Link between Manage Circle and My Account Settings: Notifications

[azurelunatic]

Title:
Link between Manage Circle and My Account Settings: Notifications

Area:
user interface, making things make sense

Summary:
To address a common confusion in terminology, cross-link between Manage Circle and My Account Settings: Notifications.

Description:
"Subscription" can be reasonably used to describe both the Circle property that lets you see someone on your reading page, and selecting any one of the things about which one can get an email/inbox notification. Despite heroic efforts in distinguishing them, this can still cause confusion, especially with new users who don't have a tour guide. (I saw an instance of this in action today, in fact. I was around for specific disambiguation, but that won't always be the case.)

To address that confusion, what about linking between http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/settings/?cat=notifications and http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/circle/edit with a brief description of what the other page does?

"You can also edit your notification tracking options" and "You can also edit your reading page subscriptions to specific users, communities, and feeds" might work as phrasing.

Poll #4744 Link between Manage Circle and My Account Settings: Notifications

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
35 (68.6%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (5.9%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
12 (23.5%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.0%)

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

I think that whole section could be reworked to be done better. I think having the notifications under manage accounts is very confusing. It took me over a year of using LJ before I remembered that was where I needed to go to change notifications. Perhaps we could have a brain-storming session on how to make the whole process of managing communication for users/communities/email/reading page/whatever else I'm forgetting.

[matgb]

Is my 'with change', there are a lot of taskflow/UI/UX problems with the site, mostly inherited, and I'm coming to the conclusion we need a complete go over of everything.

How to do that, and manage what would obviously be a mssive project, is not something my brain can get itself around currently, so I'm hiding from the idea of starting it, but...

[kyrielle]

This. Also, they are not well disambiguated - the term subscribe is used for both in varying places. If tracking will be tracking, it should be "track" and "track this" and not subscribe. The two need distinct terms. I cleared that up for someone (from the latest things feed) a while back and meant to write it up, but the FAQ for features by account level explicitly calls tracking "subscribe". Which, yes, also refers to the reading page as subscribe, but that only makes the confusion explicit in that FAQ, it doesn't resolve it easily.

A cross-link is probably a good idea even if the terminology is cleaned up since someone might guess at words and get the wrong one - but right now the site actively encourages the confusion, which also needs rooting out.

[matgb]

If tracking will be tracking, it should be "track" and "track this" and not subscribe. The two need distinct terms

Yes, they do. Unofrtunately, Subscribe is the best term for both :-(

I hate the term "track" for notifications, especially for off site users subscribing using an OpnID account or similar, on every other service I use except LJ, you subscribe by email for comments and similar.

Which is unfortunate, as I can't think of a better term (track is unclear even to people used to it in many cases), and we're using subscribe for reading subscriptions. Hmm, would 'follow' work there instead?

[azurelunatic]

I'd like 'follow' better if it weren't in common use on Twitter for essentially reading page subscription. Twitter's bigger than DW, so there's a strong likelihood of people knowing that term from there.

'Watch'? :\

[matgb]

I'd like 'follow' better if it weren't in common use on Twitter for essentially reading page subscription. Twitter's bigger than DW, so there's a strong likelihood of people knowing that term from there.


Which is why I'm semi-suggesting we rebrand reading page subscriptions as 'following', which I think is more accurate and a clearer term anyway.

It'd clear up the 'subscribe' term for it's also more generally accepted usage, which we're partially using it for.

[kyrielle]

I like "follow" for reading page, that would work nicely. And then subscribe would mean just one thing also. It'd mean a little learning for existing users who think if it as subscribe and track - but it follows standard terminology elsewhere, as you note, and that would help.

[ninetydegrees]

I think this is related to http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2718.