19 ms·

It's not intentional. Granted, it's not like Mozilla itself decided that fmarier's blog was the best place to put this, he just posted it because it's his blog

by Osmose 11y ago

It's not intentional. Granted, it's not like Mozilla itself decided that fmarier's blog was the best place to put this, he just posted it because it's his blog and he's a smart person. :D It's actually consequence of a few things (including things I'm not aware of), like: 1. There is no one team dedicated to writing detailed technical documentation at the level you're talking about, and it's not required as part of submitting a patch. 2. The details about these implementations change often, making it harder to keep what documentation there is up-to-date. 3. Firefox is so friggin' big. It'd be a _ton_ of documentation that most users (read: not developers) wouldn't care about. We have a wiki, but it's more useful to contributors and staff than it is to the general public: https://wiki.mozilla.org https://wiki.mozilla.org We have MDN (which is also basically a wiki), which is more user-facing in terms of it's content, and it has https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Privacy/Tracking_Protection https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Privacy/Tracking..., but that doesn't go into detail like this post. It's tough.

hackuser 11y ago
From years watching and occasionally contributing a tiny bit to Mozilla, I got that sense. I understand that creating and maintaining technical documentation takes more resources than most people assume, but there are compromise solutions ... > it's not like Mozilla itself decided that fmarier's blog was the best place to put this, he just posted it because it's his blog and he's a smart person. ... instead of posting such things to personal blogs, where few people can discover them, how about just posting the exact same things to a central wiki? For the same amount of work by the authors, they would be far more discoverable by people who need the information; the authors would reach a much wider audience. Wiki updates could publish in Planet Mozilla. (I'd make the wiki editable only by Mozilla employees, to reduce the burden on authors who might not want to get into debates with the world over what they post.) It may not be authoritative documentation, but it would be far better than what's available now and at little additional cost. You can make clear to readers that it's ad hoc documentation (e.g., call it the Beta Wiki, put a notice at the top of each page, etc.), and at the top of each page post the date the page was last revised in a way that nobody will overlook. Right now you are wasting a lot of great knowledge by hiding it where nobody will discover it; it's like developing great features but hiding them in the interface where nobody will find them. > Firefox is so friggin' big ... It is, but to be fair there are many comparable or larger software projects out there where detailed technical documentation is more discoverable. Windows comes to mind. All easier said than done. Good luck to you guys; you do great work.
jacquesm 11y ago
It's also quite hard to file a bug. I did just that the other day, didn't want to make an account tried to use my github account, failed at that eventually did make an account. It's a pretty annoying bar to have to create an account with some system just to report a bug (which one should be able to do even anonymously). I understand you're trying your very best and work extremely hard but these little details all taken together add up to a fragmented and inconsistent picture which is something I really find a pity because Mozilla is an absolutely excellent product from a group of extremely capable people.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Just use Persona?
- fabrice_d 11y ago
  As far as I know, people working on bugzilla have github based login on their radar. Don't ask me for a roadmap though, but people hanging out in #bmo on irc.mozilla.org should be able to fill in details. Fully anonymous login is an open door to way more spam that we want to handle ;)
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    The github based login is there but it just doesn't work. I figured it would be a bit meta to file a bug for a bugracker...
    - dylanh 11y ago
      It breaks in the case someone has multiple email addresses associated with their github account. That bug was fixed and will be out soon. :-)
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        Ah, that is exactly the case, I have one for 'business' and one for 'private' stuff. Thank you for the clarification, it was quite a confusing situation because you ended up in an endless merry-go-round.

by Osmose 11y ago

hackuser 11y ago

From years watching and occasionally contributing a tiny bit to Mozilla, I got that sense. I understand that creating and maintaining technical documentation takes more resources than most people assume, but there are compromise solutions ... > it's not like Mozilla itself decided that fmarier's blog was the best place to put this, he just posted it because it's his blog and he's a smart person. ... instead of posting such things to personal blogs, where few people can discover them, how about just posting the exact same things to a central wiki? For the same amount of work by the authors, they would be far more discoverable by people who need the information; the authors would reach a much wider audience. Wiki updates could publish in Planet Mozilla. (I'd make the wiki editable only by Mozilla employees, to reduce the burden on authors who might not want to get into debates with the world over what they post.) It may not be authoritative documentation, but it would be far better than what's available now and at little additional cost. You can make clear to readers that it's ad hoc documentation (e.g., call it the Beta Wiki, put a notice at the top of each page, etc.), and at the top of each page post the date the page was last revised in a way that nobody will overlook. Right now you are wasting a lot of great knowledge by hiding it where nobody will discover it; it's like developing great features but hiding them in the interface where nobody will find them. > Firefox is so friggin' big ... It is, but to be fair there are many comparable or larger software projects out there where detailed technical documentation is more discoverable. Windows comes to mind. All easier said than done. Good luck to you guys; you do great work.

jacquesm 11y ago

It's also quite hard to file a bug. I did just that the other day, didn't want to make an account tried to use my github account, failed at that eventually did make an account. It's a pretty annoying bar to have to create an account with some system just to report a bug (which one should be able to do even anonymously). I understand you're trying your very best and work extremely hard but these little details all taken together add up to a fragmented and inconsistent picture which is something I really find a pity because Mozilla is an absolutely excellent product from a group of extremely capable people.

kuschku 11y ago
Just use Persona?
fabrice_d 11y ago
As far as I know, people working on bugzilla have github based login on their radar. Don't ask me for a roadmap though, but people hanging out in #bmo on irc.mozilla.org should be able to fill in details. Fully anonymous login is an open door to way more spam that we want to handle ;)
- jacquesm 11y ago
  The github based login is there but it just doesn't work. I figured it would be a bit meta to file a bug for a bugracker...
  - dylanh 11y ago
    It breaks in the case someone has multiple email addresses associated with their github account. That bug was fixed and will be out soon. :-)
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      Ah, that is exactly the case, I have one for 'business' and one for 'private' stuff. Thank you for the clarification, it was quite a confusing situation because you ended up in an endless merry-go-round.