SUMO Blog

Unfortunately, we had to take the SUMO site down today because of serious performance issues that affected other services like Bugzilla. Rest assured that awesome people are working around the clock to fix this and that the site isn’t lost in the good old cyber space. We’re just facing some (major) problems keeping up with the increased traffic right now.

Oh, and justin, morgamic, and laura rock.

We’re happy to announce that the transcript feature for Live Chat is now enabled and working.

When your chat is finished, the closing page will now include a field for you to provide an email address to have the chat history sent to you.  Please keep in mind that each transcript will only include the details from the current chat, so if you get disconnected or have to restart the chat between steps you’ll need to request a transcript at each stage to have a complete record.

Attendees: djst, cilias, np, Lucy, nkoth, Collin1000, zzxc, Cww

Sumo

• Weekly metrics [1]
  • Firefox 3 is now #1 search term on SUMO
  • Need an Upgrading to Firefox 3 article that explains that fx3 is not a released product, how to upgrade, and where to find more information. Sort of like a portal page
• 0.6 milestone status (in-product help) [2]
  • First stab of product help landing page [3]
  • Need to finalize on content there before b5
• Decide day for SUMO day
  • Friday, April 11th
  • Initial list of required preparations in the newsgroup [4]

Knowledge Base

• Quiet week
• Bugzilla: New article requests: 2 [5][6] , Article bugs fixed: 0
  • Really? What about Configuring Norton 360 and Using Firefox for Windows Update? – np
• L10n updates for locale leaders will now take place on mozilla.dev.l10n.web.
  • No notification of new translations [7]
• Going to call for new firewall articles for upcoming Firefox 2.0.0.13 release. [8]
  • Will ping trolly about EnumProcess progress [9] – np
• Version info add to Using SHOWFOR

Forums

• Contributors
  • New contributor: jscher2000, about 50 posts this week
  • 3 contributors (Quarantine, Bo, cor-el) at around 3000 total posts each!
  • Quality of service seems good, but looking to get more contributors to prevent burn-out among “ultra-helpers”.
    • Mix up Live Chat and forum helpers is probably a good idea
• Stats
  • Number of threads down again, but still about the same as it’s been for the past month.
  • Will run scraper to see if adding Tb to “Ask a question” page was effective. If so, will consider adding Safe Mode or “Can’t connect after upgrade” to it.
• Software
  • Some useful fixes coming down the pipe, like “list of threads I posted in”.
  • Some bugs that would make others easier to do coming too.
  • Performance a big issue, probably the #1 complaint right now [10]
    • Will the other performance fixes help load times for people logged in and user the forum?

Live Chat

• Several new accounts this week, will see if any turn out to stick around
• Figured out high no-answer rate
  • Bug in software means queue time-out is stuck at 4 min
  • Contacted Jive, making it high priority
  • Users waiting in the queue are currently informed about the issue. Might need to work on the wording to make it less technical, but should definitely inform users that they should reconnect if they’ve waited for 4 minutes
  • Or, they could use the forum instead, since 4 minutes waiting could mean we’re overloaded.
    • Waiting message should include info about the forum to help distribute the load and inform users about the alternatives
• Configured transcripts – users can now get a copy of the chat emailed to them
• Added “Did you know?” module to Live Chat pages with links to live chat helping page as well as contributor home page

We’ve now gathered enough feedback from the community to make a decision about the SUMO Day: we’ll host the event on Friday, April 11th. Thanks for the feedback everyone and stay tuned for more info about this soon…

Firefox 2.0.0.13 is coming out soon; and one common issue that spikes with every update is firewalls blocking Firefox from accessing the internet. We have a few tutorials on the Firefox Support web site, but there are many more firewalls we don’t have tutorials for. This is a great opportunity for us to compile a more complete list of firewall tutorials.

Please help us, by creating tutorials on how to configure each firewall to work with Firefox. To get started, read the creating articles page. Firewalls we are looking for tutorials on:

• [Bug 424783] KB article: Configuring McAfee firewall
• [Bug 424784] KB article: Configuring Trend Micro Internet Security
• [Bug 424786] KB article: Configuring Panda Firewall
• [Bug 424787] KB article: Configuring Comodo Firewall
• [Bug 424789] KB article: Configuring BitDefender Internet Security
• [Bug 424790] KB article: Configuring Defender Pro
• [Bug 424791] KB article: Configuring Webroot Desktop Firewall
• [Bug 424792] KB article: Configuring AVG Internet Security
• [Bug 424796] KB article: Configuring Mac firewall

If you want to create a tutorial for another firewall, remember to file a request (or reviewers won’t know to review the article for approval).

You can view the other firewall tutorials for an idea of how to approach it. And please include screenshots!

The Firefox Support project (a.k.a. SUMO) community has grown lately, with new knowledge base content writers and localizers, forum moderators, and live chat helpers. This is really exciting news, as the project depends heavily on the community to succeed. Thank you to everyone who has helped us help Firefox users so far!

With the release of Firefox 3 coming up soon, we will need even more people to handle the increased load. One thing we’ve talked about for some time is to host a full day event, where new people get together with existing contributors to exchange knowledge, get to know each other more, and have a good time. Let’s call this event the SUMO Day!

The step in the planning process where we are right now is figuring out the best day for the SUMO Day event. If you’ve been contributing to SUMO in the past, or if you’re just interested in learning more about the project, please help us deciding when the SUMO Day should occur. The dates to choose from are:

• Thursday, April 3th
• Friday, April 4th
• Thursday, April 10th
• Friday, April 11th
• Thursday, April 17th
• Friday, April 18th

Fridays would be preferable, because they give us the ability to catch up with the increased load during the weekend. Please comment on this blog post to let us know the day that would be best for you. Thank you!

Sumo

• Weekly metrics [1]
• 0.6 milestone status (in-product help) [2]
  • Server push this week with performance fixes
• SUMO day
  • A day for new contributors to get a good introduction to the various ways of contributing to the project
  • Also a day for experienced contributors to learn more about SUMO
  • Finally a day to strengthen the social aspects of collaboration and get new contacts
  • Ideal outcome:
    • More people regularly connecting to #sumo, making traditionally non-interactive contributions like KB article writing more of a collaborative effort
    • More contributors
    • Better overall knowledge of technologies used and plans for the future
  • Pick a day soon, e.g. end of next week. Has to be a day when most of our regular contributors will be available.
  • Announce date in time on various channels, such as SUMO blog, personal blogs, SFX, about:mozilla newsletter, etc
• Rewarding contributors
  • Important aspect is to show recognition and allow people to get their privileges elevated. E.g. a blog post every once in a while with mentions of our top five contributors. O
  • What to base recognition on? TikiWiki has a karma scoring system, but it might not give an accurate picture as it depends more on how people use the system than what they contribute
    • np: Asked contributors and they didn’t really like the idea of getting rated
    • zzxc: Concern of competition and abuse of the system
    • cww: Doesn’t matter how you give people recognition, but that you do it

Knowledge Base

• 22 new KB articles (1 new en article without a bug report)
• 56 modified articles
  • mostly from locale leaders updating and translating content
• 22 active contributors
• Discussion about Firefox 3 content
  • Time to update regular KB articles to Firefox 3, while still supporting Firefox 2
  • Rename “Firefox 3″ content view selector to “Firefox 3 Beta” to reflect the fact that it’s not a released product
• Bugzilla: 6 new article requests, 5 new article bugs[3]
• Congratulations to AliceWyman who is now a KB article approver! Excited to have her with us
• New contributor: Leonidis Jones. Welcome!
• Community Support was renamed to Other Firefox support: This covers two separate issues:

1. 1. Having a page called “Community Support” gives a false impression that support.mozilla.com is not a community site.
   2. We can use it to list other support web sites as well, such as MozillaZine, PluginDoc, etc.; and other locales which already have large communities elsewhere have a place to put links.

• Still looking for ideas for hidden tags[4].
• Start updating with Firefox 3 content soon.

Forums

• Traffic a bit down from last week, but about the same as it’s been for a month.
  • Statistics on what people are linking to in forum threads. Looking for ways to knock off some of the traffic. [5]
• 0.7 requirements getting feedback from contributors [6][7]
• Contributors complaining about the site being slow. ~20 seconds to load forum pages.
• Noticed a couple new contributors, remains to be seen if they become regulars.

Live Chat

• Cww providing status (Lucy didn’t participate this meeting)
• A bunch of new contributors! Doing the best we can to train them.
• New KB article category for Live Chat documentation, editable by administrators and trusted Live Chat contributors
  • Would make sense to move regular KB contributor documentation to a similar category, editable by not only admins, but trusted KB contributors

Attendees: djst, cilias, np, lucy, nkoth

Sumo

• Weekly metrics [1]
  • Forum traffic steadily increasing
    • Jason posted interesting statistics on forum traffic in the newsgroup [2]
• 0.6 milestone status (in-product help) [3]
  • Redirect service [4] depends on:
    • Renaming en-US articles to their final names (chris)
    • Actually writing the .htaccess rules (nelson)
    • Getting info about helptopic titles for start page and “For Internet Explorer Users” (mconnor?)
  • In-product help page status
    • Content is “done” from our point of view; the issue now is keeping in sync with future UI changes and determine when we can tell localizers that the en-US pages are frozen
      • Bugzilla keyword user-doc-needed allows us to see what UI changes will require us to update the documentation, but it depends on developers actually using it
      • ui-review flag could also be used to get a better idea of what’s coming up
• General discussion about future plan/goals
  • Improve forums (0.7)
    • Right now, the forum is just a web forum, lacking tools that would make it more suitable as a support forum
  • Improve search (probably 0.8)
    • Would be interesting to see how well the built-in tiki search engine matches our requirements [5], since that engine by default has the ability to integrate with categories, tags, languages, etc
    • Google forces us to use hacks to get stuff like help vs support article separation
  • Screencasts for KB

Knowledge Base

• 1 new article request, 2 new articles [6][7]
  • Note that that’s just the Bugzilla stats; actual new articles including translations: 11
• Gathering nominees for hidden tags [8]
• freetags are now localizable [9]
  • Existing tags created in languages other than en-US need to specify their language so they don’t appear in en-US articles; Chris has posted in the l10n newsgroup [10]

Forums

• Jason’s stats reveal that there might be a large group of people who visit the forum once, post their question, and then can’t find their way back to the question they asked. Encouraging people to register might not be convenient for this group of people.
  • Need to make it easier for users to keep track of their question. Suggestion to create a page after a question has been posted that would present different ways to keep track of it, e.g. using Live Bookmark (RSS), by providing an e-mail address, or by registering.

Live Chat

• At least 2 new trainees
• Changed max chats to avoid helper burnout
  • The maximum chat per helper can be reduced per helper by not closing finished chats. Lucy to document this.
• Cleaning out unused accounts
• Need administration sub-category and permissions for trusted Live Chat helpers, so they can help updating the documentation
  • Lucy to file needed bugs

On the Firefox Support knowledge base, we make use of tikiwiki feature called “Dynamic Content.” This allows us to create blocks of content that can be inserted in any page. Each content block is language specific, and can have the same name as a content block in another language.  This helps us in updating common instructions used, and in the translation process.

Firefox Support locale leaders, and senior editors (approvers) should read this tutorial I’ve created, which explains how to create and use dynamic content on the Firefox Support knowledge base.

Attendees: djst, cilias, lucy, nkoth, zzxc

Sumo

• Weekly metrics [1]
  • Traffic to site steadily increasing — more than doubled the last couple of weeks!
• 0.5 milestone status (localization) [2]
  • Done, pending one low-priority bug [3] that we will slip
• 0.6 milestone status (in-product help) [4]
  • In-product mode will land this Friday [5]
  • Start page has been cleaned up [6], but we need to move top 10 list out to a content id block to make sure we can change it without touching the localized pages. Also, we need to decide on the New to Firefox box. Suggestion: just a stylish, large box with the text “New to Firefox? Click here!” Clicking on it would take you to the in-product landing page [7]

Knowledge Base

• Week before last: 0 article requests, 3 new articles [8]. Last week: 0 article requests, 4 new articles[9].
• New en-US contributor: David Naylor (naylor83), who has been fixing use of language, to make English articles more understandable. Also, he has translated some articles to Swedish. Welcome, and thanks, David!
• Big thanks to Alice Wyman, who improved the Importing from Netscape article.
• SHOWFOR
  • Per djst’s request, we’re not going to bother making sure SHOWFOR is applied to all article that need it. Instead, we’re going to make sure the top 50 articles are taken care of, and hope the community takes care of the rest.
    • Just to clarify, I don’t think it’s a high enough priority for us to do the update on all articles. The important thing is that we make the technology easy for other contributors to use and understand, and update the most read articles to show how we intend for the technology to be used. — djst
  • The above necessitates that we create new dynamic content, that is basically the current dynamic content, but with SHOWFOR. This way, articles without SHOWFOR won’t be broken.
• Content ID
  • We’re currently reusing blocks of text in articles that are used in more than one article, e.g. instructions on how to access the Options/Preferences window. To make this easier to use, we currently use something called content ids, which is like a variable we insert in a wiki document, e.g. {content id=4}, which then translates to the actual text, e.g. “In the menu, click Tools and then click Options…”
  • We need to switch from using e.g. {content id=4} to use {content label=options} instead.
    • Unlike content ids, content labels are localizable
    • Easier to remember a word than a number
    • Chris to write documentation for contributors and localizers on how to use this
• Need to switch from using content ids to use content label

Forums

• Jason couldn’t make it to this meeting.

Live Chat

• Presented list of our biggest issues with the live chat software to Jive
  • Initial response from Jive that it would be too time consuming for them to work out an arrangement where we can hack on it ourselves. They will try to work on some of the stuff on the list while considering other ways we could collaborate with them instead
• Need to focus on recruiting — excellent doc written by Cww after brainstorming with other community members.
  • Definitely some very good points on things we can do to improve our community energy
  • Nelson to ask Mark Laporte of TikiWiki to read the document and see if there’s anything about the IssueTracker feature that can be used here