Re: RFE: Improvements to wording of bugzilla account-creation pages?

[Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com>]

Recent messages to overseers are still quoting the old, misleading 
wording.  Can we get David's improved wording (or, better, reenable 
account creation - I expect we're losing lots of useful bug reports 
through the restriction) in place sooner rather than later (for both GCC 
and sourceware Bugzilla)?

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

> I do agree with this.
> 
> Who can make these changes?
> 
> Gerald
> 
> On Mon, 2 Feb 2015, David Malcolm wrote:
> > I believe we need some wording improvements relating to the disablement 
> > of bugzilla account creation.
> > 
> > If I go to:
> >   https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/createaccount.cgi
> > I see a page reading:
> > 
> > 
> > BEGIN QUOTE:
> > To create a GCC Bugzilla account, all you need to do is to enter a
> > legitimate email address. You will receive an email at this address to
> > confirm the creation of your account. You will not be able to log in
> > until you receive the email. If it doesn't arrive within a reasonable
> > amount of time, you may contact the maintainer of this GCC Bugzilla
> > installation at overseers@gcc.gnu.org.
> > 
> > [snip]
> > END QUOTE
> > 
> > 
> > Sadly, due to spamming, most of the above is either untrue or
> > misleading. Can we change the wording on that page to something like:
> > 
> > BEGIN SUGGESTION
> > Sadly, due to heavy spamming, there is no automated way to create a GCC
> > Bugzilla account.
> > 
> > To create a GCC Bugzilla account, you can email overseers@gcc.gnu.org.
> > Alternatively, if you use IRC, you can ask on #gcc on the OFTC network
> > (irc.oftc.net).
> > 
> > [snip]
> > 
> > END SUGGESTION
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > If users *do* fill in the form, they get to a page which reads:
> > 
> > BEGIN QUOTE:
> > <RED>User account creation has been restricted. Contact your
> > administrator or the maintainer (overseers@gcc.gnu.org) for information
> > about creating an account.</RED> Please press Back and try again.
> > END QUOTE
> > 
> > (this was attempted using my personal gmail.com account, rather than my
> > regular redhat.com account)
> > 
> > This wording could also be improved.
> > 
> > "User account creation" doesn't make it clear that it's a site-wide
> > thing, the "user" in question could well be interpreted as relating to
> > the individual user (and I hear anecdotal reports on IRC that people are
> > trying this and thinking "oh, is it because I'm on gmail" or whatnot).
> > 
> > Also the "Please press Back and try again." is plain wrong; if someone
> > retries, it isn't going to make it work, as I understand things.
> > 
> > I'm guessing that the red text is from a BZ parameter, in which case it
> > may be easier to modify.
> > 
> > Suggested rewording of red text:
> > "Sadly, due to spamming, we've had to disable automated account
> > creation.
> > 
> > To create a GCC Bugzilla account, you can email overseers@gcc.gnu.org.
> > Alternatively, if you use IRC, you can ask on #gcc on the OFTC network
> > (irc.oftc.net)."
> > 
> > (we could have s/creation/creation for that domain/ maybe, if that's the
> > case?).
> > 
> > (Alternatively, a captcha, or somesuch, but clearly that's a lot of
> > extra work.
> > 
> > Or make the original field on the createaccount.cgi hidden to humans,
> > and add a human-visible field with a different key, so the spammers are
> > POSTing to the wrong field, so that their queries are easily
> > distinguishable from benign activity - we reject POSTs where the
> > invisible field is nonblank - though, again, that's nontrivial coding
> > (and I don't know Perl)).
> > 
> > Hope this is constructive, but I think we're making it unreasonably
> > difficult to file bug reports, and thus likely missing out on the more
> > casual contributions to GCC etc.
> > 
> > Dave