Before we merge it, we need to answer two questions:
What should be the default look of the registration form?
1.a. With first and last name as high priority fields
1.b. With first and last name as low priority fields 2. Is it okay to remove the first and last name fields completely from the form when the parameter is at “low priority”? 2.a. Yes, have a shorter form than what used to be. 2.b. No, keep them at the end of the form.
The solution chosen in the pull request is to have a switch in the admin parameter to allow using the old type of form (with first and last name at the start - “high priority” setting) OR the new type of form (“low priority” setting).
For reference, here is what the form looked like before 16.10 and with the “high priority” setting (default if we pick 1.a.):
My personal opinion is that we should enforce the new form organization by default (1.b.) and that it’s completely okay to remove the first and last names instead of having them in a “useless” place in the form (2.a. ).
Any and all feedback on this topic is welcome!
Looking forward to your answers and help on these two questions!
I think the rationale for having the name fields is that when you collaborate in a wiki inside an organization, you usually want to know with whom you’re working together, and you might not know people by login names. Further, we display first and last name in all places where we reference the user when they’re set.
Now it is a choice of the wiki admin if the wiki admin wants to encourage people to participate under their real name by asking for those two fields directly in the user registration and by deriving the username from them, or if the wiki admin wants to encourage pseudonymous user accounts, in which case I think it makes sense to either display the fields at the end or not at all.
I think for many use cases of XWiki as part of organizations, it makes sense to encourage the use of real names. To me, another aspect why I think it is good to keep them at the start of the form is that for many people, it might not be obvious how they should choose the username so having that field at the start might block them. However, it is most likely obvious what to enter as first and last name and then getting a suggestion for the username is a nice usability improvement that streamlines the registration experience.
For these reasons, I’m +1 to restore the old behavior as default. I don’t mind introducing a configuration option that could have three choices: At the top, at the bottom, not at all - but to me that’s a low-priority feature, I haven’t yet seen any requests for that feature (but maybe I also just missed them).
I’m ok with having a parameter allowing to entirely hide those fields. When they’re not hidden they should still be displayed on top.
I am honestly not sure what should be the default, but we got a reported ticket that we labelled as a regression for this, so I feel like best solution would be to restore the old behaviour as default, as apparently that’s what users expect.
I too don’t see much point in keeping low priority fields in the form, there are many other user informationnal fields which are not listed either. The reason why those were in the form in the first place is that the id was generated from values coming from those fields. But when they are at the end they are not really going to be used for that (even if that still works, nobody if going to set them before the id if it’s first).
As for 1., honestly, I don’t know what’s best. I’m an old XWikier, used to having them first, so I don’t see much problem in keeping them. But I see the appeal of having only required fields in the registration form by default (by the way, the email it’s not required either, technically).
Thanks for the explanation! It makes sense and I failed to see this point earlier. The only point of going back we discussed before was that users were more used to it, but here you explain that those fields hold a special value.
I’m really careful with this because of survivorship bias: we wouldn’t hear as much from users that do not care or like the changes because they wouldn’t create a ticket for it
Tbh I think we’re missing regular user input on this, but earlier topics didn’t manage to spark any feedback from regular users and I doubt we’ll get more anytime soon.
Good point
With this info, I think we should just revert the changes and keep the fields at the start.
The parameter is not important and would only be a weird artifact of this debate, so I don’t think it’d be wise to have it.
Maybe, if users are interested in it, we could add a parameter to get mandatory fields only in the registration form (removing first/last names and email), but it’s an unrelated change.
