483834 - Show UA of commenter in article feedback

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

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

Description

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

I'm following feedback on a specific article to see if some changes helped and I realized that since each os has some differences wrt screenshots it would be nice to know which version of the article they're leaving feedback on. There were also a couple cases where I had to do some research to figure out which view a comment was referring to, and being able to see this in the comment would save some time.

Summary says UA, but I think it would probably be a better idea to just store which version of the article they have in view when leaving the comment. If we take it that way then there definitely won't be a need to let users edit this (like we let them do with UA on forums).

Would probably be helpful to include language as well thinking back to bug 471456

Comment 1

[Paul Craciunoiu [:paulc]]

Sounds like this would be a possible solution:
whichever selections are active in SHOWFOR are displayed in the comment form (perhaps as a select list, changeable). Something like this...

Post new comment
--------- Select OS... | Select FF version (autocompleted by showfor)
|       |
---------

Also, after the comments are posted, these selections for OS and FF version are click-able, and change the article to that view (e.g. basically onclick="showfor('firefox2.0')")

How does this sound?

Comment 2

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

The second half sounds exactly like what I'd like. 

I think we shouldn't expose the UI to users. I mean, the odds of them changing showfor and then leaving a comment on the original view is incredibly low. The odds of users getting confused by the select boxes is much higher.

Comment 3

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

(why do I always have good thoughts after hitting submit)

To me this is like the time. The time is the time, and we don't give users UI to change the time. I would like the feedback to just tell me what view of the page the user had going when they made the comment.

Comment 4

[Paul Craciunoiu [:paulc]]

(In reply to comment #3)
I'd love to give them no additional choices, so then we should have a way of ensuring that the comment registers the version they are addressing. But then the problem arises on what our assumptions are. Do we assume:
a) The selected article OS/FF version is the one the user is commenting on at the time the user makes the comment.
or b) The default/auto-detected OS/FF version is..

Both of these can "lie", so we should decide which way to go. a) seems better to me, as long as we're aware that there's no guarantee that the user isn't actually commenting on a different version s/he just read (but changed from).

Comment 5

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

Yeah, this is a bit complex, but I think we need to remember a couple things.

When users are leaving feedback and we want to investigate it what matters most is what version of the article they see. What OS they're on doesn't tell us that.

Example - someone with JS disabled left a comment about some text running together making the instructions hard to understand. Letting them choose what OS they're actually on would have made this info useless. Or let's say they're complaining about a screenshot, or a spelling error.

Now obviously there's value in knowing what OS they're actually on, so that if someone says "I don't have a Firefox menu!" we can see that they're on windows but viewing the mac version, however I think in most cases we'll be able to infer this pretty easily.

So I think there's definitely value in showing *both* I think the biggest help is just to know what version of the article the feedback applies to, which in almost every case will be the version they're looking at when they leave the comment.

Comment 6

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> I'd love to give them no additional choices, so then we should have a way of
> ensuring that the comment registers the version they are addressing. But then
> the problem arises on what our assumptions are. Do we assume:
> a) The selected article OS/FF version is the one the user is commenting on at
> the time the user makes the comment.
> or b) The default/auto-detected OS/FF version is..
> 
> Both of these can "lie", so we should decide which way to go. a) seems better
> to me, as long as we're aware that there's no guarantee that the user isn't
> actually commenting on a different version s/he just read (but changed from).

Aside from my tangent above, yes, I definitely agree with this, I think it's an acceptable assumption. Let's see what chris/david think.

Comment 7

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Here's the gut feeling of "chris/david": both the current view and the UA info would be useful info. We could just include that automatically without presenting any UI. There is a privacy aspect to the latter, though, which might be problematic. The "current view" can easily be included without asking, as technically it can be considered a separate page. The UA info, however, _may_ be something we need to ask before we include, but I'm not sure. Maybe as a compromise, we could have a simple checkbox at the bottom of the text box saying:

[x] Include info about my version of Firefox when submitting the feedback


Off-topic: This makes me think of how we're automatically including info about the user's plugins when they post a forum question. Maybe we should include a line there saying e.g.:

"A list of your installed Firefox plugins will automatically be included when submitting your question."

Comment 8

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

If we all agree this is helpful can we put a target on it to make sure it stays on the radar?

I agree that we should inform people about the plugins, I don't think we have a bug for investigating that yet.

I'm not sure if the UA bit is necessary to get permission for, but it's a nice gesture and hopefully most people won't opt out. I would personally say yeah go for it, except I do think we need to consider the UI. Let's see if it's too clunky with it in and go from there?

Comment 9

[David Tenser [:djst]]

On second thought I don't think informing about this data collection is necessary. This is, after all, public info for a web browser and many many sites collect the info without informing. It's in no way a privacy issue, since no private information is revealed.

So I think we should just find a way to collect the info, period. Ideally both selected SHOWFOR combination _and_ UA string, since that can also give us an idea of whether or not the user is looking at the right content for his/her version of Firefox.

The collected info could be presented as a summary at the top of the feedback thread, similar to how a forum thread is presented:

Firefox version: 3.0.8 Operating system: Windows Vista
Selected article view: Windows, Firefox 3.0