Well “submit topic” would be clearer than “create topic”.
Regarding drafts: Gmail does a pretty good job about distinguishing what action we are about to do.
Personally, I think it’s the “topic” (noun) that is the issue, not the “post topic” (verb). We have a new community that is not yet used to Discourse’s (yes, very opinionated) vocabulary and I have heard more than once that they are a bit afraid to start a new “topic” because it seems like it might be creating a new category – or changing the structure of the site in some way that they don’t intend. While I understand the logic in differentiating between a topic and a reply, for us, it’s not as important as removing every possible obstacle to participation.
I’m glad to know that it’s possible to change the text and think I will probably change it to “thread”–which is something that they recognize from email and feel they have personal agency over.
I see the problem. We should look carefully at the language, and see it as a new user sees it. If we feel we need to explain our terminology that’s a failure in design.
I think a Publish! or similar would be appropriate. It’s an action button. It’s a pity we’re reluctant to say Post because that is an appropriate verb - it just happens to clash with an inappropriate noun. I notice Gmail has Send.
3 Likes
I’d be ok with:
button: “+ Compose Topic”
and then in the Composer:
button: “Publish!” (which is similar for blog systems like Ghost)
1 Like
Edit: this is now an attempted clarification to a confusion which has been cleared up…
I think there’s a problem in that @jidanni started talking about two very different buttons. But the thrust - as I understand it - is about the button which completes a draft and causes it to be posted, in the case where the draft is a new topic rather than a reply.
I believe we’re talking about the lower-left blue “+ Create Topic” not the upper right grey “+ New Topic”. The one you have to press when you finish composing - if it’s not a reply.
1 Like
Lucky that you guys could still make quick changes. I’m now reviewing the post and on my very first message way up on the top I see I wrote (voice typed) the word ladder instead of latter.
Well, I think I’ll be stepping back out of the conversation and hope you guys take it in the right direction.
Dan, just one more point.
If you are active in a specific community and have a good relationship with the admins, you can propose they update this text as some of it is at the admin’s discretion:
which on my site I can quickly change to e.g. “Publish!”:
So Composer looks like this:
It’s that easy!
Of course sometimes these strings are re-used for subtly different purposes so there may be a limitation to this approach.
5 Likes
Thanks, but all that ideas I posted on this meta…, are efforts to make the defaults worldwide better, not just for one site. But thanks anyway.