413592 - Create an "About this site" page for Firefox Support

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(support.mozilla.org :: Knowledge Base Articles, task)

Description

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Let's create a page that explains the project to users:
- It's a community built web site
- disclaimers about versions supported
- disclaimers about Linux distributions

anything else?

Comment 1

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Possibly:
- privacy policy
- terms of use

This page should be in the Administration category and be placed in the footer (see bug 413619).

Comment 2

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

Starting it here http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-index.php?page=About+Firefox+Support

it has a rough outline to get me started, I expect it to rearrange as more info is included and a good flow is easier to see.  Shaping it more like an FAQ right now.  Let me know how it looks as I go.

Comment 3

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

- I think we need to emphasize the fact the site is community built right away (in "What is this site about").

- There's something about having "Firefox" as a sub-heading of "What do you support" that seems off to me. At first I thought the question "What do you support" was just too vague, but I realize that we don't even need the "Typical users" section.

- I don't see anything about privacy policy or terms of use.

- I tried to find other Mozilla web site pages, which may give us a good idea of how to approach this:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/about/
http://www.mozilla.org/about/
http://www.mozillazine.org/about/

Comment 4

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Are you still working on this? If not, please unassign. Thanks!

Comment 5

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

I hadn't been, but looking at it, I think it's not far from being ready for live. Thanks for the feedback Chris, I don't remember if I saw this.

If the rest of you guys wanted to give it a once over for specific things:

1. Are the headings complete?

Is there a question a user would want to know that isn't listed yet. Are there questions there that shouldn't be answered?

2. Are the current answers correct?

Is something off-base or worded ambiguously?

3. Is there any missing information?

Some of the answers definitely need filling out, though I think they all have a basic answer.  Is there a section that you think needs more information? Do you like how your section of the project is described?

Please feel free to dump the information you want to see in the actual article, it's pretty easy for me to reword things so that it maintains a uniform voice.

Comment 6

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> - I think we need to emphasize the fact the site is community built right away
> (in "What is this site about").
> 
> - There's something about having "Firefox" as a sub-heading of "What do you
> support" that seems off to me. At first I thought the question "What do you
> support" was just too vague, but I realize that we don't even need the "Typical
> users" section.

I like to structure things in a way that makes it easy for users to skim the ToC for information as well, which is why I'd made them sections. They could easily be rolled into one paragraph or be bullet points under the same section. This is important to emphasize though, we only support Firefox, and our documents are only geared towards typical end users, not hackers or web-developers.

> 
> - I don't see anything about privacy policy or terms of use.

Good point, trying to remember if those links were in the footer at the time, but they don't appear to be now.

> 
> - I tried to find other Mozilla web site pages, which may give us a good idea
> of how to approach this:
> http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/about/
> http://www.mozilla.org/about/
> http://www.mozillazine.org/about/

If you still like those examples, could you mention a couple of things about them that you think are important to try and follow?

Comment 7

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

This is my fault as well. I remember emailing Lucy, asking if she wanted me to take this over; she said go for it, and I didn't follow up.

Comment 8

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > - I don't see anything about privacy policy or terms of use.
> 
> Good point, trying to remember if those links were in the footer at the time,
> but they don't appear to be now.

The intent is to put a link to this article in the footer.

> > - I tried to find other Mozilla web site pages, which may give us a good idea
> > of how to approach this:
> > http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/about/
> > http://www.mozilla.org/about/
> > http://www.mozillazine.org/about/
> 
> If you still like those examples, could you mention a couple of things about
> them that you think are important to try and follow?

Simplicity. If this page can be done in one paragraph, do it in one paragraph.

Comment 9

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

(In reply to comment #8)

> 
> Simplicity. If this page can be done in one paragraph, do it in one paragraph.

ahh ok.  I don't think we can in this case. As you'll see my intention was to cover what we are, what we're not, and give users some info on where to go if they're in the wrong place. I think normally this would be the difference between an about page and an FAQ but for our purposes it's probably best to put them together.  Concise paragraph answer above the ToC and then the rest below for people who want to know more?

Comment 10

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

Chris - I definitely don't mind helping with the writing but I'll need you to take point on this. Maybe we can sit down to hack on it together sometime.

Comment 11

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Moving back to 0.8. This wouldn't be affected by a code freeze, because it's not a sumodev bug. Plus it's my only 0.8 bug, and I've set aside time to work on it. :-)

Comment 12

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Silly question: What is our privacy policy?

Comment 13

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Draft is ready. What do you think?

Comment 14

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

Looks good for what it covers.

I still think this is a good opportunity to detail where to get help for things we don't cover, but if we're going for simplicity that would add to the page. At the least add something like "Support for developers [web developers?] can be found at http://developer.mozilla.org" to the what we cover section.

"Firefox Support covers references, tutorials, and troubleshooting for average users of Firefox 2 and up (including Firefox 3)."

I would change this to say that we cover officially supported versions of Firefox, unless we're archiving the support articles for old versions. I brought up this question in the newsgroups, not sure it was resolved (probably a good idea).

Comment 15

[David Tenser [:djst]]

(In reply to comment #14)
> Looks good for what it covers.
> 
> I still think this is a good opportunity to detail where to get help for things
> we don't cover, but if we're going for simplicity that would add to the page.
> At the least add something like "Support for developers [web developers?] can
> be found at http://developer.mozilla.org" to the what we cover section.

I agree. Could we add a section for that?

I've made some edits to the text:

* "average users" -> "users"
* "the Mozilla Corporation" -> "Mozilla"
* "web site" -> "website" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website)
* reworded some stuff; see diff.

Comment 16

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Second draft is ready.
I added a line about where to go for developer documentation and another line about where to give feedback.

I would like to re-add the word "average", because of the monkey rule.

Answers.com says "website" is two words <http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=website>, and the style guide says to use Answers.com.

Comment 17

[[:Cww]]

Added some links and fixed some phrasing.

Comment 18

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

So, is this ready for push?

Comment 19

[[:Cww]]

I think so but I made the last edit so one more person should read it first.

Comment 20

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

I read it, and thought is was fine. It's my favourite type of edit. :-)

Comment 21

[David Tenser [:djst]]

THis page could still benefit from some clarifications. 

"Releases not provided by the Mozilla Corporation (including those provided by Linux distributions) are not covered."

This is potentially confusing. We should clarify what we mean by "provided by the Mozilla Corporation" -- I suggest we say "Releases not downloaded directly from mozilla.com (including those provided by Linux distributions) are not covered."

"Individual add-ons are not supported."

This is also a bit confusing. What do we mean with "invidivual" add-ons? Are there other types? What is an add-on in the first place? Maybe a paragraph of its own, first explaining that Firefox can be extended with so called addons (link to customizing firefox with addons) and then make it clear that this site doesn't support them. 

Finally, under the MDC paragraph, "go to the" -> "please visit the"

Comment 22

[David Tenser [:djst]]

(In reply to comment #21)
> This is potentially confusing. We should clarify what we mean by "provided by
> the Mozilla Corporation" -- I suggest we say "Releases not downloaded directly
> from mozilla.com (including those provided by Linux distributions) are not
> covered."

Actually that was kind of confusing too. How about:

Only Firefox releases downloaded from www.mozilla.com are supported. We do not support other versions like those provided by Linux distributions since these versions are not necessarily identical to our official releases and may use different settings or simply look different.

... or something like that. Feel free to be creative.

Comment 23

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Changes based on comment 21 and comment 22 have been implemented.

Comment 24

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

Sorry for the late reply here.

If a version has been given the ok to be called Firefox, then in theory we still support it as the code changes aren't very big and shouldn't affect support.

So we shouldn't say that we don't support versions from Linux, we should say we only support Firefox, and do not support derivatives such as Iceweasel.

Comment 25

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

wow, I have no idea how those changes happened.

Comment 26

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

I agree with Lucy.
Installing and updating via the package manager is encouraged.

Comment 27

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

We discussed this earlier today. The only articles affected by this differentiation are "Installing Firefox on Linux" and "Updating Firefox". And on those pages, we can explain that the normal way to install Firefox is via the package manager, before providing instructions on installing Firefox from www.mozilla.com.

I've moved the page to the admin category.

Comment 28

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

The forums and live chat are definitely affected. It can also affect the content we provide in troubleshooting articles.  There's definitely a difference between the two, whatever we choose should reflect what we're actually going to support. 

If we don't cover issues that come up in official Firefox versions provided by linux distros we'll need to change the site so that it tells people to go to their disto's support if our articles don't solve their problem. We probably want to then link to the distros' Firefox support pages from this article for approved distro versions as well.