1489530 - The "frecency" score value is no longer counted, after the website was removed from the "Top Site" area

Status: REOPENED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect, P3)

Description

[Marius Coman [:mcoman], Ecosystem QA]

Attachment: rec of the issue.gif

[Affected versions]:
- Firefox 63 and above

[Affected Platforms]:
- All Windows
- All Linux
- All Mac

[Prerequisites]:
- Have a Firefox profile with the following prefs in the "about:config" page:
	- "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.asrouterExperimentEnabled" with "true" value;
	- "browser.search.region" with "US" value.
	-  "devtools.chrome.enabled" on true.
- Have the "Browser Console" opened.

[Steps to reproduce]:
1. Open the browser with the profile from prerequisites.
2. Open a new tab and click the "Youtube" Top Site.
3. Open another new tab and dismiss the "Youtube" top site.
4. Navigate to the "youtube.com" in five separate tabs and focus the "Browser Console".
5. Enter the following string in the console: "NewTabUtils.activityStreamProvider.getTopFrecentSites({numItems: 25}).then(r => console.log(r.map(s=>`${s.url} [${s.frecency}]`).join('\n')))".
6. Observe the displayed "frecency".

[Expected result]:
- The "frecency" score is equal or over "10000".

[Actual result]:
- There is no "frecency" score displayed at all.

[Notes]:
- This issue is reproducible for each website with a card in the "Top Sites" area.
- Also, after following the steps above, the "CFR" recommendation button is no longer triggered for that website.
- This issue is not reproducible if the "Top Site" was deleted before accessing its website.
- Attached a screen recording of the issue.

Comment 1

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

This happens because blocked sites are removed from the top sites targeting added in bug 1471350:

const FRECENT_SITES_IGNORE_BLOCKED = true;

Was there a decision then to explicitly ignore blocked?

Comment 2

[Adam Hillier :ahillier]

I don't think it was an explicit decision, more just a choice that had to be made when implementing the top sites targeting before it had any consumer message providers. I guess you could make the argument that it might depend on the type of message and that some hypothetical future message provider might only want to only target un-blocked sites. For CFR though I think you're right that it makes sense to not ignore blocked.

Comment 3

[GitHub Bugzilla PR Linker]

Attachment: Link to GitHub pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/pull/4419

Comment 4

[Kate Hudson :k88hudson]

We've decided this is working as intended since we want to be looking at organic top sites rather than a user's top sites on their new tab page (just because someone has blocked them from their new tab doesn't mean they don't visit them frequently)

If we want to look at blocking of new tab tiles as a signal, we can do so separately.

Comment 5

[Kate Hudson :k88hudson]

Sorry, I was reading this as the opposite change.

As described above, we should *not* filter out blocked sites so this patch is needed.

Comment 6

[[github robot]]

Commit pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream

https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/commit/ba07fb929462f7f66a3d98b837d7adcdf1d6cf26
Bug 1489530: include blocked sites in ASRouter top sites targeting

Comment 7

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/95f8e6265f24

Comment 8

[Ciprian Muresan [:cmuresan], Formerly of Ecosystem QA - please needinfo @mcoman for things regarding the team]

The issue is still reproducible on the latest Nightly 64.0a1 (Build ID 20180925220052) on Windows 10 x64, Mac 10.13.3, and Arch Linux x64. Frecency is still not counted if the website is dismissed from Top Sites and we don't show a recommendation regardless of how many times the website is visited.

I've even tried blocking a website that already had over 10k frecency and I didn't get a recommendation.