Talk:Criticisms of Mozilla Firefox

This Article Violates MY Policy "Wiki Hounds"

This article has not changed (except with a political crit that will be removed some time soon) since it has been created (okay, over exag). The fact is that any criticism that is added will be removed unless it is seemingly so minor that no one cares. The truth is that not only are Criticisms generated by original research, which is then spat-out via the media, but also don't even need a factual ground for the crit. Criticisms are just what people don't like about the software, It doesn't matter what you FIREFOX USERS (Wiki hounds) believe. It matters what others believe.

If someone put up that Open Source is non-trust worthy with a verified site it would be removed because the site did not reference FireFox. If someone referenced a statistical site to show the rate of FireFox usage, and then referenced an article which references aspects of programming it would be removed because... it doesn't reference firefox. The fact is that most of the articles used in wiki crits are media generated, and as 'firefox' is a internet phenomeneon any media association that dares to insult it would recieve a hefty amount of feed back. So even if a crit can be associated with fire fox, it wont be allowed because either the wikipedian hounds here are idiots, unable to contemplate the association between programs, or simply too attached to firefox to allow a crit through.

Finally, crits are mainly Orignal Research, what you, as wikipedians, are asking for is impossible. I already stated that most crits will be reguritated via the media, I also stated that media attacks on firefox are unlikely. Most attacks will be from 'questionable sources' and therefore inadmissable.

Finally 2, This article barely changes, yet receives a hefty amount of edits daily. I ask this, if you directed you attention to more productive means, if you tried improving other articles in wikipedia, what would wiki be like? -Oct 14

Apparently the burden of proof is much higher when the criticism is directed at anything related to open source. On a Microsoft-related page you can put up "OMG bILL GATES IS Teh DEVIL!!1!" and someone will put a {{fact}} tag on it - here everything is removed with alacrity. Links to blogs that criticize Microsoft are fine - links to blogs that detail problems with Firefox violate VFD policies. And so on. The push to merge this page into the main Firefox article is another example of the sort of whitewashing that we see all the time on WP. Eventually this will be a minor 1-paragraph section of the FF article that reads "FireFox allegedly uses large amounts of RAM; however this remains contested" or something like that. Firefox like apparently all other open source projects has no bugs, no defects and no shortcomings - suggesting otherwise is not allowed. -- «klaus»

I fail to see why you are bitching here about IE page, on either page links to blogs are not a valid reference. You should fight that there not here, please remove any links to blogs used on this page as references. Thank you. -- AdrianTM 23:00, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I said nothing about "IE page", but I profusely apologize if you think I'm "bitching". I'll watch my tone next time. -- «klaus»

For open source pages there are generally more people are working on creating them, because of the shared princpiles in open source and Wikipedia. As more people contribute to these pages, the POV stuff is squished out more easily. You could always have a go at making pages like the IE page better by being bold and hacking out all the POV stuff. It may take a while though... --h2g2bob 05:17, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

forcing it on people...

would it be POV to say that a lot of firefox users and websites almost try to force firefox on people?--68.92.235.18 20:51, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

First of all it would be original research (if you don't quote somebody notable, that in case you are not a renown specialist in the field)

Second, it you be POV because "almost try to force" doesn't really sounds like a fact, and it would also mean to ignore that the rest of the sites force people to use IE, and IE doesn't follow standards, not Firefox.

Third, it's not an encyclopedic fact, this is not supposed to be a laundry list of bitching and moaning about Firefox. (althought the title seems to suggest that to many people)

Forth, it's not a Firefox issue, it's an issue with those sites and their choices. -- AdrianTM 21:31, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Fire Fox uses an agressive advertising campaign... I believe at one point Crits of IE said "Microsoft Tried to force IE upon us by integrating it into the system" and if it is acceptable there it sure as hell should be acceptable HERE. All we need is enough people to add in the same edit in our own words and eventually they will run out of the FF Fanatics who love Fire Fox, and then they cant revert it for... well... 12 hours by then. mwahahaha. Oct. 9

Beware that disruptive editing such as you are proposing will get you blocked. Also note that at no time would such editing prevail as there are ways around this sort of problem, such as semi-protection and blocking. Also note that as AdrianTM said, that claim would be original research and would not be acceptable. If you can find a reliable, verifiable, source then feel free add it in, but if not then don't.-Localzuk^(talk) 22:16, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

There are thousands of sources which list Fire Foxes advertisment campaigns, the problem is that it will be inevidably removed because "it is crossing the line". Attacks on IE can range from anything, attacks on FireFox have to be precise and accurate. The problem lies that an agressive advertisment campaign really isn't a problem in relationship to a browser, and that warents an easy revert.

As for getting DIFFERENT people to add in the same edit... it is allowed under wiki-rules (as a technicallity) but because it exists as a technicallity it can probally be overrun. if our section is written well enough and supported enough, then the mere fact that one wikipedian doesn't agree that it is worthy wont matter. Personally I wish there were more 'votes' rather then single people tearing out sections that disturb them, it would make wikipedia alot better. And there is the fact that alot of wikipedians would rather tear out the nonsupported sections (regardless of truth) then help make it better. Oct. 9

Jesus, calm down, it was just a question. It's just that I've seen websites that won't even let people view them unless they're using firefox, and i'eve never seen that with other browsers.--68.92.235.18 02:46, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh... how about this, this, this, this, or this? *Dan T.* 03:18, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Note: I use the term "Fire Fox Noob" to describe a set of FireFox users who exibit noob type characteristics. This includeds bashing IE with false criticisms (See UrbanDict: IE), bashing features of IE (such as Active X or IE7's tabbed browsing), and more notably, pasting multiple "IE7.com" links in forums (without understanding that publicly edited webpages will not make a google bomb). Understand this is not an insult upon the Fire Fox Community, but a sect of it which does deserve the title.

Ohh, it is a fire fox noob, come here I have something to tell you... closer... closer... bonk. Those sites appear to use features that FireFox REFUSES to implement (Such as Active X) and therefore you should blame Mozillia for their non-functionallity. One appears to use an up-to-date version of Flash (which by Mozillias refusial to implement Active X has to be added in as a plug in and therefore may not be detected by all webpages). But you already knew that didn't you? Now if those pages have a different trick up there sleeve, correct me, but as you are mearly IE bashing because your browser isn't with the times, I tag you with Fire Fox Noob.

Now there ARE web pages that use an Acid2 type layout for the sheer purpose of distorting it in IE. These web pages often simplistic when viewed in Fire Fox, it is obvious that these personal pages were created by IE Haters. Where as your "This page requires IE6 or IE7" pages have legitimate reasons for doing so. -Oct 10

Incompatible websites

There have been attempts to identify and triage websites that are incompatible (a big complaint of FIrefox) through the new "reporter tool" (http://reporter.mozilla.org). It's enabled in nightly builds for users to use (under the help menu). [bias: I developed it] -rja

Weasel Words

I know that we're Wikipedia, and most of us use Firefox, but I find this article to very POV in its use of weasel words and allegations that those who oppose FireFox are (pretty much) just stupid. By stating that a non-WC3-compliant website is built by someone who is "careless", or that people blame the browser instead of the website developer. I personally feel that FireFox could use a lot of improvement, and by attributing what "some people say" as encyclopedic, our NPOV policy is completely destroyed. The idea of FireFox is brilliant, and beautiful in its best, it is certainly not without fault. By depriving this article of being a true commentary, we are merely using it to push a Point-of-View, and are thus weakening its aims. -Mysekurity ^[m!] 23:50, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. One of two things should happen: either counter-balancing viewpoints should be added (i.e. "Many people say that Firefox is considered harmful, but many others think that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread") or all pretense of neutrality should be dropped altogether. Struct 06:18, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, this article is just oozing the subtle undertext of "These are the common criticisms of Firefox, made by commoners who are too simple-minded to understand its goals." I expect I'd read the same thing on a "Common criticisms of Linux" article. It DOES contain useful information, but a lot of it is woefully out of date or irrelevant now. I think it needs to become more of a "Firefox is not for everyone, and here's why" presentation. I'm not the guy to do it though, because I'm extremely biased. Aguerriero (ţ) (ć) (ë) 18:40, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Article needs some stuff from the other side of the story. -- N3X15 ^{( Scream · Contribs)} 20:22, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

This whole article is obviously biased, if you compare to the IE criticism you will notice the difference. Firefox users sit here and watch this page and attempt to refute everything, some of them with good points while many are just replying to be stubborn. I actually use firefox myself.~Anonymous

Updates

Some serious updates are needed to this article, as many of the criticisms are now obsolete or historical due to updates to Firefox code. For example, in 1.5, alt tags display as tooltips, which is cited as a general criticism and feature request that was ignored. Aguerriero (ţ) (ć) (ë) 18:45, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Since when does 1.5 display alt attributes as tooltips? I'm using 2.0 and they are still only used as intended. Are you referring to the addition of the alt attribute to the link properties dialog (was that 1.5?) or the popupalt extension or what?

substantial re-working of arguments

Just in case anyone is seriously interested in removing the bias and the serious problems with the article and would like to contribute to an article that's a serious critique of Firefox (and not just M$ slander, which I suspect was the original purpose of the article), I did some substantial re-workings today of some of the areas. I recommend completely removing the chunk of text I commented out (I don't think I was logged in at the time... but my IP should be there. It's under the heading I've now called "problems from "too strict" compliance with web-standards")

The point of this article should be to critically evaluate firefox, NOT "from a certain other browser's point of view" otherwise, this article is simply a browser-war forum, which is utterly stupid. I recommend completely removing the criticisms "from other browsers" until their arguments can be placed under subject-specific critiques.

I'll go ahead and comment out those sections, although not completely remove them so that the material is still there to work with.

Also, here are some tips to users who want to help remove the bias:

• Each argument should illuminate some weakness that firefox is contributing to or a weakness inherent in firefox. For an example of what NOT to do: saying that IE or other browsers have more functionality without extensions is NOT a criticism in and of itself because developers are addressing these functionality issues in a different way: namely extensions and user-contribution. Unless you can demonstrate that NOT having x,y,z functionality in the base system rather than in extensions is somehow a problem, it's not a criticism; it's the author demonstrating personal preference.

• Try using more active verbs and having accurate subjects that ACTUALLY describe who or what is doing what. Saying that "there's a delay in load time" is innaccurate because that's not a meaningful comparision and it doesn't show what the problem is or why that's a criticism. "users who use low-end hardware may experience more of a delay using x than they would using y because of blah blah blah" is better because it shows why there's a problem or why there's a criticisim and also shows under WHAT CONDITIONS this problem would be noticeable to someone.

ALSO, I understand that I'm pretty much preaching to the choir here because most people interested in strengthening this article and actually reading the discussion page are probably very conscious of these strategies for removing bias. In other words, you're probably a good writer if you notice and feel an obligation to remove the crappy bias and actually want to strengthen this article regardless of which side of the browser wars you are on and me saying this out loud is probably redundant because you've already thought of it yourself. --nashife

ActiveX criticism.

What, exactly, is the point of the current section on ActiveX? If there's a complaint about ActiveX, it's that Firefox does not support it by default for those few users who really do require ActiveX (and then that flaw is greatly mitigated by the ability to download a plug-in). All of the stuff about ActiveX security holes is pretty well irrelevant to a criticism of Firefox, since Firefox does not include ActiveX support. I'm confused. SnowFire 02:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Over-zealous standards compliance

• The first paragraph of that section needs work. The first sentence is a criticism that Firefox doesn't support standards enough, which is the opposite of what this section is about. The second sentence doesn't make sense to me (see my comment above).
• Firefox being "overly strict" or "over-zealous" is definitely POV. Few would argue that Firefox is strict in its standards compliance, but many would dispute that it is too strict. Saying "correct" or "properly" is probably also POV, it should be changed to "as per the specification" or something. "Bad code" could be replaced by "non-standard code".
• What does a "flexible range of standards" mean, and how would supporting more standards make Firefox any less strict in its interpretation?
• "some other browsers" Why be wishy-washy when you can just say that it's IE? The complaint that Firefox is too strict is almost always from IE users.--Nonpareility 15:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Response to Criticisms

Wouldn't it be better to have the response in each criticism's section?--Nonpareility 16:16, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I've changed it around. Of the three response bullet points, extensions are already discussed in "Missing functionality", I've added the relicensing response to "Political criticisms", and I've removed the "Authenticity of downloads" criticism and response because it appears that the criticism no longer applies.--Nonpareility 21:12, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Missing functionality

This section doesn't actually mention that it is a criticism any more... Maybe it needs a slight re-word again to mention that people have criticised it.-Localzuk ^(talk) 11:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I've switched it back to the previous version.--Nonpareility 03:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

NPOV

Criticisms by definition are opinions. Wikipedia is not the place for gripes and such concerns. Whatever is legitimate should be taken from these articles and merged with their respective browser pages. GreyWyvern 15:34, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

This page had deletion proposed already in June of this calendar year. See the links at the top of the page. --69.54.29.23 16:29, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I understand that, and read the history. I shall step through the criticisms listed in the article, but see my entry at Talk:Criticisms of Opera#Item by Item Legitimacy WRT Merging for my general perspective on articles such as these.

• Missing Functionality

This is not a criticism, but an apologist's preamble

This has been reverted to a previous version.--Nonpareility 20:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

• Political Criticism

In the first paragraph here, "Free software activists" make a claim which does not apply to Firefox, but rather to re-branded versions of it. Ultimately is then refuted by stating that Firefox itself has been relicenced to prevent this from happening.

See "FSF's criticism" below for discussion.--Nonpareility 20:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

The item about Trackback is not a general criticism but rather a licencing dispute.

How do you figure? (probably best to start a new section to discuss it)--Nonpareility 20:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

• Technical Criticism

Most of what appears in this section already appears in the Criticisms section of the main Firefox article: Mozilla Firefox#Criticisms, however let me point out a few glaring violations of NPOV:

Strict web standards compliance - Criticising Firefox because it does not render pages like IE is not neutral. Consider if I had made the same statement, but criticised it for not rendering like Opera or Safari.

This article is not criticizing Firefox. This article is listing criticisms that have been made about Firefox. There are two main objections raised about different browsers' rendering: "not according to standards" and "not like to IE, which is what everyone uses". Complaining that a browser renders "not like Opera" is rarely heard. --Nonpareility 20:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

ActiveX support - ActiveX support is a complaint of uneducated IE users only. The fact that this is a technology implemented and supported natively by only one browser is not a reason to criticise other browsers for not implementing it. In addition to this, the Criticism of Internet Explorer article spends much of its length arguing why ActiveX is a bad thing. Why then is it a bad thing that other browsers have not implemented it? Who decides if it is good or bad?

Right, the fact that it's only implemented by one browser is not enough, but the fact that it's implemented by a browser with 80%-90% market share is. We're not here to decide whether ActiveX is a good thing or not to have in a browser (that would be POV), we're here to offer the relevant arguments ("it's insecure and proprietary" vs. "I need it")--Nonpareility 20:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Keyboard Layout - Again, this is criticism from a select group, which does not count the fact that a much larger proportion of users prefer a standard keyboard layout for their applications. Opera recently changed some of their keys to follow Firefox as well. If myself a a small group of friends prefer Firefox to be a certain way, is that also a valid criticism?

It's gone.--Nonpareility 20:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I am reverting the article to re-include the NPOV template. GreyWyvern 17:37, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Your concerning yourself with the logic of the criticisms, I think we all agree to avoid POV by sticking to what are accepted criticisms that have been published elsewhere. Wikipedia is not the source of original research.

The issue of ActiveX and keyboard layout are indeed POV, largely because they're uncited. The keyboard issue will be deprecated soon (and verified) with existence of things like conkeror.[1] 69.54.29.23 20:01, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

The "logic of the criticisms"... isn't that the point? These are not even criticisms, yet somehow an article has been devoted to them, one which is a magnet for opinion and fanboy-ism. If you take a peek at the rest of the articles in the Criticisms Category, you'll notice that most, if not all, have a history of POV disputes, poor editing quality, deletion requests and other WP policy violations. Does this not ring alarm bells?

My argument is not just that Firefox's "criticism" article should be merged, but that all of the Criticism of X Browser articles should be merged, and you'll see that, yesh, I have marked the others in the same way. I am not a Firefox fanboy; I only see these articles as definitely something that is not of the spirit of WP.

Consider that in a year, or two years from now, most of the "criticisms" voiced here will be obsolete and replaced with new gripes, new troubles, new opinions as to what browsers should be capable of. Who decides? Do you? If some Wired article expresses a critical opinion of Firefox, is it not still opinion, despite being a verifiable opinion?

Ask yourself: Since the Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer articles already have sections on their respective Criticisms, what else are these separate articles besides a bulletin-board for complaint? Complaint that attempts to conform to NPOV, but mere complaint nonetheless.

The Criticisms sections of each respective article is all that is necessary here, for Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer. GreyWyvern 20:48, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

No, most of them are criticisms with logic. You can't use NPOV to judge whether the logic of a criticism belongs or not.

I think this article has had POV and flamebait problems in the past. It's reaching a much more useful target. It used to have sections from each major Web browser.

I actually wish all notable, historical criticisms persisted, rather then being deleted because they were presently obsolete in the current release of Firefox (See #Updates).

I'm confused how this merge will avoid POV, considering this article will just be a section on the main article? 69.54.29.23 21:46, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I think that all the Cricitism pages (IE, Opera, Firefox) should be deleted, they are not Encyclopedic. Things that can be merged should be merged in the general article (not under a "Criticism" header). That's my 2 cents on the subject. -- AdrianTM 22:07, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Since the idea to move this into the main Firefox article seems to have been kiboshed, and the criticisms have either been dealt with or not explained, is there anything left that's not NPOV?--Nonpareility 14:26, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, IMO the article does badly violate WP's NPOV policy. First it claims that "not being compatible with IE" is a criticism of Firefox. If IE has bugs in it then this should be a criticism of IE and not Firefox. Suppose these bugs are fixed in a later release of IE, would you then criticise that version of IE as being "buggy" too ? Secondly and more importantly, how the heck can "following the standards" be classed a criticism of Firefox !? Web browsers by definition should follow the w3c recommendations - doing so is correct behaviour, and failing to do so is buggy behaviour. This section reads more like a criticism of IE, not of Firefox ! The article seems to assume that what IE does is correct, and everything else is "incorrect".

In addition, the article does not mention which version of Firefox is being discussed. While some of the bugs mentioned, e.g. "memory leakage" may be present in the application at the time of writing, it is quite possible that they will be addressed in a future release.

--Salsa man 02:39, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

For the comparison with IE, it doesn't really matter what you or I think. We're here to list the notable criticisms of Firefox, not provide original research on what we think is or is not wrong with Firefox. For what version is being discussed, we're discussing the latest release. Perhaps the article should mention that. It's quite possible that a future version will improve any problem that we currently list, but we can't even state that it might without some credible source (like a review of a beta release that mentions lower memory consumption).--Nonpareility 04:06, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, at the very least, the article should point out why certain criticisms may not be valid. --Salsa man 10:34, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Can you give an example of an invalid criticism and how you would go about pointing out that it is invalid? -- Schapel 15:11, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I have given some examples, above, as have other users. I don't feel the need to repeat them. --Salsa man 18:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

If you're considering adding to the article something like what you've written above, it looks like original research, POV, and defensive. I agree that it's a bit silly to criticize Firefox for not behaving exactly like IE, especially when it's IE's fault, but we do have reliable sources that give that as a criticism. It's perfectly valid because some sites really don't work in Firefox for that reason. If you can find a reliable source that explains all this, go ahead and source it and add it to the article. -- Schapel 22:05, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Merge/Redirect

Deltabeignet redirected the article to Mozilla Firefox without substantial discussion. The article should not be redirected or merged, for the following reasons: 1) The Firefox article is already long. Subsections in long articles should be split off for readability and for dialup or slow-connection users (like myself when traveling). Hence why, for instance, the article on Indonesia splits off history and geography articles. Subpages were eliminated from the article namespace because "if an article gets too long, we can split off the subsections into separate articles." There is a brief discussion of criticisms in the main article, just as Indonesia has a brief discussion of history - it's a summary paragraph for people who aren't looking for a complete treatment. 2) This article has been getting consistently better. Criticism articles may risk becoming substantially bad, but there is a good discussion of perceptions of Firefox supporters and detractors in this article. Such problems that there are in this article are not terminal, and to halt that improvement in its tracks because some Firefox users don't like that people are pointing out perceived flaws in the software or disagree that they're actually flaws is simply wrong.

I really like Firefox, but I can't agree with this attempt to silence fairly decently sourced and notable criticism. Captainktainer * Talk 23:04, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

• My apologies. I assumed there had been more discussion, and was bold. I often see articles with week or month-old merge tags, and considered this redirect little more than janitorial work. Deltabeignet 23:08, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
  • That's fine, and I appreciate that you were willing to help the article, but it's important that you check how long a tag has been on an article before you act on it. Consensus building is still proceeding. It's good to be bold, but it's also important to be right. Captainktainer * Talk 05:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
  • So is someone who is for the merger going to list out the reasons they think that way, or can I remove the merge tag?--Nonpareility 21:06, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

An article about criticisms is, by defitition, non-NPOV. Properly cited criticisms included in a more general article wouldn't be. As it currently stands, the article is rational and of modest size. It could easily be merged with Mozilla Firefox and should be, as a way of dealing with the POV problem and controlling the fanboys on all sides. G. C. Hood 23:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

If an article about criticisms is non-NPOV, I don't see how a section with the same content in a more general article could be NPOV. If you're saying the content should change, there's no reason the content couldn't change when the topic has its own article. --Nonpareility 04:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

As I said, the content is rational; therefore, it requires no major change. When included in the main article on Mozilla Firefox, the criticisms would be part of a larger, balanced whole discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of the browser: that article would meet the requirements of the NPOV. G. C. Hood 22:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I think we could merge the article with the main one now, and gain the benefits User:G. C. Hood mentions. People have put a lot of work in cleaning up this page over the last few months. If we reduced the use of sectioning for each and evey paragraph, and dropped the obvious summary, it would be shorter than the existing "Criticism" section at Mozilla Firefox. --71.161.214.238 03:12, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Ignoring the intro and headers, on my screen we have 32 lines of text on this article compared to 16 in the main article, and that's not taking into account the fact that the main article has a section on MSI Support and we don't.--Nonpareility 04:12, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The main article has a section for criticisms. It only seems logical to put them all in the same place.JLAF 23:25, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• Merge. Criticisms should be included in the main article as there is already a section for them there and also criticisms should be part of the summary of Firefox, not on a detail page. Mm_pie 10:55, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Keyboard Layout

I've removed this section because it has no citation, the criticism reportedly comes from a small group of people, and I've never heard anyone complain about Firefox not being emacs-y enough.--Nonpareility 03:33, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

RMS and Talkback

The article cited when referring to Firefox binaries not being free because of Talkback doesn't even mention Talkback. I think it's much more likely that RMS is referring to the fact that (at least at the time of writing) Firefox was licensed under the MPL, which allows non-free binaries.--Nonpareility 06:39, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I've added another citation that strengthens the statement I made about RMS's objection to Talkback. This one specifically mentions Talkback. -- Schapel 11:52, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

FSF's criticism

Is FSF's criticism applicable anymore? It still seems to be a valid criticism of MPL, but now that Firefox is trilicensed, it doesn't seem a valid criticism of Firefox.--Nonpareility 18:42, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Even Mozilla acknowledges the ability to release proprietary versions:

This feature of the MPL has allowed developers to distribute proprietary products incorporating Mozilla code. (Netscape 7 is one example of such a product.) Under the MPL/GPL/LGPL triple license scheme developers may continue to create and distribute Mozilla-based proprietary products, by taking advantage of the option to use the Mozilla code under the MPL terms and complying with the various requirements of the MPL for those portions of the proprietary products based on Mozilla code.[2]

Even when Firefox binaries become entirely free, it's still applicable. The article will need to be updated. Encyclopedias are historical. --71.161.222.234 02:42, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I just don't understand what the criticism is. Is this that someone could take the Firefox code, modify it, and release it under the MPL (which is non-free is certain ways), so FSF believes Mozilla shouldn't allow MPL licenses? If so, it's not clear from the current text that that's what the problem is.--Nonpareility 03:59, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the FSF's criticism was that before Mozilla was tri-licensed, some parts of the source code may have been licensed under only the MPL. Because the MPL was not compatible with the GPL, that meant that some Mozilla code was not free to be used with other free code. Mozilla addressed this criticism by tri-licensing all the code, so now there are no license incompatibility issues with mixing Mozilla code and other code. Because the issue with Mozilla, and therefore Firefox, code was been addressed, I think we could remove it from this article. -- Schapel 04:14, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

This issue is partly clarified by the article:

To address these concerns, Mozilla has relicensed Firefox under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) as well as the Mozilla Public License (MPL).

I'm not sure why it needs to be removed. --72.92.129.190 17:47, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

No, that doesn't clarify it at all. If anything, it goes back to my original point: if Mozilla has trilicensed Firefox, does the criticism still apply?--Nonpareility 17:58, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I think it's notable to mention, given that the Mozilla foundation responded with tri-licensing. --71.161.216.173 03:41, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me the issue has been addressed, I don't think we need to keep that as a current criticism -- AdrianTM 04:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

It was a criticism, wasn't it? Shouldn't encyclopedias be historical? What would differentiate this article from a Web page? --71.161.216.151 20:42, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Encyclopedias should be historical, but I think going from a current critism to a past criticism crosses the "notable" line.--Nonpareility 21:19, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

That's not a very good test for notability. You'll have to do better. Even Emacs cites its performance problems of decades ago, dealt irrelevant by increased hardware performance:

Emacs was often noticeably slower than rival text editors. Several joke acronyms allude to this: "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping" (from the days when eight megabytes was a lot of memory), "Emacs Makes A Computer Slow", "Eventually Mallocs All Computer Storage", and "Eventually Makes All Computers Sick".

--71.161.213.84 03:03, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

A program being slow sounds like something that users would notice as obvious, and Emacs probably had a reputation for being slow. It sounds like in the Emacs article, they're making the point that although Emacs has a reputation for being slow, it isn't any more. That makes the old criticism notable. I don't think that Firefox code has a reputation for not being compatible with other open source licenses, so I don't think that we need to clarify that the code is now compatible with the GPL. -- Schapel 11:30, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

It's hard to believe it didn't have a reputation if Mozilla responded by tri-licensing, and it's mentioned by Mozilla in their Web documents. --71.161.216.68 15:59, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how the fact that Mozilla responded (Mozilla has responded to literally hundreds of thousands of problems in their software) and it's written somewhere on their site (a lot is written on their site) means Mozilla had a reputation for this. If they did have a past criticism notable enough to mention, should it be mentioned with the current criticisms or should it mentioned as part of the history of the project.--Nonpareility 23:49, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Are you equating the notability of software bugs with software license changes? --71.161.214.238 02:43, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm stating the reasons you say the license change is notable also apply to many non-notable bugs.--Nonpareility 03:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The current version is false. It states that Firefox's license is MPL - it isn't any more, it's the trilicense, and the complaint about not being able to use Firefox and GPL together no longer applies (the weak copyleft criticism still applies).--Nonpareility 15:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought we agreed that it is no longer a criticism of Firefox, and that people aren't generally mistaken that that is still a problem with Firefox. Is there still someone criticizing Firefox, or is there any evidence that people still think that the criticism still applies? If not, this is an old criticism that has already been addressed, therefore does not apply to the current version and should not be mentioned. -- Schapel 13:19, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I think we should give as much information as possible about the criticism, it's history and with how the Mozilla Foundation has responded to some of the licensing criticisms, that way readers get a full view.

If there are any untruths or false ideas given by how it currently reads, let them be known. --71.161.223.99 16:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

However, do we really want to include every criticism ever made, including ones that no one is criticizing Firefox for? My understanding was that this article describes current criticisms of Firefox. -- Schapel 20:56, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Technical criticisms -> Performance?

The technical criticisms section seems to now be mostly about performance gripes. I propose we rename Technical criticisms to Performance, create a new section called Functionality, and put ActiveX, Web Standards, and Missing Functionality into that.--Nonpareility 18:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

extensions

This seems to put the extension system of Firefox (which i find pretty good) in a bad light no?

"Even with high quality extensions, the user has to find and install them rather than them being available in the default installation."

I'm going to add a mention about the firefox site hosting extensions and the ability for users to comment on it. Mr toasty 01:19, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

strictly disputed

I have two problems. The word strictly implies an absolute (I'm guessing), but here it appears to mean a relative:

Firefox strictly complies with Internet standards, [3] and many pages are not displayed as the designer may have intended.[4] While Firefox, like other browsers, has a quirks mode, this mode isn't completely compatible.[5]

Without looking at reference 3 (and from non-verifiable first-hand testing!) I know that Firefox is not 100% strict (look at Opera or online browser tests), hence my guess. (And having now looked at ref 3, they agree too.) Secondly what does the trailing compatible mean? Compatible with what? Internet standards? Web pages that were compatible with older Firefox/other browsers? I will ignore the impossibility of reading minds. -213.219.141.119 14:16, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I've made changes that should address your concerns.--Nonpareility 15:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Memory use

I put back the reference to PC Magazine's article that compares memory use among browsers. Unless someone can show that PC Magazine is not a reliable source, I think that should stay in. If you want to put in a reference to another equally reliable source that disputes this information, go ahead. In the meantime, I'll look for an independent secondary source, as I can't put in my own original research to corroborate PC Magazine's data. -- Schapel 02:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

It's a reliable source, and the mention of the memory use should stay. However, calling it "objective" is pushing the NPOV line too much. PCMagazine's objectivity is somewhat questionable. Captainktainer * Talk 08:51, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Popularity

I removed this section, as it did not seem to be based on any source at all, much less a reliable one. The only source was W3School's stats for its own site, which were mistakenly claimed to be the stats for overall browser usage share. I suppose there was another source referred to, but that was about Internet Explorer security, not Firefox security. -- Schapel 00:30, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

And It does say what I says it says... If you don't like it then get a life, your little browser is not perfect, The article DOES mention how the increase popularity causes this or that... but your refusial to believe it is getting annoying. I am reverting it and await you to change it back... Thank you for your obvious actions to prevent this article from gaining length.

I was referencing it because I did not know where to find a propper article referencing what I needed... Now I did. Kindly take it down again instead of helping expand it, I gave a very valid oppinion that referenced an articles subsection which showed how usage invites trouble... It was valid, people just don't like to hear it.

Personally I think that this article is a little too small... I am not the one who is the firefox know it all (and I am not those fire fox know-nothings) but I can tell you that there are certainly more crits then what is presented here.

OpenSource is a crit, sure it means free software, but it can also mean easier bug finding or creating... The infromation is true, everyone know it, it just isn't easy to reference, articles with this type of infromation are either bad rebutels, tearing apart the document without any idea of what they are talking about [3] Further attacking it by associating it with microsoft is a great rebutel!

And look at the patch rate of FireFox... it is like 1 patch a week (Okay, mabey less, mabey more) to some that says customer care, to the programmers that says bad programming. If firefox has enough security and runtime problems to need persistant patching then what then?

The amount of features that FireFox uses must have some drain on the system... Saying that memory is the only problem is a major understatment... I am not gonna install firefox on my perfectally working system and dig through it for a few hours getting its gnarly fingers out to throughly hack test it, but there is allways a drawback somewhere. It may hid its usage in another program, or hide it in a virtual memory file (yes, programs can self create these).

Then you can cite how FireFox has so little web compatability. Yes you finally got your little flash plug in... but there are hundreds of other plugins that are normally used. Why not expand on the 'active X not supported' aspect and rather then covering it up with "ooh, it has security holes" (security holes my ass... all it does is let the system interact with the browser.) why not say that millions of webpages use active X controls, ranging from in browser video to mcafees software downloader?

Or how about how FireFox is on an agressive advertisment campaign? Yes "this site is not affiliated with mozilla" but it still is stickered with its logo. This is comparable to the advertising campaign for the 4400 [4].

All in all, FireFox is a BROSWER, and because it is a browser it has many vunerabilitys just waiting to be exploited, as it refuses to use other technologies that are commonly used it losses a few megs of size and a few bytes of ram memory. Firefox is one of the most uncompatable browsers there is, every update of flash (unless that has been fixed) has to be HACKED into the browser, every thing that IE supports has to be forcefully put in.

Of course this is ignored because FF Users will constantly defend the 'good' parts of firefox (and tabbed browsing is over rated... it is helpful, but overrated. At most, the best feature FF had before MS IE7 put it in (that browser addons also allowed) was the search bar. Nothing else really matters. People talk about mouse gestures right about now, I say WHY, I want you to go type a propperly formatted essay in word, I will type it 50 times faster because I use the keyboard shortcuts and have shortcuts ranging from simple centering to subscripts to headers to font changes to increasing font sizes. Furthermore I have optimized the layout of word to better suit me. Why would I care about gesturing with the mouse when I can use the keyboard? And the mouse can get to any spot in the screen in .5 seconds.)

Aside: I wonder if I could get away with saying that FireFox causes mental manipulation and makes millions of people daily say how good firefox is while suffering under its uncompatability? Add on the fact that this group will massivly attack IE users due to FF not working with everything. They will claim it is not secure, that you get virus' every five min... even with security settings on 0 I never got a virus by using IE. I think that this is a valid complaint... how else do you explain their bad behavior? You don't see any netscape guys attacking ie, nor and IE guys attacking firefox in the ways that FF users attack IE.

I await someone to say "You suck lozor" or "IE is soo 1337 (not) pwned". I also await 2 people to make nicely formatted arguments defending the points I presented, one of which will be a perversion of truth more so repeating what the IE haters say, but only better with more linguistic skills. The other will cite sources that support his idea and that can be defected only with more valid sources showing how the idea behind it is wrong... which may or may not exist.

Then, before the weeks end, this argument will be deleted by some 'good samaritan' who really is a FF User who does not like what is being said.

So I say 'good bye before the weeks end', and shall see if my oppinion is true.

The link referenced in the last version containing the "Popularity" section does not state that as software is increasingly used, holes are found and exploited, nor does it say Firefox claims to have no exploits or offer any reasoning behind that. Regardless of what anyone's feelings about Firefox are, Wikipedia requires verifiability, not truth, and the "Popularity" section was not verified.--Nonpareility 01:52, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

The link says "As Firefox gains market share its handling of security issues is drawing more scrutiny." The article said "As any software become increasingly used holes are found and exploited." The article said absolutely nothing about the popularity of a browser making it more likely that holes are found and exploited, just that the handling of security issues is more closely scrutinized. It's as simple as that. The article doesn't say what the text in the article said it did. This has nothing to do with trying to defend Firefox, as you're trying to make it out to be. If you can find a reliable source that is criticizing Firefox, write up a section and cite the source as a reference. But be sure to say what the source says, and not try to twist into what you want it to say. -- Schapel 02:23, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

What constitutes a valid criticism?

Many of the criticisms in the article seem equally relevant to all non-IE browsers (whether because IE is IE or because IE is the dominant browser; there is even leeway in interpreting the standards), tho some are not (notably extensions). I myself don’t use Mozilla Firefox (I use a self-compiled version of Galeon on Debian GNU/Linux, because the Galeon version in Debian is linked against Firefox—tho the reason I don’t use Galeon/Firefox is more Galeon’s fault than Firefox’s).

Without discussing personal preferences, I dislike Firefox because (this gets a bit ranty, so maybe skip this first list):

• Its user-interface is distinctly non-native on Debian and Mac OS X. Although it makes various considerations, these are generally at a macro-level, such as moving the Preferences dialog from Tools/Preferences to Edit/Preferences or Mozilla Firefox/Preferences. But there’s too many features in GTK+ or Cocoa and probably even in the Windows toolkit for XUL to ever be able to emulate them exactly. For instance, I’ve set a little-known option in GTK+ that means I can set shortcut keys in GTK+ apps just by hovering over them, and pressing the key. It also just looks uncomfortably non-native. There are solutions to this that work on cross-platform programs, such as using WxWidgets that actually does use GTK+ instead of just emulating it.
• Relatedly, it doesn’t respect system configuration. I need to set proxies under both Firefox and the System Preferences program (on the Mac) or the Gnome Network Configuration panel (on Debian). And similar. Again, these aren’t the cost of a cross-platform browser, they’re the cost of laziness. A good cross-platform browser will obtain the information differently on different platforms.
• Relatedly, the fact that they have to implement a toolkit just for themselves means that I keep getting weird-arse behavior. Like at the moment when I start it up, it gives me an empty dialog box with two empty buttons that do nothing. Why? I don’t know. Is it something to do with my configuration or extensions? I’ve deleted all my preferences. In any case, that’s completely irrelevant because a good program will cope. Preferences complete gibberish? Say something! How come every other program but Firefox manages to tell me something useful if it can’t do anything else?
• Extensions. They suck. You upgrade Firefox, and half of them break, or (worse) break Firefox. My solution on Windows where I have no choice but to use Firefox is to not use extensions, but then it has missing functionality.

Erm, so summarised, some additional more Firefox-centric criticisms:

• By implementing its own toolkit, the Firefox developers have put a lot of working on their plate to try and emulate a number of toolkits that a user is already familiar with, whose minor features they may be unfamiliar with. This means Firefox behaves differently from other programs.
• This implementation also means that bugs are more likely to creep in.
• Firefox doesn’t integrate properly into the system, not inheriting preferences that are meant to be system-wide.
• Extensions are a significant component of Firefox usability, but they can be of very dubious quality, and are often tied to a particular version of Firefox. (This one is already included in the article somewhat, but it rather non-neutrally seems to be highlighting the fact that extensions could be difficult for the ‘casual user’ to install. A potential problem with Firefox extensions are not in fact a problem, because the problem has not to my knowledge ever been exploited in the wild. So really they’re awsome. But umm .... some plebs (*snicker*snicker*) reckon they may be hard to install, or some crap like that.)

What justifies inclusion of criticisms of Firefox in this article? Coming from my perspective, I’m heavily biased against Firefox (but only because I think it’s a piece of crap) so I’m reluctant to directly add anything for fear of NPOV-ness, but I do and have criticised Firefox on these grounds.

—Felix the Cassowary 12:39, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

How about Wikipedia:No_original_research policy? This kind of articles are magnet for original research. -- AdrianTM 13:13, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I would clarify that if you want to add a criticism, you should cite a reliable source so we can verify that the criticism has been made. You can't just make up your own criticisms or point out what people have said in forums and blogs. If we could, we could claim every browser crashes every few minutes, for example. -- Schapel 13:35, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, but in the case of an article on criticism, you’ll miss criticisms by relying on that level. It’s easy to verify that Firefox has the first and third problems I mention: Run Firefox on Linux or Mac OS X, and see how it behaves differently from browsers that do integrate into the system. But this sort of thing isn’t highlighted in the reviews of the browser; they focus on Windows or platform-irrelevant aspects. As far as I understand the policies, such easily verifiable things are exempt from them. In any case, the article currently isn’t really an article of criticisms of Firefox, as I said; it’s more an article on criticisms of browsers that aren’t IE or browsers based on the Mozilla rendering engine. As others have mentioned, it’s also very defensive (and offensive)... —Felix the Cassowary 14:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the criticism you mention is obvious enough not to need a cite. Obvious means obvious to any reader, like "the sky is blue" kind of thing. Every reader would need to know how Firefox runs on Linux or Mac and then know how it's supposed to run for the criticism to be obvious. I understand that this kind of thing isn't usually mentionned because most reviews focus on Windows, but if you can't find a single review complaining about it (even in Linux/Mac magazines/websites/whatever), doesn't that tell you something about how notable the criticism is? As for this being a criticisms of non-IE browsers or of Gecko article... If the majority of the criticisms against Firefox is related to the fact that it's not IE/is Gecko, so be it, those are the criticisms of Firefox. And finally, articles like this tend to have overly-defensive parts to them. If you point out what specific parts you think are unbalanced, we'll discuss. --Nonpareility 14:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I actually use Firefox on Linux and never thought is not well integrated or that a browser should be integrated, for example I'm very happy with Opera who uses QT but strangely enough it looks less integrated than Firefox. Also, we need to remember that this is an Encyclopedia and some facts mentioned here are hardly encyclopedic. I think that encyclopedic might be only IE criticism because that can show why other browsers gained market share although IE comes preinstalled on 95% of the computers, criticism of other browsers is irrelevant and especially doesn't require separate articles in Wikipedia. -- AdrianTM 15:00, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the article is defensive. Articles are supposed to have a neutral point of view, which really means that all points of view that can be cited are mentioned. If the article lists just criticisms, and nothing to counter those criticisms, it's not neutral. -- Schapel 18:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Attribution

I'm wondering if we should change the wording of the criticisms to make specific note of who's doing the criticizing. WP:NPOV lists that as one of two ways to avoid being non-NPOV, the other being substantiation which we're doing. Right now, the only attributed criticism is the political one. For example, change it to something like this

"Firefox only launches when a user specifically requests it, and does not, generally, share code with the host system (eg. on Microsoft Windows it doesn't use Windows Explorer).[1] Softpedia notes[2] that this causes Firefox users to experience a delay when launching Firefox compared to built-in browsers such Internet Explorer under Windows or Safari under Mac OS X.[23][24]" --Nonpareility 15:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we should change the wording the way you describe. -- Schapel 16:02, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Ditto. This is something that I encourage most strongly over at animal rights related articles (due to their controversial subject matter) and it does seem to help prevent POV pushing additons.-Localzuk^(talk) 16:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

All the criticisms now say who is doing the criticizing, with the exception of the shared libraries. While it looks to me that the shared library information is true, we still need to find an example of someone complaining about it to avoid original research.--Nonpareility 20:05, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Shared libraries

I've removed the shared libraries section. While it appears to be true, it's original research. To be included, we would need to find a review or something complaining about it.--Nonpareility 18:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Removed text

Firefox doesn't actually share its shared libraries. Other applications built on the same base as Firefox (such as Thunderbird) require the rebuilding of these same libraries, producing a larger disk footprint overall. This approach also affects memory consumption, since Thunderbird and Firefox load separate sets of the same shared libraries. This problem will persist until Firefox 3.0, set to be released in May 2007, which will be the first to use XULRunner, which provides a common platform for all XUL/Gecko based applications.

Aesthetic criticisms

Sorry about my first addition to this article. I agree it wasn't well written or backed up. However I wish to change that. I want to write a section about the aesthetic criticisms heard by GNOME and Mac OS X users. This article seems to have some high standards (a good thing) so I was wondering what is required of an addition. I will write a draft in the discussion and see what others think before I post it to the page again. Jdufresne 22:35, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

We're trying to avoid original research, so you need to point out a major publication that's doing the criticizing. Other than that, use your best judgment and it should be fine.--Nonpareility 22:51, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

First of all sorry that I removed your contribution, I just want to assure you it's not bad intention, I just don't want to have minor gripes of users listed in what's supposed to be an encyclopedia, as long as the criticism is done by somebody notable or it's in a major publication I won't have anything against adding it. -- AdrianTM 01:26, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merging into Mozilla Firefox.

please bold your support or object to disambiguate. Widefox 12:31, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• I support this idea. I don't think Wikipedia should have separate criticism pages, they attract low quality contributions: original research and POV. If it's encyclopedic enough the issues should be listed in the original page of the product. I supported a similar thing for Opera and I'd support a similar thing for IE. -- AdrianTM 15:37, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
• Agreed/Support. The criticism should be placed back into the Firefox article but not in a section. Instead the issues should be discussed throughout the article.-Localzuk^(talk) 16:38, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: I agree about not putting this in a separate "Criticism" section, it will suffer from the same problems as this page. -- AdrianTM 16:59, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

• Object The main firefox article is already 50kb long. By Wikipedia:Summary Style and Wikipedia:Article Size, the main Firefox article should ideally be split into more articles, not merged. This criticisms article gives a clearer picture of the problems with firefox better to a reader than it would if buried in a 60kb mass of text. Borisblue 07:11, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: But should the article not then be split in a different manner. I think the criticism should be merged back in and worked throughout the article and then a NPOV fork be made from one of (or more than one of) the largest sections. I don't think this is really an argument against as this article currently fails WP:NPOV due to being a POV fork and having an inherently POV title.

Wikipedia isn't here to provide splits between 'pro' and 'con' information. It is supposed to provide analysis of a subject and its key points and within those analyses it will cover criticism and praise. I'll give an example of why having a seperate criticism section or article is bad:

Someone goes to an article to find out a fact. They read it and then leave. They didn't realise that there was also a criticism of this fact on a different, POV forked, article so they have left without the full set of information available to them.

So, as you can see, we lead to a situation where articles are not able to present all the information fairly and in a neutral way as required by WP:NPOV.-Localzuk^(talk) 10:04, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment:Also note that WP:SIZE is a guideline not a policy whereas WP:NPOV is a policy so pulls rank on this subject really.-Localzuk^(talk) 10:06, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: False dichotomy. There is no reason why we cannot adhere to both the WP:SS guideline and WP:NPOV. It is not impossible to provide a neutral discussion of the criticisms of firefox here. In fact, the article as is already does a decent job of it. Borisblue 20:32, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support: I don't see this article violating NPOV. An article can be "con" a certain subject without being non-neutral, as long as it attributes the criticisms. For example, Japanese American internment is pretty much "against" it (and America in general) without being non-neutral - it's just an inherently "con" subject. That being said, the current split of the Firefox articles isn't optimal. A "Criticisms" article isn't really describing an event or even a certain aspect of Firefox. If you find some way to insert this information throughout the main Firefox article, I say go ahead; the Firefox article can be split in different ways.--Nonpareility 15:28, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Please have a read of our policy on this matter. This article is an NPOV fork as it discusses only the negative items of this subject. The policy also states "NPOV requires views to be represented without bias." which means that such forks are not allowed due to them being inherently biased.-Localzuk^(talk) 15:49, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: I've read the policy. A POV fork is not defined as an article that discusses only the negative items of a subject. It's defined as "an attempt to evade NPOV guidelines by creating a new article about a certain subject that is already treated in an article, often to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts." Unless you're saying this article contains non-NPOV statements (in which case merging them into the main article is inappropriate, because they're still non-NPOV) and b) was deliberately created because someone wasn't able to say something on the main article, stop referring it to as a POV fork. Also see WP:POVFORK, "There is no consensus whether a "Criticism of .... " article is always a POV fork. At least the "Criticism of ... " article should contain rebuttals if available. And the original article should contain a summary of the "Criticism of ... " article." and "Since what qualifies as a "POV fork" is itself based on a POV judgement, do not refer to forks as "POV" — except in extreme cases of repeated vandalism. Instead, assert the application of NPOV policy — regardless of any POV reasons for making the fork, it still must be titled and written in an NPOV-consistent manner. "

As I said earlier, I support merging this article on the basis of making the subject a better read (rather than "People say Firefox is good, but people say Firefox is bad"). Any NPOV issues need to be resolved, merge or not. The article size consideration can be resolved in better ways.--Nonpareility 18:07, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Just so you understand the history of this article better. When I first came across it, it did fulfill the title of 'POV Fork' as it had obviously been created in order to rant about Firefox. I proceeded to completely rewrite the article, removing as much POV junk as I could. So, in my mind, due to its history, this article is a POV fork and always will be unless it is merged back in. -Localzuk^(talk) 18:21, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Here's the original discussion on why this article was created.--Nonpareility 19:11, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: I don't think that an article which title starts with "Criticism" can be considered NPOV, now, if the content is balanced that's a totally different thing (you can have a balanced presentation of facts in a "Why Firefox Sucks" article, but that doesn't change the fact that the title itself and reason of existance of the article is just POV pushing. I fail to see why relevant things can't be integrated into Firefox page, if it's too long and the issue doesn't fit there maybe the issue is not encyclopedic enough to be mentioned, if it is, then the place for it is clearly Firefox page, not some other page on Wikipedia. --

Comment: A "Why Firefox Sucks" article would indeed by non-NPOV because the article would assert that Firefox indeed sucks. This is "Criticisms of Mozilla Firefox", which only asserts that criticisms have been made. This article does not criticize Firefox, it only says "these notable people have criticized Firefox for these reasons" and provides rebuttals, where possible.--Nonpareility 19:11, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: "Firefox Sucks" has been said too, nevertheless I used that example only to illustrate my point that a page with POV title can contain balanced material, but still be POV because of the title. I'm not sure what you consider "notable people"... people who write in PCWorld? Anyway if there's notable criticism the place for it is in Firefox page not on some other pages on Wikipedia. -- AdrianTM

• support merge. And expedite this, before the imminent Firefox 2.0 release, else this page has the risk of attracting new content that all belongs in context inside the article. I've checked IE, Windows, Linux and they are probably more controversial and complex and they all contain their criticism. Widefox 12:18, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Object. I personally hate it when people start merging topics together, eventually a topic gets so long that you can't find what you were originally looking for. Lets take a topic, say WoW. Should we merge all the classes, items, spells into one article (yes, it probally isn't wiki worthy anyway)? No, it is outragous. People come to Crits of FF because they want the Crits, not how FF is 'the perfect browser'. Furthermore, I HIGHLY disagree about allowing articles to get longer then 40kb, let alone 50.

Comment: Please sign your posts. Also, your argument is flawed. The proposal is to merge it back in and then split off other sections which do not have POV titles and aren't inherently biased. As I stated earlier, WP:SIZE is a guideline whereas WP:NPOV is a policy. This article can never, in my eyes, be seen as NPOV so should be merged back in and weaved throughout the article and the resulting larger sections be considered for forking. Anyway, I think this will be my last comment post (unless something silly is said) on this subject as I seem to be dominating the discussion.-Localzuk^(talk) 22:21, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Look at hippopotomonstrosequipeliophobia (sp) that article, although it probally wasn't wiki worthy, was removed and SMASHED into -phob- which, in its own right, is an impropper article. You don't put phobias in an article about a SUFFIX. jesus. Furthermore, you are not a wikipedia user (obviously) you are a wikipedian. The wikipedia user SUFFERS when people start merging because with situations like the -phob- article, the infromation they are attempting to find is not where it should be. Finally, GUIDELINES are stricter rules then policys. The FireFox article is a monstrocity, it appears that if I want to find what I want I have to also read everything else. In this day and age, this is absurd. This is a hyper web, not a text web (okay, pun on hypertext html) articles SHOULD be split into multiple articles regarding sects of the core subject for further clarification. It makes it easier to find what you want, NOT make it look better.

(Comment copied from user's talk page)You are incorrect on the following:

• Signing is supposed to be done on all talk page comments. See WP:SIGN.
• Policies are the stricter rules, not guidelines (and then there are essays after that). See WP:POLICY.
• Articles should be split into seperate pages when they are too large as per WP:SIZE, but also taking into account our policies (read rules) such as WP:NPOV.

Please take some time to read our policies and guidelines and also some of our essays such as Wikipedia:Criticism.-Localzuk^(talk) 16:54, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Object - the current layout follows establised guidelines for avoiding huge entries. There's a section with a "Main article: Criticisms of Mozilla Firefox" tag, which is fine. As mentioned above this fits the MoS for Wikipedia:Article size. And there is a section in the main article giving a brief description of the criticisms. Precidents in this matter include Microsoft/Criticisms of Microsoft, which certainly needs a whole article! --h2g2bob 12:16, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: Couldn't resist. I would also say that the Criticisms of Microsoft article, is quite frankly, awful. It is full of POV comments and unsourced speculation. It should also be merged back in and the larger sections that it produces split out instead. I am going to go and have a go at removing unsourced stuff from that page, as I would say that over 50% of it is either POV or unsourced.-Localzuk^(talk) 13:16, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment:You got my support for removing unsourced material and for merging stuff back to main page. -- AdrianTM 14:48, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: I tried merging the article and it only took the page size up 7kb. It puts the page's total size to a figure that is less than it was a week ago. There's really no reason to worry--or argue--about page size. Its a poor method of filibustering the motion to merge. --71.161.214.60 00:35, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: No, filibustering is presenting an unresolvable type issue to delay stuff. In this case I consider it an actual issue. Having wiki articles in great size is a deep annoyance to the wikipedia user.

Comment: This article has effectively been merged to the parent article. Those who think material should be moved from the "Criticisms" section and incorporated to less POV places in the article, should do so, now. --72.92.129.247 17:36, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Over the past while, I've put some criticisms in the features article and in the other sections of the main article, so I removed a few sections. I'm confident that all the information is available in places other than this article, so I think we should complete the merge by turning this into a redirect.--Nonpareility 05:41, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Agree. If anyone is unsure if we got everything, the page can still be accessed via it's history. I will go ahead and do this. I am also going to have a go at moving the criticisms in the main article to places throughout the page. I hope it all goes ok. All things considered, I think we should end up with a smaller article than we have now, due to reduced repetition and other factors.-Localzuk^(talk) 09:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

The merge after the merge didn't take long. It was quick. --71.161.222.144 18:17, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

There wasn't that much to do. Both the subsections could stand on their own as sections and didn't need to be under a 'criticisms' heading. I'm going to go through the article at some point and see if anything would be better placed elsewhere - for instance the performance section would likely be better splitting off and placing in various other places.

About Security section.

What Spiegelmock said at ToorCon it's actually a joke, as reported in this news: News. Spiegelmock doesn't have any undisclosed Firefox vulnerability.

I've removed it.--Nonpareility 17:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not have 30 undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities, nor did I ever make this claim. I have no undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities. The person who was speaking with me made this claim, and I honestly have no idea if he has them or not.