Closed Bug 1051000 Opened 10 years ago Closed 10 years ago

Standardize account language

Categories

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Sign-in, defect)

Product:
developer.mozilla.org Graveyard
Component:
Sign-in
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
minor

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: shobson, Unassigned)

References

Details

We should decide which term we want to use and make sure that all pages, emails, error messages, and help documentation use the terms consistently.

Verify vs Confirm
- for email addresses
- I like confirm

3rd Party vs Social
- I don't like 'social account' that's not what GitHub and Stack Overflow are.
- Tempted to just call them 'accounts' or identify the service by name ('your GitHub account') and make sure always refer to their account with us as "your MDN account".

Someone (probably me) needs to go through the all-auth module and look at all the places we use account language and make changes. 

Discussion welcome on the proposals above though.
Blocks: 1046775
Let me see, who usually has input on language decisions. Janet? Justin? Holly? Sheppy? Thoughts?
Flags: needinfo?(jswisher)
Flags: needinfo?(hoosteeno)
Flags: needinfo?(hhabstritt.bugzilla)
Flags: needinfo?(eshepherd)
> - I like confirm

Me too.

> - I don't like 'social account' that's not what GitHub and Stack Overflow
> are.

Sign in with your...
GitHub account
Stack Overflow account
Firefox account
Persona account
Flags: needinfo?(hoosteeno)
I agree we should use specific terms when the type of account is know. I'd need more context/examples to know whether we need a generic term, and judge what it should be.
Flags: needinfo?(jswisher)
FWIW, I've cleaned up a few minor things already, e.g. removed the "social" in a few places and changed to "email address" from "e-mail address".
Severity: normal → minor
Janet some examples where we might need a generic term are:

- Please sign in with one of your existing third party accounts. Or, sign up for a MDN account.
- You can sign in to your account using any of the following third party accounts
- Add a 3rd Party Account
- An error occured while attempting to login via your social network account.
- You currently have no social network accounts connected to this account.
- Social Network Login Failure - An error occurred while attempting to login via your social network account.


Some options are:
- connected accounts
    - Please sign in with a connected account. Or, sign up for an MDN account
    - You can sign in to your account using any of the following connected accounts.
    - Connect an account


- external accounts
Oops, that submitted before I was ready.


Some options are:
- connected accounts
    - Please sign in with a connected account. Or, sign up for an MDN account
    - You can sign in to your account using any of the following connected accounts.
    - Connect an account
- external accounts
    - Please sign in with an external account. Or, sign up for an MDN account
    - You can sign in to your account using any of the following external accounts
    - Connect an external account
- Third party account (ie, let's just be consistent and not worry about using a technical term)

Janet, I hope this gives you enough context :)
Flags: needinfo?(jswisher)
Flags: needinfo?(hhabstritt.bugzilla)
Flags: needinfo?(eshepherd)
Thanks Stephanie. 

That helps some, but now I'm confused by "Or, sign up for an MDN account". "MDN account" should refer to the account you have on MDN, regardless of how you authenticate yourself for it. Creating an MDN account and signing in with a third-party account are independent things. When you start signing in with a third-party account, you might or might not already have an MDN account.

Is Persona considered a third-party account? With respect to MDN, it is technically third-party, but most users won't think of it that way, because it's controlled by Mozilla. Is it included in the list of third-party accounts, or is it treated differently?
Flags: needinfo?(jswisher) → needinfo?(shobson)
Sorry to be confusing. The intent of "Please sign in with a connected account. Or, sign up for an MDN account." is that the user needs to sign in to continue and if they have never signed into the MDN before they will need to create a profile/account.

But there is no way to authenticate using an MDN account. Persona is considered a social/external/third-party/connected account.

This is potentially quite confusing for the users too :( I hope we can fix it with a consistent use of language.
Flags: needinfo?(jswisher)
I think part of the confusion is that we have two kinds of things called "accounts". For the third-party accounts, nothing about them matters except the ability to authenticate with them. How about calling them "sign-in services"? 

    - Please sign in to continue, with any of these services. If you don't have an account on MDN, one will be created after you sign in.
    - You can sign in to your MDN account using any of the following services.
    - Connect your MDN account to a sign-in service.

Also, I suggest changing "Persona" to "Mozilla Persona" to help suggest that it's the one to use if you don't have a login elsewhere. (I know that Persona wanted to be branded independently of Mozilla, but frankly that didn't work out.)
Flags: needinfo?(jswisher)
+1 for "services" and "sign-in services" and "Mozilla Persona".
So far we've used the terminology of "MDN profile" and "Persona account". I would strongly suggest to continue using that distinction since what users will technically do is to connect a 3rd party account to a MDN profile. The "sign in with .." CTA actually means "use your 3rd party account to verify your identify to be able to access your MDN profile data".

That MDN profile is also what we link to everywhere on the site instead to an "account". Since we don't allow to log in in with MDN native credentials there is no such a thing as an "MDN account".

In summary here's what I propose instead:

    - Please sign in to continue, with any of these services. If you don't have a profile on MDN, one will be created after you sign in.
    - You can sign in on MDN using any of the following services.
    - Connect an account to your MDN profile.

As soon as we offer Firefox *Accounts* as an additional service next to Persona and Github we'll have this discussion again, so let's stick with "MDN profile" and "3rd party accounts".
Terminology that is technically correct is not always what is most helpful to users, even if those users are developers. 

I can see replacing "MDN account" with "MDN profile", even though "profile" tends to make me think of a profile *page*.

Better to eliminate "account" language entirely (and therefore use "sign-in services"). "Third party accounts" is NOT helpful to users because some of them (Persona and Firefox Accounts) are NOT third party, in users' eyes. It just so happens that one of the sign-in services is called "Firefox Accounts". But if we don't use "account" at all, there will be no confusion about different types of accounts.
(In reply to Janet Swisher from comment #12)
> Terminology that is technically correct is not always what is most helpful
> to users, even if those users are developers. 

Totally agreed, I tend to see both way in that sense.

> I can see replacing "MDN account" with "MDN profile", even though "profile"
> tends to make me think of a profile *page*.
> 
> Better to eliminate "account" language entirely (and therefore use "sign-in
> services"). "Third party accounts" is NOT helpful to users because some of
> them (Persona and Firefox Accounts) are NOT third party, in users' eyes. It
> just so happens that one of the sign-in services is called "Firefox
> Accounts". But if we don't use "account" at all, there will be no confusion
> about different types of accounts.

To clarify, we have a page that lists all the accounts of 3rd party services where people can add/remove them. They can connect multiple of each 3rd party service on that page, e.g. multiple Persona accounts, mutiple Github accounts, etc.

In other words, it's not a page that lists services but individual accounts of those services. With the proposed "sign-in services" term and eliminating "account" I'm not sure what the CTA would be for that page. Can you elaborate?
If we decide to change language for "account" vs. "services" we should also update the URLs.
(In reply to Jannis Leidel [:jezdez] from comment #13)

> To clarify, we have a page that lists all the accounts of 3rd party services
> where people can add/remove them. They can connect multiple of each 3rd
> party service on that page, e.g. multiple Persona accounts, mutiple Github
> accounts, etc.
> 
> In other words, it's not a page that lists services but individual accounts
> of those services. With the proposed "sign-in services" term and eliminating
> "account" I'm not sure what the CTA would be for that page. Can you
> elaborate?

Thanks for that clarification. I didn't have that context. In that case, I don't think we can avoid referring to them as "accounts" (unless someone has some brainstorm for another term). 

As I previously mentioned, "external" and "third party" seem problematic, which leaves us with "connected accounts" or just "accounts". Jannis has convinced me to support his proposed text from comment 11.
Sounds like we're going with:

confirm email
MDN profile
third-party accounts (we need to spell out third and hyphenate)

Examples:
- Please sign in with any of these third-party accounts to continue. If you don't have a profile on MDN, one will be created after you sign in.
- You can sign in on MDN using any of the following third-party accounts.
- Connect a third party account to your MDN profile.

Thanks everyone :)

I'm going to resolve this and create a new bug for implementing the language.
Argh. I read comment 11 wrong. After talking with Janet on IRC what I should have said was:

confirm email
MDN profile
users have accounts with services (i.e.: I might have the accounts shobson1 and shobson2 with the service Persona.)

Examples:
Connect an account to your MDN profile.
Please sign in with any of these services to continue. If you don't have a profile on MDN, one will be created after you sign in.
You can sign in on MDN using any of the following services.
Connect an account to your MDN profile.

Thanks everyone :)

I'm going to needsinfo Janet one last time to make sure I captured our IRC conversation accurately before resolving this bug.
Flags: needinfo?(shobson) → needinfo?(jswisher)
Flags: needinfo?(shobson)
(In reply to Stephanie Hobson [:shobson] from comment #17)
> confirm email
> MDN profile
> users have accounts with services (i.e.: I might have the accounts shobson1
> and shobson2 with the service Persona.)
> 
> Examples:
> Connect an account to your MDN profile.
> Please sign in with any of these services to continue. If you don't have a
> profile on MDN, one will be created after you sign in.
> You can sign in on MDN using any of the following services.
> Connect an account to your MDN profile.

Yes, I agree with those examples and terms.
Flags: needinfo?(jswisher)
Resolving this. Opened Bug #1056163 for implementation.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 10 years ago
Flags: needinfo?(shobson)
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Product: developer.mozilla.org → developer.mozilla.org Graveyard
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