[Done] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Various discussions related to Adblock Plus development
Wladimir Palant

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by Wladimir Palant »

Firefox doesn't encode GIFs - it uses the PNG format. I already implemented a trivial color reduction algorithm, with 64 colors the image above is only 190 kB. Still, some solution needs to be found for very large pages, canvas.drawWindow() has several edge conditions. In particular, it doesn't like planet.mozilla.org because its height is more than 65536 pixels.

Edit: Oh, and that color reduction takes a while on Firefox 3.x of course - while being almost instantaneous in Minefield...
Tom

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by Tom »

My dreams are coming true :-) I disagree with the weakly digest email though; why not to allow list maintainers accessing reports on demand through some sort of RSS feed or something similar. From my experience the list guys are always eager to sort out any problems caused by their list straight away, minutes after posting them on the forum usually.

The other thing, if the first part, data collection, takes only few seconds why not to execute it in the background. I think by eliminating the first screen the whole reporting process will become a little bit more user friendly. What do you think?
alberto
Posts: 65
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2009 10:58 am

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by alberto »

Tom wrote:The other thing, if the first part, data collection, takes only few seconds why not to execute it in the background. I think by eliminating the first screen the whole reporting process will become a little bit more user friendly. What do you think?
I think the data collection would be required to advise the user in the next page. For example, say the user intends to report that ABP blocks too much, but there are no items blocked, a warning message could be displayed straightaway. The screenshot capture could be done in the background perhaps (although may increase development complexity?).
alberto
Posts: 65
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2009 10:58 am

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by alberto »

What would be the implications of someone reporting an issue on an adult site with screenshots attached (e.g. sensitive images)?

These sensitive images could be publicly available to anyone if the URL is disclosed e.g. in a forum. Assuming these images are hosted in the ABP domain, is there any liability / legal obligation associated? For example, Imageshack terms of service (http://imageshack.us/content.php?page=rules) ban these type of material and offer an option to report abuse.

Perhaps a good compromise would be to implement some of these options
- Show images only on demand when accessing a report, to get the chance to see the website and description and make a judgement before opening the image
- Provide an option to report abuse, which could automatically hide / remove the image or the full report
- Discourage users from posting sensitive images, or at least not to disclose publicly the report link if sensitive images are attached. There is already an option to remove sensitive data, but I think the wording is geared towards protecting privacy (as opposed to removing content that could offend someone).
- Prevent search engines e.g. Google from indexing reports
- ABP terms of service limiting liability
Wladimir Palant

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by Wladimir Palant »

@Tom: There should definitely be an option to get a daily digest. RSS feeds will not work because I don't want to make the reports searchable - they is always the potential for reports to contain sensitive data, you should only be able to access a report if the reporter gave you a link (e.g. in a forum) or if it concerns your filter subscription.

Having data collection in background is tricky. I considered it but there are problems - if the user selects the issue type too fast we might not have the data when we need it on the following page. Also, all access to the webpage is currently restricted to the data collection page - at this stage the user is unlikely to close it or navigate away.

@alberto: I am not very concerned about copyright claims, this very much falls under "fair use". The screenshots are scaled down and have the number of colors reduced to 64 - adult images will be barely recognizable after these transformation. The reports will not be searchable, in particular not via search engines (I for sure don't intend to allow indexing on this subdomain). They are only online for 30 days and I will of course remove stuff if copyright holders object.
Wladimir Palant

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by Wladimir Palant »

Next round of screenshots:

Image
Not much different from the previous screenshot, only that the description moved down to be more consistent.

Image
Here you can now see the timeline in action. Ugly, isn't it?

Image
Screenshots go through color reduction now. While all the important details should still be recognizable, I doubt that copyright holders will object.

Image
The third page is dedicated to entering the comment now, reviewing data is optional.

Image
Same page after the user clicked "Show report data"

Image
Final page, report is being sent. Once the transfer is complete the user should get his report link (next to it a button "copy to clipboard") and optionally additional feedback - if at some point we decide to give immediate feedback on common issues. There might also be an error message coming from server (not yet sure what that would be). In case of a transfer error (SSL certificate issues, offline mode etc) the user should get the possibility to submit the report in a regular browser window - there he has more possibilities to deal with issues.
User avatar
fanboy
Posts: 3446
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2007 4:45 am
Contact:

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by fanboy »

A bit late into the thread, but will this notify, show active filters, and active subs to the maintainer?
Wladimir Palant

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by Wladimir Palant »

@fanboy: What we discussed above was a daily or weekly digest sent to subscription maintainer's contact address - links to all reports that were sent in by users of his filter subscription. Part of the report data are in particular the active filter subscriptions and all the data displayed by blockable items list.
alberto
Posts: 65
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2009 10:58 am

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by alberto »

Wladimir Palant wrote: Final page, report is being sent. Once the transfer is complete the user should get his report link (next to it a button "copy to clipboard") and optionally additional feedback - if at some point we decide to give immediate feedback on common issues.
The common issues analysis in the server-side looks like a great idea, so it can be implemented / tweaked independently of the ABP releases. However, I see the following drawbacks on having this at the of the flow along side the report submission:
- Presumably screenshots and comments are not required to troubleshoot common issues e.g. no subscription registered, etc. Why ask the user to complete all this in first place?
- If the report is generated and it was identified a common issue, how do maintainers know if this actually resolved the problem or not? should they look at these reports or just ignore them?

It would be a better user experience to provide (eventually) immediate feedback following the issue type classification. The sequence could be as follows: Type of issue > Initial analysis (common issues) > Attach screenshot > Add comments > Send report. If a common issue is identified, the user could try the advice straightaway (interrupting the flow and not sending the report).
Wladimir Palant

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by Wladimir Palant »

@alberto: Certainly worth considering but not at this stage. At the moment we don't know whether we want to generate responses for common issues at all - simply because nobody knows how much work is involved here. Also, I am somewhat worried about how the server will handle this. Before I know how much this new feature will be used I better don't double the number of server requests.
alberto
Posts: 65
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2009 10:58 am

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by alberto »

Wladimir Palant wrote:@fanboy: What we discussed above was a daily or weekly digest sent to subscription maintainer's contact address - links to all reports that were sent in by users of his filter subscription. Part of the report data are in particular the active filter subscriptions and all the data displayed by blockable items list.
Currently, looks like the forums provide a way for maintainers to track their work, discuss correct resolution, and collaborate (e.g. Easylist and Fanboy both see reports/fixes).

How do you envision the management through resolution for these new reports? If maintainers get a digest via email, how do they distribute workload and coordinate who will pick up which report? Will they duplicate efforts if the same report is posted in a forum (and also received in a digest)?
Tom

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by Tom »

I don't like the progress meter at the top of each step. If it was me I would get rid of it all together or at least make it less prominent.
Wladimir Palant

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by Wladimir Palant »

@alberto: At least for EasyList the contact address is a mailing list, these digests will be automatically distributed to all maintainers. Fanboy can easily create a mailing list as well. Reports are handled by whoever has time right now, that's the way it already works. As to the other filter lists - almost all of them are one-man shops so there will be no coordination problems.

I guess that at least for popular subscriptions the number of reports will significantly exceed the available resources, looking at each single report will be unrealistic. So the goal is to group similar reports so that the subscription maintainers can identify new common issues quickly and immediately have all the required information to act.
User avatar
fanboy
Posts: 3446
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2007 4:45 am
Contact:

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by fanboy »

Wladimir Palant wrote:@alberto: At least for EasyList the contact address is a mailing list, these digests will be automatically be distributed to all maintainers. Fanboy can easily create a mailing list as well. Reports are handled by whoever has time right now, that's the way it already works. As to the other filter lists - almost all of them are one-man shops so there will be no coordination problems.

I guess that at least for popular subscriptions the number of reports will significantly exceed the available resources, looking at each single report will be unrealistic. So the goal is to group similar reports so that the subscription maintainers can identify new common issues quickly and immediately have all the required information to act.
Done. Mailing list email, fanboyadblock @ fanboy . co . nz
Wladimir Palant

Re: [Roadmap] Notify the maintainer of the filter

Post by Wladimir Palant »

Very close to being usable now:
Image
Reports are now being sent and stored on server, the server just isn't processing them yet. Note that the white area in the screenshot is a frame showing server response, the server can potentially give out more information and additional links. I need to add server-side processing so that the link displayed in the response actually works. And censoring of URLs (remove parameter values) still needs to be done. Once that is finished this change can go into the development builds.

A few things can be fixed after the feature lands: handling of special cases will be added later, same goes for fallback in case of errors (send into a browser tab).
Locked