Issue reporter - adding a catch sentence for known issues

[Crits]

Environment

Firefox 28.0
ABP for Firefox 2.6.0.3804

Facts

• Almost every single user report, at least for Liste FR, is in fact a known issue. Notably, a vast majority of them are due to adwares.
• I analyzed some basic stats and I found that when users submitted a report that was flagged by the reporter as a know issue, very few of them actually clicked on the link that the reporter suggested them.

Why is that?
I guess users are lazy, but above that the problem is that what is suggested to the user is simply: "The issue you reported is probably already known. More information: [link to some page]"
The user doesn't feel concern at all by the message and doesn't know he often have to solve the problem by himself. In many cases, he will just wait and hope that some folk at Adblock will "do something".

Why is that a problem?

• It's bad for the image of Adblock Plus, as the report will likely not be analyzed by a list author and the user will feel abandoned.
• It's bad for list authors as the issue report list continues to be completely clogged by useless reports, as user problems are not solved.

In short, it's bad for everybody, apart from advertisers who will still consider adwares as a lucrative business.

How to solve that ?

1) Simple way: make the sentence more catchy, like: "The issue you reported is probably already known and is not likely to be processed. You may be able to solve this problem by yourself. More information about it:"
Also, emphasizing this sentence by adapted styles (centering, colors, etc.).

2) A bit more difficult way: make the sentence even more catchy by personalizing it to the issue it concerns. A few example:

• "The issue you reported is probably already known and is not likely to be processed. You may have been infected by an adware. More information on how you can proceed to solve this problem:"
• "The issue you reported is probably already known and is not likely to be processed. You may have a conflict with other add-ons of Firefox. More information on how you can proceed to solve this problem:"

Maybe this can be implemented by adding one line at each section of ​https://hg.adblockplus.org/subscriptionlist/file/tip/knownIssues ? This would also help to solve the problem of localizing the strings.

In a nutshell

A little change in ABP to change the life of dozens of thousand of users everyday.

[philll]

@Arthur, as you are in close contact with all filter list authors, could you elaborate something here ad get a change approved (and in return this issue ste to "ready" if so)?

[arthur]

famlam wrote:

I agree with him. I never look at known issues, so the sentence has to be rephrased at least. (Although I wouldn't mention the word 'processed' as I can think of multiple ways of interpreting that. More like "The issue you reported is probably already known. Filter list maintainers will not read this report. You may be able to solve this problem by yourself. More information: [link]").

I'm also fine with the catch phrases; however the following issues would arise:

1. localization (always English?)
2. we should keep the message as short as possible, yet understandable and explanatory for non-techy users. This may be hard for some known issues.
3. what if multiple known issues match (for instance due to a: multiple adware matches b: multiple filter lists with a known issue for the same problem)

[arthur]

Replying to arthur:

famlam wrote:

I'm also fine with the catch phrases; however the following issues would arise:

1. localization (always English?)
2. we should keep the message as short as possible, yet understandable and explanatory for non-techy users. This may be hard for some known issues.
3. what if multiple known issues match (for instance due to a: multiple adware matches b: multiple filter lists with a known issue for the same problem)

1. I think we could translate them into several languages. We can ask our community for that.
2. Any example issues where you think it would be hard?
3. Maybe an emphasized message if 2 or more issues are triggered? Not sure how we could do better here.

[famlam]

Replying to arthur:

Replying to arthur:

famlam wrote:

2. we should keep the message as short as possible, yet understandable and explanatory for non-techy users. This may be hard for some known issues.

2. Any example issues where you think it would be hard?

Well, except for the "Unfortunately we cannot block all ads on this page. More information: ..." issues (such as the unblockable video ads issue for ELD) I guess all of them classify as difficult. Lets for example take the most common case, even though this on is still relatively easy to explain: malware/adware reports. If you just say "the computer may be infected with unwanted software. More information: ..." ("malware/adware" is quite technical I guess, not really attracting for a catch phrase) it either looks like one of those messages that will eventually let you download such a (usually malicious) 'free pc cleanup utility' for the experienced technical users (which would be supported by the presence of download links, which you notice first when you see the blog post) or it looks like something really terrible to the inexperienced user (which I guess most adware-reporting users are, as I guess an experienced user is able to debug the cause of the ads himself/herself). While usually it's just an add-on/extension that has to be disabled, ad-inserting viruses are much more rare I guess. And to prevent TLDR (and you already have the opening phrase telling that the issue is already known/will not be read, and the more information link, so you have a lot of words already) you can really use very few words for the custom message.

[trev]

I wonder whether we should start checking for known issues before the report is submitted. Uploading the report twice would make no sense. However, the client could download the list of known issues and check the current data against it.

Looking through the known issues, there are some where we definitely don't want to accept issues - but most indicate potential issues, no they shouldn't stop report submission. I guess what we will need is a new flag to indicate showstopper issues in the knownIssues file. The issue reporter should present a page pointing the user to the known issue link. If that flag is present then there will be no way to continue. Otherwise there should be a checkbox "I've read this information but I am reporting a different issue" that will allow continuing. Mind you, many reports will still click that checkbox without reading, so maybe we'll have to enforce a click on the link first.

[trev]

Mass-closing all bugs in Adblock Plus for Firefox module, the codebase of Adblock Plus 3.0 belongs into Platform and User-Interface modules. Old bugs are unlikely to still apply.