497377 - Recall Adblock Filterset.G Updater

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Admin/Editor Tools, defect)

Description

[Rey Bango]

The add-on Adblock Filterset.G Updater is obsolete as per the description in the add-on's profile. I think we should remove it from the Add-on Compatibility report.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136

Comment 1

[Dave Garrett]

I think it's probably best to just disable the extension completely at this point. Both the extension author and list author have discontinued things. (see bug 468663) It's an updater for a list that is no longer updated; it essentially does nothing.

If someone really wants to use Filterset.G still, they can go find the last version of the list and install it somewhere else. There's still thousands of users who install this thing not knowing or caring that it's now a dud, so I'd be nice to just get rid of it from AMO entirely.

Comment 2

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I think it's probably best to just disable the extension completely at this
> point.

Agreed: Making a special case in the code for it does not seem to make sense to me.

Rey, does the compat report only contain public add-ons? In that case, why don't you sandbox the add-on.

Comment 3

[Rey Bango]

The add-on public profile says the following:

"***OBSOLETE***
The author of Filterset.G no longer maintains it, and the website it is hosted on is defunct. This add-on page is available for historical reasons only. Please use Adblock Plus with one of its recommended subscriptions instead."

I've disabled this add-on as it's unsupported and users are complaining about issues with it.

Comment 4

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

I'm confused:

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136 is now a 404
[2] A search on production no longer finds it: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=adblock+filter&cat=all
[3] It is, however, disabled as Rey says, but only on preview: https://preview.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136
[4] This bug's summary wasn't updated to match comment 3.

Comment 5

[Rey Bango]

Yes I disabled the add-on via the admin. Replying to each point:

1) When you disable it, it no longer appears on AMO which is why you get the "Add-on not found!" message (not a 404). So what you're seeing is expected.

2) Yes that makes perfect sense since it's disabled.

3) No, on preview it shows since that's on it's own server pulling from a dev DB.

4) I'm not sure what you mean. The initial intent of the bug was to remove it from the compatibility report. Based on good feedback, I disabled the add-on since it's abandoned and users were posting negative reviews as well due to it being abandoned. 

Let me know if this helps. If not, hit me on IRC and we can chat.

Comment 6

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

That'll do it; thanks.

(Updated the summary to reflect what was done.)

Comment 7

[Dave Garrett]

This bug morphed from "get rid of this thing in the compatibility list" to "get rid of this thing altogether". The later has been done, but the former doesn't appear to have followed:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/compatibility/report
"Adblock Filterset.G Updater" is still listed in there even though it links to a gone page. Does this thing need to be updated more frequently than it is, or is there something else at play here?

Comment 8

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Attachment: only look for valid statuses

Patch that only looks at valid statuses.  r? to fligtar to make sure it doesn't affect report results in the wrong way.

Comment 9

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

Comment on attachment 384244 [details] [diff] [review]
only look for valid statuses

I don't agree with this bug in principle, but the patch seems fine to me.

Comment 10

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

Hit commit too soon. Continuing my previous comment...

I've always thought the reasons we make such a big push and goal around increasing the % of most used add-ons that are compatible with an upcoming Firefox release is: 1) it's just good to have them updated and 2) users are less likely to upgrade to that Firefox version if their add-ons say they are incompatible.

I don't see how removing this add-on from our status report addresses either of those goals and instead just hacks the system so we look better. If an add-on makes it into this report, it's used a good bit and those users that already have it don't really care if we've disabled it -- it still might prevent them from upgrading.

Comment 11

[Rey Bango]

Justin, it's removed because it's **OBSOLETE**.

Comment 12

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

Rey, it has over half a million active daily users.

**OBSOLETE** or not, that's over half a million people that will be told it's not compatible with Firefox 3.5 when they update, and might click No because they want to keep that add-on. I don't think it addresses our goals to pretend it doesn't exist.

Comment 13

[Rey Bango]

Then reinstate the add-on & correct the report, which was the intent of this bug. You're the developer of the report so I've assigned it to you to handle this going forward.

Comment 14

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to comment #12)
> **OBSOLETE** or not, that's over half a million people that will be told it's
> not compatible with Firefox 3.5 when they update, and might click No because
> they want to keep that add-on.

Yeah, but there's nothing we can do about that. It's not going to get updated. It's a defunct updater for a no longer updated filter list. The author of the extension didn't even care anymore and recommends replacements. Putting it in this list or not doesn't really affect anything.

Frankly, both sides make sense to me:
a) It's a list of all add-ons in use, so even if it's disabled it should be listed because it's still in use.
b) It's a list of what AMO hosts, in which case the disabled ones shouldn't be listed anymore because they're no longer hosted by AMO.

(the hiding of disabled add-ons probably warranted a new bug, I think)

Comment 15

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to comment #13)
> Then reinstate the add-on & correct the report

Yeah, please don't reinstate this thing. It's a long dead extension and AMO shouldn't keep it on life support.

Comment 16

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

Is there a way to bridge the gap and get those users updated to something else, or?  Could also blocklist filterset.g, but that doesn't prevent the compat message from showing up.

Comment 17

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

Blocklist sends the wrong message, and other options are tricky because users that don't plan to upgrade to 3.5 anyway may still want to use the extension.

My idea that I emailed to the developers is for us to issue one last update of the extension that on firstrun pops up a dialog that explains that the add-on is no longer supported and recommending that users uninstall the extension. The dialog will have a button where users can uninstall it right there.

Users that want to keep using it can cancel, but hopefully we'll be able to uninstall a few hundred thousand that way.

I also told the developers we would be willing to write the patch if they weren't. Hopefully we'll get a reply soon.

Comment 18

[Dave Garrett]

Blocklisting sounds like overkill here. If soft blocklisting (give a message instead of a block) ever gets fully implemented that might be applicable.

Comment 19

[Nick Nguyen [:osunick]]

The other option is to see if they're willing to test their extension to see if it works under 3.5.* without any changes- if so they can update the maxver.  Or, if we're willing to write an extension we could also review and test it ourselves to see if it worked.

Comment 20

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

I've received responses from the author and am now working with the author and Mozilla developers to write the reusable, localized snippet of code we can drop in to recall an extension.

Comment 21

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

An update on this: we finished the extension today and have sent it to the authors to have it localized as much as possible before tomorrow afternoon. I'm aiming to push the recall tomorrow afternoon, leaving us the weekend for uptake before Firefox 3.5's release early next week.

I've tried to figure out if there's a way we could push the update while keeping the extension disabled on AMO, but there's not. We'll have to re-enable the extension for it to work. The only thing we could do to fix that without risky code changes is adding CSS to hide the install buttons for that specific add-on ID as a temporary fix. Other than that, the warnings in the summary and description will have to suffice.

Comment 22

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

Recall has been pushed live, and after caches clear we should start seeing uninstalls happening.

Leaving this bug open until we can verify results next week.

Comment 23

[Wladimir Palant]

Unfortunately, this update will only uninstall the extension - it won't remove the filters however. Adblock Plus already has code detecting Filterset.G Updater and recommending to uninstall it, I guess now it should be changed into detecting a Filterset.G subscription without the actual extension and removing it without asking questions. Of course the users should get the other subscriptions offered if they don't have any yet.

Comment 24

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to comment #23)
> Adblock Plus already has code detecting Filterset.G
> Updater and recommending to uninstall it, I guess now it should be changed into
> detecting a Filterset.G subscription without the actual extension and removing
> it without asking questions.

I'd still ask. The updater is defunct, but anyone who was using it was still intending to use the list even if they weren't aware that it's the final version. I fully expect a few people to even install the final version of Filterset.G manually, and while this is probably a bad idea, they can do so if they choose. Best to just give them all the info and highly recommend an alternative. (maybe even with a biased UI that allows ignoring, but doesn't focus on it)

By the way, the last version supported SeaMonkey too so that might want to be recalled at some point as well.
https://preview.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/seamonkey/addons/versions/1136

Comment 25

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

My understanding is that people that already have Filterset.G installed can still use it, which is why our uninstaller doesn't mess with the filters. So I would probably ask about removing the filters.

Comment 26

[Wladimir Palant]

You are right. Last update for Filterset.G was in March 2008 and it was already having trouble with false positives back then. But people might want to keep using it, for whatever reasons.

(In reply to comment #24)
> I fully expect a few people to even install the final version of
> Filterset.G manually, and while this is probably a bad idea, they can do so if
> they choose.

Adding it manually won't work any more, the server went out a while ago. Anyway, this is a different scenario - I wouldn't look for manually added subscriptions, only for an "external" subscription (one that is being updated by another extension) with a particular ID.

Comment 27

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

Going to mark this as FIXED now. I still intend to do a blog post with details about how this worked, but our stats aren't updating at the moment and we need to give it another week or so anyway.