This is a proposed lightweight policy for adding sites to the UA string override list. (Follow up to dev-platform; let me know if I've not spread this wide enough.)

I propose that we agree this policy, then switch the B2G default UA back to the OS-agnostic one (no "Android"; bug 787054). If we hit problems with specific sites, we file bugs, run through this process, and get an override in place if appropriate. It's important for a number of reasons to fix the B2G UA ASAP, and I suspect that if we resolve it for v1 to include "Android", we'll never manage to get it out of there, with all of the problems that will entail long term.

We want to balance the ability to react to problems users are experiencing, with a requirement to check that we are aiming before shooting, that we don't actually degrade user's UX (e.g. by bypassing a check which kept them from a very broken site) and that we are making sure the list does not grow without any organized efforts to shrink it again.

Sites should be added to the list if/when:

1) An evangelism bug has been opened and the site has been contacted;

2) The site has proved unresponsive or unwilling to accommodate us (how long we wait for this will depend on factors such as the popularity of the site and the extent of breakage);

3) There is a specific proposed alternative UA for each broken product which has minimal changes from the default;

4) Either: Deep testing (not just the front page) has shown that a UA override for that UA in that product leads to a significant UX improvement on the site; or we know that the fix works because it restores a UA which that product was previously using;

5) The override is only for the broken products;

6) The entry in the prefs file comes with a comment with a reference to the bug in question.

Criterion 2 and criterion 4 are the only ones which could potentially lead to significant delay. 4 is unavoidable; we don't want to be doing an override without checking that it actually improves things. Sites required by teams for functional testing or demoing of B2G would have a very short timeout for criterion 2.

Sites should be removed from the list, for all active branches (I propose: including stable and ESR), once the site has confirmed that they have fixed it, or deep testing makes us believe they have.


Does this strike the right balance?

Gerv
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