Make "I'm a volunteer" an explicit choice in the credit UI

I like the idea of an explicit checking of "I'm a volunteer" as part of the UI. It should make it a lot easier to track actual intent. This is going to take quite a bit of rework of the attribution fields. If someone selects, I'm a volunteer, the fields for organization and customer should not be visible. That will prevent unintended attribution of work as both volunteer and organization driven.

On a related note, should we have a default that shows when a user's contribution was funded by an undisclosed customer? (This would allow for the NDA example.) Should we have an option for undisclosed employer? (That seems like an edge case, but perhaps there are good examples for this as well.) Should those cases be separate issues?

What kind of visual change are you thinking about? I am unsure how to think about this. Does this happen near the field or on another page?

I like the idea of undisclosed organizations, but can't think of a great UI offhand. If you aren't thinking about having undisclosed attribution, I could see a checkbox labeled "Undisclosed" being confusing.

To properly gain credit when disclosure can be done, an organization could set themselves up with an organization page named "Codename Carbon" and change it when they want to be public. A bit awkward, but does get credit assigned from the start.

"I'm a volunteer" could be wrapping the the UI in radio buttons.

Attribute this contribution:
o I'm a volunteer
o drumm at organization [Drupal Association] for customer [not applicable]

While straightforward, maybe not ideal, it doubles the vertical space used.

So far, no one has attributed a single comment to more than one organization. We could take away the organization multi-select and make that radio buttons:

o not applicable
o volunteer
x Drupal Association
o Neil Drumm Consulting

#8: it's only been rolled out for a short time — removing that ability now would prevent us from knowing whether it's useful at all?

I was never sure if the ability to attribute a comment to multiple organizations made sense in the first place. (Multiple customers isn't something I'd change in this issue.)

So far, no one has attributed a single comment to more than one organization.

This is still true with 5,564 attributed comments from the last ~3 weeks.

Here's a first pass at the UI. When 'as a volunteer' is selected, that will shorten the summary to:

Attribute this contribution: drumm [ as a volunteer ]

Wouldn't "not applicable" be the default state? And as such, shouldn't it be first?

Making the choices mutually exclusive simplifies the UI quite a bit. For example, we don't have to disable or remove "not applicable" when something else is checked.

I see volunteering as mutually exclusive with organization credit. If you are spending work & volunteer time on a single comment, I'd recommend talking to your manager, and making multiple comments for each context.

Something like #7 looks good to me too.

I actually think doubling the vertical space could be a good thing. Despite its placement, the current UI is really easy to miss... I'm sure a lot of people have been blowing right by it when filling out an issue comment. (I've done that myself a few times even though I certainly know it's there.) If it takes up more vertical space it might be easier to see.

Here is an implementation of #7.

Not applicable would be leaving the defaults: username at organization not applicable for customer not applicable.

Here's a version with some slightly different copyediting.

I'm not understanding this "not applicable" option. Either an organization is paying you to spend time on something, or they aren't.

(Merges to 7.x-3.x only make the Credit & Committing table header non-sticky.)

We don't have to set a default for this option, it could come blank, and require people to fill it in.

Once you have used it once, the defaults as described in #2451381-2: Refine organization credit selection UX based on contributor use cases kick in, matching the other fields behavior.

Is there a reason we would not allow multiple contributions?

I am a bit lost why webchick her concerns are not being addressed. I also really think we should go towards the dialog model that I proposed a long time ago, if this becomes so unwieldy as these screens seem to indicate.

I'd like to take a moment to de-escalate the language being used. "Going in circles" and "not addressed" are not helpful to getting a solution agreed upon. A slow response can be caused by a lot of things. Please assume best intentions and a busy schedule. I like you both and want to get this figured out so we can start collecting data.

I agree that radio buttons without a default are less than ideal in nearly all circumstances. The one exception I could think of is the Likert scale on a survey. You don't want to default to a number on a scale as it would skew the collection of the data.

This choice has some similar implications for reporting. We have been testing the impact of radio buttons versus checkboxes on the data collection and see the following:

1. With radio buttons, we lose the ability for a user to choose volunteer AND employer contribution on a single comment. I agree there is a case to be made for the big patch that is both.

2. With checkboxes, we increase the likelihood that someone will set volunteer AND organization contribution as their default comment status. That changes the reporting in one important way. We lose the ability to report on a strict percentage of comments attributed to organizations versus individual. We would instead need to report on 3 states as comments would be volunteer only OR volunteer + organization OR organization. The expectation is that people don't want to take extra steps, so we expect that data will skew towards volunteer + organization for many users that would use this setting.

We are fine with the reporting limitations that checkboxes introduce as long as we understand what that limitation is. We can deploy the checkbox option as soon as next week if no one objects to the effects that will have on the data collected.

Similarly, there's no way to purposefully unselect it in the event you fall into an "it's complicated" situation such as a customer covered by NDA.

In that case, selecting "at organization not applicable for customer not applicable" is the correct thing to do. You are making it clear that the contribution is for an organization and/or customer, and not disclosing the specific organization(s).

Anyway, making the two options checkboxes is okay with me too.

It's not really clear to me that not applicable, and not applicable then indicates that I work under NDA. But thats possibly the whole "not applicable" label thats confusing.

If we can switch to checkboxes that would be a good step. I am a little concerned over this UI as a whole, as we are adding these things. To what extent is it possible to move this to a checkbox, it simply won't scale well and take up more and more space.

It's not really clear to me that not applicable, and not applicable then indicates that I work under NDA. But thats possibly the whole "not applicable" label thats confusing.

I see not applicable covering both NDAs, and any other reason for not disclosing the organization. Such as, if an organization doesn't want to create an organization page. I don't think we need to get into collecting more-specific data on why organizations weren't specifically attributed.

If there is better copy for that, it would be great.

If we can switch to checkboxes that would be a good step. I am a little concerned over this UI as a whole, as we are adding these things. To what extent is it possible to move this to a checkbox, it simply won't scale well and take up more and more space.

We're still talking about only the two options as shown in #29. I can't think of other issues looking to add to the UI right now.

This is what it will look like as checkboxes.

@drumm Why can't we show this in a model and just have a "credits" button? We are going from 2 lines UI to a 4 lines UI. Is it in scope to fix this, I might be the only one concerned about it - but the UI is getting quite messy.

I can't think of a better label for "not applicable" at the moment. I hope we can actually usability test this once, because that would really allow us to better understand how this is used.

Why can't we show this in a model and just have a "credits" button?

I tried explain that at #2288727-46: [meta] Provide credit to organizations / customers who contribute to Drupal issues and #2288727-69: [meta] Provide credit to organizations / customers who contribute to Drupal issues. I think the UI on the comment form should show the current values, not just "Credits." (Flippant example - do I need to get more tokens to play at the Drupal.org arcade?) Without something to see, will people think credits is something they need to click; and seeing the default value filled in is helpful. As long as the values are all there, let's keep users relatively in-flow and not go into a whole modal.

This is running on https://attribution-drupal.redesign.devdrupal.org/node/2449369#comment-9..., where my last few comments are exercising the checkboxes.

Currently, the only way this shows for others is that credit to organizations & customers isn't displayed if that checkbox wasn't checked. As a commenter with multiple hats, you can toggle the two checkboxes to switch between volunteer & work mode.

We could certainly put "as volunteer" in the "Credit" bubble on comments, and "Credit & Committing" fieldset, but only for new comments with the box checked. I can't think of a good way to backfill this data, older comments would not get "as volunteer" unless edited. I think it might be best to leave it only for collecting data. The usernames continue to be most-prominently associated with the comments, regardless of attribution.

I don't think this should make a difference for displaying credits on user profiles, you should get credit regardless of organizations, volunteering, etc. For showing organization profiles, that box of course needs to be checked.

We should also consider any pop-up changes in #2450741: Explore the use of icons for showing attribution info in issue queues.

"I just didn't fill in a box" also includes "The box didn't exist when I commented." The popups are hidden enough for that to not be a huge concern. The Credit & Committing fieldset does put all the information in one place.

That said, let's get this deployed to start collecting data.

We don't have a way to back-fill data on comments from before this deployment.

I think the pop-up will be okay.

The Credit & Committing fieldset will visibly mix commenters who marked as volunteer with ones that are "missing". That was okay for organizations, because it is something being added. I could imagine this being concerning for volunteer. (Or I could be over-thinking it.)

This is now deployed and the update to back-fill the old data is over half done. Some comments may appear to be missing organizations, when the "organization" checkbox hasn't been updated yet. Comments are being updated newest to oldest.

All the existing comments that have organizations selected are now marked as having been from organizations.

I opened an issue for adding the new type of attribution to the pop up #2504547: Display volunteer attribution with the other types of attributions on issue comments. If there is a need to discuss how to display volunteer attribution in the Credit & Committing fieldset, please open a separate issue.

It seems that the documentation page does not contain description about this new feature ("I'm a volunteer").

Is there anybody with a strong understanding of this feature who wants to edit that page?

@pingwin4eg here is an issue to track doing that #2522752: Update comment attribution documentation page to include "I'm a volunteer" choice

So I've seen a pattern at least twice now, where prolific contributors dont want to update their attribution (or forget because there is no feedback for them on save #2463979: Show whole comment credit attribution for the comment author on the comment they just saved) and do they check both as a volunteer, and their company.

This is contrary to the purpose of setting it on each comment.
... I guess it does handle the problem we used to have of not having time windows for when a person changed companies...

Anyway, wanted to document how I've seen people using the volunteer checkbox.

#2581235: Make volunteer contributions more prominently visible than paid contributions is related.