How to mark previous answers to a support question as obsolete?
This is an issue with Mozilla Support. I'd like to be able to mark an answer as obsolete, as it's potentially misleading.
If you search on Google for "firefox toggle bookmark bar", the first result is this:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/865261
It indicates that there's no shortcut to toggle the bookmark bar, which was probably true when it was written, but isn't true now (can use Ctrl+Shift+B). As the question thread is archived, there's no way to add additional responses to indicate the current Firefox functionality, and users that search for this information may get the impression that the older answer is still accurate.
I don't mean to single this example out, I'm sure there are others and the author of the answer did nothing wrong, but I would like there to be some way to help direct users to more up-to-date information.
Chosen Solution
There isn't much that can be done about it. It's a good thing that the question and others like it are clearly marked as archived and visitors advised to ask new questions (and get up-to-date responses). Furthermore, it's really not worth the effort trying to vet old answers against current versions and marking them accordingly, even if such a facility was availed. There's hardly enough man-power as it is, to provide dedicated and personalized support to every FF user, hence this public forum powered by volunteers. While that info is grossly outdated, it is still very much applicable to the version of FF that was affected by it as at that time. What can be done, however, is perhaps expand that banner with additional info regarding the archived thread and its possibly outdated answer, although this shouldn't be necessary at all.
All Replies (6)
I'm using FF 92.0 and that shortcut works just fine to hide/unhide the bookmark bar.
Stans said
I'm using FF 92.0 and that shortcut works just fine to hide/unhide the bookmark bar.
Thanks for the answer, but the question is related to how to deal with misleading information on Mozilla Support misleading people when people search for answers online.
Agree, but I don't know what can we do about it.
Google promotes the oldest answers. That one is 10 years old, where a lot of things are changing rapidly. Every 2 yo answer is most likely outdated. Even more, on this questions forum every answer not addressed directly to you can be misleading.
We only try to keep the knowledge base articles up to date.
Chosen Solution
There isn't much that can be done about it. It's a good thing that the question and others like it are clearly marked as archived and visitors advised to ask new questions (and get up-to-date responses). Furthermore, it's really not worth the effort trying to vet old answers against current versions and marking them accordingly, even if such a facility was availed. There's hardly enough man-power as it is, to provide dedicated and personalized support to every FF user, hence this public forum powered by volunteers. While that info is grossly outdated, it is still very much applicable to the version of FF that was affected by it as at that time. What can be done, however, is perhaps expand that banner with additional info regarding the archived thread and its possibly outdated answer, although this shouldn't be necessary at all.
I filed a bug report; https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1730482 Obsolete Information
Note that you can set a custom time range on the Google search result page via the Tools menu. The current forum search uses a two years time range and thus can include results that are no longer relevant.
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