Revisit KUserFeedback collected data and UX
Open, Needs TriagePublic

Description

I'd like to talk about KUserFeedback a bit.

For all the grief we get about this feature from a vocal minority, it strikes me that we are not collecting the kind of data that we can really use to make our software better. This would include, for example, which settings the user has changed from their default values. The desire for this piece of data comes up over and over again in conversations. I think a simpler and more useful set of options for the user would be:

  • Off
  • System and version information
  • ^^ plus settings changed from their default values
  • ^^ plus app-specific usage details (number of panels, launch count, use time, etc)

Another issue is that the current fragmented UI is confusing. We have a KCM in System Settings which only controls telemetry for Plasma. I would expect the KCM to have a global on/off switch and show you a list of all the telemetry-enabled apps on your system so you can configure what they collect in a central place. Instead, the per-app settings are scattered all over the place in different apps with different user interfaces--one for QWidgets apps and another for QML apps.

How about this instead: when run in Plasma, apps don't show their feedback UI in the settings windows; instead, they all get aggregated into the Feedback KCM in System Settings, where we come up with a UI for showing many apps in a compact space Otherwise, when run in a different environment where presumably System Settings is not installed, apps show the UI in their settings dialogs.

ngraham created this task.Aug 19 2020, 2:40 PM

Agreed.

As a starter, I'd add a global kill switch in the plasma KCM. KUserFeedback already supports the concept of kill switch AFAICS, we are just missing the UI for it.

We tried adding the killswitch, it was deemed too confusing in the review phase.

I would support revisiting that. I bet we could come up with a sensible design.

one thing that would be is to encourage distros to show an opt in screen during installation, something akin ubuntu's one

ngraham updated the task description. (Show Details)Apr 5 2021, 7:38 PM

In the absence of a first-run wizard, this would have to live in the installer. Different distros have different installers, so it would need to be implemented for each one.

Murz added a subscriber: Murz.Apr 6 2021, 3:10 PM