UX: Certain users understand the word "Draft" to mean "Unpublished" and are surprised that a node in "Draft" is published if a previous revision of the node is Published

Fixes are made on on 11.x (our main development branch) first, and are then back ported as needed according to our policies.

Added the necessary changes, please review.

Was previously tagged for tests which are still needed

Thanks.

Usability review

We discussed this issue the last two weeks at #3460910: Drupal Usability Meeting 2024-07-19 and #3462675: Drupal Usability Meeting 2024-07-26. The link to the recording of last week’s meeting is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3FN7NuvxyU . For the record, the attendees were: @AaronMcHale, @benjifisher, @rkoller, @shaal, @simohell, @worldlinemine, and @zetagraph. The link to the recording of yesterday’s meeting is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crtKx6T_-IM . For the record, the attendees were @AaronMcHale, @amazingrando, @benjifisher, @rkoller, and @shaal.

If you want more feedback from the usability team, a good way to reach out is in the #ux channel in Slack.

The group agreed that the problem outlined in the issue summary has to be solved. We have taken a look at the current state of the MR and made a few observations:

• The information that a previous revision of this node is being published is meta information aka information about the node, not necessarily information about the content. That information would be more suitable for the advanced column.
• The position of the info A previous revision of this node is published. See all revisions. is not controllable, since it is not a widget.
• At the moment the MR only applies to nodes, but technically it would be possible to have that functionality for other entity types as well.
• To ability to see all revisions is technically already available via the primary tab on top of the page and that way sort of redundant within A previous revision of this node is published. See all revisions..
• On the moderation state widget the label Current state: is sort of unclear, or at least might makes the user think for a second or two. What does current refers to? What state stands for (which is a shorthand for moderation state)?
• On top of the advanced column you have for example Published or Draft in bold letters, standing alone without any context. It looks like the headline/title of the advanced column, plus it is not clear if that title refers to the Status or the actual moderation state, in case the current moderation state is for example Published.

In regards of consistency and clarity there are two more aspects we've stumbled across when we’ve visited /admin/content and the revisions pages during our discussions. But both aspects are completely out of the scope for this issue:

• Same as it is important on the node edit page to inform the user that the draft someone is working on has a previously published revision it is important on the /admin/content page as well. If you add the moderation state column to the content view you get Published in the status as well as for the moderation state column, while if you switch to the moderated content tab the very same node has a moderation state of Draft<code>. That is potentially confusing and a mixed messaging across pages. We’ve found the following #3082700: Content: Moderation state field in Views does not display proper value if change made after "Published" that might apply at least in part to this problem.
• The revisions page sort of echoed some of the inconsistencies and the lack of clarity in regards of language used which was already encountered on /admin/content and the node edit page. We’ve found #2899719: Revision/version language on revision listing page is misleading with content moderation enabled tackling that.

We had a lot of back and forth over the course of the last two meetings, but we’ve agreed on the following points:

• Add a label to the moderation state on top of the advanced column and adjust the styling to the one used for the lines of Last saved and Author underneath. So the first line changes (using the example “Draft”) from Draft to Moderation state: Draft. The reason was to make the first line more clear and make the first section of the advanced column more easy scanable.
• Move the note A previous revision of this node is published. See all revisions. introduced with this MR from the main content area into the advanced column right underneath Moderation state: Draft. As already mentioned, the note is meta information about the content and therefore more suitable within the advanced column than the main content area of the node edit form.
• Change A previous revision of this node is published. See all revisions. to either A previous revision is published. See all revisions. or A previous revision is published.. It has to be noted that we have not reached a clear consensus which of the two variants to pick. There is only a clear consensus about the first sentence, and removing the reference to the node, making the sentence more generic. We were only uncertain if we should keep the reference to the revisions page including the link, since the link is now, by moving the sentence into the advanced column, in even more close proximity to the revisions primary tab.
• Change the string Current state: on the moderation state form display widget to Moderation state:. The reason was to remove the potentially confusing and probably obsolete word current and avoid the shorthand of state by making the label consistent with the one now used in the advanced column.
• Make the functionality available for other entity types as well, not only for nodes. Probably out of the scope for this issue and might be a reasonable step for a followup issue?