfor issues  bug1350856  otherwise a lot of our many KB articles are broken

We are tracking a list of items that need to be corrected on Lithium here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l_NhKEcRtlnLVCwaokIkEeaG0cL_1aALF1rTZ6SJbqI/edit#

Showfor is at the top of the list and if you see anything missing please add. These will either be addressed by Lithium or we will bring in a contractor to do the work, so Lithium's professional services team can focus on our redirect issue. 

>*  Contributor facing documentation Contributor    Bug 1348891  
>   There is no reason that could not have been prepared and accurate before we even came out of Beta testing.

Rachel is working on the changes to Onboarding doc here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hrik3tMeWyqAXoOZ6SXCLwDuoySkzW8YvwSjkjl_KK0/edit

>*  Bug handling procedures, Particularly with respect to how bugs are tracked and escalated to Lithium or Mozilla staff. 
>  How else are we ever going to get out of this firefighting mode and start getting things fixed. Bug 1341574 comment 8 

This is needed not only for contributors, but also for the staff at Mozilla. Roland is working on documenting this process and will share with the community before it ends up on our contributor forums or KB and on the Mozilla Wiki. 

:adriank Everyone on my team believes that L10n is essential to our work and I apologize for the state of the tools on Lithium. Michal is working on a spec for L10n here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W5nFjidZgmF1GIWumnhsnKzzrEybHrxloHZU_tX4stQ/edit#heading=h.gzymq6km725f

We are currently exploring using Pontoon and having those tokens pushed to Lithium. If you have any input please reach out to Michal and add it to the doc.
Flags: needinfo?(pmcclard)
Rachel, this bug is turning in to a discussion of major but non blocking issues.
If bug1337666 is a critical issue as part of the redirects issue (or likely to be affected by the redirects fix); and it appears to be so; it may be necessary to ensure it blocks bug1358221.
Patrick thanks for the reply and links. 
I have made some comments in the linked google docs.

However it seems work on documenting the KB use & procedures is so far absent from the linked docs.

I also wonder why most of this proposed Contributor facing documentation is not itself as KB articles, as much of it would have been in Kitsune. Or maybe it is just still a very early draft and a set of KB articles is being planned.  

Any indication as to when KB related information will be added, or how long before Roland will be able to share drafts of bug handling procedures.
Patrick as the tracker document has a title of
> Kitsune=>Lithium requirements (outside Redirects)
and the first line is
> Blocker to re-launch

Is that an indication that even IF these items are not made to block bug1358221  at least the highest priority ones in the google doc such as showfor issues are things that are in fact being fixed before we move back from Kitsune to Lithium? 

(In reply to Patrick McClard;pmcclard from comment #14)
> :john99 Addressing your points above.
> 
> 
> >*  Showfor issues  bug1350856  otherwise a lot of our many KB articles are broken
> 
> We are tracking a list of items that need to be corrected on Lithium here:
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/
> 1l_NhKEcRtlnLVCwaokIkEeaG0cL_1aALF1rTZ6SJbqI/edit#
> 
> Showfor is at the top of the list and if you see anything missing please
> add. These will either be addressed by Lithium or we will bring in a
> contractor to do the work, so Lithium's professional services team can focus
> on our redirect issue. 
> ....

I have not added anything to that tracker document. We will have well over a hundred sumo Lithium bugs open but we are awaiting guidelines on bug handling and very few are in any way prioritised, or assigned; and there are a lot of NeedsInfo requests unanswered, but we are not absolutely certain who follows bugs and how. I believe at the last platform meeting there was mention that the Champions listing may need revising.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 4 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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