Problem/Motivation

On a user profile, there is a tab named "my subscriptions", and another named "track". The difference is not clear, and people told me they were two Drupal modules with different functions. The thing is, in my own user's profile, when they see "track", they just cannot differentiate it from "my subscriptions" (in this context, they just mean the same thing...). This is a usability problem.

Proposed resolution

  • The "track" tab should better be named "Contributions" -like in Wikipedia, for example- (possibly, "My contributions", in my own profile, and "User contributions", in other users' public profile, although it is probably more simple to simply call it "Contributions"...).
  • Rename track things to: Activity

Remaining tasks

review

User interface changes

Labels and words and paths. See #91

API changes

No.

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Comments

cosmicdreams’s picture

Very Interesting. I associate "Track" to the module that is doing the tracking (named tracker). So you can see where that name came from.

I agree, though, that naming it something else might be a good idea. What do others think?

elv’s picture

"My posts" or "My contributions", or "My anything", even "My track" would be better than just "Track" IMHO.

BrightLoudNoise@drupal.org’s picture

How about "My Activity", or "My Activities"

VM’s picture

The problem with using "My" when looking at another users profile "My" would be incorrect.

cosmicdreams’s picture

So the word "My" would have to programmatic. When you are viewing the posts that you have submitted and the activity you've done on the site the tab should read "My Activity". If you're viewing someone else's profile, it should read "'s Activity"

Sound good?

VM’s picture

yep, now all that has to be done is a patch created and submitted for Drupal 7

cosmicdreams’s picture

 --username--'s Activity

I meant to say the above. As far as a patch...I'm still setting up my test environment so I can make patches. I'll race ya.

cosmicdreams’s picture

Status: Active » Needs work
Sutharsan’s picture

Project: » Drupal core
Version: » 7.x-dev
Component: usability » other

Moving issues from User experience project to Drupal core usability component.

Xano’s picture

"Contributions" would indicate users actually write valuable content for a website or anything like that IMHO. "Track" or "activity" would be better, since it only describes that the user is active on the site, but it doesn't give any implications on what exactly thet user might be doing. I think those words have a more general meaning.

Personally I like "track" better, but considering simplicity and translations I'd go for "activity", since that's a more general word in most languages.

cosmicdreams’s picture

Component: other » tracker.module
Issue tags: +Usability, +Novice

Xano: I understand your point of the use of the term Contributions. That makes good sense to me.

However, I think the use of the term Activity to describe the content creation events of adding nodes and comments make more sense today than when we first discussed this issue. Many people can easily relate to Facebook's Activity Feed as an analogy for a list of things that a person is generates on a site. So I'd like to advocate for the change of the term "Track" to "Activity" again.

A change to something as long lived as tracker would have to be discussed further though. This is a change that might be welcomed by some, but I don't think this issue has seen enough eyeballs to enact yet.

This change is likely to be a very simple one so I think there is still time to get this into Drupal 7. I'll tag with the Novice term.

cosmicdreams’s picture

Title: In user profiles, "Track" tab should be renamed "Contributions" » In user profiles, "Track" tab should be renamed "My Activity"

@Jao: If you don't have any strong objections, I'll re-title this issue to reflect the naming that seems to have the most traction in the above comments.

yoroy’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
FileSize
605 bytes

Yes, would be nice. Simple first version of a patch attached.

cosmicdreams’s picture

I'll put this in my testing queue today.

cosmicdreams’s picture

Status: Needs review » Reviewed & tested by the community

After I cleared my cache on /admin/config/development/performance it worked for me.

Dries’s picture

Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Needs work
Issue tags: +Favorite-of-Dries
+++ modules/tracker/tracker.module	5 Mar 2010 15:53:45 -0000
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@
   $items['user/%user/track'] = array(
-    'title' => 'Track',
+    'title' => 'My activity',

I support this change but when we rename the label, we should also update the URL path. The URL should become user/$uid/activity.

yoroy’s picture

FileSize
682 bytes

Dries: changing %user to %uid is intended or a typo?
This one uses %uid

yoroy’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review

status for bot

Status: Needs review » Needs work

The last submitted patch, myactivity2.patch, failed testing.

yoroy’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
FileSize
1.59 KB

Yes, it broke a test, as it should.

cosmicdreams’s picture

Looking forward to seeing this issue go green. yoroy, that is a very intuitive improvement. Do other parts of tracker need to be changed do to the path change?

yoroy’s picture

The breaking tests usually point out the paths that get broken, so we'll wait and see. A final stress test by a human never hurts of course but is not neccessary before test bot is happy

cosmicdreams’s picture

FileSize
7.32 KB

@yoroy: After applying the patch and flushing drupal's cache this patch seems to break tracker.

NaheemSays’s picture

Should it not be "Activity" instead of "My activity"?

(or if My is used, then for other users it should use the users name.)

Is there also a need to make similar changes for the tracker and tracker/%uid pages?

Status: Needs review » Needs work

The last submitted patch, myactivity3.patch, failed testing.

cosmicdreams’s picture

@nbz: good point, use of the term "My Activity" will be confusing for some, since a possible interpretation of the tab name would be, "My relative interaction with that person or if that person is me, my interaction with throughout the site."

Let's see if the addition of this complexity does not put this patch out of scope for drupal 7.

corbacho’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
FileSize
632 bytes

I wouldn't call it "My Activity". It's infantilizing. It reminds to Windows 95 with "My Computer" or "My Yahoo", MySpace. Even Microsoft has stop using it. In Windows 7 is now only "Computer"

Who uses "your" ?
Flickr, Amazon, and others uses "Your account", Twitter uses "your tweets" or "Account"
From what I saw Facebook don't use any possessives, only nouns "Account, Photos,..."

I will go for "Your activity", or only "Activity".
Also interesting to read: My Vs Your http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/social/core/yourvmy.html

We should be consistent too... I made a search in all the code of Drupal core and there are lots of strings where Drupal uses "your". For example "your language", "your content", "your database", "your email", "your comment". But in the other hand I found "My" in "My account" and "My blog".

This should be decided soon, before interface strings are frozen.
Re-rolling patch

corbacho’s picture

FileSize
15.07 KB
7.6 KB

I forgot the screenshots. (Should we add a weight, so "Activity" is in the last tab?)

The "/tracker" path also displays "All recent content" and "My recent content". Should be also modified, how? drupal.org/tracker has "all recent posts" instead of "content"

bojanz’s picture

Version: 7.x-dev » 8.x-dev
yoroy’s picture

Thanks for looking into this, but strings have been frozen for a long time already. Yes, this is Drupal 8 material.

Xano’s picture

We should be consistent too... I made a search in all the code of Drupal core and there are lots of strings where Drupal uses "your". For example "your language", "your content", "your database", "your email", "your comment". But in the other hand I found "My" in "My account" and "My blog".

Consistency++, but not if it's unclear whose content the system is talking about. Yours or theirs?

dbeall’s picture

Nice to see this addressed, I have been hacking core with every update to read 'my contributions'.

webchick’s picture

I'm not sure why you would hack core for this. Use http://drupal.org/project/stringoverrides.

dbeall’s picture

sorry about my bad habits, I do use stringoverrides as well and it works on most drupal text.
I promise to never hack D7 or D8 core
I promise to never hack D7 or D8 core
I promise to never hack D7 or D8 core
I promise to never hack D7 or D8 core
+100, lol

webchick’s picture

Ha. :D

Niklas Fiekas’s picture

Status: Needs review » Needs work

Needs a reroll because of the directory structure changes.

Schnitzel’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
FileSize
542 bytes

reroll

Niklas Fiekas’s picture

Status: Needs review » Needs work

Excellent. One more thing: hook_help() mentions the existence of a Track tab.

synth3tk’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
FileSize
729.82 KB

My first attempt at a patch. Ever! Changed the hook_help() reference to Activity.

Also, I agree with #18 (change the URL of the tab), although I didn't change that in this patch.

Status: Needs review » Needs work

The last submitted patch, activity-help-change.patch, failed testing.

synth3tk’s picture

Huh. Now I see why people like *nix. I'm also not sure why it created a huge patch. My bad.

synth3tk’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
FileSize
1.17 KB

Let's have another go at it.

Status: Needs review » Needs work

The last submitted patch, activity-help-change-2.patch, failed testing.

synth3tk’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
FileSize
1.36 KB

And again....

Status: Needs review » Needs work

The last submitted patch, activity-help-change-3.patch, failed testing.

synth3tk’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
FileSize
1.36 KB

Ok, using a different approach to create it. Sorry for spamming up the issue! I'm what you call a "hands-on" learner.

Status: Needs review » Needs work

The last submitted patch, activity-help-change-6.patch, failed testing.

synth3tk’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
FileSize
1.21 KB

I guess I'll just use the CLI for patches from now on. Sorry for the spam.

Niklas Fiekas’s picture

Combined the two patches.

I'd vote for keeping the URL. It's not misleasing, we have another URL like that and afterall the module is called tracker. (And a contrib project activity exists.)

Devin Carlson’s picture

Category: feature » task
Status: Needs review » Reviewed & tested by the community

The patch in #49 applies cleanly and changes the confusing "track" text to "activity" (which a majority of people have suggested).

Xano’s picture

Title: In user profiles, "Track" tab should be renamed "My Activity" » In user profiles, "Track" tab should be renamed "Activity"
webchick’s picture

Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Needs work

It doesn't look like #16 was done? The path hasn't changed.

Niklas Fiekas’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review

I have argued against that, but not sure if there is a consensus (so needs review):

I'd vote for keeping the URL. It's not misleasing, we have another URL like that and afterall the module is called tracker. (And a contrib project activity exists.)

oriol_e9g’s picture

Status: Needs review » Needs work

I'm for "Activity" but we still need to change the path:

$items['user/%user/track'] should be: $items['user/%user/activity']

oriol_e9g’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review

Ops! Sorry, I hadn't read that there was no consensus with the new path.

webchick’s picture

If the only reason not to rename it is the module is called "Tracker" that doesn't really make sense to me. We should name user-facing elements (menu items, tabs, URLs) according to what makes sense to users. And while Activity module exists, it does not, as far as I can tell, claim this path. And even if it does, Activity module is used as an alternative to Tracker, not alongside it.

synth3tk’s picture

Well if the Activity module doesn't claim the URL, and we're already changing the strings to "Activity", then I really don't see why we shouldn't. It helps to keep everything consistent.

Niklas Fiekas’s picture

Yep. I see the point. Webchick also made this point (as an example): system module exposes admin/modules not admin/system/modules because it makes more sense to the user.

What about the side wide tracker and tracker/all pages?


  $items['tracker'] = array(
    'title' => 'Recent content',
    'page callback' => 'tracker_page',
    'access arguments' => array('access content'),
    'weight' => 1,
    'file' => 'tracker.pages.inc',
  );    
  $items['tracker/all'] = array(
    'title' => 'All recent content',
    'type' => MENU_DEFAULT_LOCAL_TASK,
  );    

dbeall’s picture

In my beginners opinion,,
The label changes depending on the site and the type of people , sorry for the D7 word, the 'Users' of the site..
On a community web site, I named it 'My Contributions'

It's easy enough to hack that one little thing....

dbeall’s picture

I just have one thought to stick in the works.. don't pay attention to my idea too much because i'm a detail nut and site builder, but not a programmer. It's all about the user interface to me, I let Drupal do what it wants to do.

The tracker tab is the shoe-box full of posts by that user.
In my Drupal Deams, I see a configure link on the module list page next to tracker module.
I click the configure link and I can magically give that tab what ever name I want my users to see.

dbeall’s picture

It just hit me, because I just hacked this again -- sorry, i had 4 people wanting sites last week and it came up again.

just today, I renamed the tracker tab by hacking core to make it read "My Content"
I named it that because I was going through the moves that the user would,,
The web site had a link that offered me to "add new content", or something like that...
I made some new content, and logged out.

I logged back in and see my account page,, and now i see "My Content"

I was active in many ways on many occasions on the web site,,, but didn't add any new content... but now that I have added new content, It shows in My Content List...

hmmmmmmm
do you see why i don't get involved in this stuff....

Kristen Pol’s picture

Regarding #58, if we are going with "activity" in the URL in one place then, IMHO, it makes sense to be consistent and change it for the other URLs as well. Meaning, any URLs and user-facing strings would use "activity" whereas internally "tracker" can still be used (e.g. module name, filenames, etc.).

krishworks’s picture

Trackers only tracks the posted content or comment on the website and it may not be appropriate to call it 'activity'. Term 'Activity' denotes a variety of actions like 'logged in, logged out, posted content, liked someone's post, shared content; etc. I understand liking and sharing are not part of drupal core and could be handled by contribs. However, if tracker doesn't allow contrib modules to add other entries to its stream, then it's better we rename it to something else other than 'Activity' or just leave it as Tracker.

Also, if we are going to use 'activity' in urls and ui, then it also makes sense to change the module name to activity, rather than tracker. Otherwise, it's still a confusion to use all file names and functions starting with 'tracker'.

rivimey’s picture

Not sure what can be added here but this issue should be resolved and closed out. So far it's lasted rather a long time.

Activity for the tab name seems to have consensus.
URL path change seems to make sense too.
Lets not add in features under this issue report, so if it is appropriate to add in aln All Activity page then add a new issue for that.

If the above can't be agreed, perhaps we can decide that it doesn't matter enough to change?

klonos’s picture

...two related issues I've filed against d.o customizations #2101961: Do not include issues in the query that creates the "Posts"/"Your posts" tabs. / #1139664: List the date the user has last replied/posted in the users' profile/details (instead of the date the post was last updated)

PS: I also don't like the word "track" (implies some sort of spying) - I prefer "activity" more since it implies involvement/participation or frequency when the time factor is taken under account.

BryanGullan’s picture

I'd agree with @rivimey on this (#64). Seems to be that we should have the following changes:

  • "Activity" for tab name
  • Update paths - or at least the front-end facing ones - to use "activity" not "tracker": both as per #16 and updating the two mentioned in #58 (and indeed any others I'm not aware of!

I've attached a patch for this. I would suggest that further consideration of the title used for the user/$uid/activity page may be appropriate, but how about leaving that for a separate issue as a follow-up, if all else is fine with this patch?

Status: Needs review » Needs work

The last submitted patch, 140363-track-activity-63.patch, failed testing.

BryanGullan’s picture

Ah, damn. The tests contain paths and need to be updated. Will re-roll that patch to include test updates.

BryanGullan’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
FileSize
10.37 KB

Re-rolled patch with updates to the tests.

Status: Needs review » Needs work

The last submitted patch, 140363-track-activity-69.patch, failed testing.

BryanGullan’s picture

Oops, missed a couple. Also update a couple of comments to be accurate with respect to references to paths.

BryanGullan’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
dags’s picture

The patch applies and looks good but we can't RTBC it just yet because of this issue: #2120877: Add tests for tracker module's Tools menu link.

BryanGullan’s picture

I'll see if I can get a patch together to sort out #2120877 then :-)

That one will need to retain the "Tracker" label, and then I can update this patch to apply Activity as a label anywhere it's needed.

In the meantime, I've attached an updated patch to include a fix to the link within the Help screen for Tracker.

dags’s picture

Could you attach an interdiff? I can't tell what's different between #71 and #74.

BryanGullan’s picture

Not an actual patch file, but it's just a change to line 25 of tracker.module:

> -      $output .= '<dd>' . t("The <a href='@recent'>Recent content</a> page shows new and updated content in reverse chronological order, listing the content type, title, author's name, number of comments, and time of last update. Content is considered updated when changes occur in the text, or when new comments are added. The <em>My recent content</em> tab limits the list to the currently logged-in user.", array('@recent' => url('tracker'))) . '</dd>';
> +      $output .= '<dd>' . t("The <a href='@recent'>Recent content</a> page shows new and updated content in reverse chronological order, listing the content type, title, author's name, number of comments, and time of last update. Content is considered updated when changes occur in the text, or when new comments are added. The <em>My recent content</em> tab limits the list to the currently logged-in user.", array('@recent' => url('activity'))) . '</dd>';
klonos’s picture

klonos’s picture

realityloop’s picture

I don't know that an interdif is very useful given it's 9 months since the last patch, but here is a patch that makes this change and the Tracker tests pass with the changes made.

larowlan’s picture

Looks good.
Any reason /tracker and /tracker/{uid} weren't updated too?

rivimey’s picture

@larowlan, in the spirit of my comment in #64 and given that there would be multiple issues relating to URL renaming, I think it's better to go with #79 than extend this patch to cover that. Feel free to add in a new issue if you feel that url renaming is important.

heddn’s picture

Status: Needs review » Reviewed & tested by the community

I've reviewed the code. It looks solid. Let's get this in and add additional paths in follow-on issues.

alexpott’s picture

Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Needs work
Issue tags: +Needs reroll
git ac https://www.drupal.org/files/issues/rename_track_tab_to_activity-140363-79.patch
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  6231  100  6231    0     0   6443      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  6545
error: patch failed: core/modules/tracker/src/Tests/TrackerNodeAccessTest.php:25
error: core/modules/tracker/src/Tests/TrackerNodeAccessTest.php: patch does not apply
YesCT’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review
YesCT’s picture

sorry. patch.

YesCT’s picture

Issue tags: -Novice, -Needs reroll

I was going to update the class one line summary, since that was the change in the getInfo that was effected.
But, the patch the way it is, does still provide /tracker (and not /activity)
So that change to the description in getinfo (now would just be on the doc block for the class) is not appropriate.

I'm not sure what to do about /tracker and /tracker/{uid}

what do they do different than /user/{uid}/activity ?

As user 1, I can access /user/2/activity
but not /tracker/2

/tracker seems to be "Recent content"
and
/tracker/1 is "My recent content"

Is there a separate issue to deal with /tracker?
I think we need one, or it needs to be in here.

Let's *think* a bit more.

realityloop’s picture

/tracker is global activity, now renamed to /activity

/tracker/[uid] only accesible if using your own UID, now renamed to /activity/[uid]
-page title is "My recent content" and the link is accesible by local tab when at /activity
-this is different to /user/[uid]/tracker which is accesible to all users with sufficient permissions

realityloop’s picture

Small update to also change the friendly name of the module to "Activity Tracker"

YesCT’s picture

I might have made these interdiffs right.

There was an automatic 3 way merge in there somewhere while rebasing. but no conflict.

YesCT’s picture

Issue summary: View changes
YesCT’s picture

FileSize
383.24 KB
322.64 KB
368.59 KB

things to check:
/user/1/track
/track
/track/1

looks like head broke and the link is not a link for the title....
not to do with this issue though.

looks good to me. seems head has the problem of the title not being the link, and not the problem of this issue/patch in 88

YesCT’s picture

maybe we need a new issue that would be a child of #2297711: Fix HTML escaping due to Twig autoescape
... not sure. but it is related.

YesCT’s picture

Issue summary: View changes
YesCT’s picture

Issue summary: View changes
Status: Needs review » Reviewed & tested by the community

Re-read the whole patch. looks good, stays within scope.
tried it manually earlier.
and the autoescape thing will be handled by the other issue.

alexpott’s picture

Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Needs work
Issue tags: +Needs change record

I think that changing the url means we should have a change record.

realityloop’s picture

Status: Needs work » Needs review

Change record created at https://www.drupal.org/node/2306927

YesCT’s picture

good start. I made the title of the change record more specific.

I also searched for other change records with "tracker" in them, to see if there were any change records we might need to update.

https://www.drupal.org/list-changes/published?keywords_description=track...

and found
https://www.drupal.org/node/2086767
New History JS API — history markers no longer break the render cache
Maybe this could use an edit since we are changing the name of the module from Tracker to Activity Tracker? (but the machine name of the module is still tracker. so I dont know)

https://www.drupal.org/node/1543796
Namespace and naming changes for test classes of automated tests
I didnt see anything there that needed changed.

realityloop’s picture

https://www.drupal.org/node/2086767
references https://www.drupal.org/node/2082315 with a patch (currently needs work) that will need to change if this issue makes it in, I'm happy to jump onto that queue once this one makes it in.

https://www.drupal.org/node/1543796
no changes need to be made here as far as I can tell

YesCT’s picture

Status: Needs review » Reviewed & tested by the community

ok. change records dealt with. and still green. rtbc.

  • alexpott committed 022163f on 8.0.x
    Issue #140363 by synth3tk, makemineatriple, realityloop, yoroy, YesCT,...
alexpott’s picture

Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Fixed

Committed 022163f and pushed to 8.0.x. Thanks!

YesCT’s picture

Issue tags: -Needs change record

thanks!

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.