Hi everyone! Let's get right to business. I've got a request for a project-level decision. Up through and including Fedora 20, http://start.fedoraproject.org/ was the default home page in Firefox. At a community member's suggestion, that was change to be "about:newtab" in Rawhide, and inherited into F21.
Fedora Magazine is actually getting quite a bit of traffic from start.fpo, which means someone saw a headline there and clicked.
Generating magazine traffic is good, but even more importantly, this is one of our key channels of communication to users. I talked to the Fedora Marketing and websites teams and there was broad consensus that we should go back to http://start.fedoraproject.org/. Allan Day, who filed the original request to change.
Martin Stransky, the package maintainer, doesn't want to be changing back and forth based on whoever filed a bug last, and asks for a decision by Fedora governance.
I guess my own opinion is clear — I think putting it to the Fedora page is best for the project. Because this change only affects the defaults set the first time someone opens Firefox in a new profile, it'd be nice to have this set by the F21 release — even though we're well into freeze territory, so that ship has probably sailed. Do we have quick consensus to make the change now? (If not, we'll figure out a longer-term solution for F22.)
Why isn't %{dist} embedded in some part of the start URL, giving you the option of controlling what users of the different releases get to see from the backend side?
Cristian
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 9:53 AM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Hi everyone! Let's get right to business. I've got a request for a project-level decision. Up through and including Fedora 20, http://start.fedoraproject.org/ was the default home page in Firefox. At a community member's suggestion, that was change to be "about:newtab" in Rawhide, and inherited into F21.
Fedora Magazine is actually getting quite a bit of traffic from start.fpo, which means someone saw a headline there and clicked.
Generating magazine traffic is good, but even more importantly, this is one of our key channels of communication to users. I talked to the Fedora Marketing and websites teams and there was broad consensus that we should go back to http://start.fedoraproject.org/. Allan Day, who filed the original request to change.
Martin Stransky, the package maintainer, doesn't want to be changing back and forth based on whoever filed a bug last, and asks for a decision by Fedora governance.
I guess my own opinion is clear — I think putting it to the Fedora page is best for the project. Because this change only affects the defaults set the first time someone opens Firefox in a new profile, it'd be nice to have this set by the F21 release — even though we're well into freeze territory, so that ship has probably sailed. Do we have quick consensus to make the change now? (If not, we'll figure out a longer-term solution for F22.)
-- Matthew Miller mattdm@mattdm.org < http://mattdm.org/%3E Fedora Project Leader mattdm@fedoraproject.org < http://fedoraproject.org/%3E _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/council-discuss
On 26/11/14 18:23, Cristian Gafton wrote: I had a similar thought, some kind of variable we can amend at will even, maybe a redirect or something might be less hard coded ? I am sure we can easily do that in infra. Of course then, the question remains, what do we want to achieve ? Should this be release specific ?
Regards, Tristan
Why isn't %{dist} embedded in some part of the start URL, giving you the option of controlling what users of the different releases get to see from the backend side?
Cristian
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 9:53 AM, Matthew Miller <mattdm@fedoraproject.org mailto:mattdm@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
Hi everyone! Let's get right to business. I've got a request for a project-level decision. Up through and including Fedora 20, http://start.fedoraproject.org/ was the default home page in Firefox. At a community member's suggestion, that was change to be "about:newtab" in Rawhide, and inherited into F21. Fedora Magazine is actually getting quite a bit of traffic from start.fpo, which means someone saw a headline there and clicked. Generating magazine traffic is good, but even more importantly, this is one of our key channels of communication to users. I talked to the Fedora Marketing and websites teams and there was broad consensus that we should go back to http://start.fedoraproject.org/. Allan Day, who filed the original request to change. Martin Stransky, the package maintainer, doesn't want to be changing back and forth based on whoever filed a bug last, and asks for a decision by Fedora governance. I guess my own opinion is clear — I think putting it to the Fedora page is best for the project. Because this change only affects the defaults set the first time someone opens Firefox in a new profile, it'd be nice to have this set by the F21 release — even though we're well into freeze territory, so that ship has probably sailed. Do we have quick consensus to make the change now? (If not, we'll figure out a longer-term solution for F22.) -- Matthew Miller mattdm@mattdm.org <mailto:mattdm@mattdm.org> <http://mattdm.org/> Fedora Project Leader mattdm@fedoraproject.org <mailto:mattdm@fedoraproject.org> <http://fedoraproject.org/> _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/council-discuss
council-discuss mailing list council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/council-discuss
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 12:53:24 -0500, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
I guess my own opinion is clear — I think putting it to the Fedora page is best for the project. Because this change only affects the defaults set the first time someone opens Firefox in a new profile, it'd be nice to have this set by the F21 release — even though we're well into freeze territory, so that ship has probably sailed. Do we have quick consensus to make the change now? (If not, we'll figure out a longer-term solution for F22.)
Is this going to be a local copy of that page or is this going to open a network connection start.fedoraproject.org, before one has an easy opportunity to change the start page?
This link and other Fedora links are already added to bookmarks. Are people trying to find out more about Fedora after installation, actually having a problem finding information?
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 10:23:34AM -0800, Cristian Gafton wrote:
Why isn't %{dist} embedded in some part of the start URL, giving you the option of controlling what users of the different releases get to see from the backend side?
In this case, I don't think that helps, as the changed URL is local rather than server-side.
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 12:35:25PM -0600, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
Is this going to be a local copy of that page or is this going to open a network connection start.fedoraproject.org, before one has an easy opportunity to change the start page?
It is a remote page, as it has been for a while.
This link and other Fedora links are already added to bookmarks. Are people trying to find out more about Fedora after installation, actually having a problem finding information?
It's not so much about finding information as staying connected. As noted in the bug and earlier message, people _are_ using this fairly heavily, because we know they're clicking through links to Fedora Magazine.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 11/26/2014 10:43 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 12:35:25PM -0600, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
Is this going to be a local copy of that page or is this going to open a network connection start.fedoraproject.org, before one has an easy opportunity to change the start page?
It is a remote page, as it has been for a while.
This link and other Fedora links are already added to bookmarks. Are people trying to find out more about Fedora after installation, actually having a problem finding information?
It's not so much about finding information as staying connected. As noted in the bug and earlier message, people _are_ using this fairly heavily, because we know they're clicking through links to Fedora Magazine.
I think the start page has evolved nicely. This is not the first time I've heard it reported as being a good conduit to bring people to various Fedora Project resources.
It's also one of the tools that the upcoming Fedora community action and impact person would probably want to review and likely use; if I were in that position, I would want to really see what use it had, build some metrics, and really consider what to do with it over the longer term. Seems like it might be a good idea to leave it enabled until that person can come have a more full discussion with the Council?
- - Karsten - -- Karsten 'quaid' Wade .^\ CentOS Doer of Stuff http://TheOpenSourceWay.org \ http://community.redhat.com @quaid (identi.ca/twitter/IRC) \v' gpg: AD0E0C41
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 13:43:57 -0500, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 12:35:25PM -0600, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
Is this going to be a local copy of that page or is this going to open a network connection start.fedoraproject.org, before one has an easy opportunity to change the start page?
It is a remote page, as it has been for a while.
Would making it a local page be an acceptible alternative?
This link and other Fedora links are already added to bookmarks. Are people trying to find out more about Fedora after installation, actually having a problem finding information?
It's not so much about finding information as staying connected. As noted in the bug and earlier message, people _are_ using this fairly heavily, because we know they're clicking through links to Fedora Magazine.
Do we know how much of a drop there is when people need to go through a book mark with the initial page being blank? It doesn't sound like the about:newpage version was there for a release, in which case we probably don't know the effect.
On Wed, 2014-11-26 at 13:10 -0600, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 13:43:57 -0500, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 12:35:25PM -0600, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
Is this going to be a local copy of that page or is this going to open a network connection start.fedoraproject.org, before one has an easy opportunity to change the start page?
It is a remote page, as it has been for a while.
Would making it a local page be an acceptible alternative?
No, there are major advantages to having it go out to a real Fedora page.
* They are presented with the latest information, particularly the newer Fedora Magazine articles * From our end, it gives us a better idea of how many people have installed Fedora (since many of them will end up browsing to start.fedoraproject.org at least once after installation) without revealing any personal information (beyond "someone at this (probably NATed) IP address has Firefox on Fedora N).
This link and other Fedora links are already added to bookmarks. Are people trying to find out more about Fedora after installation, actually having a problem finding information?
It's not so much about finding information as staying connected. As noted in the bug and earlier message, people _are_ using this fairly heavily, because we know they're clicking through links to Fedora Magazine.
Do we know how much of a drop there is when people need to go through a book mark with the initial page being blank? It doesn't sound like the about:newpage version was there for a release, in which case we probably don't know the effect.
I doubt we have any real-world metrics for this, but anecdotally, I wouldn't expect people to go *looking* for more information about Fedora until they have a serious reason to do so. Using the start page allows us to have an opportunity to catch their attention, rather than rely entirely on someone looking for us.
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 01:10:21PM -0600, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
open a network connection start.fedoraproject.org, before one has an easy opportunity to change the start page?
It is a remote page, as it has been for a while.
Would making it a local page be an acceptible alternative?
Possibly, although I surmise that the updated, dynamic content (for example, links to latest announcements and Fedora Magazine articles) is what makes it useful to people. I don't know how to do that with a local page unless we push out an updated startpage RPM daily. :)
I think primarily, I'd like to put it back to how it is in F20 and figure out improvements from there.
Do we know how much of a drop there is when people need to go through a book mark with the initial page being blank? It doesn't sound like the about:newpage version was there for a release, in which case we probably don't know the effect.
We don't know, and it will be a little hard to measure the impact since it only affects new profiles.
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 11:53 AM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Hi everyone! Let's get right to business. I've got a request for a project-level decision. Up through and including Fedora 20, http://start.fedoraproject.org/ was the default home page in Firefox. At a community member's suggestion, that was change to be "about:newtab" in Rawhide, and inherited into F21.
As a user, not sure how typical or atypical a user I am, I find programs that take me places I don't ask to go a bit unfriendly and I would prefer the about:newtab default with start.fp.o pinned to it initially to be the nicer solution from an end user experience perspective.
John
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 02:14:38PM -0600, inode0 wrote:
As a user, not sure how typical or atypical a user I am, I find programs that take me places I don't ask to go a bit unfriendly and I would prefer the about:newtab default with start.fp.o pinned to it initially to be the nicer solution from an end user experience perspective.
For perspective: The first time you open Firefox, it starts with a "Welcome to Firefox" page, loaded from mozilla.org, and the home page in a second tab. (In F21 and rawhide, start.fp.o pinned, along with ads -- currently from booking.com -- and other Mozilla-slected links.) So unless we make _additional_ changes, it's already taking you somewhere.
On Nov 26, 2014 12:25 PM, "Matthew Miller" mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 02:14:38PM -0600, inode0 wrote:
As a user, not sure how typical or atypical a user I am, I find programs that take me places I don't ask to go a bit unfriendly and I would prefer the about:newtab default with start.fp.o pinned to it initially to be the nicer solution from an end user experience perspective.
For perspective: The first time you open Firefox, it starts with a "Welcome to Firefox" page, loaded from mozilla.org, and the home page in a second tab. (In F21 and rawhide, start.fp.o pinned, along with ads -- currently from booking.com -- and other Mozilla-slected links.) So unless we make _additional_ changes, it's already taking you somewhere.
In that case, if the firefox package winds up sticking with about:newtab then I would argue that the welcome page should also go away for the sake of consistency.
That said, since data seem to indicate that start.fp.o is useful to a number of people I am inclined to believe it is worth keeping.
-- Garrett Holmstrom
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 15:24:54 -0500, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 02:14:38PM -0600, inode0 wrote:
As a user, not sure how typical or atypical a user I am, I find programs that take me places I don't ask to go a bit unfriendly and I would prefer the about:newtab default with start.fp.o pinned to it initially to be the nicer solution from an end user experience perspective.
For perspective: The first time you open Firefox, it starts with a "Welcome to Firefox" page, loaded from mozilla.org, and the home page in a second tab. (In F21 and rawhide, start.fp.o pinned, along with ads -- currently from booking.com -- and other Mozilla-slected links.) So unless we make _additional_ changes, it's already taking you somewhere.
Well, I'd prefer that it didn't do that either.
El 2014-11-26 14:42, Garrett Holmstrom escribió:
On Nov 26, 2014 12:25 PM, "Matthew Miller" mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 02:14:38PM -0600, inode0 wrote:
As a user, not sure how typical or atypical a user I am, I find programs that take me places I don't ask to go a bit unfriendly
and I
would prefer the about:newtab default with start.fp.o pinned to
it
initially to be the nicer solution from an end user experience perspective.
For perspective: The first time you open Firefox, it starts with a "Welcome to Firefox" page, loaded from mozilla.org [1], and the
home page
in a second tab. (In F21 and rawhide, start.fp.o pinned, along with
ads
-- currently from booking.com [2] -- and other Mozilla-slected
links.) So
unless we make _additional_ changes, it's already taking you
somewhere.
I don't like to mozilla tell me where to go.
In that case, if the firefox package winds up sticking with about:newtab then I would argue that the welcome page should also go away for the sake of consistency.
That said, since data seem to indicate that start.fp.o is useful to a number of people I am inclined to believe it is worth keeping.
I think start.fedoraproject.org is a good way to welcome people to fedora landscape. Even, it is useful to have it as a default page as a contributor, to keep an eye on announcements and planet.
Neville
council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org
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inode0 -
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