Over the past month, I've been working on gathering support issues so that they can get followup and we can track issues that occur often and figure out workarounds/fixes or get knowledge base articles written.

Here's the system that we'll be implementing. A lot of it is in progress and/or in the works, so pardon our dust.

Each week, we'll take a sampling of questions posted to the forums and gather feedback from LiveChat. From this sampling we'll identify the issues that are occurring frequently. We're looking for cases where the symptoms are specific enough to have only one cause or a small number of causes.

Each issue gets its own thread in this contributors forum, detailing as much as we can gather, including:

1. A description of the problem and its symptoms
2. A status (details below) and the name of the lead.
3. A list of links to forum threads/Hendrix posts/livechat dumps/bug reports where users have reported this.
4. Workarounds/fixes (including a note if it's been verified to work)
5. Information needed. This section is important in that as we're trying to find the cause of the issue, we may have some questions that we'd like all users experiencing them to answer. # Other comments.

The goal is to collect all the information we can on each issue in one place. At some point, users might be able to post to these threads also, so we can ask them if they have more information to supply it in an issue thread.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the statuses?
In order to keep track of progress, each issue will have a status. Statuses are one of the following:

• Needs lead (Someone should take the lead on this)
• Needs details (Due to lack of user feedback, specifics or an inability to reproduce, issue has been tabled until a very helpful user steps forward or enough cases are coming in that we can aggregate more specifics)
• Under investigation (QA should try to reproduce if possible/find a cause, Support should try to get more details about this issue from users; everyone report to the lead)
• Pending fix OR Needs documentation (Outside/responsible parties have been contacted or a fix is in the works OR assigned lead should write a KB article OR otherwise inform relevant parties on how to address this issue)
• Fixed, tracking (Kept on the list for a few weeks to see if numbers or frequency drop after the fix is pushed/article is applied, if any subsequent variations of this issue are found.)
• No action needed (Specific circumstances may suggest that an issue will resolve itself shortly or that neither further specifics nor further action will help the situation — for example, people complaining about the old EULA)

What is a "lead" and what would a lead be responsible for?
A lead is responsible for keeping up with the developments on the issue. That includes following up with users who have been reporting it to make sure details are gathered; working with QA to figure out a workaround or a cause; and reporting on the progress and what's been found so everyone is up to date.

Lastly, if the issue needs to be documented in the knowledge base, the lead would be in charge of either writing the article or finding someone to write it.

If I lead, will I have help?
Absolutely! You're not expected to be the only one working on this issue, merely the person whom all the information flows through. Other contributors, if they see reports of your issue, will bring them to your attention. You're not responsible for reading every forum thread, hendrix post or bug report just to find the ones that apply to you. You'll have the full backing of people from across Mozilla such as in QA to help reproduce an issue or test workarounds. You'll also find that some users are invaluable and will love to help in any way they can with their issue. If you don't know what information to ask users for, devs are great at knowing the innards of Firefox and knowing what is important or relevant. If you need help finding someone to help with something, just ask! There's a lot of collective knowledge and we're sure that someone (djst, zzxc, cilias, nkoth, etc) will be able to point you to someone helpful.

Leading the investigation of an issue is a great way to get involved in the greater Mozilla community.

What can I do to take part if I'm not the lead?
Everything! We'll be keeping Weekly common issues up to date with the issues we're tracking right now. Even if you're not the lead on one, if you see a report of it or have a few minutes to test or triage, make sure you post in the relevant thread. If you're on LiveChat or in the forums and you see a case of an issue, find the thread and make sure that you ask for the information that is requested and post the answers to the thread or point the user to the thread. If you figure out a workaround, post it.

What if I'm not working with users/not a Sumo contributor?
QA and devs are needed also. If you find bug reports, please help by linking them to issues. Also, if you have more knowledge about an issue, please share. If there's any information that we could collect to help figure out an issue, posting it will make sure it's visible.

What if I have a new issue that deserves mention?
We're still figuring that part out. For now, send Cww a message on IRC or (better) by e-mail at cwwmozilla (at) gmail and he'll keep abreast of it and probably include it in with the next update (Monday mornings). The more information you can provide the better. If the issue is really general (Firefox crashes), we probably won't include it because there are dozens of underlying causes. However, if the issue is highly specific and especially if it's new (Firefox crashes when opening PDFs directly but downloads them fine) and affecting a large number of users, chances are good that it'll make it into the next update.

I have suggestions/feedback about this!
Please share it with us! We really want to know how we can make this better.