Input: Thank You project Phase 1: Part 1
Summary
Beginning
When users click on "Submit feedback..." in Firefox, they end up on our Input site where they can let us know whether they're happy or sad about Firefox and why. This data gets collected and we analyze it in aggregate looking for trends and correlations between sentiment and subject matter, releases, events, etc. It's one of the many ways that users directly affect the development of Firefox.
One of the things that's always bugged me about this process is that some number of users are leaving feedback about issues they have with Firefox that aren't problems with the product, but rather something else or are known issues with the product that have workarounds. It bugs me because users go out of their way to leave us this kind of feedback and then they get a Thank You page that isn't remotely helpful for them.
I've been thinking about this problem since the beginning of 2014, but hadn't had a chance to really get into it until the end of 2014 when I wrote up a project plan and some bugs.
In the first quarter of 2015, Adam worked on this project with me as part of the Outreachy program. I took the work that he did and finished it up in the second quarter of 2015.
Surprise ending!
The code has been out there for a little under a month now and early analysis suggests SUCCESS!
But keep reading for the riveting middle!
This blog post is a write-up for the Thank You project phase 1. It's long because I wanted to go through the entire project beginning to end as a case study.