Rename the "Configuration" menu item to "Configure"

On first sight, I liked it.

But unfortunately, "Configure" is barely translatable. As in, close to impossible.

I don't know why it works in English, but at least in German, it's linguistically not right to use the direct translation (or any variation of it) without a preceding/following subject/object. It's one of those verbs that looks, sounds, and reads horrible when used in the imperative on its own.

#2: I don't think "Konfigurieren" (Configure) is worse than "Erweitern" (Extend). German verbs generally do not translate well for this purpose, but I would not block the issue on this. We can still choose to use "Erweiterungen" and "Konfiguration" in the german translation as this applies more to the German audience - without the english core having to adhere to that.

Checked, looks goods => RTBC

Sorry, but you cannot mark such a major change to vocabulary without any review.

I am not really convinced this is necessary, it does nothing for usability. We have had no issues with the label, nor in conjunction with the renamed label.

As a native English speaker, I can confirm that this would help balance things a lot better, and I'd be very curious to know if it helps with user understanding as well.

@David I doubt that is related, it sounds highly unlikely we will affect the usability of that label by adding another noun. I also wonder if those results are correct, something I need to check with dharmesh.

I am not opposed to this, but I really don't know if it does anything to help - it seems like we are guessing here it has any effect, other than us just liking two nouns next to each other. So I can go either way on this.

@sun is right that this is hard to translate. In general when we come up with smart small labels, translating that into other (germanic) languages is quite hard.

Count Greek as another language that using the respective verb for "Configure" wouldn't make sense. But then again neither does "Extend". So, I guess we can leave it up to the translation teams of each language to decide if they should better keep a one-to-one (verb-to-verb or noun-to-noun) translation or if they should mix and match as it better makes sense for each language.

Is there a discussion anywhere of the top level admin navigation items? I've always thought it seemed disjointed for "Extend" to be the only noun* in the list, as pointed out above, (and for its path to still be "admin/modules"), and I've never been convinced that "People" and "Users" really connote the same thing. It feels like we haven't decided for sure who we're targetting with our taxonomy and there's no controlling paradigm. *Edit: I meant the only verb.

TravisCarden, #9 brings up a decent point about "Extend" pointing to "admin/modules" (verb pointing to a noun). But, extend isn't the only noun in the list -- it's a verb. Did you mean that it seems disjoint for "Configuration" to be the only noun in the list?

I think the point about noun/verb consistency is less important from the point of view that this issue's OP is taking (that they should all be consistently verbs). Many, many software systems have top-level menu items containing both nouns and verbs. The choice for verb or noun should be dictated by the kind of things you will find underneath the menu and by what sounds most natural in a given language. This includes the possibility for one language to use a noun and another language to use a verb. (I'm not sure if this is technically feasible from how translation contexts work today or not).

UPDATE: oops david beat me to the punch with contexts. Thats what happens when you leave for a lunch break in the middle of a comment. ;)

Re @jwilson3: Yeah, I meant that "Extend" is the only verb in the list. Thanks for catching that.

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The issue summary, as written, is still relevant today. The top-level link is still called "Configuration", and could be shortened to "Configure" since it conveys the same info, and (sun's comment #1 notwithstanding) provides more room in the horizontal toolbar, e.g. for additional contrib modules that provide top-level links (like "Groups" module for example). In the vertical sidebar toolbar, it could ultimately lead towards the ability to make the sidebar narrower. Shorter words and consistent word length in the vertical toolbar also help list scanability so people focus more on the icon+text, and don't rely on word length as an indicator of importance.

Tagging for a Usability Review due to the age of this issue

The Needs Review Queue Bot tested this issue. It no longer applies to Drupal core. Therefore, this issue status is now "Needs work".

This does not mean that the patch necessarily needs to be re-rolled or the MR rebased. Read the Issue Summary, the issue tags and the latest discussion here to determine what needs to be done.

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Not on the UX team just providing my 2 cents :)

But I think Configuration makes more sense. Configure reads like a verb to me, which would make sense if the other words read like that but "Structure", "People", "Appearance" don't to me.

We have taken an initial look at #3615346: Drupal Usability Meeting 2026-08-14. That issue will have a link to a recording of the meeting. The attendees at the usability meeting were @benjifisher, and @rkoller.

Since there were only two attendees today we'll hold off on providing an initial feedback. We will revisit the issue in one of the upcoming meetings once there is a larger group of attendees. For now we just wanted to leave a brief comment, adding #2447955: Change "Extend" menu item to "Extensions" as a related issue that is relevant to this issue, one we've reviewed a few months ago.