482474 - Default to contributor on sign up, and remove "Select your group" from user register page

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(support.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Attachment: Current wording

In the registration form, we ask for the person's "group" which seems confusing considering you could theoretically be part of both.

Suggest clarifying the text to make it clearer:


Select your primary purpose of your account:

 ( ) Contributor - I'm looking to help other Firefox users
 (*) User - I'm looking for help with Firefox

Comment 1

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Maybe "Select the primary purpose of your account:" is better?

Comment 2

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

I don't think either wording is going to make that much of a difference. The options themselves should explain what you're selecting.

Are people looking to be contributors also getting confused? I would think it's likely that only users looking for help would get confused by the question as contributors have probably read something somewhere before trying to sign up.

I think changing it to a question "Would you like to help?" with "yes, I'm interested in helping other users" and "No thanks, I'd just like to get help with my own problem" would go further to clearing it up as it is.

Something I like about the SFx registration form is that there are more detailed explanations in smaller text under the fields. We can present the option in simpler terms, then underneath explain what a contributor does

"If you'd like to help make improvements to the knowledge base, or answer users' questions in the forum or Live Chat select Contributors"

Comment 3

[Neil Lee [:neilio]]

The reason I flagged this is because I don't really understand why we need to make a distinction here - does it matter from an internal permissions perspective? Or is this more for statistics? Does selecting one of these change the options a new member sees on the site?

Comment 4

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

It changes some of the website UI. Ref bug 409315.

Comment 5

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> The reason I flagged this is because I don't really understand why we need to
> make a distinction here - does it matter from an internal permissions
> perspective? Or is this more for statistics? Does selecting one of these change
> the options a new member sees on the site?

This is the other thing I was thinking, besides changing the wording. We might want to explore letting contributors identify themselves somewhere other than the registration page. there's a bug to automatically make people contributors if they edit a kb article (is this done?) or answer a forum thread, so maybe we should pursue that direction.

Comment 6

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Did some thinking and research about this:

The historical reason why we wanted end users to get an account in the first place was so they could find their way back to the thread they posted in the forum.

The support forum today essentially works like a support ticket system: you post your problem and provide an email address for follow up, then a contributor answers your question or asks for more info. Ultimately the problem is solved, when the user marks it as such. All of this can be done without even registering on SUMO, because we support anonymous posting and e-mail notifications. This wasn't the case when these account gruops were created. This means that today, the KB, forum, and live chat all offer support perfectly well without the need for an account.

This leads to the question: do we really need these two user groups anymore? If there's no strong reason for end users in need of support to sign up for an account on the site, why bother with this categorization? 

Untargeting from 1.1 for now.

Comment 7

[Paul Craciunoiu [:paulc]]

David, I think this is very interesting and worth considering. Here's my input:

Pro-user:
1. Usability-wise, having a user saves the visitor from having to enter their email information over and over (unless we remember it through a cookie and autocomplete it).
2. This also helps us track people and give them prizes and such, maybe later on, for their contributions.

Con-user:
You don't have to register to post the basic stuff (forum reply, ask a question?)

I think we should list if there are more pros and cons, and see which way to go. Seeing my list so far, I'm for keeping them + having it easy for anonymous/one-time visitors to post as well.

Comment 8

[Paul Craciunoiu [:paulc]]

Oh! Is there a bug somewhere about having domain-wide mozilla users? I was thinking it'd be interesting to consider having a central place for all the user-focused sites (SUMO, SFx). This would further support pro-user and reduce the number of accounts they have to create. Most users probably start at SUMO and move towards SFx, then QMO maybe...

Comment 9

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

Yes, there are lots of bugs wrt ldap support etc. which tikiwiki supports

I don't think in the end we can really argue that there isn't a good case to have users make accounts. By taking their email so that we can reply to forum threads etc we're giving them what amounts to an account. While the user isn't formally registering like we're used to, we're still tracking them and able to associate them with specific threads.

I don't think being a contributor gives you any different permissions from being in the user group, but it does present you with different UI (different homepage etc). I don't think I could ever fully agree with not having a switch *somewhere* for which homepage people would like to see, but I think it's safe to assume the majority of people are signing up to help out.

So while on the one hand I think it's safe to make that assumption and take the question out of the registration form, I think most people who want to help out can understand the question.

So basically, if we're worried about users being confused by the question, but we're assuming users aren't going to be signing up for accounts, then users aren't going to see the question to get confused by it.

Comment 10

[David Tenser [:djst]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> David, I think this is very interesting and worth considering. Here's my input:
> 
> Pro-user:
> 1. Usability-wise, having a user saves the visitor from having to enter their
> email information over and over (unless we remember it through a cookie and
> autocomplete it).

Which seems like a simple thing to do if remembering their e-mail is the only benefit. The cost for the user to remember the e-mail by getting an account is to instead having to remember the login name and password, and taking the time to log in before navigating to the forum.

> 2. This also helps us track people and give them prizes and such, maybe later
> on, for their contributions.

What kind of contributions would an end user make -- saying thanks? :) We should award our community, not end users looking for support.

(In reply to comment #9)
> I don't think in the end we can really argue that there isn't a good case to
> have users make accounts. By taking their email so that we can reply to forum
> threads etc we're giving them what amounts to an account. While the user isn't
> formally registering like we're used to, we're still tracking them and able to
> associate them with specific threads.

Yes, and this works fine without taking end users through the process of formally signing up for an account and exposing them and our real contributors to confusing UI. 

Just as has been the case with Live Chat and the KB from the very outset, the forum support is now streamlined to no longer requiring logging in.

> I don't think being a contributor gives you any different permissions from
> being in the user group, but it does present you with different UI (different
> homepage etc). I don't think I could ever fully agree with not having a switch
> *somewhere* for which homepage people would like to see, but I think it's safe
> to assume the majority of people are signing up to help out.

It's also very clear and unsurprising that the vast majority of the support threads are posted without an account.

If there is no real benefit for end users to register and sign in, the distinction/switch between the two user groups is completely redundant. 

The very narrow use case that it was originally designed for (signing up so you could find your way back to the thread) simply isn't there anymore since bug 444335 was fixed.

> So while on the one hand I think it's safe to make that assumption and take the
> question out of the registration form, I think most people who want to help out
> can understand the question.

Sure, not every contributor will be confused by it, but it adds complexity without adding value. It's just there for historical reasons; not exactly a strong reason to keep it if it's potentially confusing.

> So basically, if we're worried about users being confused by the question, but
> we're assuming users aren't going to be signing up for accounts, then users
> aren't going to see the question to get confused by it.

This particular use case in the UX audit was a contributor use case. I'm not just worried that users get confused by the question, but that contributors do. Furthermore, contributors may be choosing the wrong option, since "Users" is the default. 

Back to the main point: there seems to be no real value for an end user to register on the site. 

I'd suggest that the fix for this bug is to remove the "Select your group" UI from the registration page and make sure the registration defaults to the Contributor user group. This would also have the nice side-effect of simplifying our contributor documentation by not having to mention these two artificial account groups.

Comment 11

[Paul Craciunoiu [:paulc]]

Learning more about the subject now, yes. I agree with David.

Given the sign up won't allow users anymore, we should think about removing the "Users" group everywhere, and what we can do with existing accounts that are users. This might be a separate bug since it will take longer. Of course we can just let them be users and keep that feature in, it would be simpler for us... I'm not sure if it would have any side effects.

Comment 12

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Yeah, it's probably safe to keep the back-end untouched for now. Definitely a separate (future) bug. Thanks!

Comment 13

[Paul Craciunoiu [:paulc]]

Removed the "Select your group". Now default is contributors. No side effects expected. The back-end should be updated to reflect that we have no more regular users, at some point.

Also, in "My account" users are still able to change. We can choose to alert them by email somehow that they should set their role and won't be able to change it, or we can leave it as is... I don't know. Anyway, the change I just made was simple, so it can be reverted if desired.

r23395 / r23396

Comment 14

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

All that is probably correct, but I think we should give it some time to see if anyone complains about the contributor UI. If not then I think we don't need to worry as much about transitioning users. If many do (unlikely) then we'd want to leave registration as is, but figure out how to let people switch back to normal user.

Comment 15

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

sorry for the double post.

Alternately we can force all accounts into contributors now to try and flush out feedback sooner.

so we'd

- switch all accounts to be in the contributor category
- leave the switch in the account preferences
- watch for how many people complain
- check and see how many users switch their accounts back

Comment 16

[Paul Craciunoiu [:paulc]]

Just to make it clear, once registered, contributors can switch back to being users (wrt comment 14).

I like Lucy's suggestion -- force users to become contributors. Since I don't know enough, though, we should examine what differences they will expect/how they might be affected.

The steps in comment 15 sound reasonable to me. David, Laura?

Comment 17

[Neil Lee [:neilio]]

"Forcing" contributor status makes the most sense to me. Wikipedia is a good model - there's one type of user and that person has the ability to consume and contribute equally.

Comment 18

[David Tenser [:djst]]

(In reply to comment #15)
> - switch all accounts to be in the contributor category
> - leave the switch in the account preferences
> - watch for how many people complain
> - check and see how many users switch their accounts back

Agreed on leaving the switch in the prefs for now. I'm guessing there will be 0
complaints, which will lead to a removal of the pref in the future, along with
a force switch of all accounts to the contrib category.

No need to switch everyone over right now though; my guess is that the people that actually contribute to SUMO already are in the right group. Once there's no way of changing your group, we obviously need to make sure everyone is in the right one. Let's deal with that later.

Comment 19

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

I tried to verify this but new-user registration didn't email me for either of the two test accounts I created.

Can others try?

Comment 20

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

(In reply to comment #18)
> (In reply to comment #15)
> > - switch all accounts to be in the contributor category
> > - leave the switch in the account preferences
> > - watch for how many people complain
> > - check and see how many users switch their accounts back
> 
> Agreed on leaving the switch in the prefs for now. I'm guessing there will be 0
> complaints, which will lead to a removal of the pref in the future, along with
> a force switch of all accounts to the contrib category.
> 
> No need to switch everyone over right now though; my guess is that the people
> that actually contribute to SUMO already are in the right group. Once there's
> no way of changing your group, we obviously need to make sure everyone is in
> the right one. Let's deal with that later.

So I'm expecting not everyone will complain, some people will just find the switch. If we switch everyone over it's a piece of cake to see if anyone switched back. If we don't switch anyone over we'd need to do some sort of script to see how many users flipped the switch since x date.  Also switching everyone over gives us a much larger (and therefore accurate) sample group.

There are definitely other important things to do for now, but I really recommend forcing everyone over *before* deciding to remove the switch entirely.

Comment 21

[David Tenser [:djst]]

(In reply to comment #20)
> There are definitely other important things to do for now, but I really
> recommend forcing everyone over *before* deciding to remove the switch
> entirely.

Switching everyone over would happen during the push of the removal of the UI; it's a simple sql script that would just be run on prod.

Comment 22

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

What you just said makes sense if we're not waiting to see if people are actually logging in intentionally as users. Further up you said "I'm guessing there will be 0 complaints, which will lead to a removal of the pref in the future" which implies that we're only removing the switch if people aren't using it.

My point in the way I suggested things was to guarantee we get useful feedback before making the decision. From your reply I can't tell if you didn't get what I was trying to suggest, or if you're saying that you don't expect the feedback to make a difference and so we should just go ahead with the change.

Comment 23

[krupa raj[:krupa]]

In the registration page,I do not see the options users/contributors.Marking this as Verified.

Comment 24

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

A user in the contributor forum pointed out a good problem caused by this switch.

We'd been identifying contributor responses in the forum as special so that end users knew which responses are more reliable. Now that all accounts are contributors we need a new mechanism for this. Probably based on number of posts, or, preferably, number of problems solved.

Filed Bug 485965 with the above info.