Sid Stamm [:geekboy or :sstamm] Assignee
	Description • 13 years ago

Currently the telemetry opt-in text focuses on performance stats:

"Would you like to help improve Firefox by automatically reporting memory usage, performance, and responsiveness to Mozilla?"

If we want to collect data (like application name, add-on list, default browser status) including things not in these three buckets, we need to make the opt-in accurate.

After changing the text, we should re-prompt folks too so they know about the change.

	Sid Stamm [:geekboy or :sstamm] Assignee
	Comment 1 • 13 years ago

Draft update:

"Would you like to help improve Firefox by sending Mozilla information about your experience?  This includes things like memory usage, performance, responsiveness, browser extensions, feature use, and your computer's capabilities."

I want to capture the other things like cpuid, add-ons, persona, feature usage, machine characteristics (etc) for which we already have telemetry probes.

	(dormant account)
	Comment 2 • 13 years ago

(In reply to Sid Stamm [:geekboy] from comment #1)
> Draft update:
> 
> "Would you like to help improve Firefox by sending Mozilla information about
> your experience?  This includes things like memory usage, performance,
> responsiveness, browser extensions, feature use, and your computer's
> capabilities."

This is getting to be too explicit/verbose. 
* memory usage+performance + responsiveness could be summarized as "performance". 
* Browser extensions -> addons
* computer's capabilities -> computer's hardware capabilities(otherwise it seems to general).

> 
> I want to capture the other things like cpuid, add-ons, persona, feature
> usage, machine characteristics (etc) for which we already have telemetry
> probes.

	Justin Lebar (not reading bugmail)
	Comment 3 • 13 years ago

I don't like "capabilities".  Since you say "includes things *like*", how about "computer's speed"?

	Tom Lowenthal
	Comment 4 • 13 years ago

How about:

"Would you like to help make Firefox better by sharing some technical information with Mozilla? This would include things like Firefox's performance, usage statistics, add-ons, and hardware characteristics."

---

As Telemetry's capture becomes more diverse and challenging to succinctly express in three lines, I think it becomes more important to also have a "more info"/"learn more" link in this dialog which takes the user to a page which has a more detailed, but still human-readable explanation of the sorts of things that Telemetry collects. In fact, it may not be appropriate to attempt a concise list of the data types in the dialog if we have a clearer list available behind the link.

In addition, the more varied the set of points we collect, from the boring (cpuid) to the more personal (persona), the stronger case there becomes for a Telemetry control panel. If users can enable and disable specific reporting features, it may help us to capture data from those who are comfortable sending some classes of information but not others. It may be worth combining the explanation and settings pages into one (with appropriate link text from the dialog). I suspect that I may be outreaching the scope of this bug a little with this proposal.

	Sid Stamm [:geekboy or :sstamm] Assignee
	Comment 5 • 13 years ago

Let me backpedal a bit and suggest we stop using "like".  I want to fully cover stuff we may collect so we don't get into a transitive-similarity scope creep.

(In reply to Taras Glek (:taras) from comment #2)
> This is getting to be too explicit/verbose. 
> * memory usage+performance + responsiveness could be summarized as
> "performance". 
> * Browser extensions -> addons
> * computer's capabilities -> computer's hardware capabilities(otherwise it
> seems to general).

How about this? 

"Would you like to help improve Firefox by sending some technical information to Mozilla?  This includes performance data, browser extensions, feature use, and your computer's hardware attributes."

I want to stick with "extensions" since this includes personas, addons and plugins (in case we collect those).

	(dormant account)
	Comment 6 • 13 years ago

(In reply to Sid Stamm [:geekboy] from comment #5)
> How about this? 
> 
> "Would you like to help improve Firefox by sending some technical
> information to Mozilla?  This includes performance data, browser extensions,
> feature use, and your computer's hardware attributes."
> 
> I want to stick with "extensions" since this includes personas, addons and
> plugins (in case we collect those).


Sounds good.

	Justin Lebar (not reading bugmail)
	Comment 7 • 13 years ago

Please let me know if I'm bikeshedding too much on this.  It seems like an important prompt to me...

> "Would you like to help improve Firefox by sending some technical information to Mozilla?  This 
> includes performance data, browser extensions, feature use, and your computer's hardware attributes."

> I want to fully cover stuff we may collect so we don't get into a transitive-similarity scope creep.

As worded, it still has room for this kind of scope creep.  "This includes" doesn't signify an exhaustive list.

Also, the parallelism is off in the second sentence.  If the sentence says "This includes X and Y," you should be able to say "This includes X," and "This includes Y," on their own.

But you wouldn't say "Would you like to send some technical information to Mozilla?  This includes feature use.".  We're not somehow sending the feature use itself to Mozilla; it's *information about* which features you use that's being collected.

How about:

  Would you like to help improve Firefox by sending Mozilla anonymous information about the features you use and Firefox's performance on your {computer,phone,tablet}?  [Learn more]

The string would need to be different on desktop/phone/tablets.  We could substitute "device", but I don't think that's as good.

I think "Firefox's performance" reasonably covers hardware capabilities.  "Features you use" covering extensions is a bit more tenuous, but IMO it's totally within, especially since on a crash, we send the full list of extensions.  And at [Learn more] we can be explicit.

How about if the yes/no buttons said "I'm in!" and "No thanks."?

	Sid Stamm [:geekboy or :sstamm] Assignee
	Comment 8 • 13 years ago

jlebar and I are iterating verbosely out of band to avoid polluting this bug.  Currently we're considering this:

"Would you like to help improve Firefox by sending some anonymous information to Mozilla?  This includes performance statistics, your computer's hardware characteristics, and information about the browser extensions and features you use." 

...but it is a bit wordy.

	Axel Hecht [:Pike]
	Comment 9 • 13 years ago

For timing, we'll want this for Firefox 9, which goes to aurora/string freeze next Tuesday.

Also, once we have the wording set, it'd be great to open a thread in .l10n to set context and allow for questions from the community, so that we get this string right. Obviously, if it's hard to be right and consice in English, translations will be even tougher.

	Johnathan Nightingale [:johnath]
	Comment 10 • 13 years ago

Current string is 17 words, 

"Would you like to help improve %1$S by automatically reporting memory usage, performance, and responsiveness to %2$S?"

New string is 32, which will be a multi-line notification box unless/until we change the UI, and is still wordy, yeah.

I also submit that we can't make this string exhaustive, nor prescriptive. I understand some of the concerns in comment 7, but I think the test here is that we disclose fairly for reasonable readers, not that we anticipate the edge cases.

Having said that - here's some word-trimming from the bleachers based on the text in comment 8. (19 words)

"Will you help improve Firefox by sending anonymous information about performance, hardware characteristics, feature usage, and customizations to Mozilla?"

(The "customizations" swap might be debatable, but I think s/Would you like to help/Will you help/ is righteous, and might even increase uptake, by being a less passive ask).

	Sid Stamm [:geekboy or :sstamm] Assignee
	Comment 11 • 13 years ago

I like johnath's 19-word phrase, but added "usage statistics" to line it up with the wording in the privacy policy (for those who click "learn more" and don't want to be confused).  jlebar, taras, can you take a quick look and let me know if this is agreeable?

	(dormant account)
	Comment 12 • 13 years ago

Comment on attachment 562564 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed patch

"anonymous usage statistics about performance hardware characteristics" does not make sense.
I like Johnath's suggestion, we should just use that as is and update the privacy policy to match new wording. We already have to revise the privacy policy for metrics and new measurements.

	Sid Stamm [:geekboy or :sstamm] Assignee
	Comment 13 • 13 years ago

Yeah, that makes sense... going with johnath's wordsmithing.  Flagging gavin for review since he has seen these lines before.

	Justin Lebar (not reading bugmail)
	Comment 14 • 13 years ago

> "Will you help improve Firefox by sending anonymous usage statistics about performance, hardware 
> characteristics, feature usage, and customizations to Mozilla?"

 * "Will you" -- I think this makes it sound like I have to do something.  I'm promising to do whatever it takes to send this information to Mozilla.  ("Would you like to" is better in this regard, but still not great.)  We're really asking "Is it OK if we", not "Will/would you".

* "usage statistics" -- I don't think this is right.  What are "usage statistics about performance" and "usage statistics about hardware characteristics"?  And "usage statistics about feature usage" is redundant.

 * "performance, hardware characteristics, feature usage, and customizations" -- The difficulty with this list is that there's an implied modifier attached to each of these items, and it's different for each one.  It's "[firefox's] performance, [your device's] hardware characteristics, [the] features [you] use, and [the] customizations [you've applied to Firefox]".

I think a non-technical user would at least have difficulty parsing the sentence, having to figure out what the modifiers are, and I think it's likely that many users wouldn't be able to insert the right modifiers, so wouldn't be able to understand.



I'd suggested to Sid in our e-mail chain (comment 8) that I don't think most users are particularly
interested in the even the high-level breakdown of items we have here.  (What the heck are "hardware characteristics"?  What do they mean "customizations"?)  It's a working assumption of telemetry that users care mostly about what's *not* being reported -- that is, they care that the data isn't personally identifiable, but they don't care if we suddenly start collecting how long the cycle collector took to run.

So I suggested the template

"Hey, we'd like your help making Firefox awesome.  Is it OK if we occasionally collect some anonymous data about X? [Learn more] [I'm in!] [No thanks.]"

and the template specialization of X="your {phone|tablet|computer} and your Firefox".

We could of course shorten the preamble to get this down to N words.  It's X which is important.

I feel like this gives the vast majority of users the data they need to make an informed decision, and that other users would be better served by the full [Learn more] page rather than an abbreviated list.  I think we'll have difficulty designing a list which does the privacy policy justice.

	:Gavin Sharp [email: gavin@gavinsharp.com]
	Comment 15 • 13 years ago

Comment on attachment 562581 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed patch

You need to also rev the entity name so that localizers will be aware of the semantic string change. That means s/telemetryText/telemetryPrompt/, twice in the properties file and once in nsBrowserGlue.js.

	Sid Stamm [:geekboy or :sstamm] Assignee
	Comment 16 • 13 years ago

Thanks for the quick review, Gavin.  As requested, here's the updated entity name.

	:Gavin Sharp [email: gavin@gavinsharp.com]
	Comment 17 • 13 years ago

Comment on attachment 562601 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed patch

What happened to the idea in comment 0 of re-prompting once we've changed the string?

We could do that by changing the pref used for "have we already notified".

	Sid Stamm [:geekboy or :sstamm] Assignee
	Comment 18 • 13 years ago

(In reply to Gavin Sharp (use gavin@gavinsharp.com for email) from comment #17
> What happened to the idea in comment 0 of re-prompting once we've changed
> the string?
> 
> We could do that by changing the pref used for "have we already notified".

Good catch... we need to do that.  I'm digging into this.

	:Gavin Sharp [email: gavin@gavinsharp.com]
	Comment 19 • 13 years ago

We don't need to do that before string freeze, though - can be done post-merge in a (code-only) followup. Let's land the string!

	:Gavin Sharp [email: gavin@gavinsharp.com]
	Comment 20 • 13 years ago

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/cf6245609f48

	Sid Stamm [:geekboy or :sstamm] Assignee
	Comment 21 • 13 years ago

hmph, fixing flag that cleared itself.

	Asa Dotzler [:asa]
	Comment 22 • 13 years ago

(In reply to Justin Lebar [:jlebar] from comment #14)

> "Hey, we'd like your help making Firefox awesome.  Is it OK if we
> occasionally collect some anonymous data about X? [Learn more] [I'm in!] [No
> thanks.]"
> 
> and the template specialization of X="your {phone|tablet|computer} and your
> Firefox".
> 
> We could of course shorten the preamble to get this down to N words.  It's X
> which is important.
> 
> I feel like this gives the vast majority of users the data they need to make
> an informed decision, and that other users would be better served by the
> full [Learn more] page rather than an abbreviated list.  I think we'll have
> difficulty designing a list which does the privacy policy justice.

I'd like to re-open this discussion because I disagree with the the old language and the new language this patch ads.  I think Justin's proposal here is spot on. People who don't know or care about the details are going to hit yes or no based on whether they want to help us or not, and people who do care about the details should get the real details, not some trimmed down, not quite everything version that tries to fit into a tiny infobar.

I think the currently way overloaded infobar actually makes fewer of our users informed about what's going on here because of its complexity and technical jargon. This is a step backwards IMO.

	Justin Lebar (not reading bugmail)
	Comment 23 • 13 years ago

Unfortunately it may be a bit late to change this.  Strings are frozen for the release when this prompt will be going out to everyone.  And if we were to change the prompt later, Sid told me on IRC that he'd want to re-prompt everyone.

See also bug 692861.

	Asa Dotzler [:asa]
	Comment 24 • 13 years ago

(In reply to Justin Lebar [:jlebar] from comment #23)
> Unfortunately it may be a bit late to change this.  Strings are frozen for
> the release when this prompt will be going out to everyone.  And if we were
> to change the prompt later, Sid told me on IRC that he'd want to re-prompt
> everyone.
> 
> See also bug 692861.

I realize that we're too late for string additions to Firefox 9, but we're not too late to back out this patch and return to the less overwhelming version that shipped in 7 and will ship in 8 and then we could plot out a better solution for going forward in 10 and 11. 

Also, I don't think we should re-prompt. Our privacy policy is the authoritative source of what telemetry can gather. The infobar has been mishandled and the text not quite right from the beginning.

	(dormant account)
	Comment 25 • 13 years ago

I agree on backing out existing prompt changes + offending probes IF there is any possibility of future changes AND/OR reprompting and then fixing this mess in FF11.

	Justin Lebar (not reading bugmail)
	Comment 26 • 13 years ago

Bug 692861 represents a definite possibility of reprompting, no? (At least for people who initially declined?)  But it doesn't look like that's come along very far.

Asa, note that backing out this infobar change would result in us backing out a number of telemetry probes (see the bugs this blocks).

	Sid Stamm [:geekboy or :sstamm] Assignee
	Comment 27 • 13 years ago

(In reply to Taras Glek (:taras) from comment #25)
> I agree on backing out existing prompt changes + offending probes IF there
> is any possibility of future changes AND/OR reprompting and then fixing this
> mess in FF11.

I agree with Taras.  If we see another impending change, it's more productive to step back, revisit the design goals, and make sure the prompt will be accurate going forward.

	Asa Dotzler [:asa]
	Comment 28 • 13 years ago

(In reply to Justin Lebar [:jlebar] from comment #26)
> Bug 692861 represents a definite possibility of reprompting, no? (At least
> for people who initially declined?)  But it doesn't look like that's come
> along very far.
> 
> Asa, note that backing out this infobar change would result in us backing
> out a number of telemetry probes (see the bugs this blocks).

I don't see why we'd have to back those probes out. Our privacy policy is very clear. I spent a long time making sure that it was correct, understandable, and covered the use cases we had in mind. The privacy policy covers what we're tracking and want to be tracking.

	Axel Hecht [:Pike]
	Comment 29 • 13 years ago

For the record, both Fx8 and Fx9 are string frozen, which means that we can't back the prompt language change out of fx9.

That's independent of when we show that prompt, and which probes it's representing.

	Justin Lebar (not reading bugmail)
	Comment 30 • 13 years ago

> I don't see why we'd have to back those probes out. Our privacy policy is very clear. I spent a long > time making sure that it was correct, understandable, and covered the use cases we had in mind. The 
> privacy policy covers what we're tracking and want to be tracking.

Our policy is also not to surprise users [1].  If we say we're collecting "performance data" and then collect things like whether Firefox is the default browser (bug 679938), I think we're doing our users (and ourselves) a disservice.

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Privacy/Roadmap_2011#Operating_Principles

	Asa Dotzler [:asa]
	Comment 31 • 13 years ago

(In reply to Justin Lebar [:jlebar] from comment #30)
> > I don't see why we'd have to back those probes out. Our privacy policy is very clear. I spent a long > time making sure that it was correct, understandable, and covered the use cases we had in mind. The 
> > privacy policy covers what we're tracking and want to be tracking.
> 
> Our policy is also not to surprise users [1].  If we say we're collecting
> "performance data" and then collect things like whether Firefox is the
> default browser (bug 679938), I think we're doing our users (and ourselves)
> a disservice.

Well, that was a fuck up. We wrote the privacy policy that way for a reason. That we have contradictory information in the infobar is a bug and one that's costing us dearly now. The infobar shouldn't have any specific information. It should say "wanna help Mozilla with anonymous Firefox data? <link to privacy policy>" and that it's not that is broken.

	Justin Lebar (not reading bugmail)
	Comment 32 • 13 years ago

I think in an ideal world, we wouldn't link to the legal privacy policy from the infobar.

The telemetry [more info] page is a great opportunity to explain to users how Mozilla works, and to show them how we're different.  (Here are some examples of the data we collect, here's how we've used the data, here's how we protect your privacy, here are some pictures of us kissing babies...)

If the infobar text is no good because it's technical, I think the same criticism applies to the privacy policy.

	(dormant account)
	Comment 33 • 13 years ago

Axel can we not use old locale strings from FF7? In the worst case we can disable telemetry on release channel.

	Axel Hecht [:Pike]
	Comment 34 • 13 years ago

The old strings are now removed from the current state, which means we had to patch some 90 repositories and deal with the fall-out with all the teams who don't work on tool chains that circle around on interactions like this properly. Not something we have resources for really.