Open Discussion Please Participate - When to suggest Downgrading, ESR or Uninstalling o?

SUMO
#1

So it has come to my attention that there are no guidelines or official or unofficial policy around how to enable a user to continue using Firefox. One specific example that I would like to bring to your attention to start a discussion around, is when downgrading, or uninstalling may seem like the best option for the user. I think many are familiar with this support issue.

Let’s say, a user comes to the forum, whatever the issue, they want to find this article [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/uninstall-firefox-from-your-computer] and they find it, no user support.

But instead they decide to open a support ticket and they describe their issue and have said all the things they have tried and they are ready to uninstall. Perhaps it is later in the thread that it seems like the solution might be to uninstall or downgrade to the way it was working before. These are things that I would do, however with Firefox, some parts of the profile may not work like the latest version, the features Mozilla is changing to make it work better.

\o/ I know that the community has two goals that are common with the user and other Mozillians: \o/

  • We browse with and like using Firefox.
  • We like to help and receive help when we need it.

So, ideally I would love to help every user to continue to user Firefox, what I don’t want to do is give advise that makes things worse or lead the user to a higher risk in the future. What I would like to do, as also discussed with other Mozillians, is to offer what the user wants if they need to uninstall or downgrade, but let them know we are still willing to troubleshoot further to help them to continue using Firefox.

I hope to answer these questions as well as a community. \o/

  1. When do you suggest Downgrade? Or to advise strongly not to? :face_with_monocle:
  2. When to suggest ESR? Currently the only known answers to that is if a user is using Windows XP, or have a Screen Reader installed, or want less frequent updates. The first two are support official, the later is not.

Please share what you do in this situation, it will help future guidelines and user experience for open, web users.

Thank you! Happy Browsing, and Happy Weekend. :tada:

#2

Hi

I am not a big fan of recommending a downgrade as it can often not solve the underlying issue. If I was, I would probably recommend ESR rather than a version in the past (with the exception of questions that need a specific version to rescue information from an old profile).

I hope this helps.