Lack of interest A little improvement to the 'awaiting confirmation text'

[Grover]

It has been more then a year since I posted any suggestion, but here's a new (albeit little) one:

I am in the process of setting up my first ever XF installation and come across some little things that could/may be slightly improved:

- A user signs up. After completing the form, this message appears:

Your account is currently awaiting confirmation. Confirmation was sent to x@hotmail.com.
Resend Confirmation Email

Obviously, experienced/regular forum-users know what it means (since it's quite clear/logic) and what to do, but for total forum newbies (which a lot of users on my new XF platform are) my suggestion would be to make this text a little more clear, like this:

Your account is currently awaiting confirmation. Please follow the instructions in the confirmation mail that was send to x@hotmail.com.
Resend Confirmation Email

That makes it a little more clear that people actually have to check this mail, since the current text just says a confirmation was send. Making some of them think that it was already confirmed, as already happened on my new (international) platform.

(Any suggestions to use the phrase manager will be disregarded )

Thank you.

 

[Chris D]

You can't say "any suggestions to use the phrase manager will be disregarded" because that's what it's for. It's to enable forum admins to adapt the language used on their site to better suit the demographic of their user base be that based on their region, or indeed their technical capability.

Aside from the existing message being pretty unambiguous even to a new person who's never used a forum before (or the internet? it's not like the process changes much across the web), it's such a simple change to make and frankly it'll be quicker to just change it if it's causing you a big issue rather than waiting for this to be implemented.

 

[Slavik]

You can't say "any suggestions to use the phrase manager will be disregarded" because that's what it's for.

Exactly this.

 

[Adam Howard]

I turned off email confirmation and would love a phrase that said something along the lines of;

"Congratulations! You're now a members, no confirmation is required."

Because oddly enough people join and go straight to their inbox looking for that email.

 

[Grover]

You can't say "any suggestions to use the phrase manager will be disregarded" because that's what it's for. It's to enable forum admins to adapt the language used on their site to better suit the demographic of their user base be that based on their region, or indeed their technical capability.

To be honest, it's (more or less) reactions like this that made me leave this community. Even if I use a clear smiley, one is told promptly that one can not say something...

Ofcourse I know what the phrase manager is for and to 'prevent' (understandable) answers suggesting using it, I put a smiley remark inside my suggestion. The confirmation message might be pretty unambiguous to you and I get that. It's also quite clear to me (since I know how it works), but I have already experienced newbie members who overlooked this message, since it was not clear to them that they needed to follow subsequent instructions inside the email that was send. As I already explained. One of the things I always do is focus on how a total newbie experiences the UI of a product (and help improving it subsequently which I did for vBulletin, now XF and other products) : not everyone is an experienced user/developer like yourself. I think it's important to realize that whenever UI's are concerned.

So this is a little suggestion to improve that for XF as a whole, instead of my local installation by using the phrase manager. And I am not sure why you assume I choose to wait for this to be implemented, as I can make the changes myself inside the phrase manager. Since I believe it could make the default text in XF a little more clear, I share it here as a suggestion, so the product benefits.

This is how a product like Invision Power Services informs the user:

Join Our Community

Thank you UIexpert. Your registration has been submitted.

The community administrator has chosen to require validation for all email addresses. Within the next 10 minutes (usually instantly) you'll receive an email with instructions on the next step. Don't worry, it won't take long before you can post!

The email has been sent to George@UIexpert.nl.

Although just tiny different, this is better, more clear feedback to the enduser. In the line of my suggestion actually. I think there's no harm if XF changes this by default: people who already got the (almost clear) message, still get it and people who overlooked it before, will/might benefit. As do the boards who might be confronted by it. Everyone wins. That I believe is a more helpful approach then pointing immediately to the phrase manager or telling co-members in this community that one can not say things. Thank you.

 

[Jeremy]

The suggestion hasn't been closed; the suggestion is open. When someone makes a suggestion, if there is a method to accomplish what is being suggested, it is said.

When you say "Any suggestions to use the phrase manager will be disregarded", that implies you refuse to make the change until this suggestion is implemented. Hence the reactions you received.

Nobody has said you are unable to speak your opinions.

 

[Grover]

Hello Jeremy,

Thank you for your helpful reply, appreciated.

I guess communicating (both on the sender and receiver side) through digital means/typed words is not always easy (since the receiver can not always get the intention/meaning behind typed words). For example: no-one thinks the suggestion is closed? I already explained why a clear smiley is there and no, it does not imply that I refuse to make any changes (first) myself if it helps my community. That is an incorrect assumption. I guess it's all about how we perceive things (differently), on several levels.

 

[Grover]

Please allow me to post a correction to what I said above. This is interesting, what I saw (on my site) earlier was not quite how it was supposed to work:

- A user signs up. After completing the form, this message appears:

Your account is currently awaiting confirmation. Confirmation was sent to x@hotmail.com.
Resend Confirmation Email

Obviously, experienced/regular forum-users know what it means (since it's quite clear/logic) and what to do, but for total forum newbies (which a lot of users on my new XF platform are) my suggestion would be to make this text a little more clear, like this:

Thanks to help from Mike I discovered that some setting was wrong on a new platform that I am testing. Therefore I just discovered a minute ago that the correct page was not displayed when people/testers tried to sign up on our board, they only got the message displayed above:

Your account is currently awaiting confirmation. Confirmation was sent to x@hotmail.com.
Resend Confirmation Email

But, with the correct setting applied now, guess what they see right after signing up? Here it is:

Your account is currently awaiting confirmation. Confirmation was sent to x@hotmail.com.
Resend Confirmation Email

YourSiteNameHere
.
Thanks for registering. In order to complete your registration, you must follow the link in the email that has been sent to you.
•Return to the forum home page
•Edit your account details

There you go! It was there in the first place all along...

I do indeed stand corrected on my own suggestion on this particular page (although I understandably missed this text, since it was not there on my site): sorry for the confusion.

There is no need now to improve anything, since it was an error on my site only.

Having cleared all that , there's just a single situation left where some added words might help a little. Because, if in the odd case people miss these clear instructions above or somehow decide to go through the process later, they will see only this when they login -without confirming yet- to the site later on:

Your account is currently awaiting confirmation. Confirmation was sent to x@hotmail.com.
Resend Confirmation Email

There's room in the notice to add some helpful words there.

 

[erich37]

I turned off email confirmation and would love a phrase that said something along the lines of;

"Congratulations! You're now a members, no confirmation is required."

Because oddly enough people join and go straight to their inbox looking for that email.

you are right.

why is the "Inbox"-button in the NavBar even showing to "unconfirmed users" ?

 

[erich37]

Thanks to help from Mike I discovered that some setting was wrong on a new platform that I am testing. Therefore I just discovered a minute ago that the correct page was not displayed when people/testers tried to sign up on our board, they only got the message displayed above:

Hi Grover,

may I ask what "wrong setting" you are talking about ?


This sentence is not visible at my website as well:

Thanks for registering. In order to complete your registration, you must follow the link in the email that has been sent to you.

I do have "Manual Approval" enabled.

Should this sentence be there for "Manual Approval" as well ?