Closed Bug 884986 Opened 11 years ago Closed 11 years ago

Bring back the version/OS switcher for unregistered SUMO users

Categories

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

Product:
support.mozilla.org
Component:
General
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: Coce, Unassigned)

Details

Hi there.

Recently (bug 872309) the Firefox version/OS switcher on top of SUMO articles was set to be invisible for users who are not logged in to SUMO. This change makes things more difficult for people who do support (e.g. on forums or the IRC), because they can no longer easily switch to SUMO content which does not apply to their operating system.

Additionally, this means that you cannot choose the Firefox version or OS if you’re visiting SUMO with a different browser (e.g. because Firefox isn’t working).

If necessary, move it to another section of the page (the sidebar?), but please bring back this switcher for all users. Imho, Mozilla shouldn’t do anything that makes life more difficult for voluntary support people.

Thanks.
Hi and sorry if we have made your workflow harder.

This button creates a lot of confusion and end users, who are not registered, don't understand the feature.

When you answer questions on IRC or the forum...do you do that without being registered?

Let's work on a version switcher that solves your issues without confusing users.
Hi, thanks for your quick reaction.

> This button creates a lot of confusion and end users, who are not
> registered, don't understand the feature.

I wouldn’t expect users to understand the function of a button that comes with no explanation. As of this moment, the switcher doesn’t seem to have a caption to explain its purpose. Could we have one that says something like „Display the article’s content for [Fx/OS]“?


> When you answer questions on IRC or the forum...do you do that without being
> registered?

I am only logged in to SUMO when I’m contributing to it, i.e. when I’m translating or editing translated articles. Some of the regular supporters on the German Firefox IRC channel are not involved with SUMO and therefore do not have an account. At any rate, having to log in is an additional step for supporters, which they shouldn’t have to take in my opinion.
OS: Android → All
I want to expand this report, as you can't switch the language too.

For instance search for "keyboard shortcuts" (from a German Firefox) and the page with the results presents " 643 Ergebnisse gefunden für keyboard shortcuts in Deutsch "- Thats totally wrong, as the page shows no Deutsch/German content.

The language selector has been a valuable tool, during searching the database. If I didn't find it in German I simple switched to an other language.
Ulli, I'm not sure if I understand your problem but it seems unrelated to the initial topic here. What I found is that when you search english terms in a language that is not English, you get forum results...and that's not necessarily good. I opened a bug for it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885092

Regarding the original problem, I hear you. On paper, the version switcher is a nice feature for those users who are trying to get help in a browser that is not the one they are using. 

That said, if you access the site with Chrome, we already show you the information of the latest version of Firefox. And we want you to update.

To change products, you can do it through the navigation.

That leave us with the small group of people who may be using an old version of Firefox to troubleshoot the latest version of Firefox. I don't have data to support this is a usecase generating any traffic to SUMO.

The other usecase is relevant, local communities who are helping somewhere that is not SUMO (the German community, the Mozilla Hispano folks, etc). When you are working in this other sites, do you provide the steps or do you provide the link to the article with the right information? If you provide the steps, could you provide the link to the user?

Could you give a little bit more detail on how you guys work? Let say, I'm a German user who is having problems to watch Youtube videos. What's the process that you would follow?

The actual implementation of ShowFor and version switcher doesn't come for free.  Adding the button adds distraction to users who, even with the explanation, don't understand what Firefox version they are in, and it mainly serve users like us that are helping other users remotely. I think that asking us to log-in is a small trade off.

We were talking about other ways to identify contributors, but it seems that logged users is the best proxy. If you have other suggestions, it would be great if you could share them.
Ibal, thanks for reading, interpreting my report and splitting it off.

In the ancient times I could send / post the URL with the OS, the version and the selected language to any other persons I wished to support.

This possibility is gone.
What about making the selection box less visible (e.g. move it into one of the sidebars)?

I'm thinking of something like this:

Your OS: Windows 8 (change)
Your Firefox version: Firefox 23 (change) 

where both change labels are links. That way, it's obvious that it already pre-selected the most appropriate value and you can change it, if you want to.
Thanks a lot for this info, it really helps me understand how you guys work and make sure that we have you covered.

Ulli...what you are saying still true:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-to-enable-java-if-its-been-blocked#os=win7&browser=fx21

You can change the locale the OS and version to whatever you need.

That said, why do you want to do that if we are auto-detecting the browser that the person that you are trying to help is using?
(In reply to Tobias Markus (:Tobbi) from comment #6)
> What about making the selection box less visible (e.g. move it into one of
> the sidebars)?
> 
> I'm thinking of something like this:
> 
> Your OS: Windows 8 (change)
> Your Firefox version: Firefox 23 (change) 
> 
> where both change labels are links. That way, it's obvious that it already
> pre-selected the most appropriate value and you can change it, if you want
> to.

Tobbi, the point is: What's the usecase? UI elements are not free. The more stuff we add to the UI the less we can promote what really matters.
(In reply to Ibai Garcia [:ibai] from comment #8)
> (In reply to Tobias Markus (:Tobbi) from comment #6)
> > What about making the selection box less visible (e.g. move it into one of
> > the sidebars)?
> > 
> > I'm thinking of something like this:
> > 
> > Your OS: Windows 8 (change)
> > Your Firefox version: Firefox 23 (change) 
> > 
> > where both change labels are links. That way, it's obvious that it already
> > pre-selected the most appropriate value and you can change it, if you want
> > to.
> 
> Tobbi, the point is: What's the usecase? UI elements are not free. The more
> stuff we add to the UI the less we can promote what really matters.

Example use case:

I am supporting a friend who's using another operating system / Firefox version than I am. I want to be able to give quality advise without necessarily being signed in to SUMO (or even knowing you had to be signed in to get steps for another OS).

Same is true for people giving advice at our German Firefox help channel, although many of these guys are familiar with SUMO.

I (as a user) might as well be looking for help with Firefox crashes where none of my browsers work on a specific machine and I only have a machine with another operating system available.
Thanks Tobbi:

> Example use case:
> 
> I am supporting a friend who's using another operating system / Firefox
> version than I am. I want to be able to give quality advise without
> necessarily being signed in to SUMO (or even knowing you had to be signed in
> to get steps for another OS).
> 

What about sending him the link to the article? That way he can benefit from learning the source (so he can find the solution himself in the future), use the multimedia features of the article (if it has a video, image, etc) or explore more about the topic (visit related articles , etc).

What is the benefit of you giving him the steps?

And why is such a big burden to log in?

> Same is true for people giving advice at our German Firefox help channel,
> although many of these guys are familiar with SUMO.
> 
> I (as a user) might as well be looking for help with Firefox crashes where
> none of my browsers work on a specific machine and I only have a machine
> with another operating system available.

This is a pretty edge case. And if to support this edge case we need to make the experience of thousands of users a week worse (because they are confused by the mechanism) the trade off is to ask this people to ask a question on the forum.

Finally, if he is a user with multiple machines and multiple OSs, my hypothesis is that he is technically savvy enough to spot the differences between what the article explains for MacOS and what he needs to do in a WinXP machines. We are describing this as if the differences between Firefox for one OS and the other were really different...and the reality is that they are not.
I want to expand Tobias use case.

Consider a page which is fresh and not translated by any friendly person.

The German pages may not have the most recent updates. A small switch to change the language could solve my problem to support the clients.
Hi Ulli, we have that covered:

http://cl.ly/image/1q2w1F2h1G0C
Ibal, thanks. I didn't see it.
Hi there. While a lot has already been said, I’ll throw in my thoughts anyway. ;-)

(In reply to Ibai Garcia [:ibai] from comment #4)

> When you are working in this other sites, do you provide the steps or do you
> provide the link to the article with the right information?

Depends on the situation. If the user appears to be competent enough, simply providing the link and saying „here you go: <insert SUMO link here>“ may suffice, but other users may need step-by-step guidance through the troubleshooting process, in which case I’d need to have the information in front of me to read.

 
> Could you give a little bit more detail on how you guys work? Let say, I'm a
> German user who is having problems to watch Youtube videos. What's the
> process that you would follow?

Somewhat of a standard procedure is to request the „Help → Troubleshooting information“ from the user for which we have an extra document, because it turns out that many problems are caused by third-party software, which occasionally borders on malware.

I must admit that I can’t think of an OS/version-specific SUMO article right now that I’d refer to for YouTube problems, but an example may be the instructions to find the profile folder without starting Firefox. That’s different for pretty much every OS, so it would be nice if I could get that information whithout logging in, to guide the user, if necessary.


> I think that asking us to log-in is a small trade off.

I beg to differ, personally I think that any unnecessary steps should be avoided. Having to log in is especially annoying when you don’t have a SUMO account in the first place. As Tobbi already said, some of our supporters are not involved with SUMO and thus don’t have an account. Honestly, it doesn’t seem right to me to make them create a SUMO account just to get the information they want.


> If you have other suggestions, it would be great if you could share them.

I’ll again side with Tobbi on this one. Moving the switcher „out of sight“ would be ok for me, making it completely invisible isn’t.



(In reply to Ibai Garcia [:ibai] from comment #8)

> UI elements are not free. The more stuff we add to the UI the less
> we can promote what really matters.

„What really matters“ is a point of view. ;-) Ease of work for supporters matters very much, imho.
On a side note:

What kind of research was conducted before removing this feature? Could we get an insight into the results (e.g. bounce rate off articles after using the version switcher or the version switcher being used without actually knowing what it does). How do you measure 'useless' switching anyway?
Tobbi,

The data that made us pursue this change is that:
15k users each day were using the version switcher.
11k of them use the OS switcher, not the Fx version switch (i.e. version switchers are about 4k)

Those are pretty high numbers for a niche feature. 

The interesting thing comes when we look at the articles where the switcher was used:
- Updating Firefox (i.e. there's almost no custom content for each browser in this topic). The main reason why somebody will click on their OS in that particular topic is because they were expecting to download the software from it.
- Use Java to view interactive content. This is by far the most visited article, so it's probably related that 1% of the users...click on the OS switcher...the same way we have clicks in the most random links of the site.
- Find what version are you using. This one is particularly interesting, because 75% uses the FX version switch...and not the OS switch. That doesn't make sense.
- Firefox take long to start up: Another article with almost no customization for a particular OS. Perhaps users want to download the browser to see if reinstalling it could help?

And the list keeps going with a far lesser amount of uses. 

So, basically we are confusing close to 15k users every day by showing this feature. 

We can hide it in the UI and confuse a fraction of them (if it's part of the UI, somebody will use it) or we can put it after a login system and show it to the people who know how to use it. That was the trade-off that we took when we removed it.

And Coce, registering in SUMO is extremely easy and painless. We don't ask for almost any information. There's the alternative of customizing the URL manually, by adding the following parameters:

#os=mac&browser=fx22

At the end of the URL. Like:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-java-plugin-to-view-interactive-content#os=mac&browser=fx22

Is that something that could work for you guys?
Hi. As I said above, I’m not surprised that people get confused by buttons with no explanation. Could you run an experiment to see how many people pointlessly use the switcher if it’s outfitted with a description of its function and hidden in the „editing tools“ menu (which is closed by default, by the way) or something similar?

As for the registration, I agree with you in that it’s an easy process, but it still makes it necessary to log in every time you require the switcher. On a more basic level, I simply don’t like the idea of creating an obstacle for people who spend their free time helping users.

As for manually editing the URL, while that’s certainly possible, I consider it impractical having to type something in the URL bar which worked semi-automatically before.
(In reply to Michael 'Coce' Köhler from comment #17)
> Hi. As I said above, I’m not surprised that people get confused by buttons
> with no explanation. Could you run an experiment to see how many people
> pointlessly use the switcher if it’s outfitted with a description of its
> function and hidden in the „editing tools“ menu (which is closed by default,
> by the way) or something similar?

That could be an option. Although it would be less convenient that the next option. And the discoverability of the feature will be non existent.

> 
> As for the registration, I agree with you in that it’s an easy process, but
> it still makes it necessary to log in every time you require the switcher.
> On a more basic level, I simply don’t like the idea of creating an obstacle
> for people who spend their free time helping users.

We have a remember me option that keeps you logged in. 

> 
> As for manually editing the URL, while that’s certainly possible, I consider
> it impractical having to type something in the URL bar which worked
> semi-automatically before.
(In reply to Ibai Garcia [:ibai] from comment #18)

> That could be an option. Although it would be less convenient that the next
> option. And the discoverability of the feature will be non existent.

When the switcher is only discoverable to those who know where to look for it but still usable without having to register, that’s „mission accomplished“ isn’t it? Also, a click more still seems a lot more convenient than having to register.


> We have a remember me option that keeps you logged in. 

Which afaik is cookie-based and thus not really helpful to people who clear their cookies regularly/when closing Firefox.
(In reply to Ibai Garcia [:ibai] from comment #16)
> There's the alternative of customizing the URL manually, by adding the following 
> parameters:
> #os=mac&browser=fx22
> At the end of the URL. Like:
It doesn't work because of bug 722106.
After talking to people at the Summit, I am now certain that this change won’t be reverted. I am therefore closing this bug. Thanks to all those who commented.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 11 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
I wrote a small add-on to show the switchers for unregistered users here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sumo-showfor-pickers/
Tobbi, this is awesome! Thanks for putting it together so quickly.
Thanks Tobbi, nice job!
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