1494492 - "Forgetting" a site is too easy for how destructive it can be.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1711759

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Caspy7]

I do a good amount of Firefox user support and this has come up several times leading to some very frustrated and angry reactions. Users will select to "forget" a site causing Firefox to remove all traces of it (history items, offline data and passwords).

Sometimes it is done in ignorance, not understanding the full ramifications, sometimes by accident. Here's a recent report from a user who says "I accidentally click it all the time when i just want to remove one link from my history"
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9j2mkn/forget_about_this_site/

Depending on the site and user habits this function can end up being particularly destructive, potentially deleting hundreds or thousands of history entries. One especially hazardous element of the Forget function is it deletes any username & passwords you have stored for that site. This could leave users in a very bad dataloss situation.
====

Let's consider a way to mitigate this problem. 
Perhaps adding an additional prompt that informs the user of *what* they are about to do before they consent to it.

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away July 4-13)]

Aaron, wdyt?

In general we always tried avoiding too many confirmation dialogs, suppose that a user is on purpose using Forget about this site to cleanup his history, and has to do that on many pages, it would be extremely annoying, and this is volatile data (history doesn't persist forever)... Then the dialog would need a "remember my choice" checkbox... and then we should decide if it's a remember forever or for the session (the risk of unwanted forgets doesn't go away).
Alternatively we could maybe add another hr to the menu, but it would look a bit weird.

Comment 2

[Aaron Benson]

If the problem is that people accidentally click on "Forget About This Site", then I think adding another hr between it and "Delete Page" is a good idea. 

If we think that people don't understand what "Forget About This Site" actually does, then we should probably think about changing the labels to be clearer and maybe putting a confirmation dialog in all the time.

Comment 3

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away July 4-13)]

I think we actually try to do both:
1. add an hr to prevent misclicks
2. Find a better string that looks "scarier" to the user than just "Forget this page/site"

Does UX team have ideas on a better string we could use here to clarify this doesn't just remove history but any related data (cookies, offline data and so on).

Comment 4

[Aaron Benson]

Not so much scarier as it is more descriptive. I've also proposed changing the other Delete action. Thoughts?

https://mozilla.invisionapp.com/share/YMOHIF3F69V#/324614219_Forget_About_This_Site

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away July 4-13)]

I have doubts about the user concept of "history", I actually think for most users history does not include cookies, offline data, passwords, but it's just visits. Especially in some of the translations, in italian "history" => "cronologia", and cronologia is used in most browsers (and understood by users) as a collection of visits.
See for example comment 0 "I accidentally click it all the time when i just want to remove one link from my history", using the word "history" in the Forget string seems to actually make that case worse.

I was thinking about "All Data", or "Stored Data". We use Stored Cookies for example in Preferences. Something like "Remove Stored Data For This Site" or "Clear Stored Data For This Site"?

Comment 6

[Aaron Benson]

Yeah, good point. I ran with one of your suggestions but shortened it just a bit to "Remove All Data For This Site". I also think that "Delete Page" can stay the same now as it makes sense with this new wording. The spec is updated. Thoughts?

Comment 7

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away July 4-13)]

It looks like an improvement to me. Mark, thoughts?

Comment 8

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Yes, I think that is much clearer. Do we also want to add the hr in, so that these entries are separated and it is less likely that you'll accidentally slip onto the wrong one?

Comment 9

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away July 4-13)]

(In reply to Mark Banner (:standard8) from comment #8)
> Yes, I think that is much clearer. Do we also want to add the hr in, so that
> these entries are separated and it is less likely that you'll accidentally
> slip onto the wrong one?

yes, see the mock-up.

Comment 10

[santtu.hietamaki]

This UX problem still exists.

I just accidentally deleted my whole DDG history and was bit of shocked that there were no confirmation dialog or possibility to undo. That's several years of personal search history down the drain because of one misclick. That's valuable data about user's past that can have several potential uses.

Here's multiple other reports from users experiencing this problem:
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/search?q=forget+site&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all

Here's a duplicate of the bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=903777

Comment 11

[Karl]

I fully agree with this bug and am puzzled why even an existing patch (in 903777) is being ignored for so long.
I find it really counter-intuitive that a context menu in the history manipulates not just the history (which is subject to expiry, i.e. transient) but various important and permanently stored data.

Comment 12

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away July 4-13)]

This was fixed in bug 1711759 with a confirmation dialog.

Comment 13

[Caspy7]

Always puts a bee in my bonnet every time I file a bug and later someone files an identical (or nearly so) bug and when it gets fixed mine gets duped against it. It's happened to me now on multiple occasions and makes me feel dismissed or unappreciated as a contributor.

If the first bug is burdened with comments or some other baggage, I can see the case for working someone in stealth, but that's not been the case.

Comment 14

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away July 4-13)]

Hi, I'm sorry about that, the problem is that bugzilla at this point contains millions of tickets, finding a previous instance of an issue can be a challenge, especially for new contributors. The work is not always noticed by the peers in a meaningful time and often people prefer to work in a new ticket to start from a clean slate. If the work already started on another ticket, asking that person to stop everything and move all the work and discussion to another old bug may sound like stop-energy. I honestly prefer to get the fix first, that benefits everyone.
If that would make you feel better, I could just mark this bug depending on that one and fixed, but I feel like it wouldn't change much.
The fact the bug was fixed anyway, means this feedback was spot on.

Comment 15

[santtu.hietamaki]

Thank you for listening to feedback and fixing the issue! It's good to see an issue taken seriously that have an aspect of subjectivity.