354524 - The support/firefox/adblock page was deleted, but wasn't replaced by anything.

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[Lucian Smith]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6

If you go to:

http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips

There is a bit that reads:

Ad Blocking

    Advertisements on websites are annoying, often breaking up text and flashing to get your attention. There is a neat trick that you can use to block most of the ads on Web pages.

    Because of the length of the code in this tip, it is available in a separate page.

'Separate page' is a link to http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/adblock  This was a terrific thing, and I used it religiously, but now it is gone.  From the CVS for that page:

1.7	steven%silverorange.com	2006-07-10 14:07	 	Replacing this page with an empty file before it is removed, as a hack to keep the generated html from living on on the live servers

Please, don't delete this page!  It is excellent.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

I don't understand Steven's comment. Could someone please explain it?

Comment 2

[Nick Bebout]

David, Steven, why was this page removed?  I can revert to the old version if that is wanted.

Comment 3

[Steven Garrity [:sgarrity]]

This content was intentionally removed from mozilla.org. 
Shaver, Lilly, Beard, and Pkim were in on the decision.

Comment 4

[timeless]

um, mozilla.org should be relatively open. if people want to remove something from it, there should be a moderately public explanation. if the explanation is that there's a legal liability, that should be publishable.

Comment 5

[Wolf [:wolf]]

I was going to comment, but timeless pretty well covered it before I could. doh. :-)

Comment 6

[Steven Garrity [:sgarrity]]

I'm just the web-monkey that removed it. Maybe we could get some of the people who asked me to remove it to explain why that was?

Comment 7

[Nick Bebout]

CC'ing the people Steven mentioned.

Comment 8

[Mike Shaver (:shaver -- probably not reading bugmail closely)]

The content there was over-broad and quite decrepit, and people who want to block advertisements have more effective and easy-to-use options available (including some listed on the Firefox Add-ons recommended list at the time of this writing).  There are better pages on the web describing how to block advertisements using that very technique as well, for those who might insist on using that specific approach for whatever reason.  It doesn't need to be on the mozilla.org site, least of all under the "support" section where users might quite reasonably expect mozilla.org to offer them support on using the technique in question.  (Far more thought went into its removal than went into considering each individual page that was pulled in during the import of texturizer.net, and I don't think we need a plebiscite on every change to the web site. :) )

WONTFIX, but if you want to offer support to users who do this, and educate them about the kinds of site breakage that they can silently incur with such broad mutations on pages, you are obviously more than free to host a page somewhere with instructions and guides for it.  It doesn't need to be on mozilla.org to be useful.

Comment 9

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Shaver, Lilly, Beard, Pkim, and Steve: I agree with the decision. Next time, however, please let me know if you're removing content from the support pages. It definitely helps me maintain the pages. :)

Comment 10

[Lucian Smith]

Alrighty, I can live with that.  Sad, but OK.  I started using this technique maybe 5 years ago, and it's worked fine since then; I guess I'll see how much longer it keeps working.

Mike, you mentioned there are other web pages that describe 'this technique'--what would you call the technique for the purposes of a google search?  I can't think of a good combination of search words.

Comment 11

[Marc Bejarano]

is there a bug tracking the complete removal of the page?  if you go to http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/adblock right now, you see this:
==
Adblock

Welcome to Firefox Help, the online help resource for the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

code1
code2
==

Comment 12

[Nick Bebout]

I will remove it and set up a 410 Gone response shortly.

Comment 13

[Nick Bebout]

In about 15 minutes you should see a 410 Gone response when going to /support/firefox/adblock.html

--

RCS file: /cvsroot/mozilla-org/html/support/firefox/.htaccess,v
done
Checking in .htaccess;
/cvsroot/mozilla-org/html/support/firefox/.htaccess,v  <--  .htaccess
initial revision: 1.1
done
Removing adblock.html;
/cvsroot/mozilla-org/html/support/firefox/adblock.html,v  <--  adblock.html
new revision: delete; previous revision: 1.8
done