post or thread? --> page?

I agree with what you're saying and I can rationalize "item", but I've never seen it used that way. We might as well call it "thing," "piece," or "box"...

German has a word that works pretty well: "Beitrag" — literally translated that would be "contribution," something that originated from a contributor.

It can't be "To this thread" because comments might not even be enabled. "Post" is nicely vague: it allows the idea of replacing one post with the next (updates) as well as one post attracting more posts (comments)...

I've been thinking about this off and on, and I keep coming back to "post"...

There's a similar issue with having to tell people to go to the "Categories" to subscribe to forums. No one understands that. We know, of course, that there's more to categories than forums, but forum users couldn't care less. OTOH, it's not an unsurmountable problem either.

So, shall we rename "Threads" to "Posts"? Would that add value? I don't think so.

Maybe we just accept the heritage from Subscriptions 1.x... If we can leave behind all the other pain that 1.x has caused, then I can happily live with a slightly quirky terminology.

This is my comment just to put my grain of salt, and without any intention to cause confusion or offending.
All this begin with the "need" of using just a single word for a definition. I think is easier to use 2 words or a new word, the same as Drupal uses the word "hook" and it is used "as is" in spanish because is a neologism. So, I don't have any sort of 2 words to define this behavior but I invented this word: Phreath, that is a new keyword for google and will be easy to found, and we can document the meaning of that new word (README.txt?).

Blessings!

I found myself facing the same doubts when trying to translate Subscriptions. Having heard users asking about the meaning of "topic", "thread" and even "server", I am sure they might get confused. So I tend to simplify terms in translation: for example, rather than "node", "post" or "thread" I would just say "subscribe to this page" on the node, which everybody understands. Similarly, I would use "Details", on the subscriptions page tab (as opposed to the "Overview" tab). The problem comes when the software developer uses the same string in multiple places: for example, if I render the threads tab with "details", then I don't want to come up with "subscribe to this details" somewhere else....

Yes, maybe "subscribe to this page" and "Pages" would be better.

The discussion started by gustav is very lively but not conclusive. The one thing I take from it is that "post" and "thread" point to a certain way of using a site that is not universal enough. "Page" seems to cover more.

I would use "Details", on the subscriptions page tab (as opposed to the "Overview" tab).

I don't understand what you mean. Replace the title "Overview" with "Details"? I don't follow the rest of your explanation, either.

Please post paths of what you're talking about in a new issue! Keep issues focused!!!

sorry for the misunderstanding:
I was suggesting to have "Overview" and "Details" in the user subscriptions page.
You are now considering "Overview" and "Pages" (which would be more consistent with "subscribe to this page")

In the rest of my message I was just referring to a general problem (not germane to this discussion): sometimes the
same English term/sentence fits well (and is used) in two places, but when one renders it in another language
one may feel the need of translating it in two different ways...

According to the answers in the post and the forum discussion started by Gustav, I can see a lot of different meanings for the same thing, so people loves one in particular and there is not consensus. So, I have another idea: to let users label subscription options, fivestars does the same, user can label every star.
In this particular case, and without any coding, they just have to activate locale and create a custom language to replace strings they don't like.

Blessings!

@skizzo: Ok, I see what you mean, but that's based on your limited view of a broken installation. I think we can drop that once your installation is working.

@develCuy: Yes, that's a very good idea!

Nevertheless, I'm renaming
"To this post" -> "To this page",
"posts" -> "content",
"Threads" -> "Pages".

We'll see how it works out...

Well, you're the one who got the ball rolling... Would you like to go back to where we were before, now?

I see no reasonable way to make these strings configurable, for several reasons:

1. User-editable strings support a single language only (at least in D5); this would hurt multi-language sites.
2. The strings are supplied by the add-on modules on the fly. There's no way to know what the modules will supply.
3. The strings would need to be somewhat synchronized with the corresponding page titles; this is going too far...

People who want that kind of customization should define their own language and translate the strings themselves.

Ok, I guess we can change it to "To content of type Story" — it's kinda clumsy (funny, the spell checker in FF accepts 'kinda'...), but it may be clearer...

"Subscribe to this content" — no, grammatically wrong.

"Subscribe to this piece of content" — no, piece of whatever.

"Subscribe to this item" — no, too vague, no significant precedent in Drupal or user space.

"Subscribe to this page" — yes, see #5.

It's the first option, maybe the only option that users will see, and it has to be as good as we can make it. Tough luck for the Page content type.

Incidentally:

Page

If you want to add a static page, like a contact page or an about page, use a page.

Why would you want to allow subscribing to Pages (with capital 'P')?

Hmm...

"To Forum topic content by John Doe"

"To content of type Forum topic by John Doe"

I'm not sure this is an improvement...

Comments, anyone?

Sorry, gustav, you'll have to create your own language and translate the strings yourself.