Fix default home page

Kyle, do you have a suggestion what to change this to?

I am not clear on why the URL is invalid.

If it needs to change, please ass Gary Ekker.

I knew that Hao was bought by Baidu and that they want us to switch from hao222 to hao123 due to better brand recognition. I didn't realize that they were invalidating the old tn codes . '04089046_1_hao_pg', which should be 'http://www.hao123.com/index.htm?tn=04089046_1_hao_pg'.

Thanks Gary. http://www.hao123.com/index.htm?tn=04089046_1_hao_pg does not look any different from http://www.hao123.com, so I suppose that URL is still not correct?

I'm not sure how it is supposed to look different, it is the same page with a different referral code. Why do you believe it should look different?

It just looked like it was pre-selecting a particular topic which was related to Ubuntu, or our affiliate search code, or something else. So this is the definitive URL now?

Let me verify, since I was only given the tn code. It might take a day or two as there is/was a national holiday in China the first part of this week.

Martin, I still haven't heard back. Let's assume it is as I'm 90% certain and I don't want to miss getting this into precise.

OK, so let's go with that one for now.

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-defaults-zh-cn - 0.6

---------------
ubuntu-defaults-zh-cn (0.6) precise; urgency=low

  * webbrowser/startpage.txt: Update start page as per Gary. (LP: #952868)
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Sun, 08 Apr 2012 20:08:25 +0200

regarding with the feedback I got from the community, its might not that proper to set the page as hao123/222.
http://weibo.com/1656750814/yraTprklZ
weibo is the most widely used twitter likely SNS in China, so any news travels very quick there.

http://weibo.com/1401880315/yr6gIp8MT
more discussion here

Why do you change the default homepage of Chinese image? Is it a business deal with Baidu?

IMHO this is in question and there is a heated discussion/attention from Chinese users on Weibo, so please clarify the situation and possibly listen to the input of actual users.

The default homepage was changed for 11.10 from http://start.ubuntu.com to http://hao123.com based on feedback that it is a better experience for users in China. This was discussed at UDS and agreed by Ubuntu community members in China. Can you help me understand why you think it is not proper, or what the concern is around this in the community? It isn't clear to me from the links above.

@Gary, Thanks for your info! But apparently I haven't agreed on this
very item, and I don't know there is someone from Chinese community
has made such an agreement at 11.10 UDS.

I've added Kyle and David to recipient, and I'd like to ask them to
comment. Also some other Chinese participate of 11.10 UDS are added to
CC list, in case they know something that we have missed here.

On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 4:21 AM, Gary Ekker <email address hidden> wrote:
> The default homepage was changed for 11.10 from http://start.ubuntu.com
> to http://hao123.com based on feedback that it is a better experience
> for users in China. This was discussed at UDS and agreed by Ubuntu
> community members in China. Can you help me understand why you think it
> is not proper, or what the concern is around this in the community? It
> isn't clear to me from the links above.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/952868
>
> Title:
> Fix default home page
>
> Status in “ubuntu-defaults-zh-cn” package in Ubuntu:
> Fix Released
> Status in “ubuntu-defaults-zh-cn” source package in Precise:
> Fix Released
>
> Bug description:
> The Chinese image currently uses this homepage URL:
> http://www.hao222.com/index.htm?tn=ubuntuu_hao_pg [ubuntuu -> sic] as
> per https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Qin/QinOneiricUdsSpec
>
> This is not valid any more, it looks no different to
> http://www.hao222.com/index.htm?tn=ubuntu_hao_pg or
> http://www.hao222.com/.
>
> So I suppose this might need some updating?
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-defaults-zh-cn/+bug/952868/+subscriptions

@Aron, I know you weren't at that particular UDS. There were representatives from the community there ZhengPeng and others.

I still don't understand why this is problematic for Chinese users and the Chinese Ubuntu community, can you please explain?

@Gary,

Thanks for your reply, I guess we should find out who exactly agreed on this very issue, so I can talk to him later.

Using navigation sites is still common in China, but it's not wise for a big system vendor to do it, especially when you don't maintain your own navigation site. Looking at these vendors, Microsoft, Redhat, Novell, neither of them did this before, because I believe it's a job for independent software vendors, like Firefox China, or other browser providers and third-party system development groups. Users will think that they are being hijacked when they saw that the default homepage has changed from the international version because such issue happens very commonly on Windows.

It's a good choice to develop a simple configuration wizard or tool to help users configure the system at first run, I believe ubuntu-tweak, which is written and maintained by Ding Zhou, could be a good candidate to consider.

Follow-up on this is that the customization of the default home page for the China image will be reverted in an SRU for Oneiric and Precise. It should be the same across all region specific images.