I think you are right. Right now “tracking” is used as the name for a notification level within the dropdown and as a term for the feature to choose a notification level. That’s why it’s shown on hover, used as a heading in the guide and as the name of the section in your preferences where you configure the notification level. I think it’s good to use a consistent name for the feature in all those places but I am not sure if “Notification level” next to “Notifications” will cause more or less confusion.
Could renaming the notification level “Tracking” help solve the issue, e.g. to “Following” or “Observing”? Though the latter is semantically quite close to “Watching”.
Maybe. I didn’t suggest anything because I was worried about how well using a different term would work in other languages. Translators would have to find enough different terms in their language, too. And for that, you need the context of how these different terms are connected to each other.
For example, the German translation of ‘watching’ is ‘beobachten’. For ‘tracking’ we use ‘verfolgen’, which is already like “following.” The translation of ‘observing’ would likely result in one of these words, too.
I also expect a lot of guides on how to use a Discourse forum to refer to the current terms used for the tracking levels.
I think renaming the feature as it was suggested in the first post could work better. I like the idea of removing the term ‘tracking’ as awesomerobot suggested, but I am not sure about “notification level” next to “notifications” in the user preferences.
Are we just talking about the mouseover helper text? I think it would make sense to follow the example of the reply button right next to it in the topic timeline, and use it to explain what will happen if you select the button in a few words. E.g. “Set your notification level for this topic”.
Yeah, this is a tough conundrum. I think + Tracking is a good compromise for this spot.
Nathank started out talking about the mouseover text, but I took it a bit further. One of his ideas was having it display the name of the setting selection, like “Normal”, rather than the name of the “Tracking” feature – because, as Moin said,
Right now “tracking” is used as the name for a notification level within the dropdown and as a term for the feature to choose a notification level.
I suggested tweaking the names of the settings systemwide, so a.) they’d generally be more understandable, and b.) we’d no longer have to realize my Tracking setting is… Tracking. In my example sets, that choice would be named Track or Tracked – just different enough to be clear.
(Whether the mouseover used setting names, or your good suggestion "Set your notification level for this topic”, it would improve the situation nathank brought up.)
Yup, this nails it! All of my looking at it was on the Category topic list, with the New Topic button next to it instead, so I wasn’t thinking that way.
Perhaps this deserves to be broken out into a new UX topic?
When translating, it is easier if a feature is renamed in all places at the same time. Then you can use the same term without having to spend a long time researching what you chose some time ago. That is why I would prefer to change ‘tracking’ for the topic/category/tag tracking setting everywhere at the same time, rather than changing the drop-down menu now and then, after some discussion, changing the corresponding setting in the preferences.
Of course, “topic tracking” would not be a renaming. Kris’ suggestion of “notification level” would be.
This kind of stuff triggers me too The naming of the options isn’t ideal — sometimes it refers to the state of a topic’s notification level, and sometimes to the action a user takes to stay informed about the topic.
It might be confusing for newbies, as the functioning of notification levels isn’t easy to grasp at all.
The naming of the options isn’t ideal — sometimes it refers to the state of a topic’s notification level, and sometimes to the action a user takes to stay informed about the topic.