453387 - Restore the Gecko user-agent spec

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

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

Description

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The user-agent spec is still the current specification for web developers that describes how our UA string is formatted.  It needs to be either restored on mozilla.org or migrated to devmo with a redirect installed, not just removed.

This is eerily reminiscent of the newlayout thing, complete with document authors who are still around and such...

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

I'd mark this blocking the bug where the removal happened, but there's no bug# in the CVS log.

Comment 2

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

We're not going to restore it on www.mozilla.org without a very good reason, but we're happy to add a redirect to MDC or a redirect to the archive.

Comment 3

[Robert Kaiser]

Well, this sounds more like a spec than a doc, and a spec probably would have its rightful place on www.m.o after all, as they are official and not just code docs or so. Should we create a www.mozilla.org/specs/ directory or such to hold things like that?

Comment 4

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

I'm fine with that, considering we just made a new policies/ directory.

Comment 5

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

It boggles my mind that people think it's good that screw-ups like this keep happening over and over again.

Comment 6

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

I honestly don't have a strong preference for whether this is on devmo or in mozilla.org/policies or whatnot.  I just care that the URI in the URL field of this bug redirect to the right document.

Comment 7

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> It boggles my mind that people think it's good that screw-ups like this keep
> happening over and over again.

When we (as a group) decided that we were going to remove large chunks of pages from www.mozilla.org, we conceded that issues like this were going to come up, and we stated we would do our best to resolve the issues and add redirects as needed. We felt that in the long run, it was better to go ahead and do large removals and see what happens rather than trying to talk to every owner of every page on www.mozilla.org, which just isn't feasible at all. David blogged about this (http://davidwboswell.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/archiving-content-on-wwwmozillaorg/) to help give people a heads up after we did the initial removal of a lot of documents. This isn't something we just decided to do out of the blue. We have been planning this for months (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla.org:Planning), and we just needed to get the ball rolling so we could start the real work on reshaping www.mozilla.org. We're sorry that this removal was unfortunate, and we're happy to help resolve the issue, but please have patience with us on our path to make www.mozilla.org better.

Comment 8

[Robert Kaiser]

Yes, we knew that some screwups might happen, we have an awful lot of cruft on www.m.o and it's hard to see what lies between those historic pages that is still valid. It's probably good that those issues come up as they make us identify what documents are still valid and needed.

I think the way to go is to create a specs/ subdir or use policies/ or somesuch and put this in there, I guess there might be others that fit there as well.

Comment 9

[David Boswell]

I'd like to hear from sheppy before moving this back.  Eric, do you think it makes more sense to put this page on MDC or set it up at

www.mozilla.org/specs/revised-user-agent-strings.html

Comment 10

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

It should be put on MDC and a redirect established, IMHO.

Comment 11

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

How about undoing the incorrect deletion of a non-obsolete document and then figuring out where it should go, rather than holding the people who want the document back hostage to a process of deciding where it should go?

Comment 12

[David Boswell]

I've copied this page over to MDC and set up a redirect.  The new page on MDC is at

http://developer.mozilla.org/User_Agent_Strings_Reference

If that's not the right place to put that document on MDC, please let me know and I can change the redirect as needed.

Closing as fixed.

Comment 13

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

Now that the article is restored, it would be helpful if someone would update it so that it's current.

Comment 14

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

I've taken a shot at updating some obvious things, but dbaron should look over it, probably.