843068 - When signing up, some users enter their email address in the "Username" field

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

What feature should be changed? Please provide the URL of the feature if possible.
==================================================================================
The "Username" field of the account sign-up page. See comment 1 for a screenshot.

What problems would this solve?
===============================
A significant number of users mistakenly enter their email address here, indicating a usability flaw. This can be seen in bug 843062 and elsewhere.

Who would use this?
===================
Anyone who signs up for an account on MDN.

What would users see?
=====================
Not exactly sure. Maybe some placeholder text in the input box (like "John Smith") would help.

What would users do? What would happen as a result?
===================================================
To call this done, users should be correctly entering usernames in the box more often than they are now. We could even do some A/B testing on this to confirm the change helps.

Is there anything else we should know?
======================================

Comment 1

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

Attachment: Username input box

Comment 2

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

Looking through a list of MDN users, it seems way more people do this than I realized. About 10% of users provide their email address as their username.

Comment 3

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

I suggest we add a placeholder string, but also use HTML5 form validation to reject the "@" character in the username.

Comment 4

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

Those could help. I would also be interested in discovering the underlying problem here. Most sites do not provide placeholders or reject the @ character, but still do not have this problem.

Comment 5

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

(In reply to John Karahalis [:openjck] from comment #4)
> Those could help. I would also be interested in discovering the underlying
> problem here. Most sites do not provide placeholders or reject the @
> character, but still do not have this problem.

Well, given that email addresses are frequently used as user identifiers these days, I bet they actually do have this problem. Also, perhaps other sites don't accept long enough strings to allow typical email addresses?

We probably should also add some text under "Username" here, like:

"Please enter the name you'd like to display to other users to identify your contributions."

Comment 6

[Jesus Perez]

Hello. I can take care of this bug if you agree.

Comment 7

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

Sure, go for it Jesus!

Comment 8

[Jesus Perez]

Pull request: https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/pull/1015

I've done some changes for this:

- I've add the placeholder "john_smith" to "Username" input (I haven't used "John Smith", because this input don't accept spaces).

- I've add the text: "Please enter the name you'd like to display to other users to identify your contributions." under "Username" input.

- I've changed the rule to reject the "@" character in the input and I've deleted the "@" in the error message (now it's "Letters, digits and ./-/_ only.").


Tell me if this is ok for you, or I have to change anything in the pull request :)

Comment 9

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

(In reply to Jesus Perez from comment #8)
> Pull request: https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/pull/1015
> 
> I've done some changes for this:
> 
> - I've add the placeholder "john_smith" to "Username" input (I haven't used
> "John Smith", because this input don't accept spaces).

I'm inclined to make this just "username" instead; I hesitate to use a gender or culture specific term in this field as the placeholder (although if it's localizable that would alleviate most of that concern). Otherwise, good idea. I'm a big fan of having placeholder text.

> - I've add the text: "Please enter the name you'd like to display to other
> users to identify your contributions." under "Username" input.

Good deal.

> - I've changed the rule to reject the "@" character in the input and I've
> deleted the "@" in the error message (now it's "Letters, digits and ./-/_
> only.").

I like this too.

> Tell me if this is ok for you, or I have to change anything in the pull
> request :)

By and large this sounds good (aside from my first comment), although I'm not the one that will be reviewing the code.

Comment 10

[Jesus Perez]

new pull request https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/pull/1016 (I've messed-up a thing with my other pull request :S)

Now placeholder (and the others strings) are localizables.

Comment 11

[[github robot]]

Commits pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/kuma

https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/commit/915d240dcdc1b291cf437a6e3402ba08b3eccf23
fix bug 843068

https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/commit/8d82f8bcd68782502154fa9a9a70ea65a74762a2
fix bug 843068

https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/commit/518146512dd8eeb7cd778181f5b705ff322321a7
Merge pull request #1016 from tx2z/bug843068

fix bug 843068 - When signing up, some users enter their email address in the "Username" field