Mozilla Labs Wants To Monitor (Volunteers') Firefox Use

Howardd21 writes "PC World reports that Mozilla Labs wants 1% of its Firefox users to voluntarily provide information about how they use the browser, and their web browsing habits. This would be done through an add-on named "Test Pilot" that collects the information and associates it with some demographic information that the user has provided. Unlike other data collection utilities that software developers may include to provide usage information, the add-on will follow the same open source concept that Firefox adheres to, allowing the market to better understand what is being collected. Mozilla Labs stresses privacy when discussing how they will collect, store and use the data, including publishing it for other researchers to to analyze."

Comments

Won't happen

[jerep]

I'm not giving them my best porn sites.

Re:Won't happen

[Eudial]

Hey, they gave you libpr0n (safe-ish for work). The least you could do is to share some of the stuff back to them.

Re:Won't happen

[sakdoctor]

You'd only be giving them a hash of your best porn sites.
With so many to choose from, I think your love of horse/goat double penetration is safe.

Re:Won't happen

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd only be giving them a hash of your best porn sites.

Porn, hash, maybe they want me to order them a pizza too?!

Mandatory

[Bocconcini]

In Soviet Russia, open source monitors you!

Re:Mandatory

[cp.tar]

No. In Soviet Russia, memes kill you.

round 1

[ani23]

Mozilla Labs Wants To Monitor (Volunteers') Firefox Use VS Microsoft Wants To Monitor (Volunteers') IE Use Fight

Re:round 1

[ani23]

now with line breaks
Mozilla Labs Wants To Monitor (Volunteers') Firefox Use
VS
Microsoft Wants To Monitor (Volunteers') IE Use.
Fight

At least they are asking for volunteers...

[Anonymous Coward]

instead of just adding it to the base code.

Self-selection will skew results

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is very odd... all of users primarily visit technology sites, and, uh, porn."

Re:Self-selection will skew results

[theaceoffire]

Well, this obviously means they should make more technology porn sites.

They better share this important info immediately!

I hope they aren't planing to follow M$ office

[quickOnTheUptake]

The data collection mechanism is internally called âoeService Quality Monitoringâ, or just SQM. It was introduced in Office 2003, and presents itself to the user as âoeCustomer Experience Improvement Programâ (CEIP), or you might also see it under the heading of âoeHelp Make Office Betterâ. . . .What did Microsoft do with the data? It turns out, a lot. The data combined with human judgment was the basis for the placement of all commands on the Ribbon. The Home tab in all programs is a great example of the statistics at work. The commands on the Home tab represent the 80% most used commands of that particular application.

From: here

"One difference between Firefox 2.0 and Firefox 3.0 is that the Back button grew in size," Raskin said. "Why did it change? Because we found that people used the Back button much more than the Forward button."

I hope this information about most used features isn't going to be used to develop a Mozilla ribbon.

Re:I hope they aren't planing to follow M$ office

[scottrocket]

Additional info from Mozilla

Overview of Test Pilot We can provide a much more satisfying experience all around by putting in place some basic infrastructure. Here's the idea: * We develop and promote a formal Test Pilot program with a Firefox add-on at its core.
* The first time the Test Pilot add-on is run, it asks a few simple non-personally-identifiable questions in order to put the user into a demographic bucket, e.g. technical level, locale, etc., and to let them opt in to additional anonymous instrumentation.
* Test Pilot will then notify its users when a new experiment is available for testing. If the user opts in, it will download the required software (if any) and load any information required to get started with the new experiment, e.g. overview, use cases, etc.
* After either a specified amount of time or upon completion of a specific action, Test Pilot will prompt the user for feedback. The feedback form will only ask a few questions selected from a much larger set. A link will be provided to provided more comprehensive unstructured feedback or bug reports.
* The set of questions posed for feedback will be randomly distributed within each demographic bucket to ensure statistical significance of the results.
* Anonymized aggregate results and analysis will then be posted automatically to the Test Pilot site.
* * All participants will receive a "flight badge" displayed in their Test Pilot profile and available to embed on blogs, social networks, etc.
The idea is that by reducing the amount of required feedback to only a few clicks we can increase overall rates of participation.

If they give me a physical flight badge to wear on my hat, I might do it.

Re:I hope they aren't planing to follow M$ office

[Btarlinian]

I hope this information about most used features isn't going to be used to develop a Mozilla ribbon.

Sure, discounting the fact that the ribbon was probably the best UI design MS has ever created. (The only people who might dislike it are those who have learned the intricacies of the Office menu structure and they still have the option to switch back.) If Mozilla can come up with something as good as the Ribbon from this, I'd say it's a good thing

Re:I hope they aren't planing to follow M$ office

[ljw1004]

Is there any consensus or are there usability-studies that support your claim that the ribbon is great?

(I have no opinion on it. I'm just curious. I haven't seen either yet.)

Re:I hope they aren't planing to follow M$ office

[Repossessed]

The only people who might dislike it are those who have learned the intricacies of the Office menu structure

Sorry, but no, I don't know the intricacies of either, I hate the ribbon because without fucking *words* I don't know what a button does.

How about add needed features instead?

[duffbeer703]

How about making it possible to update Firefox in a business environment without administrative rights? Maybe allow admins to push the browser and patches?

Re:How about add needed features instead?

[grasshoppa]

Absolutely. I would love firefox to be a viable browser in the workplace, but it simply isn't given the way settings are stored alone, nevermind the inability to patch and update.

Re:How about add needed features instead?

[Shados]

And allow admins to control stuff like configuration, homepage, etc. Where I work, they modified firefox from source to allow some of these things. Supposingly tried to contact the team (big, big, big company) and they didn't even want to talk, so we did it on our own. Works fine, but (amusingly enough), IE is used as the primary browser just because we have can have our way with it, on a global scale, while Firefox, we need to play with the source to get it to do what we need, and while we actually DO that, its a pain in the ass.

Re:How about add needed features instead?

[duffbeer703]

That would allow users to install automatic updates, but would open up the computers for massive ownage by zero-day threats.

Who would volunteer?

[MrEricSir]

Seriously for a sec -- what kind of person would volunteer for something like this? And would that person really represent the average user?

Where "volunteer" equals

[Anonymous Coward]

Not read the EULA thoroughly upon installation?

Bias

[michaelhood]

Apologies to MrEricSir, as he posted on this sort of but I wanted to write my own opinion.

This is textbook sampling bias. It's just now getting to the point that the "average user" might be someone who is even using FireFox. There is no way the people that install this addon and submit their usage to Mozilla will be representative of anything useful at all.

Unfortunately, to get the "average user", Mozilla probably need run some "punch the monkey" banners on MySpace - offering people a free iPod and a trip to a tropical destination, in exchange for installing this addon. Maybe they can use some of their Googlefortune.

Re:Bias

[Artraze]

On the other hand, why would they even want "average user" over "average Firefox user"? I can understand that the former may have value in as far a switching users to Firefox, but on the other hand most people don't switch because IE is good enough and already installed. No matter how much touts improvements in whatever, they aren't going to convince these people. Mozilla is best off improving their experience for existing uses so that they: a) don't switch away, and b) install FF on their friends computers. Thus, "average Firefox user" really has more value to them anyway.

I would volunteer and good on them !

[johnjones]

first thing is testing and the best thing is feedback

yes crash reporter's help but the best thing is real feedback about what actually is stressing the engine

are javascript functions that rarely get used the best use of the engineers time ?
knowing what is going on and what really stress's the engines is profiling
Profiling is a good thing
Hard to do right without actually asking real users to do it

I welcome the fact they actually doing it themselves and building it out in a open way !

regards

John Jones

Re:4Chan

[alx5000]

It's a browser, not a miracle worker ;)

Sure

[alexborges]

The large reptile can have my data. No problem with that at all.

Stupid statistics

[turkeyfeathers]

Conclusion: 100% of our users aren't at all concerned about their privacy (based on our 1% voluntary sample size). -Mozilla Labs

Re:Stupid statistics

[Opportunist]

You won't get far in the field of statistics if you don't know how to choose your sample to get the desired results...

Why? They already have reams of feedback

[AaronLawrence]

Users have submitted thousands of bugs, and then voted on them.
Yet those votes don't get acted on. Mozilla fixes bugs or adds features when "something else" tells them they should - often, what's cool for developers or what some big company wants.

Why would they pay attention to the statistics generated by this program when they don't pay attention to the much more focussed statistics already in Bugzilla?

Re:Anonymous coward

[dvice_null]

How many tabs you have open? How often you use back button? Do you save tabs? How often you restart your browser? etc. This information can be used to optimize Firefox for YOUR needs. Assuming you belong to the majority.

Re:Like Joe Pesci says in Goodfellas....

[strikeleader]

Why would anyone volunteer for this, Nielsen pays people for this.