558156 - Users are complaining about AAQ taking them in circles

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(support.mozilla.org :: Forum, task)

Description

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

We sometimes get KB article comments saying something like: 
"You know, it's not funny to send people in circles  when trying to find info on Firefox crashes. Within four clicks I was sent back to where my search for information began. Not funny at all."

"When I look for a way to post a new question this, Support sends me round in circles to the same USELESS information."

"All I'm trying to do is get the GD bookmarks to work but your support sends me in endless circles."

"Your Firefox help won't actually allow me to submit a question on this form - it goes into an endless loop - so I'm commenting here instead."

"Screw you guys.  All you do is send me an infinite loop.  Click here to ask a question.  Here are the answers to the question you have not been able to ask yet.  Click here to ask a question in the support forum.  Then back to the same goddamn place.  YOU WILL NOT LET ME ASK THE GODDAMN QUESTION."

"I am in a "Loop" - I have gone thru all the suggestions and reached "still need help - ask a support question" - and I get sent back to the beginning of the process ending up with this page on trouble shooting extensions."


I'm guessing that users are clicking on articles in step 2 of AAQ, not noticing the "None of these help" section.

Comment 1

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

How long have we been receiving these complaints?  Has it been only since the recent 1.5.3, or earlier?

Comment 2

[James Socol [:jsocol, :james]]

Note that the content of the suggested articles can be modified via the admin pages and does not require code changes.

Comment 3

[Paul Craciunoiu [:paulc]]

Maybe make the "None of these help" a heading (just like "Get help right away!") and underneath it say something like: "Still don't have a solution? Click Next step below to ask your question."

Comment 4

[James Socol [:jsocol, :james]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Maybe make the "None of these help" a heading (just like "Get help right
> away!") and underneath it say something like: "Still don't have a solution?
> Click Next step below to ask your question."

The "Ask again" button on the search step probably doesn't help. Especially because results could easily push the "Next step" button off the bottom of the screen.

Possible solutions requiring code changes:
* String changes on the search step
* Limit the number of results to, say, 5, to keep the "Next step" button on screen

Comment 5

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

It's tough to tell when these complaints started, because there may be some cases where they are complaining about articles linking to each other (i.e. "your support takes me circles")

Earliest mention of AAQ is Jan 31.

Comment 6

[David Tenser [:djst]]

I don't really understand this, since the "Next step" button is still there at the bottom-right corner. In fact, you can even skip the search step altogether by clicking "Next step" instead of "Ask this". Do people suddenly not see the "Next step" button after they already clicked it twice?

How many people have complained about this compared to the ca 25k asked questions in the forum since Jan 31?

Btw, the search doesn't even work for me. No matter how many times I press, it gets stuck on " Please wait. Searching... "

Comment 7

[James Socol [:jsocol, :james]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> I don't really understand this, since the "Next step" button is still there at
> the bottom-right corner. In fact, you can even skip the search step altogether
> by clicking "Next step" instead of "Ask this". Do people suddenly not see the
> "Next step" button after they already clicked it twice?

Fwiw, on smaller screens than most of us have, the "Next step" button will get pushed off the bottom of the screen by search results. The text on the search step (and probably the step before) could be clearer, and we could limit the search results to 5, but...

> How many people have complained about this compared to the ca 25k asked
> questions in the forum since Jan 31?

...how important is it?

> Btw, the search doesn't even work for me. No matter how many times I press, it
> gets stuck on " Please wait. Searching... "

I've never seen this, but if you are you should file a bug.

Comment 8

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Yeah, unless comment 0 was just a small subset of all the reports, I'd say this isn't very important/frequent (for Tiki/1.x). If we can tweak this to be better in Kitsune, that'd obviously be nice.

I'll try some more and if I can find reliable STR, will file a bug aobut the stuck search.

Comment 9

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

tiki issue