611933 - "CC list" is not a typical term for most issue trackers/webapps other than webmail, should use more common web app jargon

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1533587

(Bugzilla :: User Interface, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Andreas Haller]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; de; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12
Build Identifier: Bugzilla 3.4.6

As a user of an opensource software, i sometimes come across bugs or problems, that already have been reported. If i find the bugreport, i sometimes want to get a notification (via email), if there are any updates for this issue.

For example, in Launchpad.net, i click on "subscribe". In lighthouseapp.com, i click on "watch ticket". It works like on Twitter.com where i click on "follow".

For bugzilla this is not that easy, at least for me. I think, i have to check the "Add me to CC list"-checkbox  and then click "commit" at the top of the page. But i am not really shure. I did that, but all it told me, was something like "[e-mail] got notified, excluding ME and another person".

I think one problem is the term CC List. I get that "CC" means something like the "CC" in my email app, but i think the use in bugzilla is misleading.
I think the term "CC List" is already learned by people who are already familiar with bugzilla and it's vocabulary, but to new users, who want to get involved, it does not make a lot of sense.

So given if my assumptions about that "Add me to CC list" actually subscribes me to report update aren't false, i got three problems:
1. The term "CC List"
2. The feedback, after having subscribed to a report
3. (Maybe minor) I have to click the "commit" button, but i just want to get notified about… maybe other people commiting something…


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Visit any report
2. Look for a way to subscribe to updates for this report

Actual Results:  
Clicking "Add me to CC list" then "commit" feels strange for new bugzilla users.

Comment 1

[Guy Pyrzak]

Point 3 should no longer be an issue since commit has been changed to "save changes". Using ajax saving is a technical can of worms and another issue all together so i'm not going to include that as one of the changes. 

I agree that subscribe might be a better term than CC list. Subscribe is much more typical on web apps, and CC list is much more a mail client sort of thing. 

To be fair here, Jira uses "watch", twitter uses follow, Facebook uses "like", and well there are probably a lot more. But CC list seems like the least clear of all of them since we're not Carbon Copying people and Bugzilla isn't a mail app. I personally like follow since i do feel like I want to follow the progress of the bug and bugs are not news sources, and people subscribe to news sources or RSS feeds.

Which makes me think every webapp picked their own word. The good news is, it is relatively easy to change cc list to something else for local instances. BMO might want to consider this along with any other large open source projects using bugzilla, no need to wait for some release for this change.

And having better feedback for being subscribed sounds like a good idea as well, we might want to think of better ways of showing users, especially new ones, that the changes that they have made were accepted. Specifically, right now we just say "your changes were accepted" but more might be helpful.